I'm looking through you

I'm pretty sure that it's not the correct quote nor the meaning of the correct quote, but it is hard not to think these days that "the media is the message", in that many of the stories that they dwell upon endlessly are basically the stories that only they feel the need to dwell upon endlessly. The shoe bomber sequel is perhaps the most recent example, in that the media is in a panic, Republican operatives are having a field day making attacks that they themselves would have called treasonous way back when in 2001 when Richard Reid tried the same exact thing, and honestly I'm not sure if anyone else really cares. By this point, if you haven't figured out that much of airline security is theater designed to make us feel safe, learn to love Teh Google, as there are 63,000 hits that can basically go over the concept for us. No, I think we all realize to some extent that while the government is good at retroactively preventing attacks that have already been attempted, there is inevitably a chance that someone will come up with a new way to attack a plane.

Quick aside: Like Kevin Drum in the following link, I think it is true that the fact al Qaeda always attacks planes and/or buses is a sign of weakness. Since 9/11, Afghan militants, Filipino militants, several African generals, and a bunch of other groups have figured out clever ways to slaughter the innocent. Al Qaeda likes to attack planes using shoes and underpants. They've tried twice in a decade, and failed both times, with the gravest injury being to the crotch of the most recent attempted bomber. As Nate Silver points out, airline travel is not just safe, it's ridiculously safe:

Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

If you are content leaving home without a lightning rod in your pocket, you should probably feel ok to fly. Honestly, I think people already know this, and the media freakout is basically an orchestrated show for the right wing to land free potshots and the hyperventilators to show how panicked all the rest of us should be. Remember during the past decade, of course, when across America the government and media hypervintilated about terrorism and New Yorkers, the people hit hardest and most likely tobe hit again, almost universally said "Al Qaeda? Fuhgeddaboutit. Fuck 'em." and managed to live life while small midwestern city governments built concrete fortifications around obscure county buildings.

The situation is so bad that David Brooks of the NYT is being held up as a voice of reason for his New Year's column. While agreeing in part with him, I think he misses a key point:

Resilient societies have a level-headed understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.

But, of course, this is not how the country has reacted over the past week. There have been outraged calls for Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security to resign, as if changing the leader of the bureaucracy would fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy. There have been demands for systemic reform — for more protocols, more layers and more review systems.

We do have a resilient society, by and large. The outraged calls and demands are a product of the media, by the media, and for the media. The rest of us were singing Auld Lang Syne badly, watching football, and other similar pursuits.

That said, while I think those calling for random insulting ways to racially profile Muslims really have no grasp of what drives a lot of the hatred of the US, I have to say that the proposal to put in many more full body scanners in airports doesn't really bother me. Even the two year old is starting to learn the names for various parts of herself, and I hope it comes as no surprise that there really aren't that many variations in all our parts. To put it mildly, even though many of us spend way to much time obsessing over penises and boobies, I'm pretty sure that after an airline scan technician looks at a few hundred, most of the prurient thrill will be gone. Your first glimpse of unobscured anatomy is a thrill, the thousandth, not so much. If this is what it takes to make a few people feel better, I can live with it, as the idea of just having everyone fly naked is hampered by sanitary and climate control issues. For those worried about privacy, the big threat is not a full-body scan, it's google if you've ever posted a single detail about your life on the internet, or if someone else has (hint: someone else has, trust me). Between google, facebook, and all the other easily searchable ways to find out info about people, our private lives are rarely private these days. If you haven't done so recently, try googling yourself. The only hope any of us has for anonymity these days is not a high level of privacy, but rather a common name. Matthew Smith, you are in luck. Me, somewhat, as there are a few of me and my googlegangers to obscure exactly who is who and who did what. In light of this, I just have trouble getting worked up about the idea of an airline screener staring at the outline of my genitalia for three seconds in a day full of body after same generic body.

Is such a step necessary to feel safe at the airport? Not at all! Driving in snow is a vastly bigger risk than a flight, and the biggest fear I have of air travel is having to sleep overnight in some of the country's lovely connecting airports after the restaurants have closed. Still, it's just not a big deal, and if it helps us as a society to get over some of our bizarre body issues, all the better. In the end, our genitals are our own, but they are basically like half of everyone else's too.

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Now playing: The Beatles - I'm Looking Through You
via FoxyTunes

Simple answers to insipid questions

From Howie Kurtz in the WaPo:

Krugman calls for focusing on the candidates' policy proposals instead. I'm all for that. But can we really make judgments about Obama and Edwards, for example, based on the differences in their health care plans?

Umm, yes. This has been the first edition to simple answers to insipid questions, inspired, of course, by Atrios.

Odds and ends

I'm busy getting ready to watch The Sopranos' final episode, but wanted to pass along a link to an article about how lightening up roofing and highway materials is a vastly useful environmental technique, since much less heat is absorbed, especially in cities. All it takes is chalk dust. Apparently, the reason we don't do this is because it's too simple to sound impressive. From Mark Kleiman, via Matt Yglesias:

Of course, if we had political reporters who weren't pig-ignorant about science and technology, this wouldn't be as significant a problem as it is. And if politicians weren't in the habit of offering trivial pseudo-solutions to serious problems, journalists would be less cynical about things that seem too easy. But then if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a trolley car.

This is a case where simply repeating the idea until it no longer seems funny could make a difference. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explain the idea to five people until they stop laughing.

Stop laughing!

By the way, lest we ever forget this, people are morons. This is a fundamental truth of human existence. It applies to those in the tech world who would impose arcane limits on us, crazy warmongering politicians like Joe Lieberman, the same crazy guy agreeing with Barack Obama that the internet is dangerous, etc....though I'll note that, closing the circle, Obama does know how to deal with pig-ignorant journalists.

The wrong man was convicted

Just a quickie this morning, about last week's Repbulican debate, with actual content outsourced to the always good Paul Krugman (link is behind the NYTimes firewall, but if you have an e-mail from an .edu domain, you can see it):

In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the "gaffe of the night"?

Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit....

[I]f there’s one thing I hope we’ve learned from the calamity of the last six and a half years, it’s that it matters who becomes president — and that listening to what candidates say about substantive issues offers a much better way to judge potential presidents than superficial character judgments. Mr. Bush’s tax lies, not his surface amiability, were the true guide to how he would govern.

And I don’t know if this country can survive another four years of Bush-quality leadership.

Imprisonment

A quick summary of the news from this morning:

Imprisoned by the Universe: There is a great article by Dennis Overbye of the NYTimes this morning about dark energy, the stuff that makes the universe accelerate outward, and what this means for the ultimate fate of the galaxy (not planet, which will be long since gone, or humanity, whose future is a mystery trillions of years from now). I'd only add that measurements of dark energy are convincing, but theoretically difficult to explain, and we may yet overhaul our basic cosmological model in the future should a better theoretical grounding come along.

Imprisoned by the Government: Yesterday, a military court basically overturned the whole trial system set up to deal with detainees at Guantanamo, based on the case of a boy who was captured when he was 15. See either a good analysis piece from the NYTimes, or if you really want, a piece that basically just repeats the Bush administration spin from the WaPo.

Imprisoned by outdated moral notions: For all that FoxNews is indecent by design (see below for more on that), the government's treatment of their broadcast network, among others, has certainly been indecent. Thankfully, the courts have thrown out some ridiculously hefty fines imposed on the networks when celebrities used naughty words at live awards ceremonies. There is a boring wrap-up in the WaPo (they just can't win today), and a great one in the NYTimes:

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

Imprisoned by the bonds of racism: If the charges against him are true, the Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) will be going to jail for a long time for corruption and being stupid enough to hide $100K in his freezer!?! If so, honestly, good riddance to him, for being a stain upon our government, and if he takes fellow Dem Allan Mollohan of West Virginia along with him supposing the latter is guilty, all the better. Corrupt Democrats are corrupt officials first, and we are better off without them. Still, only FoxNews could manage to make their own faults the story when describing a 16-count indictment. It seems that FoxNews can't tell black representatives apart, even when one is the current head of the House Judiciary committee and has a moustache, and the other one is not and does not. Idiots.

Imprisoned by our own shortsightedness: What do you do when NASA satellites keep finding evidence of global warming, which is inconvenient for an anti-science administration trying to deny the existence of said phenomenon? Apparently, you cut the funds for the program!

Imprisoned by preconceived notions: Newspapers apparently don't like Google News, because, um, well, I really don't understand. It actually drives their online traffic, and they want to look the gift horse in the mouth, then slaughter it and eat it. See a wise graduate student destroy the arguments of a journalism professor here, and puzzle over the vagaries of the tenure system.

Imprisoned by themselves?: It seems that the Justice Department interprets civil rights and voter rights to mean trying to make sure that minorities don't vote, by any means necessary. Congress is investigating. Perhaps they can sic the DoJ on themselves?

It's not a crime! It's legal, perfectly natural...

I'll be going off tonight on fake scandals and the reporters who love them, but make sure to scroll down and play dkon's youtube clip first, since it'll put you in a better mood either before or afterwards (or both).

My current favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama, found himself enmeshed in a scandal today...only, it turns out that it's not really much of a scandal at all. He turned over proceeds from his book into a blind trust, realized later that he was receiving more info about the investments he let a broker make than he should, and decided the best course of action was to take all his money and place it into mutual funds instead, to avoid a conflict of interest. Thankfully, Obama understands the fast-paced media cycle and responded in the same day:

Senator Barack Obama said today he did not believe it was a conflict to seek investment advice and use the brokerage services recommended by a friend and political contributor. He said he was not aware he had invested money into two of the same companies supported by some of his top donors.

“At no point did I know what stocks were held,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “And at no point did I direct how those stocks were invested.”

I'm not even sure that this is a scandal even if he knew, since he and supporters were investing in the same companies, not in each other's projects, and as mentioned before he didn't even know about where his money was going so one can't really say he meant to do anything. Still, it's good to know that the story got smacked down, because otherwise it is safe to assume that FoxNews would have had a field day, like they did with the fake madrassa story, and the fake controversy over his church's creed, and the fake controversy about his middle name, and ....

Obama's not the only one whose been bitten by crappy gotcha journalism. John Edwards was gotcha'd for selling his house through a realtor below market price to a political opponent. Again, I have no idea how this is supposed to be a conflict of interest, and neither did the Washington Post ombudsman, who smacked down the reporter who filed the bogus story, John Solomon. Solomon, formerly of the AP, is famous for misleading hit pieces, most recently on Harry Reid for another non-scandal, and was once described thus: "The consensus: he's lazy, and takes hit jobs handed him on a platter by opps research teams (and anyone will do.) And doesn't do much to clean it up.".

Seemingly every presidential candidate is vulnerable to this crap. Hillary got pilloried by the Drudge Report, and then CNN et al., for a quote taken massively out of context. Even St. John McCain, the patron saint of moderation and maverickosity was on the receiving end of another Solomon smear that was considered so blatantly unfair that lefty bloggers were up in arms.

Remember, many politicians are out-and-out criminals, like Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and likely Tom DeLay. Sen Pet Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, both Republicans from NM, seem to have interfered with an active investigation, thus obstructing justice, in the recent US Attorneys scandal. Still, not every scandal is real, and many of these stories are steaming piles of donkey poo, poorly sourced and poorly fact-checked, designed to attack a candidate without giving them a fair chance to respond. For goodness sakes, it's not like investigative journalists can't find enough real scandals out there, but some are just too lazy to do it.

Well maybe I am the f@ggot America, I'm not a part of a redneck agenda

First a followup from yesterday, and then the newer stuff, including a movie review for a very good film that I really should have heard about long before now.

The media blackout on Coulter basically continued today, but for a halfhearted effort from the NYTimes, which first compared her to Hillary Clinton (yes, they are both polarizing, Hillary for proposing a halfway decent healthcare plan and Coulter for being a bigot), and then attempted to apologize for all the speakers who preceded her at the CPAC meeting, failing to note that last year at this very venue she contented herself with just making raghead jokes. This was premeditated, no matter how dumb the media chooses to play it, when they play it at all.

I brought up Atrios yesterday, and today featured one of the best descriptions of his blog and methods from the also-excellent Ezra Klein. Discussing Atrios' world-famous "wanker of the day" award, Klein explains exactly what it does and does not represent:

Among other things, the lefty blogosphere was founded on a critique of the mainstream media that argued, contrary to popular belief, that the media was not actually liberal. The individuals who comprised it may have been tolerant on cultural issues, but years of sustained attacks from the right had cowed reporters into a hollow set of "objective" protocols that served to obscure truth rather than enhance it. Simultaneously, decades of sustained attacks on liberals had spurred "serious pundits" to underscore their independence by routinely attacking the left. The result was a media which may have voted Democratic, but was fairly hostile to progressivism.

"Wanker of the Day" is not an argumentative feature, it is a reinforcing one. It exists to repeatedly provide evidence for a critique of the media that is only now leaving the margins. Atrios's epiphany was that you had to actually prove it day after day, not merely argue it. Since this was a somewhat counterintuitive take on reportage, it had to be buttressed -- and not just once, but repeatedly. Now, you can argue about the language ("wanker") or even deny the feature's legitimacy, but it does have a point -- it's not simply rhetorical extremism or red meat.

And let us all say, amen.

BTW, in case anyone wondered about the US Attorneys reference I made yesterday, the same exact wanker media/good blogosphere dynamic is summed up perfectly here at Talking Points memo, which also has pictures of Mitt Romney with Coulter, and this little chestnut on the whole affair, sent in by a reader:

From TPM Reader RB:

As I read the reaction/fallout from Ann Coulter’s remarks at CPAC this week I’m annoyed by the entire progressive reaction to it and most of the many other outrages committed on a daily basis by the Republican Party.

Why doesn’t a progressive with an audience say something to the effect “This is who and what the once proud and honorable Republican Party has turned itself into. It is a party of hate, intolerance, incompetence, greed, treason, fanatical, hostile to science and reality, and totally corrupt. They have no honor and no shame. They’re fascists and a cancer on our great nation, plain and simple and this is just another example of that.”

You'll note the clever meta trick of publishing said reader comment on a progressive blog with an audience...and again, let us all say amen, brother.

So, on to the movie reviews. On the recommendation of one of my colleagues, I finally saw Idiocracy, by Mike Judge, the guy who created both Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, and wrote and directed Office Space. It stars Luke Wilson as a completely average American who is accidentally placed in hibernation for 500 years, during which time the stupid people in the world so completely outbreed their smarter brethren that the entire country is plunged into idiocy. This should not be taken as racist (maybe classist), more a comment on today's race to the bottom popular culture. Given Judge's past, it should come as no surprise that TV, along with global corporate greed, proves to be a popular target for Judge to parody. The satire is a bit loose, but the movie is sustained throughout by a clever and funny visual feel (everyone wears shiny clothing more littered with ads than your average NASCAR driver), and a selection of targets that few would want to defend (mostly corporate conglomerates and their incessantly stupid advertising, along with dreadful reality TV). It's certainly worth renting, and given its complete lack of notoriety should be easy to find in a video store.

One of the funnier points that the movie makes is that there is an unfortunate association made in popular culture between intelligence and feminization. Judge does this by having his idiots of the future call lots of things "gay", satirizing the same macho bullshit redneck culture attacked by Green Day in the lyrics giving us tonight's post title (from "American Idiot", just like last night) and personified by Coulter's remarks and her intended audience, who can think of few things funnier than a faggot joke.

One of the reasons I am proud to consider myself a liberal is that this shit does not fly with us. We don't make it a point of principle to constantly attack the "other", whoever they may be at the moment, and are willing to defend them, as Elizabeth Edwards, John's wife, did today:

Although her words did not hurt us, they may have hurt some in the gay community. We are all sick and tired of anyone supporting or applauding or introducing hate words into the national dialogue, tired of people thinking that words that cause others pain are fair game. And we are sick and tired of people like Miss Coulter thinking that her use of loaded words about the homosexual community in this country is remotely humorous or appropriate.

The same dynamic is always in play whenever homosexuality is brought up: idiots go on the attack against what they perceive to be an easy target, and those of us who aren't assholes are left to argue against them. In response to a former NBA player coming out of the closet, we had this lovely quote from former player Tim Hardaway:

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known," Hardaway said. "I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Somehow, he perceived this as the proper Christian response, as would Ann Coulter as well, which is even scarier. The intelligent comeback came from former players Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller, respectively, and credit to them for saying it:

“I played with gay guys, I’ve got gay friends. I don’t care if a person is gay or not, only God can judge a person. But any jock who thinks he’s never played with a gay guy is sadly mistaken. Any team you’ve been on, at some point, you’ve played with a gay guy.”

“It’s a lack of education. For everything we’ve overcome as African-American athletes with a lot of the racial discrimination, I believe he needs some type of counseling or help to overcome his phobia. This is another black eye that David Stern has to deal with.”

I'll note that even though times may be changing slowly, they are changing. It may not men much to hear these words from someone randomly on the street, but these are prominent (hall of fame caliber) athletes, albeit in one of the two more liberal major sports (the NBA, because of the large African-American player percentage, along with Hockey, because of the European/Canadian influence). Even one of the most conservative institutions in America, the military, is seeing a change in perceptions. According to a 2006 Zogby poll:

Nearly one in four U.S. troops (23%) say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59% said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly from the individual, a Zogby International poll of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan shows.

More than half (55%) of the troops who know a gay peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others. According to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, service members are not allowed to say that they are gay.
...
According to the new Zogby data, however, nearly three in four troops (73%) say they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.

Thankfully, with Democrats now in charge of Congress, Rep. Marty Meehan's bill ending the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy will likely come to the floor, even though the assholes at the Pentagon aren't pleased and say that it will be divisive. in a sense, they may be right. it will end up dividing the assholes and bigots from the rest of America, and about time. There is simply no place left in reasonable discourse for out and out bigots, and it's about time we started pushing this as strongly as possible.

Don't wanna be an American idiot, Don't want a nation under the media

To quote Atrios: Owwww! The Stupid! It BURNS!!!! Parental advisory: Today's stupidity will force me to curse repeatedly.

From today's Chicago Tribune, Mary Schmichdiscussing the new TV show "Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?":

But as for what star is closest to the Earth? Get real. The average person does not need to know that.

Yes they do. It's the fucking sun! It's what powers the entire planet, and allows us to live. How big an idiot are you, first to not know, and then to mock people for not being more ignorant than your average kindergartner?

From today's Conservative Political Action Committee meeting, at which nearly every Republican presidential candidate spoke, we have Ann Coulter, who I'll note was introduced by Mitt Romney himself:

I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.” Audience members said “ohhh” and then cheered.

That's actually not the idiocy, since Ann Coulter is always like this. No, I'm talking about the complete media blackout. You may not have heard of this, since while it was mentioned on several liberal blogs and Editor and Publisher magazine, it literally wasn't mentioned by a single newspaper or news agency in the country, even though the NYTimes, Washington Post, and AP all filed stories on the day's meeting. From E&P, who seem to actually still believe in journalism:

The New York Times failed to mention the crack about Edwards in observing tonight: "The conference drew thousands of attendees, many of whom waited in a long line out the door for a late-afternoon appearance by Ann Coulter, the conservative author and commentator."

The Washington Post covered the conference but did not mention Coulter at all. Neither did the Associated Press, which also attended.

Seriously, what the fuck? John Edwards got a week of bad press for hiring two bloggers who have in the past taken on the Catholic Church for its support of pedophiles and backwardness with respect to birth control, and all of those news sources were more than happy to run with the story. A speaker at the biggest collection of Republican candidates to date makes a faggot joke in front of the assembled media, and they decide it's not newsworthy? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this country?

I could actually go on about several other idiocies tonight, given the continuing whitewash of the Walter Reed fiasco by the military (the guy they appointed to take over the facility, General Kevin Kiley, did nothing after being told that patients were sleeping in their own urine).
There is a story in the WaPo about the firing of 8 US Attorneys that completely misses the fact that many of them were fired because they were investigating higher-ups in the administration. Did you know that Carol Lam, the former US Attorney for San Diego who busted Rep. Duke Cunningham, is currently investigating the former #3 official in the CIA for corruption? You won't find that little tidbit anywhere in the newspaper tonight, needless to say, because John Solomon, their new "investigative" "reporter", turns out to be neither.

Seriously, I wish there was a God so it meant more when I say "god help us all"..

You don't have to be a six-footer. You don't have to have a great brain. You don't have to have any clothes on.

Sometimes, a headline manages to combine both the extraordinarily obvious and completely wrong into one convenient passage: Here's an example from MSNBC:

Catholics slam bloggers hired by Edwards

Group claims campaign tarnished by ‘two anti-Catholic ... vulgar bigots’

Two bloggers hired recently by Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards were criticized Tuesday by a Catholic group for posts they had written elsewhere on the Internet.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, demanded that Edwards fire Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.

For the backstory, John Edwards hired two famous bloggers to work for his campaign, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan, who writes under the pseudonym Shakespeare's Sister at the blog of the same name. Both of them have been rather harsh on Catholicism in the past, not that the church didn't in most cases have it coming, what with defending and protecting any number of priests who like to molest and anally rape young boys and doing their best to fight reasonable birth control throughout the entire world.

Because of their writings, the Catholic League jumped all over the Edwards campaign, especially their president, Bill Donohue. Is he an important Catholic clergyman, you ask? Not at all, he's just the president of a large organization of right-wing Catholics, famous for the following quotes:

"The gay community has yet to apologize to straight people for all the damage that they have done."

"Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. ... Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions."

He's a lovely fellow, isn't he?

What MSNBC totally missed is that the bloggers in question have offended any number of right-wing Catholics, right-wing Protestants, right-wing Jews, and right-wing atheists over time. Donohue speaks not for all Catholics, but for a particular right-wing organization. My wife's former boss is president of a left-wing Jewish organization, but it'd be ridiculous to claim that she speaks for "Jews"; rather she speaks for some Jews. If my wife and I get angry about the local grocery store in March/April, we don't get to claim "Jews slam Champaign supermarket over lack of Passover-related items" (this isn't a real complaint of ours, I'm just drawing an example). Donohue speaks ostensibly for his 350,000 person organization, who represent half of a percent of American catholics. He speaks in no official capacity for the Church itself, nor for the majority of American Catholics, who it turns out are a group that basically tend to behave like a broad cross-section of Americans, because they're a broad cross-section of Americans. Just as one can claim that the Catholic church is against abortion but a majority of American Catholics favor it's continued legalization, even more so may Bill Donohue have a problem with two bloggers while most American Catholics could give a flying one. It really isn't all that hard. The lesson, as always, is that way too many journalists are basically incompetent, and that bigots on the right-wing will always have a platform to launch ridiculous fake-outrage propaganda campaigns no matter how odious they happen to be. Thankfully, Edwards didn't cave, and now the left-wing blogs are launching attacks back on the Catholic league for their utter hypocrisy and misrepresentation of Catholic values. Serve it cold, people, serve it cold.

You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

I suppose I could comment on the state of the Union, but honestly, why bother? Half of it will be lies, and the other half will be pauses in between lies. None of the proposals will be enacted by a Democratic Congress, thank god, so we don't have to worry about that at least. There will be a great bit of theatre in discussing the irrelevant speech, a process Josh Marshall termed "dingbat kabuki". No phrase sums up Washington politics and media coverage better. For a further example, Time Magazine has a new blog, Swampland, staffed by the former Wonkette, former democrat turned raving moron Joe Klein, and their Washington Bureau chief, Jay Carney. Today, Carney was talking about how Bush may try to resurrect his failing presidency, and said

In late 1994 and early 1995, President Clinton was in free fall. His aides despaired. They worried he might never recover from the shellacking the Democrats took in the 1994 mid-term elections. His approval ratings were mired in the 30's, and seemed unlikely to rise.

Atrios summarized the responses of a number of commenters who pointed out factual errors, the most prominent of which is that Clinton was never as unpopular as Bush is now, and his approval rating hit the 30's once before stabilizing in the low 40's during 1994, whereas Bush just hit 28. Carney's response:

Amazingly, some Swampland readers seem to think my earlier post about President Bush's State of the Union address was too sympathetic to Bush, which proves nothing but that the left is as full of unthinking Ditto-heads as Limbaugh-land.

No, this proves nothing more than the fact that the Washington Bureau chief of Time Magazine is a frickin' moron who can't be bothered to use a search engine and check some facts, nor correct mistakes after they are pointed out to him. Someday, this man could be President....

Anyway, tonight's piece is about the proposed privatization of the Illinois State Lottery:

The state of Illinois yesterday took the first steps in selling its state lottery system, hoping to attract as much as $10 billion from investors who, in return, would own a monopoly that could turn out to be the biggest jackpot yet.

The sale, which may occur as early as the spring, would not be the first privatization of public property — both Chicago and Indiana have recently earned billions of dollars by signing long-term leases with private companies to run toll roads. But the proposed lottery sale is almost certain be one of the largest privatizations of a state-run program, and it raises concerns that states, some of them critically short of cash, are selling valuable assets that could otherwise provide consistent streams of revenue.

Under the proposed sale, Illinois would receive a multibillion-dollar one-time payment, and the lottery’s new owners would receive all revenue and profit for 75 years.

This is fantastically dumb. No company in their right mind will bid more than the lottery is worth over 75 years, nor anything more than pennies on the dollar, given the uncertainties present in 3/4 of a century worth of business. The state, on the other hand, will likely be around for the entire time period, and can actually make approximately 100 cents on the dollar. If they can't handle the marketing duties, then hire a frickin' marketing agency! It's not like other aspects of the government don't. Essentially, the state is falling for a simple annuity buyout scam, only they tricked themselves into thinking it's a good idea to make a quick buck. If the state really needs the money now (I don't see what's so different about now compared to a couple years ago or a few into the future, personally), sell some frickin' bonds! It's bad enough that lotteries are horrifically regressive sources of public revenue, but to steal from the poor to give to corporations is best left to the current Federal administration (thank god for those capital gains tax cuts!).

One further problem with the lottery, as with any gambling institution, is that people are vastly hypocritical about it. For the same reasons that states that don't allow casinos on dry land will allow them on "riverboats" affixed to docks (which can then be absolutely destroyed in large Hurricanes when the river surges), Illinois apparently doesn't allow just anyone to sell lottery tickets:

“Right now, states don’t sell lottery tickets in adult book stores, or next door to welfare offices, because lottery directors know that they can be fired by politicians,” said I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, Calif., who studies gambling, and has advised the Illinois Gaming Board on other matters. “You’ll won’t see such hesitation among private companies. Those are great places to sell.”

I understand the welfare office part, since you really gain nothing as a state by trying to soak the poor, but who gives a squat about adult bookstores? Why can't they sell lottery tickets? This actually makes sense, all things considered. Why is it wrong to combine one vice which is legal but looked down upon (pornography) with one that the state itself pimps (lotteries)? Seriously, what we need is to encourage lottery sales at Starbucks, Brookstones, and fancy upscale mall stores. Remember, we want to soak the rich to give to the poor...

Nothing really matters, anyone can see

I'd like to think I take something of a maximalist position on ethics issues. I believe that sins of omission are equal to sins of commission, and that we face many more ethical choices than we care to think about on a regular basis. What we buy, what we do with our time, these choices have ethical components. One problem with this philosophy is that it makes it exceedingly difficult to live up to one's ethical obligations; I am only a fraction of the person I could be, and that takes some getting used to. Still, I'd like to think it helps to focus attention on things that actually matter, as opposed to things that only seem to matter. Three news stories from today highlight this.

Sins of Omission

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the country, and it can be debated whether or not they are the lucky or unlucky ones. Still, I think it should go without saying (it doesn't, but it should), that we have a responsibility to them, because we were the ones who blew the place up. This would be true even if it wasn't a war of choice, which it was. It should surprise no one at this point that we are going to fail at that basic moral obligation. From the New York Times:

With thousands of Iraqis desperately fleeing this country every day, advocates for refugees, and even some American officials, say there is an urgent need to allow more Iraqi refugees into the United States.

Until recently the Bush administration had planned to resettle just 500 Iraqis this year, a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are now believed to be fleeing their country each month...

Some critics say the Bush administration has been reluctant to create a significant refugee program because to do so would be tantamount to conceding failure in Iraq.

Holy crap this is a poor excuse. In order to save face now (let's face it, saving face in the long run would require a plan, and we don't actually have one of those, nor a prayer for that matter), hundreds of thousands of people find themselves in danger. It's been suggested that some of them may be terrorists in waiting, but this is a lame excuse for avoiding responsibility, and it is insane to think that wannabe terrorists can't find other ways into the country. Furthermore, no Iraqi has ever been involved in an act of terror on US soil, if I remember correctly, so it's not like they even have a history of it. No, even if it means some risk for us, that risk has to be considered an acceptable one, for one cannot just ignore the damage we've done to thousands. It's about time we grow up enough as a nation to realize this uncomfortable fact.

Sins of Commission

I realize that journalists have a duty to get information out, but sometimes they really just serve as the weapons that the powerful use against their opponents, or in this case, former employees. Bush, having screwed up the war, is looking for a fall guy. Who better than a soldier to fall on the sword. From the NYTimes and the poison pen of Sanger, Gordon, and Burns:

Over the past 12 months, as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy. And now, as the image of Saddam Hussein at the gallows recedes, Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.

General Casey repeatedly argued that his plan offered the best prospect for reducing the perception that the United States remained an occupier — and it was a path he thought matched Mr. Bush’s wishes. Earlier in the year, it had.

But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.

This is what's known in the biz as a "hit piece". Notice no one criticizes Casey on the record; this is a purely professional takedown for political gain, not anything personal. Josh Marshall at TPM gets it right:

In so many words, Casey's policy (which, reading between the lines, it's pretty clear Casey thought was Bush's desired policy) was maintain current troop levels and 'standing down as the Iraqis stand up'. You may have thought that was the Bush policy. But apparently not. "Over the past 12 months," the Times now tells us, "as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy."

There's a simple way to figure out if this is fair or not. What have Bush and Casey said in the past? Well, Casey's currently arguing against an escalation while anonymous officials say he's arguing for one, but the liar in chief is our President himself, praising Casey on September 15 (2 months before the election):

And I'm going to tell you I've got great confidence in General John Abizaid and General George Casey. These are extraordinary men who understand the difficulties of the task, and understand there is a delicate relationship between self-sufficiency on the Iraqis' part, and U.S. presence.

Nice of the NYTimes reporters not to mention this little detail. That's what you get from the finest journamalists in the country (and no, that's not a misspelling).

Spotting the bigger picture

Democrats taking over the majority in Congress face something of a dilemma, as noted by Steve Benen, guest hosting at Political Animal:

There's obviously a bit of a conflict. House Dems promised to use certain procedural rules, and they promised to pass certain bills. In the very short term, they can't do both, so they decided to pass the policy agenda first. I can't say I blame them.

Here, the procedural rules in question are those that allow the minority party in Congress the power to actually amend bills and have some tiny bit of input into the process. The bills in question are the legislation the Democrats promised to enact, things like raising the minimum wage, establishing new ethics rules, and allowing the government to negotiate with drug companies. Here's the quick question: which is more important? I would have to say that as Congress' job is to pass legislation, the agenda comes first, even if feelings are hurt (Benen concludes this as well). Raising the wage for hundreds of thousands comes before the hurt feelings of 200 Republicans in the minority. Eventually, there will have to be compromises, and I hope this happens sooner rather than later. Still, there is a time to establish policies, and that time is know. All other concerns are secondary, and decorum doesn't matter a bit, especially given that two years from now the month of January 2007 will be largely forgotten in the grand scheme, except for people making something marginally closer to a living wage and seniors not paying the same exorbitant drug prices as Medicare costs continue to skyrocket (more on that in a later post). It's important to be nice in this world, but your duty is to help as many as possible. That's ethical principles for you, sometimes they can make your life difficult (especially if you're a Republican), but you gotta do what you gotta do. Sometimes, baby, you've gotta be cruel to be kind...