Me: Frank Lynch

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For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes), with a weekly essay springing from one of Johnson's quotations.

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Democracy and Iraq. Yes, democracy is good. Yes, Saddam was bad, a bad man. He's a bad man. You may be surprised to hear how strongly some people feel, though, that democracy was a reason why we went to war. I think it's too strong to suggest that Glenn Reynolds (at that link, at least) thinks it was the real reason for going to war, as Kevin Drum has written. But it's certainly fair to point out that it's getting more than its fair share of attention (and Kevin's right on that). It would be great (great in the "dream on" sense) if the President said, you know, I've read Duelfer's report, and it's clear we were wrong about WMDs. (You can bet he'd have read most of it if we were right.)

But through Kevin's post I read a great metaphor for the insufficiency of democracy as a justification for the war:

Seriously now. We all know that this was advanced as a benefit of the invasion, but gimme a break. If someone sells you "a Porche with a nice stereo system" and you then discover you've actually bought a Dodge Dart, are you supposed to be mollified because it actually has had a nice stereo system installed? Democratization was supposed to be a happy side effect of eliminating the WMDs—that was why we had to do this right the fuck now before the "smoking gun" came in the form of a "mushroom cloud," why we couldn't keep pushing for a diplomatic solution. Anyone else remember that?

Artfully put, and with appropriate passion. Go back to the Cincinnati speech, and you will hear Bush raise humanitarian issues, but they only matter because Saddam Hussein was supposed to have had WMDs. Democracy itself? It's not there in the speech, not democracy, not democratic; use your browser's "find" function: demands is there, so's demise, but not democracy.

We did not threaten war over democracy. This is called bait and switch. And bait and switch is against the law in retail, by the way.
Link | | | 3:07 PM | Home

Sounds like the right man for the job to me. A senior person from Colin Powell's staff, on John Bolton:

"I don't know if he's incapable of negotiation, but he's unwilling," Ms. Jones said in an interview. She said she believed that "the fundamental problem," if Mr. Bolton were to become United Nations ambassador, would be a reluctance on his part to make the kinds of minor, symbolic concessions necessary to build consensus among other governments and maintain the American position.

"John Bolton is a blunt guy," said the President the other night. Sure, like a damned brick wall is blunt. But a brick wall won't even cut butter.
Link | | | 11:04 AM | Home

Happy Queen's Day! It's Queen's Day in the Netherlands, a celebration based the Queen's birthday (actually, the day was set by her mother's birthday; the current queen was born in the winter, when the weather is much less conducive for celebrating).

I have a lot of fondness for the Dutch people I know, those I've met personally as well as a wonderful photoblogger, and I hope they all have a happy day, even if I'm getting these wishes up while it's already mid-afternoon for them.

Have a happy, you all, and I want to see pictures of your new son dressed up as an orange, OK?
Link | | | 9:07 AM | Home
 

Knowing a stacked deck when you see one. It's really wonderful how the White House tries to make it look as if Democrats outside of Congress see the need to reform Social Security — as if, therefore, we need new Democrats in Congress. Last night, Bush cited the ideas of a Democrat (Robert Pozen) in pushing for changes in the program; in the past, Bush has also leaned on the ghost of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was on a commission Bush set up in May, 2001. In his press briefing today, McCellan continued efforts to "donkey up" their plans:

Q Under the Pozen plan, he has a specific formula on who gets what and how benefits are determined. Is the President signing on to all elements of this Pozen plan?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, he was saying that he's proposing an approach that is based on what Mr. Pozen outlined. And he was a Democratic member of the President's commission that looked at all these issues. And all of those members came to a conclusion that Social Security was headed on an unsustainable course.

But as I've pointed out here before, one has to be careful about the commission McClellan refers to: this was no unbiased examination of Social Security's future. It was expressly set up to implement private accounts:

Two months ago, in my address to Congress, I described the principles that must guide any reform of Social Security. First, Social Security reform must preserve the benefits of all current retirees and those nearing retirement.

Second, Social Security reform must return the Social Security system to sound financial footing. Third, Social Security reform must offer personal savings accounts to younger workers who want them. Today, young workers who pay into Social Security might as well be saving their money in their mattresses. That's how low the return is on their contributions. And the return will only decline further -- maybe even below zero -- if we do not proceed with reform.

Personal savings accounts will transform Social Security from a government IOU into personal property and real assets; property that workers will own in their own names and that they can pass along to their children. Ownership, independence, access to wealth should not be the privilege of a few. They're the hope of every American, and we must make them the foundation of Social Security.

Today, I am naming a Presidential Commission to turn these principles into concrete reforms. This task is not easy, but the mandate is clear: strengthen Social Security and make its promise more certain and valuable for generations to come. I have asked the Commission to deliver its report later this fall. (Emphasis mine.)

No question about it, there's no way Bush would have put anyone on that commission who didn't already think Social Security needed reform. No Dean Bakers, gang. So who cares if they agreed with the President's opinion? It's no endorsement.
Link | | | 8:05 PM | Home
 

It's the context, stupid! Jim VandeHei and Michael A. Fletcher of the Washington Post write as if the President will protect Social Security benefits for lower income workers:

President Bush called on Congress last night to curtail future Social Security benefits for all but low-income retirees in an urgent new effort to address the popular program's shaky finances.

With virtually every Democrat, as well as many Republicans, opposed to his plan to allow workers to put some of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts, Bush sought to shift the focus of the Social Security debate to a plan that would cut future benefits more as workers' incomes rise.

"I believe the reformed system should protect those who depend on Social Security the most," he said in a nationally televised news conference. "So I propose a Social Security system in the future where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off." This is the first time Bush has backed a specific plan to reduce benefits for tens of millions of Americans.

What's wrong with their lead? Cluelessly, they forget that benefits naturally increase over time, because wages do. But since Bush offered no comparisons of benefit growth to planned benefit growth, you can't conclude that he's protecting the benefits of lower income Americans. Odds are, Bush plans to cut benefits (versus planned benefits for everyone). The writers, frankly, don't know enough about Bush's plan to give Bush's statement a free pass. It's their job to interject and put it in context.

UPDATE:

One of the commenters here has suggested that Bush is following a plan put forth by Robert Pozen. Two things on that. First, in yesterday's press briefing, McClellan said the President was "proposing an approach that is based on what Mr. Pozen outlined." There's a huge difference between a plan and "based on" a plan. I have learned you have to be careful about the small differences in language: in the past, the White House has also suggested that its plan would be similar to what the Congress has, the TSP; yet that plan is an add-on plan, not a carve out plan, which is a big difference. So until the White House is specific, no one is safe.

Second, who is safe under the Pozen plan? Well, let's look at what it is. Basically, it moves from wage indexing (the way Social Security sets your benefits at retriment), to price based indexing, where the price basis changes depending on how much you earn. The more you earn, the less you'd be protected. Under this plan, some people (lower earners) are more protected than others (higher earners). One group is fully protected under this plan, the bottom 30% who make under $20,000. I am glad they are protected, they should be. But since the actuaries at Social Security have generally been pessimistically off the mark with their projections (history has resembled their optimistic forecasts more than their "middle" forecasts), one can't help but wonder if the Pozen plan is answering the wrong questions, thus an overreaction, and whether more than the bottom 30% should be protected.

The Pozen plan, let's be honest, is an effort to forgive government debt. A very small increase in the payroll taxes would take care of the supposed Social Security deficit, and, as Baker and Weisbrot point out in Social Security: The Phony Crisis, incomes are going to rise so significantly in the future (yes, in today's dollars) that after-tax income will also rise steeply even with a small increase in payroll taxes. Yet Mr Uniter-Not-A-Divider refuses to consider payroll taxes. Taxes, as you know, are something he hates, and he continues to think they are the cause of sluggish growth in the American economy.
Link | | | 11:30 PM | Home

I know how to cut the trade deficit in half. If America continues at the current rate, we'll get so indebted to other countries that we can't afford chocolate. (Give me credit for the boldness of recognizing that.) It's up to Congress to take care of it. (Here too, I get credit for recognizing how government works.) But here's how it should happen: Americans need to buy fewer foreign goods. (Again, credit me for a brilliant idea.) But I won't negotiate with myself, we will negotiate when talking to other countries. (Still giving me credit?)
Link | | | 11:04 PM | Home

Still no plan. So far as I can tell, Bush still offered no plan to resolve any solvency issues regarding Social Security. Maybe it will come from others, but Bush didn't want to talk about it while he was in the spotlight. He said that lower income workers' benefits would increase more than those of the wealthy, but is that within the context of overall benefits cuts? He didn't talk about that, did he? He talked about not increasing the payroll tax, and making sure that private accounts were still part of the deal for younger workers, but those are only ideas, not "plans." And when he talks about ideas like raising the retirement age, let's be clear: if he's so concerned about the shorter life-span of African Americans who reach retirement age, he's talking about cutting them an even worse deal. What's his plan? None yet?

You know, he complained about people who wanted to give Saddam until forever to disarm, even though they didn't. I will give Bush the benefit of the doubt, and say that I don't believe Bush wants forever to come up with a plan. But I do want to know when he thinks he'll have one ready, don't you? After all, time is running out.
Link | | | 10:55 PM | Home

"If the spouse dies early..." One of Bush's complaints with the current Social Security system was that if a spouse in a two-worker household died early, it upset an applecart, because the surviving spouse could only get one worker's Social Security benefits. Without knowing more about what he was saying, this doesn't sound like a huge problem to me... First, the dead spouse certainly doesn't need the money, maybe surviving minors do, but they would get survivor benefits. As for the surviving spouse, that survivor already has an ongoing Social Security account. Why should that spouse get additional benefits?

If you think about it, other taxes work the same way. When a head of household dies, it's not like the spouse automatically gets better highways. The nation gets better highways because we all contribute to the programs. It's the same with Social Security: we all pay in, for the benefit of all. Can anyone tell me why this idea of community is such a bad thing?
Link | | | 9:13 PM | Home

Hard work, work harder... That was such an embarrassing moment in the debates, I'm surprised he hasn't found a new line, like we need to hunker down, or focus, or be diligent, persevere, show resolve. Vocabulary is hard work.
Link | | | 8:51 PM | Home

Bush's press conference... He pulled out that line about Social Security revenues (payroll taxes) not being held in any bank account, and being part of government spending. As if that's a put down? I really wish someone would run that clip from "It's a Wonderful Life," where George Bailey is holding off the customers doing a run on his bank, while he patiently explains to them that their savings aren't there in the bank, they've gone to help housing and so on. How is government money spent? It goes towards education, roads, defense... Is that bad, Mr. President? Don't like it? All those investment protect the future value of the country, or increase it. It's as real an investment as any stock fund. Why does the President hate America?
Link | | | 8:45 PM | Home

Damned good news. The Ivory Bill Woodpecker is not extinct.
Link | | | 7:38 PM | Home

Safer with Saddam gone? Of course not. Was he a destabilizing force in the region? Duelfer surmises the WMD feint was bluster, an effort to keep up appearances:

One is that, you know, Saddam had other threats besides the United States. He liked to present some ambiguity about whether, in fact, he had given up all of his weapons, and he did that intentionally.

The second point is, you know, his sense of place in history and glory among the Iraqi leaders is important to him, and in a certain way he was I think fatalistic. There was also a sense that this President Bush was going to complete the work that the first President Bush did not complete. So there's a mix of things.

Where's the increased safety in taking the sheet off the Trick or Treater? Certainly not seen in the increased deaths from global terrorism. How much is due to our aggressive effort in Iraq?
Link | | | 7:04 AM | Home

The picture of the week. Everyone's nominee, as seen by Tom Toles.
Link | | | 6:41 AM | Home
 

Someone is wrong.

Is it Rich Lowry?

It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq.

If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war. Our counterinsurgency has gone through the same stages as that of the Brits five decades ago: confusion in the initial reaction to the insurgency, followed by a long period of adjustment, and finally the slow but steady erosion of the insurgency's military and political base. Even as there has been a steady diet of bad news about Iraq in the media over the last year, even as some hawks have bailed on the war in despair, even as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has become everyone's whipping boy, the U.S. military has been regaining the strategic upper hand.

Or, is it General Richard Myers?

The insurgency in Iraq is "about where it was a year ago," in terms of attacks, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said but he said American and Iraqi troops are gaining ground in the two-year-old conflict.

Perhaps they're both wrong, since Myers doesn't really seem able to justify his optimistic conclusion...

UPDATE: I should explain more. Myers tried to justify his optimism, by saying on the one hand that violence is no longer at its pre-election levels, and on the other, that the insurgents' attacks were not so telling on US forces. As for the first, it's true, but the violence pre-election was unusually high and thus not a point for comparison (we were even given warning that it would be high). As for the second, the insurgents are targeting Iraqis (civilians and security forces, recruits) far more than they were before.
Link | | | 10:28 PM | Home

Ewwwwww. Not much else one can say.
Link | | | 9:18 PM | Home

The destruction of the Pequod. Over at Social Security Choice, Don Luskin points out that our Captain is committed to private accounts, even if it's the last day he spends as president.

Hath thou seen the white whale?
Link | | | 7:36 PM | Home
 

Slipshod standards for writing. It's not easy to approach the news from a new perspective. It's really not; some times you have to be inventive. I mean, you could point out that Scott McClellan has so far made no mention of the President playing the Theremin. Think about it: we were treated to news on the contents of his Ipod. And yet, no one dared talk about the President and the Theremin. Yet, the Theremin is crucially important to Good Vibrations. What does that mean? Are they trying to hide something? The press is so biased.

Seriously, I have no idea whether the President plays anything (though I've heard he plays video games, and I still don't care). My point is that we shouldn't argue that there's anything significant about what's not discussed. OK?

So now, let's deal with this extremely stupid opening in a Wall Street Journal column from Brendan Miniter (brought to my attention by the sturdy thinkers over at Social Security Choice:

Here's one detail most media outlets won't report on the Social Security debate: At least one Democratic leader once supported moving all federal employees out of the system. That leader is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who as a House member in 1983 sponsored a bill to push all federal employees, including members of Congress, the president and vice president, out of Social Security. The bill ultimately failed to attract a single cosponsor and died an obscure death without ever even coming to a vote.

The slide-rule users over at Social Security Choice offer us this 1983 recollection without chiming in at all, so we are left to suppose, uh, what?

Let's see. 22 years ago. Where were you living then? How did you feel about issues like Israel, or Russia? Do you remember what your position in the capital markets was? Hell, I bet if you thought really hard you might even be able to remember how many kids you had back then.

I'm sorry, but I am not motivated to strong opinions by what people thought over twenty years ago. I don't forgive genocidal maniacs, but political opinions? Chrissakes, is this the best that the privatization twerps can do, dredge through what people said over twenty years ago and point to what an apparent inconsistency as if it's being hypocritical? Don't they recognize growth when they see it?
Link | | | 9:40 PM | Home

Boy meets girl, they fall in love. As an evening blogger, sometimes there are stories you don't feel like you can add much to. Late last night, Atrios had a post on the conclusions of the Iraqi Survey Group that there's no evidence that Iraq moved WMDs into Syria prior to the American- led invasion, thus deflating further the WMDs as a rationale for war. "B-b-but Clinton thought they were there, too," you can hear them sputter: the fact is that whether or not they'd been squirreled off into Syria, Bush had inspectors on the ground through his intervention in the U.N. So did Blair. And neither chose to believe them.

Whether or not Saddam was a bad man (as the formula seems to go), our bravest soldiers didn't need to lose their lives over this charade. Completely unnecessarily. No matter who you are, or your life situation, just think a moment what it would mean to lose a spouse. Or a brother or sister, son or daughter. Or your best friend from high school. Maybe to grow up without your dad. Just think about it for a moment.

Now, here's my idea: go to this web site, and pick a name, any name. Then, find someone like Jonah Goldberg or Andrew Sullivan or Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle or George Tenet. Or Rush Limbaugh. If you're adventurous, hunt down the snail-mail address of a war blogger, someone who really worked to fan the flames of war. Some are in the links on the left.

And if you can find their snail mail address, just send them a postcard with this text:

My name is (blank) and I died in Iraq on (date). We were there because Iraq was supposed to have WMDs. You helped fan the flames of war, and contributed to my death. If you haven't heard yet, there were no WMDs.

And my kids will never know me.

We can't send people to jail for speaking freely, but it would be nice if they paused to reflect, don't you think? Free speech is free, and should remain free, but there are responsibilities, too.
Link | | | 8:51 PM | Home
 

Don't they even stop and think? One of the articles I linked to last night was about the problems of Company E in Iraq, and the problems it's gone through for lack of proper armor. In clear terms, the article lays out not only what they've gone through in terms of losses of life and limbs, but also how clear it is that much of it was unnecessary, thanks to their being under-supplied. But one passage angers me still; the passage reads as if the Pentagon was trying to defend itself over Company E's situation:

Defense Department officials acknowledged that Company E lacked enough equipment and men, but said that those were problems experienced by many troops when the insurgency intensified last year, and that vigorous efforts had been made to improve their circumstances.

So essentially, while the article focuses on Company E, the Pentagon says it's wrong to focus on that one company because a lot of our men are in trouble, and besides, its because of poor planning.

Sheesh! Have they no idea how clueless they sound?
Link | | | 9:52 PM | Home

New DVD releases on the horizon. I don't know about you, but I am really looking forward to Season 1 of Home Shopping Network. Man oh man, there will be no baseball watching once that baby arrives.

Actually, I got into a riff like this with my brother yesterday, and he countered with Season 1 of CNN Headline News — a nice bit of absurd humor once you remember how that channel repeats itself. The cool thing, of course, would be that you could skip ahead to hear the old scores if you wanted to.
Link | | | 9:19 PM | Home
 

Visionary neocons are killers. Not cold-blooded, mind you, but certainly negligent. And they should bear the consequences of their half-baked, pipe-inspired dreams. Feeling good about the neocons, Hindrocket?
Link | | | 9:04 PM | Home

Those visionary neocons! Maybe Hindrocket also thinks they should get credit for this unforeseen blessing?

Nationwide enrollment in the Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps has slipped more than 16 percent over the past two school years, leaving the program, which trains and commissions more than six of every 10 new Army officers each year, with its fewest participants in nearly a decade.

...

While it is unclear precisely why enrollments have dropped, Army officials and defense experts say the decline probably mirrors the problems the Army has had recruiting generally, as some potential recruits fear they will be sent into a war zone after earning their second-lieutenant bar at graduation. Some ROTC programs, such as the one at the University of New Hampshire, have seen more than 80 percent of their graduates fight in Afghanistan or Iraq over the past few years, and the Army's increasing need for young, capable officers has been drawing more ROTC graduates into the fighting ranks.

Now more than ever, Jonah Goldberg needs to volunteer.
Link | | | 10:31 AM | Home

All of the credit, none of the blame. The blogger formerly known as Hindrocket has posted an interesting viewpoint on causality:

It appears that the last Syrian troops in Lebanon will leave tomorrow. It isn't clear how reliable these reports are, but the withdrawal evidently includes Syrian intelligence.

This is a remarkable development that must be attributed, at least in part, to the neocons' conviction that bringing liberty to the Middle East would pay dividends in ways that we can't predict. Congratulations to President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and the many others who had the courage to gamble on freedom, against what the liberals said were overwhelming odds. And congratulations above all to the people of Lebanon who saw the opportunity to restore their independence, and took it.

Yes, we're glad for the Lebanese, but let's look at this idea about "the neocons' conviction that bringing liberty to the Middle East would pay dividends in ways that we can't predict." Just what does that mean? Why, it means that anything good that happens, the neocons are allowed to say, "yes, we predicted that unpredictable things like this would happen," that is, they can take credit for any damned thing they want. Now, as for being greeted with candies and sweets, they didn't really predict that, now, did they?

Are they also willing to put their names on all the things which haven't happened, as proof of the insufficiency of their vision? And are they willing to say, you know, since Putin isn't really as open as we expected he would be, maybe we should say the jury is still out on what will happen in Lebanon and other countries?

This idea is patently ridiculous: there's no unifying logic, and they are just too eager to take credit. (Seen via The Daou Report.)

UPDATE: What needs to be done, of course, is to step back and look at other events than the ones we "want" to. Let's not forget this recent report pointing out that the risk of terrorism across the globe is on the rise. Is this one of those lovely unpredictable outcomes the neocons predicted?
Link | | | 7:23 AM | Home
 

Right now, nothing engages my thoughts as much as the Trashcan Sinatras. If you're skeptical, that's OK, because I'll admit that right now I have Todd Rundgren's 1975 "Inititiation" playing on the CD. But, that having been said... Last night Ab and I saw them play here in Brooklyn, and while they deserve far better venues than the one we saw them in, it was very nice to have them here in our neighborhood, a mere ten-minute walk away. (And on an evening where the weather was predicting heavy rain at show's end, the near proximity was a blessing, even when the deluge didn't materialize.)

Our familiarity with them goes back even before they had a US release; we spent a wink of our 1989 honeymoon in Edinburgh, and having fallen in love with the city, paid special notice to a 1990 cable show on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; it was on one of the two cable comedy channels which morphed into what we now know as Comedy Central, and the show featured the Trash Can Sinatras on the steps of Edinburgh's National Portrait Gallery singing "Obscurity Knocks." (Back then, "Trashcan" was two words, "Trash Can," and I suspect that it morphed into one word for legal reasons, but I digress...) When their first CD, "Cake" was later released, we were all over it, and happy to hear "Obscurity Knocks" on the alternative stations in the early 90's whenever it happened.

They've gone through far too much history in the years since for me to tell you all of it here (a brief outline would say a better follow-up album, a third album never released in the US, label goes bankrupt, band goes adrift, and they return in 2004 with a new album which makes it into a number of Ten Best lists, plus a US tour to support it). We saw them last September in Manhattan, and thoroughly enjoyed them, but they were even better last night in Brooklyn. They weren't tighter, just more relaxed thanks (I presume) to the regularity of work. They are still on tour, playing many small venues throughout the country, and if you can go see them I highly recommend you do so. Tour details are here.

Last night's show had something like eighteen songs, concentrated in their two best albums, and the songs they chose ranged from what would be instantly accessible to some worth listening hard to in order to discover their worth. Every member of the band was on, there were no dull moments, so just, uh, go.
Link | | | 10:51 PM | Home

For your reading pleasure. The Cunning Realist, on the failure of some right-wing bloggers to understand how events relate to each other.
Link | | | 1:48 PM | Home

Repeating the mistakes they made over Terri Schiavo? If the GOP wants to portray Democrats as being out of touch with mainstream American values, it needs to either use those same values to set its bounds or work to change the bounds; it cannot idly stray. Now, we all know that the Terri Schiavo case should never have been pursued out of political opportunism, even though it apparently was by the right (in spite of Hindrocket's protestations to the contrary); what was astonishing was that in the effort to exert political leverage, the GOP politicians at the fore on the issue were completely tone deaf over what most Americans wanted: Americans in general, those living in the state of Florida, and even many Christian conservatives. It was only after they looked beneath the soles of their shoes that they realized something didn't smell right: Delay, for instance, hid for a while, yet when Schiavo died came out with a new degree of thug-like invective, speaking of retribution. (Senator Cornyn, of Texas, was undeterred by the smell from his shoes, however, and spoke in the Senate that there might be a connection between threats against judges and public perceptions of judges who don't adequately kowtow to the will of the hardline Republicans. The protection racket, writ in Congress.)

Now it seems we have the GOP repeating their tone-deafness over judicial appointees. As was the case with Terri Schiavo's last weeks, so-called conservatives are arguing for changes in Senate processes to allow for simple majority rule; in doing so, they are working to take away a tool which was successfully used against Clinton's judicial appointments merely because the table has turned. Sure, they try to dress it up in matters of principle so it's not seen as unprincipled effort it truly is. At the same time, they have poll data (see here and here) which should be alerting them to the tenuousness of trying to maintain a populist posture as Cheney enters the fray on the wrong side.

Why isn't anyone on their side smart enough to see that they could win the battle on specific appointees and lose a much larger war for the hearts and minds of Americans? Do they really think Americans are going to accept their "by any means necessary" approach, and not grow leery of a bigger government that grows more and more like Big Brother every day? Their tone deafness is just astonishing.

(For more on the judicial nominee issue, here's a round-up of links: Carpetbagger Report on how bad the nominees are; Media Matters on the use of religious bigotry as a wedge, and on falsehoods from the Reverend James Dobson; and a column from Paul Gaston on religious schisms and the process.)
Link | | | 11:30 AM | Home
 

Honest people can disagree. How infantile of our bold President to ascribe reluctance to confirm John Bolton for U.N. Ambassador as merely political. As you probably know, that was the essence of what he said yesterday:

I welcome to you the nation's capital, where sometimes politics gets in the way of doing the people's business. Take John Bolton -- he's a good man I nominated to represent our country at the United Nations. John's distinguished career and service to our nation demonstrates that he is the right man at the right time for this important assignment. I urge the Senate to put aside politics and confirm John Bolton to the United Nations.

Politics in Washington has also made it hard for some to put aside their differences to come to the table to strengthen Social Security. And that's what I'm here to talk about today. I want to spend some time with you talking about the fact that Social Security is headed for deep trouble, and that those of us who have been entrusted by the people to serve our country need to act now to make sure the Social Security system is there for our children and our grandchildren.

Let's be clear about this: it's not politics; there are honest differences about the role of morality, and so far Bush is ignoring all of its power. Bolton apparently ignored his moral responsibility as a leader and as a government employee — as a leader in terms of his complete disrespect for those who disagreed with him, and as a government employee in terms of his winnowing out varied opinions before they reached his superiors' desks. As for Social Security, there is also honest disagreement about how much of a problem the program is in, and the President hasn't proposed a plan which will remedy the problem he sees. (He hasn't come to the table himself!)

For us to really progress, the President has to stop impugning the motives of those he deals with; until he reaches that point there can't really be any dialog, because he's belittling people's honest opinions.
Link | | | 7:08 AM | Home

Normally you're not so lucky, but according to this page the Trashcan Sinatras will be on Air America tonight at 8:30 PM (US Eastern Daylight Time, that's six hours behind Central Europe). Go to the Air America web site to find a station near you, or to hear it over the web. If listening over the web, you'll need to register.

They have a really special sound, so take advantage of the opportunity.
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"Stopped well short" of a ringing endorsement. Colin Powell, that is, regarding John Bolton. Tepid.
Link | | | 10:24 PM | Home

More Hindrocket follies. Hindrocket (now clearly not his real name, since he's abandoned his unreal name; Madame Defarge is considering a licensing deal...) is highlighting a reader's email ("There is one obvious difference") in support of John Bolton's UN nomination, citing how the White House travel office lost its jobs after the Clinton administration arrived, and speculating that this might disqualify Hillary for the position of UN ambassador.

In typical Hindrocket fashion, our blockheaded writer for Time magazine's Blog of the Year seems to have forgotten a number of obvious differences.

• Hillary Clinton has not been nominated for the position, and her suitability is irrelevant.
• John Bolton did everything he could to squash diverse opinions.
• John Bolton doesn't know how to handle people; Hillary Clinton has at least won the support of a majority of her constituents.
• John Bolton is also supposed to have worked to prevent important information on Iran from getting to his bosses Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

In short, Bolton is not suited for his position, and it would seem Hillary Clinton is suited for hers. Hindrocket should resign, or shut up, anyway.
Link | | | 9:51 PM | Home

Required reading. The President (bless his bold little heart) hasn't given up on pushing the privatization of Social Security yet, and I think it would help if we continued the discussion at an elevated level, and so I really think everyone should read Social Security: The Phony Crisis, by Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot. I'm about half way through it, and it sure beats the Da Vinci Code, lemme tell ya. Baker and Weisbrot do a great job in differentiating Social Security's impact on our future from the demands implied by rising health care costs and the federal budget; at the same time, they present some arguments which I would honestly consider devastating about the supposed difficulties we face in keeping Social Security solvent. Such as, you've probably heard that a small increase in the payroll tax would take care of the solvency issue, and you may even have heard the retort that a tax increase is the "wrong" approach; but Baker and Weisbrot take it a step further, and point out that with the projected increases in future income, even when discounted back to today's dollars, that a payroll tax increase would still leave workers with more tomorrow than they have today. In all seriousness, there's a lot here, and I can't do it justice in a tiny blog blurb, so you should buy it. (And maybe someone should print flyers based on its contents, and hand them out to people as they go in to hear Bush do his vaudeville routine; the disloyal may not be able to get in, but how about their ideas?)
Link | | | 9:26 PM | Home
 

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