What He Said

Roublen Vesseau spelled out in my comments what I've been trying to write:

The reason I'm not gung-ho on war with Iraq is that the Administration refuses to give an estimate on American casualties and on Iraqi casualties. If I got a firm sense from this Administration that they were really going to make an effort to minimize the number of American & Iraqi casualties, and that they expected the number of casualties to be relatively small, I would be for removing Saddam.

Broadly speaking, there are two cases for war with Iraq, the humanitarian case and the national security case. The national security case strikes me as almost wholly unconvincing. The moral case is compelling, but it depends crucially on the likely number of casualties.

1) The best case that can be made for removing Saddam is that it will be good for the Iraqis, most of whom want to see the bastard dead. But a good result depends on not killing a bunch of innocent Iraqis (both civilians and draftees) who never hurt anyone. If a Saddam took charge in the US, I'd love to see someone kick his ass out, but I wouldn't want to see millions of dead Americans in the process (I know, of course, that some dead are inevitable; but also that they can be minimized).

2) One of the biggest problems with backing a war with Iraq is having to trust such a fundamentally dishonest administration with carrying things through. How can we know what to expect when they're so obviously lying to us about almost everything?

3) #1 is why I thought that we should make it stated policy to go after the leadership of the "rogue states" rather than simply killing off their armies of draftees as if poor teenagers were somehow stand-ins for the scumbags themselves. You want to cut down on genocide? Hang Milosevic, the other Serbian leaders, and their counterparts from Rwanda live on CNN. Make it clear that they're not exceptions (yes, I know all the legal/ethical/practical problems with this approach, but it's still far preferable to smart-bombing a few hundred thousand people into graves while their leaders walk).

2)

Work in Progress

For the last week, I've been trying to write a piece on the reasons for going to war with Iraq. This is made difficult by several factors:

1) The reasons the Bush administration has stated for war with Iraq have nothing to do with why they really want war with Iraq

2) The reasons the neo-Cons in the administration want to go to war with Iraq are not the same reasons that the good-ole boys in the administration want to go to war with Iraq.

3) The reasons political animals like Karl Rove want war with Iraq aren't related to the reasons in #1 or #2.

4) The reasons Tony Blair, Joe Lieberman, Colin Powell and other non-neo Con, non-good ole boys have for going to war with Iraq aren't related to #1, #2, or #3.

5) There are some legitimate reasons I can think of for war with Iraq, and they're not related to the reasons in #1, #2, or #3 either (but they may be related to the private thinking of those in #4).

So far, all I've been able to write is nonsensical gibberish that sounds like it came from a tech-writer at Microsoft. If I ever get my product into readable form, you'll see it here.

Frankly, this whole thing would be a lot easier if those dishonest bastards in the White House would just drop #1 altogether and explain why they really think war is a good idea.

Wrastlin'

(the real kind)

Today I went to my first wrestling tournament since I stopped wrestling myself (yes, that's a very long time), and have mixed emotions and a few random observations.

On the Good Side:

1) Even those who've never wrestled should be able to enjoy a good match. It moves at lightning speed, there's no down time, and a wrestler with an insurmountable points lead can still lose in the final seconds (as happened twice today). Good wrestling is about the best spectator sport around.

2) Wrestling is also a damn fine sport to participate in. Not only is it a lot of fun, but it feeds something primal within us, something that wants to know how we stack up against our fellow man one-on-one.

3) Wrestling is the most egalitarian sport around. No expensive equipment is required; nor do you need a very big space to work with. Poor schools can compete on a level playing field with rich ones, and poor kids with rich ones as well.

On the Bad Side:

1) There's still a big problem (and I don't know what to do about it) with kids starving themselves to make weight. I remember being yelled at for having lunch when I was a teen, and I know damned well I'm not the only one. I had friends who'd gorge on burgers and then vomit it back up, and others who took diuretics. There's no way to stop this sort of shit completely, but coaches can certainly make the environment less friendly to it.

2) Wrestling is the most brutally Darwinian sport there is. Not only is there only one winner, as in all individual sports, but he wins by asserting physical domination over his opponents. Losing a wrestling match is the most dispiriting kind of loss there is. Not only can't you blame your teammates or the playing conditions to rationalize your defeat, but you (quite literally) have defeat rubbed in your face as you're pinned to the ground.

Random Observations:

1) Oddly enough, with the majority of wrestlers trying to hard to make weight, there are now a number in the upper weight bracket wrestlers who are really, really overweight. I saw a couple who probably shouldn't be involved in competitive sports in any way until they drop some serious weight. These guys wouldn't have even survived the practices I used to go through, and there's no way a doctor should've signed off on them wrestling.

2) It's a whole lot more fun watching the little guys than the big ones. Things move a lot faster and the technique seems a lot cleaner. The big guys seem to try to muscle each other into submission.

3) I don't know if coaching has changed, or what, but at times it looked like I was watching Greco-Roman. When I wrestled, we were taught to go for the legs before all else. Not only did we use the legs for take-downs, but hooking an opponent's leg with an arm and lifting was the preferred method for pinning. Today, I rarely saw anyone going for the legs once on the ground. They were just trying to use body-weight to pin instead of leverage. My coaches would not have been happy.

4) There's still no NBA/NFL-style showboating in wrestling, Thank God. Shakes hands with each other, shake hands with the opponent's coach, give your coach a little hug, and sit the hell down. Wrestling's old school, and so am I.

Sadness

I was in high school when the Challenger blew up. We crowded into the computer lab (the only room with a TV) and watched the replay over and over again, but I could never quite believe what I was seeing (the same reaction I had on Sept 11th). Once it had sunk in, I felt bad for the people who'd died, but I felt even worse for their friends and relatives who'd watched it all happen live and had to relive it every time the explosion was shown again.

Well, I'm a lot older now, and a lot of really bad shit has happened in America and in the world. I no longer have trouble believing what I've seen, but I feel just as bad for the people who're suffering right now. I wish that there were something I could do, but there's not. Nothing I could do or say would make those astronauts any less dead, nor their families any less torn apart. So I'll just sit alone with my sadness and type.

Yes, Virginia, We're Going To War

Only a few short months ago, I'd fooled myself into thinking that all this war talk was simply an electoral ploy. I knew that Bush's brain (aka Karl Rove) was cynical to whip up a war frenzy in order to pick up a few mid-term election seats. I knew that the realistic end-game to a war in Iraq, with its attendant messy occupation, wasn't likely to be much fun. I knew that the chances of bringing democracy to Iraq were akin to the chances of bringing Vanderbilt to the Sugar Bowl or UT to the academic all-American team. In short, I knew that invading Iraq wouldn't be the gimme that lots of other bloggers seem to think it'll be. I also knew that Bush's people, if not the man himself, were smart enough to know these things too.

From all this, I surmised that the war talk was for electoral purposes only, and that Saddam backing down and readmitting weapons inspectors would give the Bushies cause to declare victory and go home (after all, he did change course last Fall and declare UN inspections as being sufficient to forestall an invasion). Ari Fleischer even added to my belief with some idiotic double-talk about how a change in Saddam's behavior would be the same thing as regime change. This all looked like prelude to calling off the war and skipping straight to the victory parade.

That's not going to happen. We're really going to war, and there's nothing anyone lower down than Dick Cheney can do about it. My opinion doesn't matter. Your opinion doesn't matter. Colin Powell's opinion doesn't matter. Even the Republican leaders in Congress have no say here. We're going to war. Get used to it.

I, honestly, can't quite decide whether this is simply part of the neo-con dreamworld of overturning the established order in the Middle East and replacing it with democratic capitalistic societies all of which embrace Israel's right to exist (administered, no doubt, by the monkeys flying out of Richard Perle's ass) or whether this is a simplistic I'm gonna ice that fucker who tried to kill my dad directive from the top. The signals here are mixed. I'm guessing a little bit of both.

Bush's desire for vengeance and his simplistic good guys in white hats vs bad guys in black turbans mindset have got to be really easy for smart guys like Perle and Wolflowitz to manipulate. They also make it very hard for people like Colin Powell (and even Poppy Bush) to impress a nuanced view of the world onto him. The result is that people from ideological think-tanks with precious little real world experience have hijacked the brains of the two most powerful men on the planet (George Bush and Dick Cheney) and have them steering a course into a very uncertain future with all of us along for the ride. Unfortunately, really smart ideologues don't have the best track records in the real world (see Vietnam, American involvement in; also, Marxism; also, Russia, transition to free market economy of; also, music synthesizers, dancing to crappy music made by).

I could be wrong. Things could turn out okay. Those monkeys flying out of Richard Perle's ass could be really lucky and/or competent. I hope to God they are, because we are going to war, and the guy at the helm doesn't know where he's taking us (the really smart guys with the charts haven't told him yet).

PS: I'd love to hear anyone's theory that Bush is a master strategist ordering the world as he see fit and/or a bloodthirsty monster who just wants to kill darkies, but you'll have to convince me that he can name all the countries of the Middle East first. Until then, I'll stick with the available evidence, that he doesn't know shit about international affairs other than that some scumbag tried to kill his dad and that the smart Jews all told him it wouldn't be very hard to take the guy out. If he really knew that the Saudis were on the Big List and that years of disruption to the oil supply might be considered an acceptible cost, I don't think any of this would be happening. But I could be wrong (monkeys can be pretty damned smart).

Clarification: My reference above to Bush thinking some scumbag tried to kill his dad and that the smart Jews all told him it wouldn't be very hard to take the guy out is what's called internal dialogue. It represents Bush's thinking on the subject. Personally, I don't think Perle or Wolflowitz are either particularly smart, or at least not as smart as I'd like them to be given their current influence [nor, for that matter, do I believe that they're part of some massive Zionist conspiracy; given my support for Israel, I'd be part of the conspiracy too, and I'm already annoyed enough that we agree on anything without being in the same conspiracy together]. I do, however, believe that Bush thinks they're plenty smart and is letting them tell him what he really wants to hear (taking out Saddam will be painless and fun) while blocking out those who tell him otherwise.

Further Clarification: Any future reference to Bush thinking of Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell as the reasonable negroes can also be classified as internal dialogue and should not be interpreted to mean that I consider them to be either particularly reasonable or particularly representative of blacks as a group.

Further, Further Clarification: Any past or future reference to Dick Cheney or Karl Rove as fat, evil white men is not Bush's internal dialogue, but my characterization of their personalities, builds, and ethnicity. No offense is meant to either the fat or the evil in lumping them in with all those other whiteys.

The Richard Nixon of Football

Al Davis doesn't sleep tonight. He paces the hallways, alone with his pain; gnashing his teeth until blood flows; plotting his vengeance. They've made him look like a fool; they've made him look like a chump; they've made him look like a loser. They must be destroyed. It may cost him millions and hurt his chances of winning another Super Bowl, but he will be avenged. This is more important than winning, more important than money. Vengeance will be his, oh yes, it will be his.

Politics As Usual

Ever notice how little of the politics of the "pro-life" crowd has to do with actually reducing the number of abortions?

If you want to keep the number of abortions down (as I do), the obvious way is to make sure that women who don't want to get pregnant don't. To do this, you can hold your breathe until everyone stops having sex (the obvious reason Orrin Hatch is so discolored) or you can try to get people to use sensible precautions when they do so. This includes both birth control pills and condoms, either of which is a really good, though not perfect, way to keep babies out of where they're not wanted. And both of which serve to reduce the number of abortions by the millions every year. Any way you want to look at it, the pill and Trojans have stopped more abortions in a single year than all the protesters have since Roe v Wade.

Do the "pro-life" crowd embrace condoms and birth control pills as a sensible way to prevent abortions without intruding in women's lives? Of course not. They do everything they can to reduce the access and information that women, especially young ones, are given to brith control, thereby increasing the number of abortions every year. That's right, there will be more abortions this year worldwide than there would've been had George Bush not taken office. Take it to the bank. There will be even more because the Republicans took control of Congress a few years back and immediately started slashing family planning funds both at home and abroad.

Instead of sensible family planning leading to fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer abortions, we get remarkably ineffective Just Say No programs wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. The Nation ran a series last Spring about these programs, and how they've become pork-barrels for right-wing politicos. I guess making sure that The "Christian" Coalition is well fed takes precendence over doing anything about teen pregnancy and abortion rates.

Want to know how well "abstinence education" works? Just ask Pat Robertson, who was married a few months before his first child was born, or even George Bush, who was born a few months after his parents were married. Maybe that's why they hate birth control so much?

To the Editors of The New Yorker

The plural of the word you is spelled ya'll and pronounced yawl. It is neither pronounced nor spelled you all.

There can be no peace between our peoples until this matter is laid to rest.

How Not To Get Invaded Even If You're A Tinpot Dictator Who Craves Power

By Kim Jong Il
cc: Damascus, Baghdad, Rangoon, Tripoli, Tehran, Tallahasee

1) Very important! Don't try to assasinate the former President or anyone who might be related to a future President, especially not anyone who fits into both categories. This is just asking for trouble.

2) Act nuts. I'm not talking Pinky and the Brain/Dr Evil style taking over the world nuts. I mean genuinely nuts. Dress and act strangely, always refer to yourself in the 3rd person and/or invent a 4th person tense if your language allows. The goal here is to have every major news outlet in the Western world question your sanity openly.

3) Invade your neighbors. Not for vital oil wells, nor for Leibensraum. Just invade them for the hell of it. Send troops over the border, kill a few villagers, then withdraw. When they ask why you did that, respond that you don't know what the hell they're talking about and that the villagers probably shot themselves.

4), A few days later, admit that you invaded, and promise not to do it again. A few days after that, retract the admission and start challenging people to duels.

5) Then invade again, except this time by sea. Again, withdraw, deny, admit, then deny again all within a week.

6) You guessed it! Invade again. The goal here is to both reinforce #2 and to get people to see these occasional border skirmishes as a regular part of your personality, not as something that can be deterred.

7) Build you nuclear plants right on the border with your neighbor friendliest to the West (which is also who you should've been invading all these years). It really helps if the prevailing winds would make bombing the plant mean contaminating your neighbor's largest city.

8) Declare that your nuclear plants are only for peaceful production of power.

9) Then declare that you're going to build nukes and no one can stop you. Get an astrologer to say that you're destined to be a world leader, and say that having nukes is your destiny.

10) Then deny having said that at all, blame your translator, and have him shot. If you've already shot all your translators and are having trouble finding new ones, kidnap a few foreign nationals to speed the training process.

11) Deny having denied making nukes.

12) Deny having kidnapped foreign nationals.

13) Deny having denied having denied making nukes.

14) Admit to having kidnapped foreign nationals, but say they're all dead and promise not to do it anymore.

15) Deny having denied having denied having denied building nukes, but promise not to do it anymore.

16) Admit that some of the foreign nationals are alive, but deny that they don't want to go home.

17) Start test-firing your newest rockets so that they travel directly over a nearby industrialized democracy before splashing down in the ocean.

18) Deny that the rockets have military uses.

19) Admit that, of course, the rockets have military uses. Shoot more translators.

20) Deny having denied having denied having denied having denied making nukes. If you have any translators left, shoot them.

The goal of all you actions should be to make people fear not only the short-term effects of a war to take you out, but to fear all the crazy shit you might do if they launch one. Acting like a rational leader will get you killed playing this game.

America and the West don't fear rational leaders of small countries; they can either be bought off or overthrown with few complications.

America and the West rightly fear crazy-ass motherfuckers with a long history of irrational behavior who apparently don't give a damn what people think of them, especially ones who might or might not have nukes and who've shot all the people who know for sure. If they fear you, they'll leave you alone.

They fear me, do they fear you?

The Big Dog Eats

Trent Lott is a racist, but that's not why the Republicans forced him out. Trent Lott is not a particularly likable guy, but that's not why the Republicans forced him out. Trent Lott made a habit of manipulating Senate rules more boldly than any majority leader since LBJ, but that's not why the Republicans forced him out.

Chalk another one up for Bill Clinton's Penis.

The Republicans forced out Trent Lott because they'd never forgiven him for not kicking Bill Clinton out of office when he had the chance.

It didn't matter how much water he carried for the right wing. It didn't matter how he twisted arms and manipulated the rules to further their agenda. It didn't even matter that he personally voted to convict. To the wingnuts, he would always be the man who let the Big Dog run loose. He had Bill Clinton's mighty Penis in his grasp (so to speak), and it squirmed away.

Anyone familiar with politics could be forgiven for listening to Republicans talk amongst themselves, or to talk radio (which is the public equivalent) and wondering who the hell they were talking about when they described Trent Lott. I've heard the admirer of Strom Thurmond described as not really conservative. I've heard the man who kept over a hundred of Clinton's judicial nominees from getting hearings described as an accomodationist.

Say what they like, make any excuses that come to mind, and it still boils down to one thing. Trent Lott is only the most recent victim of Bill Clinton's Penis. Has the Big Dog eaten for the last time? Or are there more people waiting to be brought low by his powerful implement? Only time will tell.

Note to aspiring Woodsteins: Bill Frist's family business (and the source of his millions in wealth), HCA, paid the largest fine in world history (over a billion dollars if memory serves) for defrauding the US government out of medicare payments. There's dirt there, dig.

I'm Back From The Grave, And Ready To Party

Regular incoherent ranting about current irrelevancies should resume shortly.

Christmas Vacation

Instead of trying pathetically to keep up the pretense of blogging while doing too much other stuff, I've decided just to take a couple weeks completely off. I should be back shortly after New Year's.

Meanwhile, contemplate the delicious prospect of Trent Lott being forced out of the Senate leadership for saying what he really felt.

Money and the Net

AOL has just announced that it's going to put Time/Warner content on the net, and make it available exclusively to AOL users. Since there's been little progress in making money off of content (just ask the people with stock in Salon, to name one of the still solvent content providers who'll never turn a profit), they've decided to leverage their content to get more people using AOL for internet access and to make money that way. This doesn't bother me, since there's so much other content on the net available for free and there are only two companies that could make this play with any chance of success (AOL and MS). I'm guessing that it'll help AOL a little but not a whole lot.

As another way to make money off of content, I've noticed the NY Times and a bunch of magazines that previously made their archives available for free now charge to download articles. Again, this doesn't bother me. It's their content, they can do what they want. Though I doubt that they'll make much money. Slate became a subscriber only site for a while, then switched back when no one subscribed. I see the magazines going through the same thing when they realize that people like me who read old articles on a lark aren't willing to pay for them.

What this all amounts to is a desperate attempt to make money off of content other than porn, and I'm hoping it doesn't succeed. Let me explain.

Right now, the companies who sell internet access couldn't care less what I or you look at. They get their money whether you read big influential newspapers, little influential magazines, or bored liberals with nothing better to do. We're all the same to them. If someone comes up with a universal way to make money off of readership, this will all change. Suddenly, there will be big money for the presumably best sites with the highest readerships and even bigger money for those who figure out how to drive readers to sites regardless of how good they are. This would completely change the rules of the game.

For several years now, people have been predicting a future internet model based on micro-payments. Essentially, every time you went to a site you would pay it some tiny amount of money. Big sites would have a lot to gain. Little sites would still get something for their effort. Even though this would make me a few bucks, I think it would lead to real trouble. Once people got paid for clicks, there would be massive attempts to game the system for maximum profit. Popups, of course, would become even more ubiquitous, but that wouldn't be the real problem.

The shit would really hit the fan when companies like AOL and Microsoft figured out that the easiest way to drive traffic to their sites was to restrict access to everyone else's (and don't think micro-payments or something similar wouldn't lead to exactly this). It wouldn't always have to be a total block of sites, although that would be a possibility. First, the internet providers who also make content would rework their servers so that their customers accessed their content way faster than they could access anything else. Then they would start bribing Google and the other search engines to give them preference, the easiest way would be simply to list every hit for a paying customer ahead of every one for a non-payer (which would mean goodbye to being the #1 hit for my name on google), then you could eventually drop the non-payers completely on the grounds that no one clicks on them anyway.

If this weren't enough, the ISPs would then start cross-licensing each other (AOL and MSN giving each other preferential access, etc). Soon enough, what websites you could access (and how easily) would depend on who your ISP was, with the thousand or so paying sites being accessible to all and the rest of us not. Most people wouldn't mind so much, since all the stuff they were looking for (sports scores, stock quotes, naked pictures of Britney Spears) would still be accessible. You'd still be able to play games online. You just wouldn't see any non-approved or non-paying sites.

The people who did mind wouldn't always have a choice (there are still big chunks of this country with only one or two ISPs). They also wouldn't have a voice, since the big media would be the real winners in all this.

Of course, you'd be able to set up a blog or webpage through MSN or AOL, but I'm sure it wouldn't be free. You'd also have to watch what you say, they do have community standards to uphold. You may think that my blog wouldn't be worth blocking. It wouldn't be, but all of them combined would be (that's millions of hits a day). Those bloggers who played along would be allowed to operate (for a price). Those who wouldn't, wouldn't. If someone really popular didn't play ball, I'm sure that AOL could find someone willing to imitate his style for a nice salary.

Who would stop this? Would the big media conglomerates (who'd stand to make millions) raise a fuss? Would Congress step in, and interfere with the free market? [and it would still be as free as broadcasting is right now]. Would the Rehnquist Court rule against a few companies just trying to make a buck? Sure, new ISPs would open that promised free access, but they would be easy to buy out or marginalize (imagine if those 1,000 most popular sites stopped being accessible from certain ISPs or if the XBOX and PCs couldn't play online through those same ISPs).

I'm guessing that if we ever institute a system by which sites get paid for every reader without subscriptions, that'll be the end of the web as we know it. It'd just be a matter of time before the internet was a bunch of sheep looking at the pretty pictures brought to you by Chevrolet and Time/Warner.

Who's gonna prove me wrong?

To the Women of America

If a man in your life ever hits you or even seriously threatens to, walk out the fucking door and don't come back.
I don't care how much you love him.
I don't care how sweet he is when he apologizes.
I don't care how hard it is to find another man (they are out there).
I don't even care how hard life will be without him (it'll be far easier than putting up with abuse).
Walk out the door and don't come back.

You deserve far better than to have some asshole hit you when he gets pissed off at life. Staying with an abuser not only physically hurts you, but it hurts you psychologically. It makes you feel like like you had it coming. You didn't. Or that you provoked it. You didn't. There are no circumstances in which a man is ever justified in hitting a woman (other than defending himself or his kids against the woman's violence, but that's a situation in which the man should walk out the door and never come back).

You also need to think about the effect on your kids. Not only does domestic violence model bad behavior for them when they're grown, but it's hurting them now (even if the abuser isn't, and he will eventually). Think about how helpless and full of rage a child feels watching his mother be beaten. Think about how this rage will follow him around his whole life. Do you want that for your children? Walk out the door and never come back.

From a societal point of view, this would change the incentive structure for men (not that this should be the responsibility of women). Men would know that a single raised fist meant losing their family. Don't think this would change their behavior? There aren't a huge number of men each abusing one woman. There are a relatively small number of men who abuse practically every woman they get involved with. The sooner these men are left alone the better. We'll all be better off if they can't find anyone to stay with them. They may even change their behavior.

I know that a lot of people are going to jump in with It's more complicated than that or Don't you realize how hard it is to raise kids on your own?. I know, and I don't care. Sometimes there are no good choices, but putting up with abuse is never the best available option. Even moving to a shelter for a while is better than being abused or watching your mother be abused.

Others may balk at a strict zero-tolerance policy. After all, couldn't this be a one-time thing? No, it couldn't. The fact is that the vast majority of men have never hit a woman. Those that have do so more than once. If he hits you and you stick around, he will do it again. Guaranteed. Walk out the door and don't come back.

Note to the men who hit women:
Why? Does it make you feel like a tough guy? Does it give you some sense of power in an otherwise powerless life? Do you just like the idea of pushing around those weaker than you? Is your temper that uncontrollable? Get help. There are programs to help you change your behavior. If that fails, then leave. If you can't control your anger, then you need to walk out the door and never come back. Everyone in your life would be better off if you just got the fuck out. If you neither want to change nor to leave, drop me a line next time your temper gets the best of you. You're probably bigger than I am, but I'd give you a much better challenge than a woman or a child. Or are you afraid to fight a man?

Best of the Web

CalPundit has written a really good review of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq by Kenneth Pollack. You should read it.

I, for one, hate Saddam and would love to see his head hanging from the national Christmas tree in Washington. However, I think so little of the competence and intentions of the Bush administration that I don't trust them to do things right. If they'd only stop lying to us all the time and make a real case against the bastard......

You should also read Limbs of No Body: World's Indifference to the Afgan Tragedy, which was written by an Iranian before the terrorist attacks that reminded all of us of what was going on in Afganistan.

In this hour, 14 more people will have died in Afghanistan of war and hunger and 60 others will have become refugees in other countries. This article is intended to describe the reasons for this mortality and emigration. If this bitter subject is irrelevant to your sweet life, please don't read it.

Don't worry. It really takes far less than an hour to read.

Meanwhile, Jim wants you to take a look at the man behind the curtain. Despite any impression left by our current dance with the UN, he believes that we are going to war with Iraq, no matter what (here and here).

American citizens might be forgiven for wondering what kind of suckers their government takes them for.

The aggressive movement of Israeli, Turkish, and American special forces into Iraq is another sign that the U.S. and its allies are not seriously engaged in any kind of peace process. In fact, what is going on is pre-war -- not an adjective, a noun.

Pre-war is what negotiation and diplomacy really mean in our modern newspeak. Pre-war is a constant vigilance against peace. It is the Tonkin Gulf and the USS Maine and, when even these kinds of charades are no longer necessary, it is a first-strike foreign policy.

Given the Bush administration's unwillingness to change policies even when circumstances change (see Tax Cuts, Deficits; also Fuel Economy, Saudi Utility Vehicles), I think he may be right.

Jeanne D'Arc give us a rundown of the mess that is Nigeria (the people who brought you Biafra and death by stoning for premarital sex). She's posted some feedback giving more detailed info on Nigeria here. Given its oil, its population, and its position as the strongest military power in a very fucked up part of the world (not to mention its tribal and religious strife), Nigeria is one to watch. A meltdown there (a very real possibility) could not only kill millions of people through war and starvation, but a ripple effect could destroy reform efforts in other African countries, plunge the whole region into even more chaos, and reach out to bite us here in America (plus, obviously, make most of Africa off-limits to Americans and Israelis for the forseeable future).

Lastly, take a look at UggaBugga's flowchart detailing possible outcomes in Iraq. And, yes, pigs fly is listed as a possibility (just under US transforms region into Western style capitalist democracies).

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas ... . For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. ... For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society.
- John F. Kennedy

Mea Culpa

I know I said that I'd ignore other bloggers and day to day politics until I finished spilling my guts on the issues, but man is fallible and weak. I have several wordy, poorly, written, and annoyingly imprecise posts in the hopper on subjects ranging from education to foreign aid. Unfortunately, they'll take some serious work to even meet my exceedingly low standards for publication, and I'm not in the editing mood. Once I get them into a form comprehensible to anyone other than the voices in my head, I'll post them. I promise.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

More Politics

CalPundit weighed in on the Kevin Phillips essay and had this to say:

I think this business of "rebuilding" the old FDR coalition is tiresome. FDR — with the Depression as background — was able to build a coalition based on labor, the poor, and minorities. The problem is that labor and the poor are shrinking constituencies, so focusing there just won't do the job.

I think he's right that a coalition of the poor, minorities, and labor is an electoral loser; I just don't see that as the true New Deal coalition.

As a percentage of the American population, the truly poor (as opposed to those who are simply on the low end of the scale, but are doing okay) has shrunk pretty much every decade since the depression, with the possible exception of the 80's. Their share of the electorate has shrunk even faster, because the poor have always voted in low numbers but now vote even less. Any electoral strategy that appeals primarily to the poor is a sure loser (and this is where I think much liberal rhetoric goes wrong).

Labor's percentage of the vote is also shrinking, and many union members are now well-off enough that they can vote based primarily on social rather than economic issues. Most union voters still vote Democratic, but this is far from monolithic. Minority voters (black, hispanic, asian, and gay) are more reliably Democratic; but discrimination has lessened and enough of them are doing well enough financially that many of them now vote based on their self-identification with the investor class rather than from concern over civil rights. [Note: I don't consider this and a lessening of poverty to be bad things just because they hurt Democrats at the polls. Far from it. I consider these as things that the nation and the Democratic Party can be proud of. They do, however, have electoral consequences, and they cannot be ignored]. Expecting union members and minorities to vote Democratic based solely on their identity as union members and minorities is also a sure loser.

I believe that FDR's appeal was not to minorities, the poor, and to union members just because they belonged to those groups (even in the 30's that wasn't enough to win elections). I believe that his appeal to them was part of his greater appeal to huge chunks of the American electorate. That appeal was more psychological than based on race or other identity. FDR spoke to and for what America as a whole was feeling during the 30's and 40's, and that is still applicable today.

I'd say that FDR had two basic constituencies, with a great deal of overlap: the anxious and the powerless. Speak to those constituencies today and you win elections (a great deal of Reagan's popularity was his appeal to those who felt anxious about the future and those who felt powerless in the face of government).

Whatever the drawbacks (and they're too many to list) of the era, there was a lot less anxiety in the 50's and early 60's than there is now. If you had a job assembling cars, you could be pretty sure that the job would stick around and that you'd be able to support your family with it. If you had a job in middle management at GM or at a bank, you could be pretty sure that job would be there your whole life. If your kids were in college, then you could be pretty sure that good jobs would be waiting for them when they graduated. Things were more predictable, and that made people less anxious.

Compare that to the 30's and 40's, in which the Great Depression and war made everyone anxious. You couldn't be sure that your job would be there in a year. You couldn't be sure your son would be alive in a year. You couldn't even be sure that your way of life would be around much longer. FDr dealt with this anxiety by letting people know that we were all in this together, and by using the government to actively make things better. He knew that when things are bad, people don't want the government to simply step out of the way and let nature take its course (the Hoover approach); they want the government to step in and make things better.

This activist approach to government is very popular and should be just as big selling point for the Democrats now as it was then. While social dislocation and unemployment is nothing close to what it was in the 30's and the War on Some Terror Funded by Some People (none of whom happen to be Saudi) pales in comparison to WWII, the public today is still quite anxious. A factory employee, a middle manager, even a professional doesn't know for sure that his job will be there in a year. If it's not, he doesn't know for sure he'll be able to replace it. He doesn't know if his kids will find good jobs when they graduate college; nor does he know what the world will be like in even a few years. This leads to a lot of anxiety, and elections will go to those who act to calm it and are willing to take steps to make things better. If both parties pretend the anxiety doesn't exist, then elections will go to the party willing to promise the biggest bribes to the most people(and that's usually the party that wants to cut taxes the most).

The second thing in people's minds that FDR spoke to was a sense of powerlessness in the face of the forces controlling events, sometimes these were the market forces which caused the Great Depression, sometimes they were world events spinning out of control. This, too, is still a powerful emotion today, though there are obviously different things driving it. Even those with lots of money often feel powerless in the face of events. Even those who have secure jobs themselves know for a fact that they have little true influence on the way things will go down the line (the people with true power in this country could fit into Madison Square Garden).

People feel powerless in the face of their jobs moving overseas. They feel powerless in the face of HMO's denying them medical care. They feel powerless in the face of their 401k's being eaten away by corporate malfeasance. They feel powerless in the face of international terrorism. Whoever reliably sticks up for those that have little power on their own will win elections. Given their unwillingness to face down corporate donors over economic issues and their unwillingness to do more than slavishly follow George Bush on foreign affairs, the Democrats shouldn't be surprised to see Bush fairly popular. At least he seems willing to stick up for them against terrorists (even though he's dishonest as hell about where the true threat lies).

Speaking for those who feel anxious and those who feel powerless was the true source of FDR's coalition, much more than simply listing its members ethnicities and incomes. That is the sort of coaltion the Democrats should be rebuilding. Give them policies which try to address (rather than just stoke) their anxieties and which give them a collective voice in events they're powerless to affect alone, and you'll win the support of most Americans. Stoking fears without offering solutions and hoping people vote based solely on ethnic identity is sure not to.

Skybox Politics

Kevin Phillips used to be in the mainstream of the Republican Party, but for the last decade or so the Party has moved away from him to the point where he appears further from the Republicans than many mainstream Democrats are. he's written a good thinkpiece for the LA Times, and it's obvious from his tone who he now identifies with.
Greed Is Putting Party in Peril (username=laexaminer; password=laexaminer):

The weakening economy and skewed wealth distribution were obvious rallying points, yet Democratic leaders, despite having the freedom that comes from being out of power nationally, abandoned them, save for cliches about protecting Social Security and providing prescription drugs.

While hardly new, this marked an escalation in the national party's willingness to discard old beliefs and the interests of ordinary citizens in order to woo big-contributor money that has captured the center of U.S. politics -- the new "venal center."..............

.............This is a losing politics, because the dominance of venality automatically favors the Republicans. Innately on the side of money, many, if not most, Republicans are philosophically committed to upholding its principles and some of its excesses. By contrast, the worthy history of the Democratic Party, especially during its periods of dominance, has been to question those principles and to indict related excesses. When abuses mount and Democrats remain mute, they lose both constituency appeal and their historical raison d'etre.

Regaining this balance is not turning left, an implausible description for the great Democrats from Jefferson to Truman. What it has involved is correcting the excesses of plutophile conservatives from Alexander Hamilton through the 20th century and down to the present day. Under current circumstances, it would take years for any such correction to be leftish............

.............What the Democrats have to pursue, then, is neither rightward nor leftward movement but a double-barreled recommitment to Middle America and the party's old Jackson-FDR constituencies. That will require them to forswear both rightist economics and left-chic culture. If any such effort succeeds, what opponents try to label it won't matter. Indeed, we can reasonably speculate that any such new politics able to overcome the venal center would also go a long way toward recreating another vital center.

Armed Liberal has already commented on this, but I can't say that I agre with him when he says:

Until the Democratic Party can wean itself from the golden teat of large donors (primarily from lawyers, labor, technology, and media), they will be transparently captive to their investors' interests.

or with Phillips when he insists that money from Hollywood is the worst of all.

I would first point out that the traditional Democratic donor groups don't scare me, nor do they scare most people likely to vote Democratic. The unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, abortion rights groups, and socially liberl Hollywood types are the most solidly Democraic donor constituencies. Try as they might, the Republicans have never gotten significant numbers of people to vote against the Democrats because of who gives money to them (people may vote pro-life, but they're not changing their votes if the Democrats stop taking money from NARAL). These traditional Democratic donor groups line up pretty closely with good Democratic policies.

The problems occur when Democrats start relying on money from traditionally Republican groups. When Democrats start depending on money from banks, from insurance companies, from the investor class, and from big business in general, then they find themselves in an untenable position. To keep these donors happy, they must abandon traditional Democratic policies and the political advantages that come from representing the majority of the American people against those with outsized power and influence.

As soon as Democrats start selling access to anyone willing to write a check, they're lost. It's not that Democratic ties to their traditional supporters scare off voters; it's that Democratic reliance on their traditional opponents paralyzes them. This reliance makes it impossible for them to put forth the sort of policies that will truly differentiate them from the Republicans. This is where Kevin Phillips has things wrong. Gray Davis didn't fail to excite California voters because he was too beholden to Democratic interest groups. Davis failed to excite them because he was too beholden to Republican ones. His Skybox Politics were so dependent on big corporate money that he was unwilling to do anything to piss that big corporate money off. In effect, Davis came off as a Republican Lite, and this it what failed to excite voters.

I'd say that it's good news for Democrats indeed that such an unappealing politician as Gray Davis won almost solely because of residual loyalty to the Democratic Party (it's not like most of his big donors didn't secretly want Simon to win). It says something about the Republican Party that they've moved so far to the right that they can't beat an empty suit like Davis.

I'd also say that it's good news for the Democrats that some big money that had straddled the fence in the Clinton years has now gone over entirely to the Republican side. That's right. It's good news, but only if the Democrats learn the proper lessons (and some Democrats, like Joe Lieberman, seem unwilling to learn those lessons).

Since the oil companies now give almost all their money to Republicans, the Democrats now no longer have to give a shit what the oil companies think about anything. They can formulate and push policies that favor conservation and that favor consumers even in the face of stiff opposition from the oil companies. Why? Because the oil companies won't support them anyway, so there's no downside. In fact, they can go out of their way to antagonize the oil companies with almost no repercussions.

Since the drug companies now give almost all their money to Republicans, the Democrats now no longer have to give a shit what the drug companies think about anything. They can formulate and push policies that favor consumers even in the face of stiff opposition from the drug companies. Why? Because the drug companies won't support them anyway, so there's no downside. In fact, they can go out of their way to antagonize the drug companies with almost no repercussions.

You get the point. The Democrats can make a list of every industry that favors Republicans over Democrats, then go down that list getting rid of every policy they ever instituted to favor those bastards. They once opposed price controls fro prescription drugs; they should now favor them. Not only is it good politics in that millions of voters would benefit from Democratic policies, but sticking it to your enemies is also good politics. It gives the big donors a reason to fear you, and may convince some of them to stay the hell out of politics completely. The same is true for sticking to the oil companies, the insurance companies, the big polluters, etc.

Most of the big Republican contributors do scare voters, and it's much better politics to protect the public from those out to fuck 'em than it is to compete for donations by helping to bend the public over. Does this mean the Democrats will lose some more financial support in the short run? Yes. Does this mean that some Democratic politicians will lose elections in the short run? Yes. Both of these are likely true, but they're worth the cost. Actually articulating a message that puts voters over donors, that truly serves the people and not the powerful would make the Democrats the majority party for the forseeable future.

As people like Kevin Phillips and Michael Lind prove, there are a lot of voters disaffected with the direction the Republicans have pushed politics in the last two decades. Those voters, most of them Rockefeller Republicans, are looking around for a choice. The Democrats, by competing for big money donations from those same interest groups that have driven away lifelong Republicans like Phillips, haven't given those partyless voters any reason to support them. The people want politicians who'll stick up for them even when the big money goes the other way. Those policians are unlikely to ever be Republicans, but right now they're not Democrats either. It's not that the people have been given a choice and chose the Republicans, it's that they've been given little choice (at least economically) and are evenly divided. Democrats win elections on economics, but they have to give voters a true choice. Skybox Politics doesn't give the voters that choice.

Gays in the Military

I remeber looking at all the fuss made over Letting gays in the military back in '93, and thinking Are these idiots under the impression that there aren't any gays in the military? If so, were any of these idiots in the military themselves? I can tell you, for a fact, that there are gays in the military right now, just as there were gays when I was in the Navy, just as there were gays when my father was in the Navy, and just as there were gays when both my grandfathers were in the Army. It's just a matter of whether they have to lie about it.

I knew several guys who were almost certainly gay when I was in the Navy. One of them had the bunk underneath mine for over year. I went drinking with others on several occassions. I never knew for sure, because they didn't tell me and I wasn't about to ask. They were simply my friends and shipmates. What they did in their own time was none of my business.

There are laws on the books to handle sexual harassment, and they should be applied to everyone fairly. If no sexual harassment or other violations are actually occurring (ie, if everyone involved is a consenting adult) and if no one violates their chain of command, then I don't see why it's anyone's business what anyone else does with their private parts when off duty.