Strongbad on video games, and you can play them at the end.

We Want Indictments, We Want Disbarments

Can you imagine if the Democrats had done this to the Republicans:

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.

This would be the only topic on cable news for at least a couple weeks. The pundits and talking heads would be screaming for indictments and disbarments. They would use this to tar all Democrats as dishonest sleazebags for supporting the people who did it.

So allow me to be the first.

We want indictments.

We want disbarments.

And any Republican who doesn't agree is a dishonest sleazebag.

The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee shouldn't even allow the quorum needed to meet until there are people behind bars.

Fuck You, Chevy Chase

Matthew Yglesias discusses counterfactual scenarios and gives us this:

My personal favorite, however, is what if Nixon had won in 1960 and had to deal with the pressures of the Civil Rights movement. At the time, the allegiances of African-American voters were roughly split. The GOP in the aggregate was more supportive of civil rights than were the Democrats, but the leading civil rights advocates in the government were northern liberal Democrats. There's a fair chance that the circumstances would have forced Nixon to become a civil rights champion (as they forced Kennedy and LBJ), no Goldwater campaign, and no southern re-alignment. You might have seen northern liberals move into the GOP which then would have become something like a European liberal party dominated by Olympia Snowe types while the Democrats became a vehicle for white class politics.

I see this as having been a very real possibility. For much of the 20th century, the Republicans were, on the whole, more liberal on social issues than the Democrats. This is understandable, as most rural areas were Democratic and most affluent urbanites Republican.

This lead to an interesting discussion of other scenarios amongst his commenters (TR wins in 1912, tries to jump into WWI too early, destroys support for him and his economic policies; Nixon wins in 1960, leads us into a bloody war in Cuba, etc).

My favorite counterfactual has always been:
Chevy Chase doesn't make Gerald Ford look like a complete fool every Saturday night, Ford ekes out a victory against Carter and gets blamed for all the badness of the late 70's (and possibly legalizes pot, in accordance with the wishes of many, including a young Congressman named Dan Quayle).

I've always considered Reagan's victory in 1980 to be much more of a reaction against Carter's ineefectual administration and against things completely out of Presidential control rather than a sudden embrace by the electorate of voodoo economics. Of course, the Reaganistas don't see it this way. They seem to feel part of some massive historical tide (a tide, of course, that has trouble actually winning elections without an incompetent opponent).

So, no Chevy Chase on SNL, No Ronald Reagan Memorial National Debt, no decades of neglect for alternative energy, no gutting of labor and environmental law enforcement, no shifting of the tax burden from the wealthy and corporations onto the backs of the middle class. No Chevy Chase, and my kid isn't looking at paying off the 1981 tax cuts for the rest of his life. Fuck you, Chevy Chase.

How Free? How Independent?

Am wondering exactly how free and how independent we're really gonna let the Iraqi government be.

What if it wants a theocracy?

Closer ties to Iran?

What if it reneges on all Saddam's debts? (which I hope it does, as governments/banks that loan money to bastards like him shouldn't get their money back)

What if it supports Palestinian suicide bombers the way Saddam did?

What if it nationalizes the oil companies?

What if it wants to elect ex-Baathists, as some Eastern European countries have elected ex-Commies?

What if a relative of Saddam came to power

I'm asking because we've deposed leaders for things like nationalizing oil companies, and I really don't see the Bushies allowing the Iraqis the freedom to do stuff that pisses it off. Hell, we once deposed the elected government of Guatemala cause it pissed off United Fruit.

The things in bold are my guess as to what would be deal-breakers in this case. I don't know exactly what we'd do, and neither do the neo-cons (who never anticipated an Iraqi government that wouldn't do our bidding). I just know we wouldn't let things stand if the new Iraqi government reneged on all its debts and started nationalizing oil companies.

The Era of Big Government Is Back

Bush didn't say it, but should have.

If you like massive government programs that do nothing but buy off voters and contributors, this is your guy.

If you like the prospect of trillion dollar deficits, this is your guy.

And if you don't mind shuffling off today's spending on our kids and grandkids, this is your guy.

Will the last Republican to abandon fiscal conservatism please turn off the lights?

I Know You Are a Terrorist

Holy Crap!

Howard Dean was on CNN a little while ago, looking like someone smacked him in the head with a crowbar.

I don't know what's a bigger shock:

1) Gephardt getting bitch-slapped by the voters

2) Edwards finishing a strong second

3) Dean finishing a weak third, getting lapped by Kerry and almost by Edwards

He has the money and organization to take this all the way, but Dean must win New Hampshire or he's toast.

Gratz to the Kerry and Edwards campaigns, you worked for this one.

FWIW: Kerry/Edwards wouldn't be a bad ticket. Not as strong as Clark/Edwards, but still strong.

FWIW, part II: Gephardt would make a fine Secretary of Labor, keep it in mind.

Liberal Oasis reminds us that it's less about how you do in Iowa than in how you spin it.

Who remembers that Clinton actually lost Iowa by 8% in '92, then went out and declared himself the Comeback Kid?

The Most Important Election Is Always the 2nd

The Shia outnumber Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, and they would dominate any popularly elected government.

Unfortunately, there is nothing is the rehotric of their leaders, nor in the history of the Iraqi state that leads me to believe they'd have any interest in respecting democratic traditions.

Among these are allowing your opponents to be critical of you, allowing them to run political campaigns unimpeded, allowing votes to be counted honestly (a step we've had trouble with in recent years),and actually stepping aside if you lose.

We've seen plenty of mostly honest first-time elections when dictators have fallen or regimes have collapsed. What we don't always see is the winner of those elections ever leave the scene willingly.

I'm afraid that's what we'll see in Iraq. Some mullah or representative of one will take power, and that'll be all she wrote. We'll have either a kleptocracy like in Zaire, a thugocracy like Zimbabwe, or a corrupt Islamic Republic like in Iran.

But no matter what fucked up regime ends up in power, we'll get the blame.

People will forget how bad Hussein was, and they'l focus on the least flaw (or the giant, raging flaws) in the successor regime. And we'll get the blame for every damned thing it does. Count on it.

Cauci

Never been to a Caucus, don't know much about how the votes get counted. But I got cable specifically so I could watch political stuff, so I guess I'll just keep watching these idiots drone on until we get some news.

Tomorrow, things should be a bit clearer. The latest polls seem to show Kerry and Edwards surging and Dean sliipping a bit, but who the hell really knows.

Strange Bedfellows

Michael Moore and George McGovern are both campaigning for Wes Clark, perhaps the most conservative Democratic candidate other than Lieberman.

Dennis Kucinich, the most liberal candidate, has apparently asked his voters to switch to John Edwards if they don't get the 15% needed to get to garner some delegates. He's about as conservative as Clark.

BTW: Neither of these candidates are anywhere outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party, nor are they in the same ballpark as people like Zell Miller and John Breaux. They're just not the obvious picks for liberals like Moore and Kucinich.

TV "News"

When did MSNBC become wingnut central?

I know I haven't had cable in a very long time, but they seem as bad as Faux "News" now.

New Term

Not real happy to see My Baby's Daddy enter the lexicon as a term of art. Never had a problem with people having kids outside of wedlock, but am old-fashioned enough to think that couples can take better care of kids than singles. This is especially true when the single in question is very young and never had a stable relationship with the father of her child.

When it's so common for women to get knocked up by someone they're not dating exclusively that you need a special term for it, that's a problem (I'm assuming here that the word boyfriend would suffice if he was, in fact, her boyfriend).

Vaporware

Whenever a competitor announces a new product, you can be sure that Microsoft will announce that it's working ona something that fills the same niche, but with more features. They'll do this even if they don't have such a product in development yet, or even if they have no intention of ever developing one. This mythical product is known as vaporware.

The intent of vaporware is to make the currently available competive product less attractive to both consumers and investors. Why buy this product when a cheaper one with more features will be available soon? Why invest in this product if one with the marketing muscle of Microsoft behind it will be competing with it soon?

In politics, we see vaporware either as a competing proposal that is much cheaper and/or puts off real action for years, or in the call for more studies or research. The Bush administration has gotten very good at the announcement of vaporware for maximum effect.

Worried about golbal warming? Don't worry, we're gonna study it some more to waste tim make sure we really have a problem.

We saw this with the big fuss they made over hydrogen fuel cell autos, which won't be commercially available for well over a decade. We have hybrid cars now, we can make regular cars much more efficient than we currently do; but why worry about all that if hydrogen fuel cells will solve all our problems? This is a very effective way to distract attention from things we could being doing now that the Bushies oppose for either political or ideological reasons.

I'd put school vouchers and the No Child Left Untested Act into the category of vaporware as well. Why fix up urban schools, reduce class sizes, and pay teachers enough to make it a truly desirable occupation (all things we could do now, but which would cost lots of money), when we can simply wait for the vast number of quality private schools that will magically spring into existence at some point in the future (and it would truly have to be a vast number to make a real difference in our educational system) or for market mechanisms to fix everything without having to spend more cash.

Bush's Mission to Mars fantasy looks like more vaporware. It's aimed far enough in the future that the Bushies know they won't have to pay for it, at the same time as it's used as the reason to kill off other programs now. Bloggers have noticed, but the mainstream press has ignored (surprise) that Bush proposes to cut funding for every NASA project that doesn't point to the Moon and Mars. Some of these are crappy money wasters (the Space Station), some are cost effective and scientifically useful; but they want to shelve it all. I'm guessing that this is mainly just a chance to help pay for the Bush tax cuts, with a bit of payoff to big defense contractors thrown in.

The question is, how long will the public accept Bush proposals at face value?, and will they ever start to look at them as the vaporware they are.

Civil Servants

Am reading Robert Kaplan's An Empire Wilderness : Travels into America's Future, which chronicles here in America the growing divide between those who can thrive in the global economy and those who can't, as well as the gradual dissolution of the nation-state, patriotism, and public services in favor of private security firms, private schools, and a sense of belonging more wrapped up in self or local than national identity.

Kaplan has explored the latter more fully in The Coming Anarchy : Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War, in which he writes about places that never quite got a national identity off the ground (think of how much fun we had with those who thought of themselves as Serbians first, members of the Orthodox Church second, and Yugoslavians only third, if that).

Kaplan describes the problem with the police in many Mexican cities. Rather than fighting crime, they are criminals themselves: working as security and hired muscle for drug runners, shaking down businessmen and civilians, even carjacking and armed robbery.

Instead of the mixture of desire to do good and the desire for a secure job with good benefits that drives people into policework here, they surely see more police driven by the desire to make a quick buck easily [this is not to say that Mexico doesn't have honest cops trying to do well, just that the incentives don't work that way].

This made me think of the problems with corruption endemic in many 3rd world countries' civil services, where a bribe is necessary to get a marriage license, to get a loved one's body from the morgue, to take a school entrance exam, for any of the things in daily life we've taken for granted.

An honest, decently paid civil service is one of the things that is absolutely necessary for a livable society. Some societies have one, some don't, and I honestly don't know how a place like Mexico or India will be able to clean their's up. I'm guessing the key will be to pay civil servants enough to make it a desirable job, then to be ruthless in getting rid of anyone corrupt.

But this isn't an easy problem to solve. Once the bribe-taking mindset becomes prevalent, it's hard to root out, especially for those places that don't pay their civil servants a living wage. If I was a cop who couldn't feed his family without bribes, I'd be shaking people down too.

I Should Like Lieberman More Than I Do

At least on foreign policy matters, he and I both favor of muscular, interventionist liberalism; we're essentially Cold War Democrats. We believe that America has a positive role to play in the international arena (which sets us apart from a lot of other liberals), but that it can't do everything alone (which sets us apart from a lot of conservatives). Lieberman, Clark, and Kerry are the candidates I feel closest to on foreign policy, probably in that order.

Joe has a good environmental record, and is actually to my left on some other social issues like affirmative action. Like me, he doesn't buy into Reagan's dictum that government is the real problem. We both believe that the government can be and usually is a net positive in our society (of course, that's net, not in every instance).

So why don't I like Lieberman more? I'd divide it into one big policy difference and one smaller personal one.

When it comes down to it, Lieberman has simply become too comfortable with the concentration of wealth and of political power in fewer and fewer hands. Either he doesn't see these as a problem or he doesn't see them as being solvable. I, on the other hand, see that we need to prevent our slow division into have's and have-not's, into those with lots of power and those with noe if we're to prevent ourselves from being an increasingly brutal and dangerous society like Brazil or anyplace else with a wide and widening gulf between the rich and poor. Given my druthers, I'll choose Denmark over Brazil any day, and I see a steeply progressive tax code and strict regulation of corporate behavior as necessary to push us in that direction. I'm not sure Joe agrees.

On a strictly personal note, Lieberman's smarmy goody-two-shoes act gives me the creeps. It bugged me in 2000 when he spent most of the election lecturing Hollywood, and my reaction hasn't gotten any better.

We agree on more than I usually admit, but Lieberman and I are just too far apart on our vision of government regulation and of the tax code for him to be my guy. Sorry, Joe.

No Agua

Came home from work yesterday and there was no water coming from my taps. I figured that there was a water main somewhere being worked on, so I waited. Sure enough, the H2O started flowing again in a couple hours.

Like the last time freezing rain knocked out my power here in The London of the Piedmont (Buffet's description of Nashville's weather), this gave a bit of time to reflect on how soft and downright helpless Western Man has become. I may be able to fix a computer, drive a car, argue my way in and out of trouble, or even change a diaper; but put my ass in a situation with no electricity, no supermarkets, and no access to potable water and I'm in deep shit. And of the three, clean water is probably the most vital and hardest to get.

Millions of people, lots of them little kids, die each year because they have no way to get clean drinking water. Kinda puts my bullshit struggles in perspective, don't it? Makes me thankful to be here in America and feel a little unworthy of everything I've been handed at the same time.

SayUncle discusses freedom and what is necessary to preserve it and isn't happy with what he sees:

In short, guns are useless without the will to right wrongs and take risks. Sadly, I think America is at the point where most of us are unwilling to take risks, stand up for what’s right, and speak truth to power.

We sit by while our courts restrict speech; politicians authorize government agencies to snoop through citizen’s records without warrants; police randomly harass motorists; indoor plumbing justifies why police no longer have to knock and announce their presence before entering a suspect’s home; dissenters are quarantined to First Amendment Zones; judges tell people they can’t sell their book; local governments abuse eminent domain; men armed with machine guns parade around our large cities; people are detained without access to legal counsel, sometimes in secret; and the list goes on and on.

As long as Michael Jackson is in the news, Paris Hilton is sucking dick, and the latest reality TV shows are popular, we don’t notice. Or we don’t care.

Or we’re forced to pick two losing sides. Democrats and Republicans have equally deplorable records regarding civil liberties. It just depends which particular civil liberty you’re talking about. We often vote for the lesser of two evils.

It’s up to us to change it by holding politicians responsible. If we can’t do that now with our vote, we won’t have the will to do anything if our last hope turns out to be AK47s.

Question

I hear lots of numbers as to how many Palestinians have been killed since the start of the most recent violence. Does anyone know how many of them have been killed by other Palestinians, either in bombings or killed for collaborating with the Israelis?

Just a side note, but I really miss Rabin. He's maybe the only one who could've guided Israel through this without the bloodshed we've seen. I was happy to see Sharon stand up to the wingnuts in his own party and say that settlements must be dismantled, but I have yet to hear of any actually being torn down.