Are you f*cking crazy? I'm gonna re-design my site so I don't offend the type of people that I think are ruining America? Why are you wasting my time with a question like that? Isn't it enough that that the mainstream media is overwhelmingly slanted to the right? You want my blog too? F*ck You. How's that for "vitriole"? Bottom line is I'm not gonna change anything to make wingnuts feel better about themselves while they're here. Sorry.Boing Boing agrees "take a flying leap through a rolling do-nut".
Friday, December 09, 2005
Hear, Hear - Right Wing Nuts told to take a flying leap.
The War on Christmas: Mutually Assured Embarrassment - Wonkette
The truth is, anytime someone starts talking to you about how Christians are persecuted in the United States, you are -- right then and right there -- talking to a retard. There's just no other way of saying it.
Texas child protective service workers made up heart-tugging story for donations
It was a heart-wrenching story: A 10-year-old boy named John, separated from his mother since the hurricane, was living with other foster children in an emergency shelter, and he had one Christmas wish - to go home.
``But there's no way I'll get gifts for Christmas. I don't even believe in Santa anymore,'' he was quoted as saying.
The Brazosport Facts ran the profile on its front page Nov. 29 as part of its Fill-a-Stocking series, which features a different foster child each day from Thanksgiving through Christmas and solicits donations for a local charity to help fulfill the child's holiday wish.
But the story was a work of fiction.
State caseworkers apparently made it up to tug at readers' heartstrings.
Caseworkers with state Child Protective Services in Brazoria County, outside Houston, were responsible for writing the profiles for the newspaper's charity drive, which has been a holiday fixture in the 19,000-circulation paper since 1982.
Lauck said it does not appear the CPS caseworkers had any bad intentions.
``They were just trying to tell stories that would clearly tug at the heart, capture the emotions of the readers and inspire them to give more money,'' the TV reporter said. ``But they did it in a way that misled the public.''
NYTimes confirms again it is for the upper-middle class, not millionaires
The right course is clear: responsible senators should approve alternative minimum tax relief, but stand firm against machinations that would tart up the tax code with additional giveaways for the wealthiest Americans. Rampant tax cutting must be stopped in the face of deficits, looming budget obligations and the painful sacrifices being demanded of the poor.
NYT - The only link of Saddam to Al Qaeda was fabricated by rendition torture victim
The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.
The Other I.D. - Professor explains theory of Incompetent Design
A Wise man cites serious flaws in the systems of the human body as evidence that design in the universe exhibits not an obvious source of, but a sore lack of, intelligence.
This is related to another scientific religious theory that the universe was created for black holes, God's chosen, and that life is a side effect in the unassembled materials. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is amused. Break out you pirate hats and start worshipping to prevent global warming.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
A Bad Sci-Fi Movie Real News Day
Do you have 31 years to live? It's called Apophis. It's 390m wide. And it could hit Earth in 31 years time. Scientists call for plans to change asteroid's path but developing the technology could take decades.
And Japan is invaded by giant sea monsters. Over six feet wide and weighing over 450 pounds with countless poisonous tentacles a seemingly endless supply have taken up station off the coast of Japan. Will they hit the beaches soon? Links by the Last liberal in Central Florida.
Daily Howler: The Puzzlement of the Millionaire Pundits
Mort and Charles and Cokie and George were confused by the views of those prole voters.
Krugman explained "the main explanation for economic discontent is that it's hard to convince people that the economy is booming when they themselves have yet to see any benefits from the supposed boom. Over the last few years G.D.P. growth has been reasonably good, and corporate profits have soared. But that growth has failed to trickle down to most Americans."
When everyone you see on a TV show is a millionaire receiving the benefits in a bipolar economy isn't it normal for them to cast blame at someone for not spreading the good news? As John Edwards said we live in two worlds that have been growing apart as all the good stuff is only happening at the top.
Dems Propose House Ethics Reform
The place needs a good scrubbing, and that is what it would get if the leadership were somehow to embrace a set of rules changes put forward this week by several longtime members.
Democrats cannot take back Congress unless they nationalizae the House races like the GOP did with their Contract for America. Ethics reform is the first step. They just took it.
WP: Condi playing games withs words in torture statements
NEWSPEAK was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles in the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all Party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech.
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods.
Voice Of God Revealed To Be Cheney On Intercom
Telephone logs recorded by the National Security Agency and obtained by Congress as part of an ongoing investigation suggest that the vice president may have used the Oval Office intercom system to address President Bush at crucial moments, giving categorical directives in a voice the president believed to be that of God.
While journalists and presidential historians had long noted Bush's deep faith and Cheney's powerful influence in the White House, few had drawn a direct correlation between the two until Tuesday, when transcripts of meetings that took place in March and April of 2002 became available.
In a transcript of an intercom exchange recorded in March 2002, a voice positively identified as the vice president's identifies himself as "the Lord thy God" and promotes the invasion of Iraq, as well as the use of torture in prisoner interrogations.
Truth or the Onion?
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
THE MEDICAL MALPRACTICE MYTH
Kevin Drum reports on Tom Baker's The Medical Malpractice Myth:
1 There's a lot more genuine medical malpractice than you think. A long string of studies has shown that about 1 out of 100 hospitalized patients are victims of negligent malpractice. These studies were supervised by doctors and used a very strict definition of "negligent."Baker also has a proposed solution, which he calls the Patient Protection and Healthcare Responsibility Act. The four main goals of PPHRA are to reduce the actual amount of malpractice; provide patients with more information up front so they can decide if they are the victims of malpractice; make compensation for medical injuries fairer; and regulate the boom-and-bust insurance cycle that's responsible for the skyrocketing insurance premiums that are so disruptice for doctors.
2 Most victims never sue. Less than 5% of patients who are victims of negligence file a claim.
3 Patients who bring weak claims usually do so only because hospitals refuse to disclose information about their quality of care unless they are taken to court. Patients who learn that their care was reasonable usually drop their claims.
4 What's more, contrary to myth, insurance companies very seldom pay off weak claims even if patients continue to pursue them.
5 Rising malpractice awards are not responsible for skyrocketing insurance premiums. The insurance cycle is.
6 In any case, the evidence that fear of malpractice suits produces significant amounts of defensive medicine is pretty thin — although a small amount of defensive medicine does exist. Likewise, the evidence that malpractice payouts are driving doctors out of practice is low and mostly restricted to doctors in rural areas — which have been losing doctors for decades for financial reasons anyway.
Nude Teens and the National Review
Do you share John Derbyshire's [National Review columnist] belief that females are only desirable to look at nude from the ages 15 to 20?
Are they just more public in their dirty old man kinkyness now?
Will they be providing links to DOMAI - Dirty Old Man Association International? (Link not safe for work. All models also over 18 so possibly not to his taste.)
For the record I love women of all ages and think they are beautiful. I even like nude beaches with grandmothers, common in Europe.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Birds of a feather will hopefully get indicted together
Protesters outnumber DeLay fundraiser attendees.
Posted with photos by Bay Area New Democrats whose members almost got a relative unknown elected in DeLay's place last year
"In a very Republican area, the protestors were greeted with long lasting honking from bumper to bumper motorists. Many rolled down the windows to voice their support. There was absolutely no sign of opposition on the street. Not one single middle finger salute or negative outcry. Not one single anti-protestor or DeLay supporter was in sight."
Diebold insider sings, questions elections in Georgia, Ohio, elsewhere
The Raw Story: The insider harbors suspicions that Diebold may be involved in tampering with elections through its army of employees and independent contractors. The 2002 gubernatorial election in Georgia raised serious red flags, the source said.
“Shortly before the election, ten days to two weeks, we were told that the date in the machine was malfunctioning,” the source recalled. “So we were told 'Apply this patch in a big rush.’” Later, the Diebold insider learned that the patches were never certified by the state of Georgia, as required by law.
“Also, the clock inside the system was not fixed,” said the insider. “It’s legendary how strange the outcome was; they ended up having the first Republican governor in who knows when and also strange outcomes in other races. I can say that the counties I worked in were heavily Democratic and elected a Republican.”
In Georgia’s 2002 Senate race, for example, nearly 60 percent of the state’s electorate by county switched party allegiances between the primaries and the general election.
The insider’s account corroborates a similar story told by Diebold contractor Rob Behler in an interview with Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.
Harris revealed that a program patch titled “rob-georgia.zip” was left on an unsecured server and downloaded over the Internet by Diebold technicians before loading the unauthorized software onto Georgia voting machines. “They didn’t even TEST the fixes before they told us to install them,” Behler stated, adding that machines still malfunctioned after patches were installed.
California decertified Diebold TSX touch screen machines after state officials learned that the vendor had broken state election law.
“In California, they got in trouble and tried to doubletalk. They used a patch that was not certified,” the Diebold insider said. “They’ve done this many times. They just got caught in Georgia and California.”
The whistleblower is also skeptical of results from the November 2005 Ohio election, in which 88 percent of voters used touch screens and the outcome on some propositions changed as much as 40 percent from pre-election exit polls.
“Amazing,” the Diebold insider said.
Diebold is headquartered in Ohio. Its chairman Wally O’Dell, a key fundraiser for President Bush, once promised in an invitation to a Republican fundraising dinner to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes for Bush. The staffer said the company has a deep conservative culture.
'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion'
The UK, more experienced with Narnia, recognizes the very bad theology of this overwrought tale.
I only read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe this year and disliked it. It talks down to kids and Aslan, unlike Christ, knows he dies to play a trick on the Witch (Narnia's Satan). There seems little of the compassion and moral lessons of a Christ-like ministry.
Tolkien hated Narnia: the two dons may have shared the same love of unquestioning feudal power, with worlds of obedient plebs and inferior folk eager to bend at the knee to any passing superior white persons - even children; both their fantasy worlds and their Christianity assumes that rigid hierarchy of power - lord of lords, king of kings, prince of peace to be worshipped and adored. But Tolkien disliked Lewis's bully-pulpit.
Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".
EVO DEVO and the death of Intelligent Design
Evolution making revolutionary strides.
Indeed, several scientists, including, most prominently, the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, have argued that the incipient science of evo devo might represent the next great revolution in the history of evolutionary thought.
Sean Carroll, a professor of biology at the University of WisconsinMadison, and a leading evo-devo researcher, surveys the state of the field for a general audience in his book “Endless Forms Most Beautiful.”
.... Despite the nearly irresistible romance of the scientific revolution, the history of evolutionary biology might end up looking a lot more like evo devo’s own history of the animal kingdom: a few radical innovations early on, followed by some intensely interesting tinkering.
The Death of Intelligent Design
While intelligent design has hit obstacles among scientists, it has also failed to find a warm embrace at many evangelical Christian colleges. Even at conservative schools, scholars and theologians who were initially excited about intelligent design say they have come to find its arguments unconvincing. They, too, have been greatly swayed by the scientists at their own institutions and elsewhere who have examined intelligent design and found it insufficiently substantiated in comparison to evolution.
"It can function as one of those ambiguous signs in the world that point to an intelligent creator and help support the faith of the faithful, but it just doesn't have the compelling or explanatory power to have much of an impact on the academy," said Frank D. Macchia, a professor of Christian theology at Vanguard University, in Costa Mesa, Calif., which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, the nation's largest Pentecostal denomination.
Derek Davis, director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor, said: "I teach at the largest Baptist university in the world. I'm a religious person. And my basic perspective is intelligent design doesn't belong in science class."
Mr. Davis noted that the advocates of intelligent design claim they are not talking about God or religion. "But they are, and everybody knows they are," Mr. Davis said. "I just think we ought to quit playing games. It's a religious worldview that's being advanced."
Real Jesus followers beat Kansas University professor who is to teach a class on the myths of intelligent design.
A German Protestant Youth Group is selling a nude calendar of erotic scenes from the Bible. - Somehow this is connected.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Cheney and DeLay: A Scandal Plagued Houston Reunion Tonight
Vice President Cheney is in Houston, Texas for a high dollar fundraiser for indicted former Republican House Leader Tom DeLay tonight.
This event comes after today's story in USA Today that Vice President Cheney has become the "Velcro veep" and that Vice President Cheney is a central player in most all of the Administration's problems, including the investigation of the illegal leaking of CIA agent's identity during a time of war and the possible manipulation of pre-war intelligence. Despite these issues Cheney continues to stay the course and refuses to answer questions or admit mistakes made by himself or the Bush Administration.Facing ongoing scandals, the Vice President seems to be in good company today with former Republican House Leader Tom DeLay who has been busy soliciting campaign cash for his re-election and trial.
The corrupt captains Veep and Creep fundraiser in Houston is expected to draw hundreds of protesters.
What: Hundreds to protest Cheney/DeLay fundraiser in Houston
When: Monday Dec 5, 2005 5:00PM-7:00PM
Where: Westin Oaks Hotel 5011 Westheimer on the sidewalk Post Event Rally: Dave & Buster's 6010 Richmond Ave. at Fountainview 713-952-2233
An hour ago the judge ruled that DeLay must face trial in January for illegal campaign contributions and money laundering.
Mahatma Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins
Mahatma Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins
Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi, one of the most influential figures in modern social and political activism, considered these traits to be the most spiritually perilous to humanity.
- Wealth without Work
- Pleasure without Conscience
- Science without Humanity
- Knowledge without Character
- Politics without Principle
- Commerce without Morality
- Worship without Sacrifice
Sojourners has it available as a poster.
Nanotechnology Regulation Needed,
Nano Control Needed
Amid growing evidence that some of the tiniest materials ever engineered pose potentially big environmental, health and safety risks, momentum is building in Congress, environmental circles and in the industry itself to beef up federal oversight of the new materials, which are already showing up in dozens of consumer products.
An estimated 700 types of nanomaterials are being manufactured at about 800 facilities in this country alone, prompting several federal agencies to focus seriously on nano safety. Yet no agency has developed safety rules specific to nanomaterials. And the approach being taken by the Environmental Protection Agency, arguably the furthest along of any regulatory body, is already facing criticism by some as inadequate.
In the past few months:Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology found that nanoparticles of aluminum oxide stunt the growth of roots on several crops -- including soybeans and corn, mainstays of U.S. agriculture.
Japanese researchers found that a kind of nanosphere that some want to use to deliver drugs or vaccines into the body is a potent stimulator of immune-reaction genes, perhaps explaining fatal inflammatory responses seen in animals exposed to nanomaterials.
And a California team working with laboratory-grown cells showed that carbon nanotubes specifically activate "cell suicide genes."
Sunday, December 04, 2005
CIA leaks "inhumane techniques" used on prisoners
UK Independent: Amid a growing row in the US over torture, a list of "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by CIA agents in secret prisons - including near-drowning, freezing, sleep deprivation, shaking and slapping - has been leaked. In at least one case, a prisoner has died.
The techniques have been authorised for use at CIA "black sites" abroad, at which top terror suspects are held. Last week the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch said "ghost detainees" were held at two military bases, in Poland and Romania. Similar sites in half a dozen other countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand and the Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia, leased from Britain, are now said to have been closed.
The existence of these detention facilities, and what happens inside them, are the most secret aspect of America's "war on terror". In contrast to military-run camps and prisons such as Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where it was impossible to shield all CIA activity from outside scrutiny, the location of the "black sites" and the identities of those held there are made known only to a handful of senior officials in the US. In the host countries, only the president and top intelligence officials are aware of them.
America's covert forces are operating in a climate of impunity, described by Cofer Black, then CIA counter-terrorism chief, who told a congressional committee in 2002: "After 9/11, the gloves were off." At one point, according to Newsweek, the Bush administration formally told the CIA it could not be prosecuted for any technique short of inflicting the kind of pain that accompanies organ failure or death.
The normal justification is that such methods could help avert a terror attack in which thousands might be killed. But are there any cases to prove it? Claims that the "waterboarding" of Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced details of planned attacks on the US were sceptically received by one CIA official, who said: "What we got was probably not truthful. And there's no way of knowing whether what good information they got could not have been obtained by more traditional means."
THE ATTENTION GRAB: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him. Israel, the only democracy to have openly debated coercion of prisoners, declared this legal in 1987, but the Supreme Court ruled it out in 1999
THE ATTENTION SLAP: Interrogators may deliver "an open-handed slap", which is "aimed at causing pain and triggering fear"
THE BELLY SLAP: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage
STANDING FOR HOURS: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to a ring bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are claimed to be effective in yielding confessions
COLD TREATMENT: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept at around 10C, and constantly doused with cold water. Misapplication of this technique is blamed for the death of a detainee in Kabul
WATERBOARDING: The prisoner is bound to a board, head slightly below the feet. Plastic is wrapped over his face and water is poured over him, or his head is lowered into a bath. The gag reflex is automatic; few can endure more than a matter of seconds
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was US Secretary of State, said last week that he knew of more than 70 "questionable deaths" of detainees under US supervision up to the end of 2002, when he left office. That figure, he added, was now around 90.
Dr. Dean Hammers Bush On War, Immigration, ethics
WP: DNC Chief Gives Preview of '06 Race
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean offered a preview of the 2006 elections here Saturday with a blistering critique of President Bush's policies on Iraq and immigration and the Republicans' ethics scandals. But he warned Democrats they cannot expect to win next year without offering an agenda of their own.
Speaking at the fall meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Dean pledged that Democrats would offer tax policies aimed at middle-class voters, a plan to provide health insurance to all Americans, immigration proposals that offer a path to legalization for illegal immigrants, and defense policies that would protect the nation and expose the "hollow promises" of the Bush administration.
Dean warmly praised Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for "standing up and telling the truth" about Bush's policies in Iraq, and suggested that the Pennsylvanian had offered a vision around which Democrats could rally. But Dean stopped well short of embracing Murtha's call for a withdrawal plan that would redeploy all U.S. troops within about six months. Instead Dean called on Democrats to coalesce around a proposal that would keep some U.S. forces in Iraq for two more years.
States Say No To Sex-Ed Dough
AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: States Say No To Sex-Ed Dough
Maine has stepped out of the collection line of states getting federal money to help subsidize sex education, joining California and Pennsylvania in saying, "No, thanks."
Citing a potential conflict with a 2002 state law that mandates teaching teenagers everything from self-restraint to contraception, Maine declined about $160,000 in federal money for fiscal 2006. Maine would have had to pitch in about $120,000 had it accepted the federal money, and it would have had to focus sex education programs financed by the money on abstinence exclusively.
The state also refused to allow Heritage of Maine, a nonprofit, abstinence-education group, to put on its programs in Maine public schools. Heritage's programs, which are financed with a three-year, $1.5 million federal grant, are instead being conducted only in private schools.
Maine's teen pregnancy rate has dropped by 50 percent in 20 years. Mills called this one of the biggest public health successes in the country, and said contraception as well as abstinence had played a role.
"We were in a position of having to turn our backs on proven programs that we have been using for quite a while, versus accepting these (new) standards that we think may actually be harmful to our children," Mills told Stateline.org.
Allan Lichtman: The DeLay Scheme: Blatantly Buying Our Government
DeLay's intervention in Texas state legislative elections was part of a concerted, nationwide Republican plan to control our government through political gerrymandering at the expense of black and Hispanic voters. I have observed this process first-hand as the expert witness, not only in Texas, but also in the court cases challenging Republican congressional redistricting plans in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, and Michigan.
In southwest Texas, DeLay's plan split heavily Hispanic Webb County, removing some 90,000 Hispanics from Congressional District 23 to ensure that it would elect a Republican opposed by Hispanic voters. His plan dismantled seven other congressional districts across Texas in which African-American and Hispanic voters critically influenced election outcomes, submerging these voters into heavily Republican districts in which they have no influence.
DeLay's plan represents the first time, anywhere in America, that majority-minority districts have been dismantled since the Voting Rights Act was passed.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Friday, December 02, 2005
Support Our Troops
Bring Them HomeWelcome to peacepositive.net
Home of the Peace Dove car magnet
$6 plus $1 shipping and handling per magnet.
Dept. of Justice Staff Found DeLay's Texas Redistricting Illegal - senior GOP overruled them
Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.
The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.
"The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," the memo concluded.
The 73-page memo, dated Dec. 12, 2003, has been kept under tight wraps for two years. Lawyers who worked on the case were subjected to an unusual gag rule. The memo was provided to The Post by a person connected to the case who is critical of the adopted redistricting map.
The Justice Department memo recommending rejection of the Texas plan was written by two analysts and five lawyers. In addition, the head of the voting section at the time, Joseph Rich, wrote a concurring opinion.
Off Center : The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy
Amazon.com: Off Center : The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy
Prof. Henry Farrell:The Republicans have been transformed over the last twenty years from a loosely organized coalition in which moderates appeared to have the upper hand, to a party that is astonishingly well disciplined by the standards of American political history and dominated by right-wing radicals. How has this happened?
Hacker and Pierson immediately discard two common explanations, neither of which is supported by the facts. First, there is no evidence that Americans are more conservative on social issues than they used to be; indeed some evidence suggests that they are now a little more centrist. Nor does it appear that mobilization of "morals voters" was the key to Republican success in the last Presidential election - detailed analysis suggests that state-level efforts to put gay marriage on the ballot helped Kerry, not Bush. Second, there is no evidence of a general process of `polarization' in which both the left and the right are rapidly seceding to the extremes, leaving moderate voters with few palatable choices. The evidence suggests the contrary - while Democrats have become only somewhat more left wing, as Southern Democrats have either disappeared or defected to the Republicans, the Republican party has shifted radically to the right. Positions that were in the mainstream of the Republican party of the 1970s and 1980s are anathema today.
So why hasn't the Republican party been punished by voters for its radicalism? As I understand it, Hacker and Pierson's explanation has three main components. First, information. Voters are often poorly informed about politics, and are vulnerable to "tailored disinformation," which distorts public perceptions. Second, institutions. The Republican Party has been able to use its dominance of Senate, House and Presidency to set the agenda and to sideline opposition. Finally, networks. "New Power Brokers" like Tom DeLay have been able to assemble networks that bring together politicians, think-tankers, funders and lobbyists, creating a coherent agenda across separate institutions, rewarding and protecting loyalists while brutally punishing those who go off-message.
By bringing these together, Hacker and Pierson can explain how the Republican party has succeeded in bringing through radical policy shifts that go against public preferences. Their analysis of the 2001 tax cuts, the Bush energy plan, and the Medicare drugs bill shows how highly objectionable policies can be crafted to fleece the public without raising much in the way of public opposition. In the case of the tax cuts, assiduous propaganda disguised the fiscal impact of the cuts and made them look less biased towards the rich than they in fact were. Republican leaders made sure that they were sent to the floor for voting without opportunity for proper debate or for consideration of alternatives. "Sunsets," "phase-ins" and "time-bombs" were deployed to make the measures temporarily more palatable and to disguise their true costs and long term consequences. "Backlash insurance" provided protection to Republicans who signed onto the agenda.
Nor do Hacker and Pierson confine their argument to the legislative process. Executive action (and non-action) too is important, as witnessed by their account of the systematic gutting of the EPA's and OSHA's ability to enforce regulations.
The book's detailed discussion of how the Republicans have been able to pull all this off is valuable in itself. Readers who have paid attention to Brad DeLong, Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall over the last couple of years will already know much of the story, although not all of it. Hacker and Pierson uncover some interesting and important new facts. But where the book shines is in providing the analytic chops to draw it together into a coherent whole. Off Center does this in two ways. First, it provides a taxonomy of the different tactics that right wing radicals in the Republican party have used. Second, and more importantly, it shows how distortion of information, manipulation of institutions and careful application of network resources work to reinforce each other. Without understanding all of these - and the interaction between them - you can't understand the quite remarkable success of the Republican party over the last few years.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Is this my plan?
Iraq Plan: We Win - New York Times
The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.
Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Substitute the Iraqi constitutional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it), and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead.
A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more.
Anti-union Houston gets a 5,000 strong janitors union
The janitors who clean Houston's office buildings have the lowest wages and benefits of janitors in any big city in America. The janitors do not receive health insurance or other benefits and nearly the entire workforce is part-time. Janitors are paid an average of $106 a week. Meanwhile, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, average expenses for a Houston-area family with two parents and two children are nearly $500 a week.
I used to work for ABM - they pay their starting custodial workers $5.25 an hour while in other cities they provide health insurance and start at $10 or more. ABM was a target of the union and community leaders and ABM was unionized.
Corruption and a Narrow Majority
Talking Points Memo reader: You've sort of hinted at this, but what's truly amazing about the attempts to paint this corruption as equally applicable to both parties is this: The essence of the K Street strategy pioneered by DeLay and Norquist and run today by Blount and Santorum is to deny Democratic politicians the chance to be dealmakers and players on the Hill - or to put it another way, to deny them access to the sort of "honest graft," policy horsetrading, and borderline bribery that brings in campaign donations and keeps a political party flush and strong. That's why they try to pass everything on narrow party-line votes; why they muck up legislation so that even centrist Dems can't stomach voting for it; why they pressure trade associations not to hire Democrats. They can argue either that the sort of influence peddling that has nabbed Ney, the Duke, and others is rare and they shouldn't be tarred with it, or they can argue that it's so common it's unremarkable and not worthy of notice. That's their choice. But they themselves have made clear that they want to own the racket outright.
Tags: corruption, GOP
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