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This is the alternative in the race, a Democrat:
There's no Republican in the race, so the primary winner will basically take the seat.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Rodriguez Speaks
Ciro Rodriguez has posted a diary at Daily Kos.
Like what you see and you can donate here.
This is the alternative in the race, a Democrat:
There's no Republican in the race, so the primary winner will basically take the seat.
Like what you see and you can donate here.
This is the alternative in the race, a Democrat:
There's no Republican in the race, so the primary winner will basically take the seat.
Counting the Votes
Funny how these things happen:
House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting. Stay with RollCall.com for updates.
Clean House
Kos tells us that we have a chance to get rid of another loathsome Democrat who just pulled a Lieberman.
Actually, this is worse than Lieberman - it's the kind of thing people do right before they switch parties.
Fortunately, there's a contested primary and no Republican scheduled to run. Cuellar's primary opponent is Ciro Rodriguez. Rodriguez and Cuellar had a primary fight after DeLay's redistrcting meant that one of them would be turfed out of Congress. Cuellar won, but only by a little bit.
A little bit of additional motivation. That's Bush and his bff Cuellar.
So, Rodriguez gets added to the candidate list. This is an important one. I'd say it would be quite a big accomplishment if the netroots could get rid of Lieberman's twin in the House. Warm up for the big event.
Give early. Give soon. Give now. The Primary is on March 7.
More on Cuellar, who has also been endorsed by the evil Club for Growth.
For the speech Tuesday, Mr. Cuellar positioned himself along the president's route and grabbed a seat on the Republican side of the aisle. Custom dictates that the Democrats stay to the speaker's right and Republicans to the left, making it easier to gauge party-line splits on applause lines.
"Doesn't really matter," the congressman said. "It's the U.S. Congress side. I didn't see any sign that says Democratic or Republican."
Actually, this is worse than Lieberman - it's the kind of thing people do right before they switch parties.
Fortunately, there's a contested primary and no Republican scheduled to run. Cuellar's primary opponent is Ciro Rodriguez. Rodriguez and Cuellar had a primary fight after DeLay's redistrcting meant that one of them would be turfed out of Congress. Cuellar won, but only by a little bit.
A little bit of additional motivation. That's Bush and his bff Cuellar.
So, Rodriguez gets added to the candidate list. This is an important one. I'd say it would be quite a big accomplishment if the netroots could get rid of Lieberman's twin in the House. Warm up for the big event.
Give early. Give soon. Give now. The Primary is on March 7.
More on Cuellar, who has also been endorsed by the evil Club for Growth.
The Big Money
Our excellent adventure become even more costly:
WASHINGTON - The White House has told Congress to expect requests for about $70 billion in additional funding for the ongoing budget year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $18 billion more for hurricane relief, a Senate GOP aide says.
Censorship
A lot of our trolls came in here yesterday whining that what the Joint Chiefs of Staff were doing by complaining about the Post's cartoon criticizing Rumsfeld wasn't censorship. Never mind that I hadn't claimed that it was, but anyway. It of course isn't strictly censorship, but any time a member of the government complains in this way, behind a government podium or on official letterhead, it does indeed get closer to official censorship. The point is to have a chilling effect. Had Rumsfeld or one of the members of the Joint Chiefs complained on personal stationary it would've been a bit better, though the dishonesty of the letter would've been still made it a bit awful.
The point is there's a big difference between someone like Bill O'Reilly saying "people should watch what they say" and Ari Fleischer saying it. Both are meant to intimidate, but one is an agent of the government and one is not. Both can have a chilling effect on speech, but only one has the official government approval on doing so. Censorship? Not quite. But creeping close to it.
The point is there's a big difference between someone like Bill O'Reilly saying "people should watch what they say" and Ari Fleischer saying it. Both are meant to intimidate, but one is an agent of the government and one is not. Both can have a chilling effect on speech, but only one has the official government approval on doing so. Censorship? Not quite. But creeping close to it.
Contraception
Expanding on another point of Pollitt's:
Even aside from pro-lifers lots of people are uncomfortable with their sons and daughters having sex. Programs to provide easier access to contraception involve providing easier access in high school and colleges. Access to contraception just doesn't have the universal support that people like Saletan imagine. It's a regular controveresy in high schools and in colleges. People associate contraception with sex and associate easy access to contraception with easy access to sex. A big chunk of this country also thinks "sex is icky" and doesn't like the idea of "easy access to sex" for unmarried people.
Of course married women have a large number of the abortions in this country and expanding contraception availability includes them, but contraception availability implies availability for everyone. That just doesn't make everyone happy, actually.
You want to intensify our culture's already broad, deep strain of sexual Puritanism, shame and blame, and attach it to contraception. It won't work, because contraception is really about other values—pleasure, health, self-expression, self-protection. It comes from a different part of the national soul, the anti-Puritan side that says sex is good, has many meanings from sacred to silly, is a natural part of life, and that women should not pay a price for having a sex life. Anti-choicers mostly don't have this view, and that is why they aren't so keen on birth control despite the obvious fact that blanketing the nation with contraceptives would lessen the rate of something they consider to be outright murder.
And that is why there is no movement of pro-Roe abortion-hating contraceptive enthusiasts, just waiting for Barbara Boxer to sound the trumpet.
Even aside from pro-lifers lots of people are uncomfortable with their sons and daughters having sex. Programs to provide easier access to contraception involve providing easier access in high school and colleges. Access to contraception just doesn't have the universal support that people like Saletan imagine. It's a regular controveresy in high schools and in colleges. People associate contraception with sex and associate easy access to contraception with easy access to sex. A big chunk of this country also thinks "sex is icky" and doesn't like the idea of "easy access to sex" for unmarried people.
Of course married women have a large number of the abortions in this country and expanding contraception availability includes them, but contraception availability implies availability for everyone. That just doesn't make everyone happy, actually.
Is Abortion Icky?
Sam Rosenfeld points us to this Slate debate between Lord Saletan and Katha Pollitt.
I'll say first that basically I endorse Rosenfeld's take on the issue. I've never really understood that expressing the view that the "abortion is icky but it should be legal" is the right politics. I don't know why our side always needs to run from the abortion issue even thought it's one of our most popular issues.
Most people think abortion should be legal. There are people who think that to be true and but who else think that abortion is icky. So, if you give them any kind of out by asking questions such as "should abortion be legal in this circumstance? in this circumstance?" they'll tend to answer no on at least some of them.
I've had exchanges with quite a few people in the "abortion is icky" crowd. I sympathize with them, and they're certainly welcome to their moral beliefs on the subject, but I've also never understood just what they want other than bringing people like me around to their view. They're welcome to try to do that, but it's not clear just how "abortion is icky" translates into public policy.
There are those who think that the public policy it translates to involves caving in on those wedge issues the Right invents - fake scary names for abortion procedures, parental notification, chipping away at late term abortions generally, etc. - but I think that just involves a complete misunderstanding of the tactics the anti-abortion crowd is using. There are an infinite number of ways to chip away at abortion rights by trying to appeal to the "abortion is icky" crowd, providing an infinite number of test cases to send to the Supreme Court. It will never end. Chip chip chip. Usually lost in the debate about the fake "partial birth abortion" issue is that the reason it's unconstitutional is that there's no health exception. That's it. Republicans wouldn't vote for a version which included a health exception. So, how can any pro-choice person support signing on to such a thing just to appeal to the "abortion is icky" crowd, especially when the next plan to further restrict abortion rights will come out the following week.
The real issue is making the abortion icky understand in their hearts what they do understand intellectually - that the issue is simply who gets to make the decision. That's it. It's the same issue as with Schiavo. The question was not whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing to remove the feeding tube, the question was simply who had the right to make that choice. Even the abortion is icky crowd doesn't really want Bill Frist or Tom DeLay making that decision for them.
Again, I really don't know why we talk about this issue as if it is a political loser. It isn't. I think code phrases like "safe, legal, and rare" are quite fine for politicians to use as they throw a bone to the icky crowd, and I certainly don't expect politicians to adopt my "safe, legal, and rare just like appendectomies" modification, but running around saying "abortion is bad, bad, bad but it should be legal" will always lose to "abortion is bad, bad, bad, and it should be illegal" if that's how the debate is framed.
I'll say first that basically I endorse Rosenfeld's take on the issue. I've never really understood that expressing the view that the "abortion is icky but it should be legal" is the right politics. I don't know why our side always needs to run from the abortion issue even thought it's one of our most popular issues.
Most people think abortion should be legal. There are people who think that to be true and but who else think that abortion is icky. So, if you give them any kind of out by asking questions such as "should abortion be legal in this circumstance? in this circumstance?" they'll tend to answer no on at least some of them.
I've had exchanges with quite a few people in the "abortion is icky" crowd. I sympathize with them, and they're certainly welcome to their moral beliefs on the subject, but I've also never understood just what they want other than bringing people like me around to their view. They're welcome to try to do that, but it's not clear just how "abortion is icky" translates into public policy.
There are those who think that the public policy it translates to involves caving in on those wedge issues the Right invents - fake scary names for abortion procedures, parental notification, chipping away at late term abortions generally, etc. - but I think that just involves a complete misunderstanding of the tactics the anti-abortion crowd is using. There are an infinite number of ways to chip away at abortion rights by trying to appeal to the "abortion is icky" crowd, providing an infinite number of test cases to send to the Supreme Court. It will never end. Chip chip chip. Usually lost in the debate about the fake "partial birth abortion" issue is that the reason it's unconstitutional is that there's no health exception. That's it. Republicans wouldn't vote for a version which included a health exception. So, how can any pro-choice person support signing on to such a thing just to appeal to the "abortion is icky" crowd, especially when the next plan to further restrict abortion rights will come out the following week.
The real issue is making the abortion icky understand in their hearts what they do understand intellectually - that the issue is simply who gets to make the decision. That's it. It's the same issue as with Schiavo. The question was not whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing to remove the feeding tube, the question was simply who had the right to make that choice. Even the abortion is icky crowd doesn't really want Bill Frist or Tom DeLay making that decision for them.
Again, I really don't know why we talk about this issue as if it is a political loser. It isn't. I think code phrases like "safe, legal, and rare" are quite fine for politicians to use as they throw a bone to the icky crowd, and I certainly don't expect politicians to adopt my "safe, legal, and rare just like appendectomies" modification, but running around saying "abortion is bad, bad, bad but it should be legal" will always lose to "abortion is bad, bad, bad, and it should be illegal" if that's how the debate is framed.
May
Reader Jim E. writes in:
Interesting. This is the Cliff May about whom Wolf Blitzer said:
Cliff May has claimed ever since 2003 that Plame’s identity was an open secret. He has said in print and on TV that he knew about Plame prior to the publication of Novak’s column. According Fitzgerald, though, it appears that May’s repeated claims are not true.
Cliff May has previously written that Novak's July 14, 2003 column about Plame "wasn't news to me. I had been told that." Cliff May claimed he knew about Wilson’s wife when he wrote an anti-Wilson screed on July 11, 2003, but purposely didn't include it "because it didn't seem particularly relevant." (This Cliff May article has relevant links to the above quoted words.)
In the recent Fitz letter to Libby’s defense team, Fitz lists all the known reporters (Pincus, Miller, Cooper, Woodward, and Novak) who knew of Plame/Wilson’s wife prior to July 14. Yet Fitz’s list doesn’t include May. (See pg. 4 of Jan.23, 2006 letter.) Cliff May previously told David Corn that he (May) had been interviewed by the FBI during their investigation of the Plame matter.
Therefore, one can conclude that Cliff May misrepresented his own knowledge about Valerie Plame. He apparently didn’t have much to tell the investigators regarding his own knowledge of the case otherwise he should have been listed in Fitz’s letter. That he wasn’t listed suggests that he *didn’t* know Plame’s identity until Novak published it. Maybe Cliff May has an explanation for this (I can’t wait to read it), but so far he’s been silent at The Corner.
Anyways, I thought this tid-bit was interesting and wanted to pass it along.
Interesting. This is the Cliff May about whom Wolf Blitzer said:
BLITZER: Well, why would Clifford May say that he knew about it?
JOHNSON: Clifford May has been wrong on a whole variety of things.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: But he's a respected guy, Clifford May.
JOHNSON: Well, he's respected by some people. I don't respect him, because I...
BLITZER: I have known him for many years...
JOHNSON: I...
BLITZER: ... going back to when he was a reporter for the "New York Times."
Probably
Mighty charitable of him:
Christian ministers were enthusiastic at the early private screenings of "End of the Spear," made by Every Tribe Entertainment, an evangelical film company. But days before the film's premiere, a controversy erupted over the casting of a gay actor that has all but eclipsed the movie and revealed fault lines among evangelicals.
...
Christian ministers were enthusiastic at the early private screenings of "End of the Spear," made by Every Tribe Entertainment, an evangelical film company. But days before the film's premiere, a controversy erupted over the casting of a gay actor that has all but eclipsed the movie and revealed fault lines among evangelicals.
...
One Web log, nossobrii.blogspot.com, written by Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Seminary in Minneapolis, stated in a Jan. 13 entry: "Granted, we must not overreact. And it would probably be an overreaction to firebomb these men's houses. But what they have done is no mistake. It is a calculated strategy."
...
Greg Clifford, chief operating officer of Every Tribe, said the company, based in Oklahoma, had alerted the F.B.I. there about the Web log. The F.B.I. did not return phone calls yesterday about the matter.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
So Sorry
So very sorry. Haven't seen such genuflecting since we had to beg for our spy plane back from the Chinese. Or, maybe, since that time a bunch of rich Texans were going for a joy ride in one of our subs and killed about 10 people on a Japanese fishing boat.
I'm sure the Little Green PeePee crowd will be outraged.
Diplomatically, Mr. Bush's ambitious call for the replacement of 75 percent of the United States' Mideast oil imports with ethanol and other energy sources by 2025 upset Saudi Arabia, the main American oil supplier in the Persian Gulf. In an interview on Wednesday, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said he would have to "seek an explanation" from Mr. Bush.
I'm sure the Little Green PeePee crowd will be outraged.
Isolationism
Yglesias starts to knock down this silly isolationist idea which has been obsessing Peter "prime fighting age" Beinart and now apparently George W. Bush. Go figure.
There have long been isolationist strains on both the far right and far left. In addition, massive foreign policy interventions of any kind are generally complicated and costly and messy with unpredictable results and it's perfectly understandable that people on the left are a wee bit more likely to expect a Democrat to handle these things a bit better and those on the right to expect a Republican to handle it better. Call that bias or partisanship or whatever, but that's the way it is.
So, anyway, even in normal times it would be expected for isolationism on the left to have a wee uptick and isolationism on the right to be reduced. But, now, in addition to that we're at a time when George W. Bush lied to take us into war and then totally fucked it up. Fucked it up more than even I imagined they could fuck it up. Fucking it up so badly that we're constantly having to come up with new words to describe the degree of fuckingupness.
I opposed the Iraq war, in part because I thought the Bush administration was pretty much prone to fucking just about everything up. Call it bias or partisanship or simply a well-informed opinion, but I did. It wasn't the only or most important reason I opposed the war, but much as "fake WMDs" was the "reason for war" all the Bushies could agree on, "everything they touch turns to shit" should've been the reason all the liberal hawks could agree on to not support the war. So much for that.
As I was saying, if you combine standard every day "I don't trust their party's president to do the right thing" with pretty much ironclad proof that "everything Bush touches turns to shit" it's perfectly understandable that those of us to the left of Joe Lieberman are pretty wary of Commander Cuckoo banana's further attempts to stride across the Risk board in his majestic codpiece.
And, when Peter "prime fighting age" Beinart's book appears to tell us how horrible it is that Bush's Iraq's war has made us liberals isolationists, whatever that means, we will just have to remind him that he should've thought of that before he supported the damn thing.
There have long been isolationist strains on both the far right and far left. In addition, massive foreign policy interventions of any kind are generally complicated and costly and messy with unpredictable results and it's perfectly understandable that people on the left are a wee bit more likely to expect a Democrat to handle these things a bit better and those on the right to expect a Republican to handle it better. Call that bias or partisanship or whatever, but that's the way it is.
So, anyway, even in normal times it would be expected for isolationism on the left to have a wee uptick and isolationism on the right to be reduced. But, now, in addition to that we're at a time when George W. Bush lied to take us into war and then totally fucked it up. Fucked it up more than even I imagined they could fuck it up. Fucking it up so badly that we're constantly having to come up with new words to describe the degree of fuckingupness.
I opposed the Iraq war, in part because I thought the Bush administration was pretty much prone to fucking just about everything up. Call it bias or partisanship or simply a well-informed opinion, but I did. It wasn't the only or most important reason I opposed the war, but much as "fake WMDs" was the "reason for war" all the Bushies could agree on, "everything they touch turns to shit" should've been the reason all the liberal hawks could agree on to not support the war. So much for that.
As I was saying, if you combine standard every day "I don't trust their party's president to do the right thing" with pretty much ironclad proof that "everything Bush touches turns to shit" it's perfectly understandable that those of us to the left of Joe Lieberman are pretty wary of Commander Cuckoo banana's further attempts to stride across the Risk board in his majestic codpiece.
And, when Peter "prime fighting age" Beinart's book appears to tell us how horrible it is that Bush's Iraq's war has made us liberals isolationists, whatever that means, we will just have to remind him that he should've thought of that before he supported the damn thing.
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