Halfway down the Danube

The obligatory Sarah Palin post

Everyone in the blogosphere has done one, so here's mine.

A while back, the guys at FiveThirtyEight.com discussed whether Palin could win the Republican nomination in 2012.  Nate Silver said yes, while his co-blogger Tom Schaller said no way.

I'm with Schaller, but I'm going to add an argument that I think he missed: running for President is goddamn hard work.  If you're serious about it, you have to start six months to a year before the Iowa caucuses, and then you have to spend pretty much all your time campaigning.  Long, long before a single ballot is cast, you will have endured endless rubber chicken dinners in Iowa and winter festivals in New Hampshire and eight-hour marathon fundraising sessions on the telephone, shaking down donors for cash.

Barack Obama elected President!

Well, almost.

-- Electoral college, right?  Well, they officially voted yesterday.  His election won't be certified until the votes are counted, which happens at a joint session of Congress in January.  (Oddly, Dick Cheney will announce the results.) 

While we're mostly past the euphoria stage of things, it's still hard not to feel a frisson of emotion at stuff like this:

In Florida, state Sen. Frederica Wilson, 66, never thought she would see a black man elected president.

"White water fountains, colored water fountains. You couldn't sit at the lunch counter, go to the bank or get a hamburger," Wilson said after signing a document certifying that Obama got all 27 of her state's electors.

"The pain will always be there, but I think there's a realization that people have evolved," she said.

[...]

As pro football legend, Franco Harris signs his autograph countless thousands of times. But the signature he made as one of 21 Pennsylvania electors for Obama was the one the Pittsburgh Steelers great running back won't ever forget.

"That was special," the Pro Football Hall of Famer said. "This was the most valuable thing I've ever signed my name to."

[...]

Sedrick Rawlins, a retired 81-year-old dentist from Manchester, Conn., traveled to Selma, Ala., in 1965 to help the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., with the bloody march to Montgomery. The night Obama won the election, he said, he wept with joy. On Monday, he couldn't stop smiling.

"The election is one thing, but it's really official when they seal those ballots with wax and send them off," Rawlins said.

Watching Obama

No, they didn't last the entire speech.  After all, there was homemade noodle soup on the dinner table, the lure of which Obama could not speak against.  But we adults listened to it over the slurping noises the boys made (table manners are a distant dream of mine...)

Comment: Obviously, you don't get Germans going wild by asking them to send troops somewhere, even or maybe because they already have troops on the ground (Afghanistan).  However, ask them to join for peace and equality and a better future, and you will be celebrated.

(And no, Jacob's knees are not that horribly skinned that he needs two bandaids on each.  But you see, they are Dora bandages, and he had found the box in the drawer earlier that day...)

The Next Generation

  So today after dinner, while the boys were upstairs playing, I noodled around the Interwebs and somehow decided to watch Obama's famous "Yes, we can" speech in New Hampshire.  The YouTube video I watched was about 13 minutes long, and not one minute into it, Alan came into the living room and snuggled up to me.  I am sure he was just waiting for the opportunity to ask for a Transformers video, and was going to begin squirming around soon enough.

But something strange happened.   Alan watched the speech with me, attentive, and seemingly mesmerized. After a little while he said, "This guy is good, who is he?"  I suppressed my laughter and said to him, "Well, Daddy and I hope that he is going to be the next president of the United States." Alan nodded, and continued to watch with me.  Mind you, this is the kid who has ADHD and doesn't like to sit still even for a Transformers movie.  Sitting still and paying attention doesn't come easily to him.

After some minutes, he started asking questions, and answering the political questions of a child of six is really hard.  I carefully explained about the current president, and about the war, and about how America is so divided and people are afraid.  It was, of course, a very simplified version of what we think, and fear, and I tried to make it all as non-threatening as possible.  I wanted him to get the positive message much more than the grim reality of the current political situation. 

Alan listened to my answers, and then listened to the part in the speech about schools, and then he said, "I sure wish he was mayor of Fladungen, then he could make the school here also better!" (The school here, according to Alan, isn't wonderful because he has to wait for September to start first grade - patience also doesn't come easily to him.)

After the speech was over, I decided to take it one step further and showed him the DipDive video (which has, on YouTube, close to 8 million views, btw).  And towards the end, I heard my son quietly whisper with the chorus, "Yes, we can, yes, we can..."

I told him not to forget Obama's name, because Obama has already changed America, even if he doesn't get elected as president.  Alan nodded gravely.

And then he asked for a Transformer video.

Politics 101.  The change has already begun.

Our moment

  In stark contrast to Hillary Clinton's non-concession -- and I have no troubles at all picturing her throwing tantrums when losing at Candyland at four years of age -- this is what I received in my inbox from Barack Obama's campaign early this morning:

Claudia --

I'm about to take the stage in St. Paul and announce that we have won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

It's been a long journey, and we should all pause to thank Hillary Clinton, who made history in this campaign. Our party and our country are better off because of her.

I want to make sure you understand what's ahead of us. Earlier tonight, John McCain outlined a vision of America that's very different from ours -- a vision that continues the disastrous policies of George W. Bush.

But this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past and bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

It's going to take hard work, but thanks to you and millions of other donors and volunteers, no one has ever been more prepared for such a challenge.

Thank you for everything you've done to get us here. Let's keep making history.

Barack

Calling all Clinton supporters

  I would have a lot of respect for Hillary Clinton if she dropped out of the race now, and spent her considerable energy and experience to boost the Democratic Party and Barack Obama, and to sputter all her poison on McCain.

Wishful thinking, probably.  I suppose it's really hard in such a situation, when you've worked so hard and only had one goal in mind, to step back and let go.  That goes not only for Hillary, it also goes for her supporters.  It must be tough, and very bitter. 

But here's the clinch: we need you guys.  If we want to win the presidential election in November, we all have to pull on the same string.  I know Hillary supporters who don't want to vote or even want to vote for McCain if Obama wins the nomination.  That is... dangerous, to say the least.

Of course it's easy to argue from the (hopefully!) winning side (although I did start out as a Hillary supporter way back when she first ran for Senator - and then she lost me with her vote for the war).   But let's all look forward and work together towards the goal that we really want to obtain: to push the Republicans out of the White House. Surely that should be worth it, no?

I don't know about you...

... but I find the TSA blog endlessly amusing.

My last politics post

First, the media. Oh my God. There is something prerevolutionary about watching the pundit class pretend -- condescend -- to know what America is thinking and feeling. It's strange: about the only thing Noam Chomsky got right in his life was his emphasis on media construction of political narrative. But that point of view, radical as late as the 1990s, is now firmly in the mainstream, and we can see how irritatingly shallow Chomsky's analysis really is.

Second, the candidates. My take on Obama? He's a brilliant, arrogant SOB who will, in the words of his fellow Chicagoan, take you home and make you like it. I don't think this is projection on my part. I don't know how effective he'll be as a politician; he's been dealt an awful hand. However, I think he's more capable than the extremely lackluster generation preceding him.

H. Clinton, I find it difficult that anyone can now believe is a competent technocrat. To be sure, she looks good among the Democrats of New York State. And I think a re-evaluation of W. Clinton's political skills is in order. After all, this was the president that a third-rate science fiction author fought to a standstill in the halls of Congress. Clinton looked like a master politician, but compared to whom, exactly? A man stands tall in an ocean of garden gnomes.

McCain, the best thing I can say of him is that, like George W. Bush, he's not personally racist. This distinguishes him from many of his Republican colleagues in the Senate. And, to be fair, it's an accomplishment for a man of his generation and background. The McCains are an old Mississippi slave-owning family, but the Navy seems to have knocked that crap out of this branch. There is a post I will likely never write on General McCain, the late president of the University of Southern Mississippi, racist, plagiarist, extreme right wing activist, and cousin to the current nominee. Perhaps someone else will.

Those Keystone links

From Dennis Brennan:

Not directly on point, but helpful information for those who are trying to handicap Pennsylvania:

• Hamburg, Pennsylvania photo gallery [#5 is of a Gun Library -- CY]


• Wing Bowl


• Pittsburgh's Primanti Brothers Restaurant


• English Only at Famous Philly Cheesesteak Joint


• Southern Baptist Biker Association


• Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board


• Casey no Casey


• "Pro-Life Democrats?" [asks an anti-life Republican -- CY]


• In vital Pa., Clinton relies on a maverick


• Eagles Post Game Live


• Gone hunting [why does Pennsylvania have so few hunters? -- CY]


• Amish men plead guilty to dealing drugs


• Pennsylvania's largest employers


• PSU fans need to lighten up


• Alabama in Between, "A conservative Republican perspective"

I'll throw one of my own in: the crucial Franco Harris endorsement. I'm not kidding.

Thanks to Dennis for these looks inside the beast. (Do you remember what the wrestling DuPont ordered on his pizza?)

Photoshop is the new Minesweeper

As some of you may know, I've been doing some pro bono work for the McCain campaign, as part of their new "Exit Light / Enter Night" youth voter outreach program. I'm not really a McCainiac. After all, this is New York, which McCain will lose anyway. Mainly, it's to meet rich young WASP-y women with self-esteem issues, just like the man himself.

The Pure Product of America: This isn't really true... is it?

What do you think? Anyway, we were kibitzing at a bar in Chelsea -- Jesus, these people do a lot of blow -- discussing viral marketing (first use according to legend? the word "quiz"), and some bright boy suggested harnessing the power of LOLcats to the McCain campaign. It should tell you something about the brain wattage at the table, or maybe the primate dominance hierarchy there, that most people thought this was a good idea.

Anyway. Here's my take:

Everything is explained.

Unlike Noel, I don't have any deep thoughts to offer about the next Democratic primary.

However, I do have some shallow thoughts.

The "nice" line. It exists. The primaries have demonstrated it. There's a mathematical theorem which states, loosely paraphrased, that if you're above zero on one side, and below zero on the other, there's going to be a point in between which is exactly zero. The question is, where does the zero line run? My guess is that it runs roughly from Michael Moore's Flint, Michigan, around Eminem's Eight Mile, cutting down to Fort Wayne, Indiana (home to fictional M*A*S*H wingnut Frank Burns), then to Muncie, where the famous Middletown sociological study was performed in the 1920s, which of course omitted blacks and Jews. Indianapolis is a question mark in my mind, but the line probably spills into the Ohio River along the Kentucky border, and there are likely blobs of naughtiness scattered hither and thither throughout Indiana, like cold patches on a weather map. After all, the Klan did run Indiana for years.

Why does the line exist? I sure as hell don't know. But as Eldridge Cleaver once said, "The onus of teaching racial supremacy and hate, which is the white man's burden, is pretty hard to bear." It's like entire states have decided, screw this, I'm getting a brewski.

I might get there ahead of you

My primary predictions for tonight: Ohio, Clinton +7%; Texas, Clinton +4%; Rhode Island, Clinton +15%; Vermont, Obama +11%. My reasoning? A little less than the polled gap in Ohio, an unexpected Clinton surge in Texas, and without Noel in Rhode Island, it would have been +18%.

Wait, those are the Obama campaign's projections from last month.

This tells me that all of Clinton's efforts -- and she's campaigned hard -- had already been taken into account by the Obama campaign a month ago.

It's like one of those piece exchanges in chess that looks even, but one player somehow manages to come out a knight ahead, planning it moves in advance. Not that I play chess.

Kind of spooky.

A musical challenge

I first saw this video in Belgrade, which should tell you how much in the loop I am, after visiting an exhibit of national historic Yugoslav Serbian costumes:

Do I think that, should the American experiment fail, people will adopt demented Uncle Sam, biker, and cheerleader outfits as markers of national identity?

Yes; next question. (The Yugoslav costumes had belts made of dinars. I've seen Navajo jewelry made from silver dollars and turquoise, but this was all about the bling.) Anyway. Noel called me on route to Florida informing me that there is, in fact, one demographic the Obama campaign has not fully reached in musical form, the headbanging sunburned Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker. Hell, enough of them are blood kin, so I'll just say it: the redneck.

Alas, I might be the only HDTD reader who has video editing software. But if there's anyone else out there. You know what to do.

PS: Southern rock as American turbofolk. Discuss.

PPS: Yes, it's possible to change the "KID ROCK" logo in the video to "BARACK". No, it's not worth the effort.

No demographic left behind

My god, they're even reaching out to the Cheetos-eating basement dwellers.

(Hm. The YouTube still image makes it look NSFW. It's not, but under the cut it goes.)

¡Venceremos!

This is mainly an excuse to test out some new image-processing software.

You know what I'm waiting for? One of the GOP anti-immigration people to say, "You can all go home now. Except for the hot ones." I wonder why not.

In related news, John McCain has announced his new campaign theme, "I May Not Get There With You".

(I was going to write a brief scene involving McCain trying to find music which might appeal to the youth vote, settling on Metallica after hearing "One" and bawling his eyes out. But it just wasn't gelling. I do want to keep this line, though: "Play it, or so help me God I'll send you back to the Young Republicans hogtied with a box of poppers.")

Obamamania ... you ask why, I respond

Internet quizzes are usually pretty stupid things.  When Dan Drezner recommended a 36-question issues survey to see where you fit on the political landscape, it was a foregone conclusion that I would click the link in a moment of procrastination, but my expectations were low.  To my surprise, the questions were smart and as unbiased as they could possibly be.  Better still, the site provided a wealth of sources about how they determined the various candidates' positions.  I was quite impressed.

Of course, since it was an internet survey, it didn't take a lot to impress me.  But there are far worse surveys out there, based on nothing resembling data.  I recommend that those of you who have used such surveys in any sort of serious way check your results against the one prepared by professional political scientists.

So where did I come out?

Now that result surprised even me, considering that no small amount of my support for Obama derives from considerations of character. 

Unlike other surveys (like the one above), this one allows you to check exactly where you stand against the candidates, issue by issue.  Details below the fold.

Really Weird Stuff in the Washington Post

OK, there's a lot of very weird stuff in the Washington Post.  It's not a very good newspaper, and it's getting worse.  (Not all of it, of course; and some of its reporters are the best in the biz ... even if they seem to save their best stuff for their independent books and not their articles in the paper.)  One of the problems is the editorial page, which publishes increasingly strange things, like the following from Robert Maranto of Villanova University.  Starting in the second paragraph of his piece, right after a brief quote from Larry Summers, Maranto writes:

I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I've been on the "far right" as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights. All these views -- commonplace in American society and among the political class -- are practically verboten in much of academia.

Whaaaa?  I supported and continue to support the replacement of AFDC with TANF ("welfare reform") on the grounds that the evidence shows that it has helped the poor.  I certainly believe that resisting Soviet aggression was a good thing.  And I happen to approve of applying cost-benefit analysis to environmental regulations.

Absolutely none of these positions has ever caused me political problems in the university.  Obviously not in economic or political science departments, but not even in history departments. 

In fact, I have a good friend in a major political science department who is advising Rudy Giuliani and a excellent colleague in a similarly major history department who is doing the same.  We won't mention my opinion of their presidential choice, but I can't possibly think more highly of their academic work, and their careers are doing more than fine. 

In short, I just don't know what to make of an editorial that starts by telling me that my own experience of reality is wrong, and then proceeds to make its argument via series of anecdotes reported in ambiguous ways.  For example, is it the following really true?

Despite New York City's 15-year-long decline in crime, most criminologists still struggle to attribute the increased safety to demographic shifts or even random statistical variations (which apparently skipped other cities) rather than more effective policing.

Actually, considering how the above is phrased, how would you know it weren't true?  It implies that any attempt to test the causes of the crime decline is "anti-conservative." 

The whole thing is just a little ... bizarre.

Nostalgia

As a fan of the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers, I have to say that this is shaping up to be a most exciting football season.  I've been a New England fan ever since I wrote the job talk that got me my current employment while watching them win the Superbowl.  And I've been a Green Bay fan since becoming friends with Carlos. 

But my football loyalties are shallow.  I'm a baseball man, a fan of the once and future dreaded (but always hated) New York Yankees.

I follow them around.  That's me at Fenway.  I had doffed my hat at the moment that photo was taken, but look at the two guys standing below my right arm.  Yankees hats.  And look at the fellow seated in front of them.  A Derek Jeter jersey.  We are there, in the bleachers of Fenway.  The opposite would not occur in Yankee Stadium, not unless the Red Sox fan in question wanted humiliation.  Or possibly violence.

The Bleacher Creatures of the Bronx are the fellows who learned to chant obscene comments about the sexuality of Dice-K's mother in Japanese.  Two senior professors once took me to a Red Sox game against Toronto.  They weren't surprised, exactly, at my comportment. 

In some ways, Boston and New York are inverses.  In NYC, nobody could care less if you wear Red Sox paraphenalia.  In fact, Manny Ramírez managed to blow a shot at turning most of Washington Heights and a big chunk of the Bronx into part of Red Sox Nation.  (Guess how he blew it.  Right.)  In Boston, though, people feel free to yell at me in the street for wearing a Yankees hat. (And so I mostly don't, except around Harvard Square.)  On the other hand, Yankees fans do fine inside Fenway, even in the bleachers ... and the reverse ain't true in the Bronx.  (I wouldn't risk it on the D-train after a game neither, to be honest.)    

So why am I a baseball fan?  Three reasons.  (1) I actually played it back in the day.  Sure, now I have trouble throwing a ball ninety feet, but I played the real thing, unlike football.  I think I played tackle football maybe, like, twice in my life, and even then it was way way watered-down because we used neither pads nor helmets and I am still here to talk about it.  (2) I understand baseball.  People who don't understand baseball won't admit this, but the game is actually simpler than football.  And (3) ... history.  Baseball's just got hella more history than football. 

Which brings me to nostalgia.  I rarely give Brink Lindsay props.  After all, he has no idea what really caused the Great Compression, mistakenly believes that the Democratic Party lost white male votes outside the South during the 1960s and 1970s, and claims that the Great Society contributed to "an explosion of crime, urban riots, family breakdown, and welfare dependency."  But he did say one very very clever thing about nostalgia for the 1950s, when baseball ruled supreme, and today's political debates:

"Republicans want to go home to the United States of the 1950s, while Democrats want to work there."

True or false?

Obamamania!

Dave MB asks about the feel in New Hampshire.  This weekend I didn't canvass.  Instead, I was at a rally and fundraiser for Obama in Boston. 

Fundraising is much less fun than canvassing.  Have you ever asked anyone for money?  It's not pleasant.

It is, however, sadly necessary.  The thing is, it becomes easier when you can offer people the chance to be in the same room with the candidate and hear his stump speech live in return for their cash. 

I thought that was silly until I was in a room with the candidate and heard the stump speech live.  It makes a difference.  It's not like watching the same thing on television at all.   

Which is why, I suppose, I felt the need to take a picture, even though there are thousands of better ones out there on the net.  Proving that I was there, I guess, even though the only thing I did to be there was get some people to write checks to somebody else. 

Nine eleven, nine eleven, nineleven, nineleveninenelenevufenene

This deserves as wide dissemination as possible, and so, as a public service, I bring you the following political message:

Enjoy!

Democracy in America

This weekend I spent my afternoon canvassing for Barack Obama in the housing projects of New Hampshire.  I do that a lot of weekends, these days.

Yes, New Hampshire has projects.  While New Hampshire has a high median income, $57,352 in 2004 — £31,438 at 2004 exchange rates, compared with £24,302 for the rest of the U.S. of A. and £21,700 for England and Wales — the state still has lots of ordinary people. 

Now, we don’t knock on every door.  We’ve got a list of registered voters, and we only go to Democratic households.  The standard spiel is, “Hi there, we’re with Barack Obama, have you decided on a candidate yet?”  Beat … beat … then, regardless of the answers, “Well, what issues are most important to you?”  Followed by then the sales pitch.  Which can last for half-an-hour, if you hit if off with the person at the door. 

In New Hampshire, the pitch includes telling people when and where they can personally meet the candidate.  Now, I’m the first person to say that the American political system is entirely broken.  Congressional districts have metastasized into gerrymandered monstrosities of 700,000 people.  The Senate is a travesty by definition, and I wonder about my countrymen’s lack of outrage about its existence.  And we won’t mention the Electoral College — why should the switch of a few thousand votes in Ohio been enough to save the American people from the results of their own temporary insanity in 2004? 

But for all its faults, having the primary season kick off in places like New Hampshire is, quite simply, a Very Good Thing.  It brings a moment of sanity to a media-drenched political machine badly cobbled together to select a chief executive for a continental nation of 300 million people.  And I love it.

To bomb or not to bomb

   This is an interesting read re the issue of bombing Iran.

I don't know whether The Canadian is a reliable news source (is it?) but this article nicely brought together all my doubts and fears about the current administration's stance on Iran. It also made me go and refuel my car, and have those go-bags ready.  Just in case.  Can't hurt.

Does anyone else get this awful deja vu feeling?

And speaking of international aid

I don't want to turn this into a political blog. Nor either into one dedicated to bashing the current administration. This isn't that sort of blog. (And goodness knows there are plenty of places to go online if that's the itch you want scratched.)

But as long as we're on the subject of international aid, this story caught my eye. (Washington Post, use bugmenot if needed.)

And speaking of international aid

I don't want to turn this into a political blog. Nor either into one dedicated to bashing the current administration. This isn't that sort of blog. (And goodness knows there are plenty of places to go online if that's the itch you want scratched.) But as long as we're on the subject of international aid, this story caught my eye. (Washington Post, use bugmenot if needed.)

Warning! You are reading an international blog...

... or, wait. It is a blog on a US server, so it's a domestic blog. No, no, it deals with international issues, so it's an international blog. Furthermore, two of the contributors are residing outside the US, and one of them even is of foreign nationality! And they log in from Romania! You know, the country with no CIA prisons! That's not spying! That's just protecting you! If you got a little confused on the definition of domestic versus international, just read the very informative news release of the White House:

# Domestic Calls are calls inside the United States. International Calls are calls either to or from the United States.
# Domestic Flights are flights from one American city to another. International Flights are flights to or from the United States.
# Domestic Mail consists of letters and packages sent within the United States. International Mail consists of letters and packages sent to or from the United States.
# Domestic Commerce involves business within the United States. International Commerce involves business between the United States and other countries.

All clear now? If your reading comprehension isn't quite up there, you may want to watch this little instructional video which explains the White House release in easily understandable words for you. With graphics! Don't tell me I didn't warn you. It's your own damn fault if you are reading this. [You have to open the video in Internet Explorer, I'm afraid. Microsoft is evil.]

Justice or not?

Discussing an issue that touches sensitivities is always risky. The signal to noise ratio suddenly drops considerably (see the comments on my earlier post on the VanGoethem trial). But maybe we can try to discuss this topic without losing basic civil behavior. The problem I have with the VanGoethem trial is the really weak performance of the prosecution.

Another nail

Reader Ciprian beat me to it - I was composing a post on the VanGoethem trial yesterday but didn't finish it. Now this:

QUANTICO MARINE CORPS BASE, Va. � A seven-member court martial board on Tuesday found Marine Staff Sgt. Christopher VanGoethem not guilty of the two major charges in the traffic death of Romanian rock musician Teofil Peter. The board found VanGoethem not guilty of negligent homicide and adultery, but guilty of two lesser charges: obstruction of justice and making false statements.
Stars and Stripes

Picture via Daily News.

This is ludicrous and shameful. I can't find the words to express how I feel about this. This is driving yet another nail into the coffin of what once used to be a positive image of the US in the world. I need to take a deep breath and step back for a day from this subject, otherwise I will drip sarcasm and derisive comments about the US military judicial system all over the place. I will have a complete post on this tomorrow, complete with inside information from the US Embassy. (Besides the fact that his affair with Wentworth was blown out of proportion -- what is it compared to killing a human being? - it was an affair and not his first one. It was also not his first accident while drunk. He had a crash in May 2004 which was hushed up by the Embassy. I think VanGoethem got hurt in that accident but I need to check my sources on that one.)

Unacceptable conditions

This already happened last week but I only read about it in the Zeit magazine today. I wonder how much media attention it got in the US -- neither Doug nor I had noticed any reports about this but then, we've been busy, so it might have slipped past us. If you are a reader of this blog you may know that I've been outraged by the US treatment of "enemy combatants" for a long, long time. It's shameful, to say the least, and bad things just keep happening. I would love to be wrong, I really would. But it seems not. Going with the theme is this piece of news from yesterday: [Sorry for the extended quote but NYTimes links go bad after a week or so.]

I don't understaaaaand

I am utterly bemused and confounded by this:

"I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down."

I guess Chang is sort of like the LORD, except he's a martial artist too. Then there's the ceremony:

Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift. "I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior," he said, as the crowd roared.

Like, did Jeb have the sword at home in a cabinet? And what will Chang think? Is Jeb no longer under the protection of Chang? Are there other mystical warriors and/or weapons in the employ of the Powers That Be? Or was Chang simply using Jeb, and now has a better, more pliable puppet to work through?

Diplomacy

Teo Peter, founding member of the Romanian rock group "Contact", was killed in a traffic accident in Bucharest on December 4. Peter traveled in a taxi that was struck by a US Embassy vehicle driven by US Marine Robert Christopher. Witnesses report that 31-year-old Marine drove his car at high speed through an intersection, did not heed the traffic signs, and hit the taxi. The impact was so forceful that the taxi whirled through the air and hit a pillar in front of the Sudanese embassy. Rescue workers could not save Peter's life, the driver of the taxi was severly wounded but is said to be in stable condition.

Don't look the other way

Molly Ivins about the Red Cross Report:

It is both peculiar and chilling to find oneself discussing the problem of American torture. I have considered support of basic human rights and dignity so much a part of our national identity that this feels as strange as though I'd suddenly become Chinese or found Fidel Castro in the refrigerator. One's first response to the report by the International Red Cross about torture at our prison at Guantanamo is denial. "I don't want to think about it; I don't want to hear about it; we're the good guys, they're the bad guys; shut up. And besides, they attacked us first." But our country has opposed torture since its founding. One of our founding principles is that cruel and unusual punishment is both illegal and wrong. Every year, our State Department issues a report grading other countries on their support for or violations of human rights. The first requirement here is that we look at what we are doing � and not blink, not use euphemisms. Despite the Red Cross' polite language, this is not "tantamount to torture." It's torture. It is not "detainee abuse." It's torture. If they were doing it to you, you would know it was torture. It must be hidden away, because it's happening in Cuba or elsewhere abroad.

Read the entire thing. She makes a good point about reciprocation of which I hadn't thought of before.

Chip, chip, chip...

It's amazing how many people have not heard about the bill that passed Congress last week. Hidden inside is a provision that bars federal, state or local agencies from forcing doctors, hospitals, insurers, HMOs or other health care entities to provide abortion services or referrals. So, imagine you're a rape victim. You are horrified to find that you carry the attacker's child, and go to a clinic. You see a doctor and he says "No, we morally object to abortions." Where can I go instead? "I don't have to tell you that, so I won't." But what can I do? "Well, I can give you the address of this pro-life organization. They're good people, and I'm sure they'll help you do the right thing!" On another front, more and more doctors refuse to prescribe the Pill, and more and more pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions. Chip, chip, chip away at people's rights.

Tell it to the guys on Str. J. M.

Y'all know by now that Ashcroft has resigned. And you've probably read parts of his good-bye letter to Bush that is indubitably going to become a (in)famous manuscript in days to come:

"I take great personal satisfaction in the record which has been developed. The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved. The rule of law has been strengthened and upheld in the courts. Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration."
From the New York Times

To say it with Hilzoy, fancy that! Nobody bothered to tell me! Even more so, nobody bothered to tell those Romanian police officers on Str. J.M. They are standing guard in front of the building in which one of the US military attaches lives - two in a car and four in a van further down the street. They stopped and questioned me twice today when I picked up/dropped off parts of my carpool. We do look so threatening, what with four kids and two moms in a minivan. I wished someone told them that all that threatening to the officer and his family is really imaginary and non-existent. Then I could do my carpool without being bothered. It would be nice for the officer to know everything is safe, too.

It's not the values, stupid!

The New York Times again. I can't stay away from it. Here's a new spin on why the Democrats lost the elections.

I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion. This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.

Oh.

Missing: some 6,000 missiles, give or take a couple thousand

Our reader Kevin would rather if we didn't refer to the New York Times so much. I'm sorry if I can't oblige today, Kevin. Via the Washington Monthly, a link to an article about even more missing missiles in Iraq.

American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday. A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, American officials said.

Well, I'm not going to fly over Iraq anytime soon, I tell you that. The officials don't know exactly when the missiles disappeared, so we won't be pointing fingers quite yet. They also don't know whether the weapons have left the country. They think not. That doesn't seem good enough at all. OK, so they are not easy to use. Terrorists would need some training to be able to fire them accurately at planes, civilian or no. Somehow, this does not make me feel any better.

Slow weekend blogging

Weekend blogging - nobody reads us, we're busy with the kids. Slow days. For those still following -- read this op-ed in the New York Times, and this article in the German Spiegel magazine.

Those values everyone is talking about

I'm taking this out of the discussion on my earlier post because it's getting too long for the comment section. None of my thoughts is very original and it has all been said before, but hey: it's my blog so I can say it again. And the latest comments make me suspect that maybe I'm not making myself entirely clear. I'm not afraid that Bush will institute himself as God's deputy here on earth. I'm not afraid that only Christians will be allowed to vote in four years. I'm not worried about "theocracy". What bothers me is the apparent swing in people's minds. Bush appealed to the growing Christian fundamentalist base and even if he only talks the talk without any deeper commitment (which I think he does - a man who laughs at exections and doesn't follow up on Abu Ghraib doesn't have the moral conscience Christians should have), the public embrace of fundamentalism scares the shit out of me. The public bashing of homosexuals scares the shit out of me.

A heavy heart

I thought long and hard about how to write about my feelings and concerns. Then I read this post by PZ Myers over at Pharyngula. He expressed my thoughts much more eloquently than I could have -- and also more forcefully than I would have, and I can find no fault in that. I recommend reading the entire post but here's an excerpt:

An unjustified, futile war�doesn�t matter. Abu Ghraib�doesn�t matter. Tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians�don�t matter. Prisoners tortured and held without trial at Guantanamo Bay�doesn�t matter. Throwing away two centuries worth of the world�s respect for our enlightened principles�doesn�t matter. A president who laughs at executions and mocks the sacrifices of our soldiers�doesn�t matter. The Democratic candidated dared to say that our reputation in the community of nations mattered, and the arrogant bully won.