It's hardly surprising that the Super Bowl should have evolved into an occasion to have a holiday. After all, it's over a month past Christmas, the weather sucks, it's three weeks till pitchers and catchers report to spring training, and why not turn this annual orgy of testosterone excess and advertising dollars into an excuse to throw a party? That it has to be something manly to warrant a holiday (unlike, say, the Oscars®, which few self-respecting men will even admit to watching despite the prospect of Angelina Jolie in a push-up evening gown) is besides the point.

It's been a widely held myth that domestic violence rates go up on Super Bowl Sunday, and perhaps that's why the powers that be in the NFL seem to want the players to pretend to be as cute and cuddly as possible in the Week-O-Hype that precedes the inevitably disappointing Big Game. This year it's especially important as the sport starts to heal from the ugliness of Michael Vick's extracurricular activities; and so we have our Two Handsome Quarterbacks and Cute and Cuddly wide receivers like Plaxico Burress, whom we love not just because of his manhandling of Al Smith two weeks ago but because his very name sounds like an antidepressant.

It may be that an all-East-Coast Superbowl isn't the ideal matchup for advertisers, though the Boston and New York markets are hardly chopped liver. And the matchup of the Scrappy Little Team that Could and the Eighteen-And-Oh Beantown juggernaut is the kind of stuff of which movies starring Dennis Quaid and Mark Wahlberg with trailers featuring for the 4,962nd time that music from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story are made.

But as the whole family settles down tomorrow to chow down on wings and fried cheese and other LDL-raising delights (we're having pita chips with spinach and artichoke dup, corn chips with black bean and corn salsa, vegetable lasagne, multigrain focaccia, and salad at Chez Brilliant), the New York Times gets in the spirit of Super Bowl as Family Holiday by taking a look at how some of the horribly abused dogs that were rescued from Michael Vick's house are doing. It's a rare dose o'Warm Fuzzies (heh) in a world with precious few of them:

They are assigned to an area of the sanctuary called Dogtown Heights, what Best Friends calls a gated community. Vick’s dogs have their own building with heated floors, sound-absorbing barriers and skylights. Each has an individual dog run because, for now, the dogs must remain isolated, for safety’s sake.

Little Red is a tiny rust-colored female whose teeth were filed, most likely because she was bait for the Bad Newz fighters. Handlers cannot explain why loud noises make her jumpy.

Cherry, a black-and-white male, has what seems to be chemical burns on his back. His file at Best Friends says he loves car rides and having his backside rubbed. But like many of Mr. Vick’s pit bulls, he is petrified of new situations and new people.

Oscar cowers in the corner of his run when strangers arrive. Shadow runs in circles. Black Bear pants so heavily that he seems on the verge of hyperventilation.

All but one of the Vick dogs at Best Friends wear green collars, signaling that they are good with people. But Meryl, who arrived with a rap sheet, wears a red collar.

She was aggressive toward the veterinary staff at a previous shelter. When Best Friends evaluated her in November, she lunged at a veterinary technician, snapping at him three times. By court order, she must stay at Best Friends forever.

Mr. Vick paid $18,275 for the lifetime care of each of his dogs here but one. Denzel was deemed highly adoptable, so his fee was only $5,000.

The actual cost for personnel and medical staff to care for the dogs, said Best Friends officials, is much higher at the sanctuary, a no-kill, nonprofit facility for 2,000 animals. For example, Denzel needed a blood transfusion to treat a tick-borne virus. Donations must make up the difference.

Bred to Be Friendly

John Garcia, the assistant dog care manager of Dogtown, which houses about 500 dogs, said pit bulls that are withdrawn or aggressive toward humans break his heart because they are bred to be people-friendly. “With most of these dogs, even Meryl, their actions are based on fear,” said Mr. Garcia, who communicates with the dogs in soothing baby talk. “The biggest job we have with these guys is teaching them that it’s O.K. to trust people. It may take months or years, but we’re very stubborn. We won’t give up on them.”

Because the dogs are still adjusting to their surroundings, it is difficult to predict how many of them will become adoptable. They arrived Jan. 2 from Richmond, Va., on a chartered airplane, stressed after eight months in shelters. In initial evaluations last September, many lay flat and looked frightened. Now, many respond to caregivers by wagging their tails and giving sloppy kisses.

“They have improved by light-years,” Mr. Garcia said, adding that it would take patience and a lot of time for these dogs to be happy and safe in an adoptive home.

Caregivers walk the dogs several times a day and spend time in their kennels, praising and caressing them. It is progress when a dog like Cherry does not need to be carried, because he is afraid to walk on a leash. It is monumental when Shadow approaches them instead of retreating.

“We want to get them to understand that being around people isn’t necessarily a bad thing; that we won’t hurt them,” Mr. Garcia said. “The worst thing we could do is push them too hard, too fast.”

Mr. Garcia, an expert in working with aggressive dogs, said getting some of these pit bulls accustomed to other dogs would be the toughest task. Initially, 10 were evaluated as aggressive toward other dogs.

[snip]

Ellen arrived at Best Friends overweight, looking more like a sausage than a fighter. She was a breeding dog but had spent time in the ring. One side of her face droops from nerve damage, but she is still affectionate and loves to offer her belly for rubs.

Lucas was Vick’s champion, a 65-pound muscular brown dog with a face mottled with dark scars. He is so friendly and confident that his trainers suspect he was pampered.

“I bet you ate steak every day, didn’t you, Lucas?” the caregiver McKenzie Garcia, who is married to John, said. “I bet they took care of you because you made them money.”

Every Vick dog here has a Personalized Emotional Rehabilitation Plan. Caregivers rate each dog in several categories. How fearful was Little Red today? How confident was Black Bear? How much did Meryl enjoy life?

Recording the dogs’ progress will help Dr. McMillan, the veterinarian, track their well-being. “DogTown,” on the National Geographic Channel, also plans to follow the progress of several of Mr. Vick’s dogs, including Georgia.

“The successful rehab rate for these kinds of dogs is unknown because nobody has ever studied it until now,” Dr. McMillan said. “You might see an incredibly friendly dog, but does that dog’s personality change over several weeks, over several months, after psychological trauma? Are they hard-wired to be aggressive, or can they change? What’s the best way to work with them?”

The plan is to determine how to keep these dogs happy, even if a real home is not in their future.

And one dog already has his forever home:

His back resting comfortably against her chest, Hector nestles his massive canine head into Leslie Nuccio's shoulder, high-fiving pit bull paws against human hands.
The big dog—52 pounds—is social, people-focused, happy now, it seems, wearing a rhinestone collar in his new home in sunny California.

But as Hector sits up, deep scars stand out on his chest, and his eyes are imploring.

"I wish he could let us know what happened to him," says Nuccio, the big tan dog's foster mother.

Hector ought to be dead, she knows—killed in one of his staged fights, or executed for not being "game" enough, not winning, or euthanized by those who see pit bulls seized in busts as "kennel trash," unsuited to any kind of normal life.

Instead, Hector is learning how to be a pet.

After the hell of a fighting ring, he has reached a heaven of sorts: saved by a series of unlikely breaks, transported thousands of miles, along with other dogs rescued with him, by devoted strangers, and now nurtured by Nuccio, her roommate, Danielle White, and their three other dogs.

The animals barrel around the house, with 4-year-old Hector leading the puppy-like antics—stealth underwear grabs from the laundry basket, sprints across the living room, food heists from the coffee table—until it's "love time" and he decelerates and engulfs the women in a hug.

[snip]

Hector's settling into his new life, getting further and further from his past.

Weekly AKC "canine good citizen" classes are correcting his social ineptitude. And he's taking cues on good manners from patient Pandora, a female pit bull mix who's queen of the household's dogs. Once Hector graduates, he'll take classes to become a certified therapy dog, helping at nursing homes and the like.

For now, he's learning the simple pleasures of a blanket at bedtime, a peanut butter-filled chew toy, even classical music.

"I put on Yo-Yo Ma one day and he cocked his head, laid down and listened to the cello next to the speaker," Nuccio said. "He's turning out to be a man of high class and culture."

(Note to my mom: Don't even THINK about it.)

Labels: Michael Vick, pets, Super Bowl

From those fantastic folks at Brave New Films comes the revelation that John McCain brings Dr. Strangelove out of the realm of fiction:

Labels: John McCain

If Kate Harding did not exist, I would have to invent her, so that I'd have a place to find articles like this one:

Feeling fat may be worse for you than being fat

By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Obesity's health effects could have more to do with feeling bad about being fat than actually being overweight, a new study shows.

Researchers who looked at a nationally representative group of more than 170,000 US adults found the difference actual weight and perceived ideal weight was a better indicator of mental and physical health than body mass index (BMI).

"The obesity 'epidemic' might have a lot more to do with our collective preoccupation with obesity than obesity itself," the study's lead author, Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University in New York City, told Reuters Health. "We still need to focus on healthy diet and exercise as public health officials, but we need to take fatness out of the equation. Were we to stop looking at body fat as a problem, the problem may well disappear."

Some researchers have suggested that stress due to stigmatization could be a factor in the health problems obese people have, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, he and his colleagues note in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

To investigate, they examined data on 170,577 people participating in a study of behavioral risk factors. All had reported their actual weight, perceived ideal weight, and the number of days in the past 30 days when they felt that their physical or mental health was not good.

When the researchers used statistical techniques to control for the influence of age and body mass index, they found that the more dissatisfied a person was with his or her weight, the more "bad days" he or she had. The relationship was strongest in non-Hispanic whites and women.

As I've mentioned before, I have two obese parents in their 80's. I'm overweight by any standard, but I'm preposterously healthy. My blood pressure is good, I'm moderately active, I walk at a good clip (a habit learned long ago when I realized that it takes me at least 1-1/2 steps to equal a taller person's one), I almost never get sick. I've cut way back on sweets, I avoid white flour product and anything with high fructose corn syrup in it, and I've learned that if you want the cookie, you might as well eat it because otherwise you're going to eat everything else in the house -- and then eat the cookie anyway.

I've long believed, a belief reinforced by reading a recent article about the increase in heart disease among Indian call center workers, that the so-called "obesity epidemic" in this country over the last decade is attributable to the stresses caused by fear (fear that has been nurtured by the Bush Administration) and increasing financial insecurity. When people have to work harder and longer in order to make ends meet, or prove their worth to a corporation in order to save their jobs, not only do they have less time for exercise and to eat right, but the constant, nagging stress takes its toll.

Now we have a study indicates that in addition to other stresses, the stress of worrying about one's weight may in fact be a cause of obesity.

And why wouldn't one feel stressed about being fat? Even if you aren't overweight, the terror of being overweight is ever-present. And if you ARE overweight, you're subject to not only social discrimination, but employment discrimination
and appalling treatment by the medical community, and stigmatization if you're brave enough to decide to join a gym. I've often thought that there is a fortune to be made in opening a chain of health clubs for fat people.

I look forward to the day when no one with ovarian cysts is told by a doctor that if she just loses weight, the pain will go away, and no clinical depressive is told by a doctor "...you have a great figure, but you could lose some weight. I look forward to a day when there are Megayoga classes in every town in America. I look forward to a day when our notions of health aren't tied to a specific size but we accept that everyone is different and no one has to be afraid to go to a doctor, or join a gym, or take a dance class, or eat a dessert for fear of being criticized by strangers.

That it took a medical study to figure out that the way our society treats overweight people may result in the stresses that cause obesity is ridiculous all by itself. I don't expect, however, that it's going to make all that much difference. There is just too much money to be made by major corporations in exploiting Fat Fear.

Labels: weight

The media love affair with John Edwards, now that he's left the race, is just a bit nauseating. It sort of reminds me of that time in high school, when the kid everyone picked on hung himself, or died of anorexia, or had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized -- and suddenly everyone felt really badly how they treated him.

Well, John Edwards hasn't died, thank goodness, but his candidacy for the presidency has, and now all of a sudden, the very same media that was obsessed with his haircut and his bigass house and his trial lawyer work, is now lauding him as the guy who built the Democratic agenda that now the candidate of THEIR choosing will carry to the November election.

Of course by the time the general election campaigns rolls around, that agenda, which in no way involves enhancement of the power of the very giant multinational corporations that own the media outlets in this country, is going to be so soundly trashed by the same talking heads lauding John Edwards now, that the American sheeple will follow their marching orders and elect another warmongering, greed-fostering Republican. But for now, the media have finally -- now that it's too late -- found John Edwards.

Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic (at CBS News):

As anybody who attended his town meetings could attest, he may have been the most effective campaigner of all - capable of establishing an instant connection with audiences, then sweeping them up with a moving, coherent story about what was wrong with America and how he proposed to fix it. Edwards was also, I would argue, a more versatile campaigner than his rivals. He was terrific working the grassroots, much like Obama, but also excelled in the debates, just as Clinton has. As his advisers were constantly reminding reporters - most memorably, through this priceless video - focus groups frequently named Edwards the overwhelming "winner" in those televised exchanges. Alas, a media preoccupied with the Clinton-Obama rivalry rarely seemed to notice.

Still, if Edwards wants to blame somebody for his defeat, he shouldn't look at the media. He should look at himself. And I mean that in the best sense possible. Edwards' biggest problem may have been that he was too compelling - so compelling that his rivals effectively adopted his agenda. From the beginning, Edwards was positioning himself as the champion of Americans struggling to get ahead financially. And rather than simply offer populist rhetoric, he backed it with a serious, comprehensive set of policies.

Faux Noise:

Edwards may no longer hold a place on the presidential ballot, but his populism, often expressed with great zeal, has impacted the presidential race in innumerable ways, some of which have yet to be realized.

At the heart of Edwards’ message was the need to speak out for the poor and disenfranchised—those people whom the Senator often referred to as “the real underdogs in this election.” He was the first to propose a universal health care plan—ensuring coverage for all Americans—and the first among the Democratic candidates to make poverty and global warming a key focus of his campaign.

For Edwards, the need to combat these problems was a “moral test,” and he referred to such issues as “the causes of my life.”

Not without fault, Edwards was sometimes criticized for his changing positions on the Iraq war and for oversimplifying the problem of lobbyists. Yet he was honest in admitting that his initial support of funding the war “was a mistake.”

Upon leaving an event in Springfield, Missouri, on Monday, that drew over 1,000 Edwards supporters, a high-school English teacher related his message to a line from Shakespeare she had recently taught her 12th grade class.

“To thine ownself be true,” she said, quoting a famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “Edwards inspires because he’s pushed issues not always politically popular. And for that he deserves credit.”

Mona Gable of the Obama-supporting Huffington Post:

It must have been a tortured decision for Edwards, is all I can say. The crippling loss in South Carolina. Then the calls to Obama and Hillary.

And now it's over, his five-year quest for the presidency. "It's time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path," Edwards told a small crowd in New Orleans, as Elizabeth Edwards and their three children stood beside him.

What I can't really say is this: why his campaign never took off. Why, despite his insistent message about the plight of the poor and the middle-class, his landmark health-care plan, his vow to end the war in Iraq, his railing against corporate greed, he couldn't generate much heat. Was the national giddiness over a first black or a first woman president too much to overcome for a white guy from the South? Was it the obsessive narrative about the $400 hair cut, the sprawling mansion and the hedge fund that did him in? Was there too much John Kerry baggage? Or maybe--and this comes from the ever-delightful Chris Matthews--Edwards was just too "glamorous"?

Whatever the reasons, the media can finally return to what it longed to do all along with the Democrats: focus on Obama and Hillary in their increasingly nasty battle for the nomination.

It's going to be a long, long season.

Both did pledge to Edwards to continue to carry his message of poverty and fight the good fight. I wouldn't hold my breath. It's hard to imagine either candidate stopping to talk to homeless people camped near a bridge, as Edwards did in New Orleans on his way to give his speech. Or picking up a hammer to go off and build houses for Habitat for Humanity, which Edwards and his family did right after his poignant speech.

In a campaign that was often too short on substance and too much about glitz, I will miss his voice.

Gail Collins, the New York Times:

Farewell to John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani. Guess which one is planning to devote his life to helping the poor? No fair looking it up.

Joel Topcik, Broadcasting & Cable:

From the moment a politician announces his or her candidacy—at a hometown VFW hall or, maybe, in front of an aircraft carrier (as John Kerry did in 2004)—finding the right backdrop that’ll play on TV is huge.

John Edwards offered a new twist on the technique yesterday when he chose to announce his decision to drop out of the presidential race in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward neighborhood—the very place he announced his candidacy more than a year earlier.

Back then, the scene looked more than a little contrived, bordering on exploitative, with the former senator, clad in jeans and a too-crisp work shirt, standing amid the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina a year and a half earlier.

But there was a kind of poetry in his return to the scene yesterday. Wearing virtually the same costume, standing before a backdrop that showed signs of progress, Edwards brought his anti-poverty Two Americas campaign theme full circle—as if he were simply going back to the work of building "One America," one neighborhood at a time.

And then there's Paul Krugman, who never fell into the "haircuts/house/hedgefund" meme, and always "got it" as to what Edwards was trying to do and puts it in political context:

...Mr. Edwards, far more than is usual in modern politics, ran a campaign based on ideas. And even as his personal quest for the White House faltered, his ideas triumphed: both candidates left standing are, to a large extent, running on the platform Mr. Edwards built.

To understand the extent of the Edwards effect, you have to think about what might have been.

At the beginning of 2007, it seemed likely that the Democratic nominee would run a cautious campaign, without strong, distinctive policy ideas. That, after all, is what John Kerry did in 2004.

If 2008 is different, it will be largely thanks to Mr. Edwards. He made a habit of introducing bold policy proposals — and they were met with such enthusiasm among Democrats that his rivals were more or less forced to follow suit.

It’s hard, in particular, to overstate the importance of the Edwards health care plan, introduced in February.

Before the Edwards plan was unveiled, advocates of universal health care had difficulty getting traction, in part because they were divided over how to get there. Some advocated a single-payer system — a k a Medicare for all — but this was dismissed as politically infeasible. Some advocated reform based on private insurers, but single-payer advocates, aware of the vast inefficiency of the private insurance system, recoiled at the prospect.

With no consensus about how to pursue health reform, and vivid memories of the failure of 1993-1994, Democratic politicians avoided the subject, treating universal care as a vague dream for the distant future.

But the Edwards plan squared the circle, giving people the choice of staying with private insurers, while also giving everyone the option of buying into government-offered, Medicare-type plans — a form of public-private competition that Mr. Edwards made clear might lead to a single-payer system over time. And he also broke the taboo against calling for tax increases to pay for reform.

Suddenly, universal health care became a possible dream for the next administration. In the months that followed, the rival campaigns moved to assure the party’s base that it was a dream they shared, by emulating the Edwards plan. And there’s little question that if the next president really does achieve major health reform, it will transform the political landscape.

Similar if less dramatic examples of leadership followed on other key issues. For example, Mr. Edwards led the way last March by proposing a serious plan for responding to climate change, and at this point both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are offering far stronger measures to limit emissions of greenhouse gases than anyone would have expected to see on the table not long ago.

Unfortunately for Mr. Edwards, the willingness of his rivals to emulate his policy proposals made it hard for him to differentiate himself as a candidate; meanwhile, those rivals had far larger financial resources and received vastly more media attention. Even The Times’s own public editor chided the paper for giving Mr. Edwards so little coverage.

And I think that's what's so painful for those of us who supported this guy. It's not the kind of near-cultish admiration that was such an integral part of the Howard Dean movement in 2004 and which seems to be part of Barack Obama's supporters this year. It's more of a cautious sense that while we may have wondered if we were being played by a very smart and charismatic lawyer, at least there was a candidate who had taken the time to hammer out very detailed, and more importantly, workable progressive policy positions. But the Ghost of 1970's Identity Politics just won't go away, and with the media poised to do its masters' bidding and push the argument in a direction that favors a Republican victory, sideshows like the New York chapter of NOW blasting Ted Kennedy for "betraying women" by endorsing Barack Obama, and the "Hillary Cried Her Way to a Win in New Hampshire" meme, and the media's breathless wait for Barack Obama to lose his cool so they can paint him as the Angry Black Man, what chance does a white guy from the south have, even if he IS offering the most progressive alternative?

I remember exactly where I was when I heard that former Virginia governor Mark Warner announced that he would not seek the presidency. It was October 2006, I was at a Virginia Welcome Center on I-95 on my way home from North Carolina, and the television sets that dotted the cavernous room were all set to CNN, which was breathlessly broadcasting Warner's news conference. The speculation at that time was that without Warner, the Democratic party's best hope for victory in 2008 was now dashed, because he was widely believed to be the Cautious Centrist White Guy from the South that the punditocracy believed was necessary to win the presidency against the than-anticipated raving liberal candidacy of Hillary Clinton. The irony that it is the cautious and centrist Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who are the last two standing, with the Southern White Guy having run the progressive campaign, which just demonstrates even further that the media's agenda is about corporate power alone. That Obama and Clinton add the dimension of identity politics to the stew is just a ratings bonus.

Labels: 2008 election, identity politics, John Edwards

After plowing through page after page of tantrums on the Edwards blog and cultish bashing of heathens from true believers of all three of the until yesterday major Democratic candidates, I was going to write a post called "The Netroots: Why We Suck", citing such behavior as the reason our leaders don't give a flying fuck what we think.

I didn't, because the post I did last night came out instead.

But Jim Booth at Scholars and Rogues eviscerates with a very sharp knife the kind of bullshit identity politics at play in the Clinton/Obama race of a kind best evidenced by New York NOW's screeching that Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama is somehow a betrayal of women:

What Edwards is really doing is paying the price for being a white guy at the time of historic (and mostly just) back lash against the “aristocracy of white guys” that has been the target of the concerted efforts of “liberals” who aren’t liberal at all. What these “liberals” (too often media pundits) are are ideologues who proclaim that someone would make a better (read “more media interest worthy”) Presidential candidate simply because that person is a) a woman or b) an African-American. Justice is one thing - ideology is another - this is ideology at its most reeking…. Yes, I hear your scornful retorts: “These are the times that try [white] men’s souls…” yadda, yadda….

I don’t say this to discredit Hillary or Obama, both of whom have real merit. I say this because the drive to push forward a woman or black candidate is (I fear) a media creation that allows the media then to control the narrative of the Democratic campaign - and the election. And the Democratic Party, which plays the sucker to every narrative the media creates for it, is playing the sucker again.

John Edwards has addressed overtly and directly real issues plaguing our country at this historical moment - the shift toward a class system that the “Repugnacans” have engineered - and their systematic removal of any realistic opportunity for those in the rapidly developing underclass to better themselves. Edwards, like me, Sam Smith, and many others across this country, has been able to work hard, gain success, and rise to a position of both (in a relative sense) wealth and power because of the past social and economic policies of the Democratic Party. I don’t begrudge him any of his success the way the entitled scions of the Right do - to do so would be to repudiate my own life. What I find most repellent in The Left’s rejection of JE is its own smug self-righteousness that it is doing so for the “correct” reasons.

Not so. The Left is rejecting Edwards because he reminds too many of us in the Left® of what WE came from - how we scrambled and worked and took advantage of opportunities made available by FDR, HST, JFK, and LBJ. It’s easier to glom onto the myth of Hillary as a deserving member of her gender or Obama as a deserving member of his race (despicably patronizing behavior masquerading as visionary open-mindedness) than to stand up and say “offering opportunities for people to better themselves has been and should always be a basic tenet of the Democratic Party.” That would mean supporting Edwards - who espouses these positions - and rejecting the more fashionable idea of supporting Hillary or Obama because they represent a “historic opportunity.”

[snip]

I’m reminded of the way Sam Smith and I have often laughingly scoffed that the only Marxists left are those wearing tweed in tony offices in universities. The closest they ever get to the “revolution” is the occasional Cuban cigar obtained from a Canadian friend. Those of us who’ve benefited from the Democratic Party’s social and economic policies that allowed us to get educations and move up the economic and social ladder are like tweedy Marxists. We’re interested in opportunity as an intellectual abstract.

Go read the whole thing here.

One of the funnier recurring characters on Morning Sedition was Tom Johnson's "Pendejo the Revolutionary" -- a hapless, rather sniveling guy who fancied himself to be some kind of neo-Che Guevara, coming up with organization names like Progressive Underground Destabilization League (PUDL) and Tactical Elite And Battle Action Group (TEABAG) and Battalion of Aggressive Liberal-Loving Seditionists (BALLS) and the People's Underground Threat Alliance (PUTA).

Jim is absolutely right: it may very well be that in trying so desperately to be "transformational", to be revolutionary like poor Pendejo, we may very well find ourselves under another four years of incompetent, crooked, wasteful, Republican rule while we sit petting our shih-tzu Stompers, who cannot be left alone, wondering what went wrong.

(h/t)

UPDATE: The aforementioned Sam Smith weighs in here.

Labels: bloggers, John Edwards

So what are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi planning to do about this:

President Bush this week declared that he has the power to bypass four laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, that Congress passed as part of a new defense bill.

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Bush made the assertion in a signing statement that he issued late Monday after signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008. In the signing statement, Bush asserted that four sections of the bill unconstitutionally infringe on his powers, and so the executive branch is not bound to obey them.

"Provisions of the act . . . purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as commander in chief," Bush said. "The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President."

One section Bush targeted created a statute that forbids spending taxpayer money "to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq" or "to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq."

The Bush administration is negotiating a long-term agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The agreement is to include the basing of US troops in Iraq after 2008, as well as security guarantees and other economic and political ties between the United States and Iraq.

The negotiations have drawn fire in part because the administration has said it does not intend to designate the compact as a "treaty," and so will not submit it to Congress for approval. Critics are also concerned Bush might lock the United States into a deal that would make it difficult for the next president to withdraw US troops from Iraq.

"Every time a senior administration official is asked about permanent US military bases in Iraq, they contend that it is not their intention to construct such facilities," said Senator Robert P. Casey Jr., Democrat of Pennsylvania, in a Senate speech yesterday. "Yet this signing statement issued by the president yesterday is the clearest signal yet that the administration wants to hold this option in reserve."

Several other congressional Democrats also took issue with the signing statement.

So are they going to just talk, or are they going to do something to rein in this guy before he hogties the next president before s/he even takes office?

Labels: Democrats, dictatorship, George W. Bush, spinelessness

...for the Republicans. By knocking John Edwards out of the race, you've very likely handed the presidency to John McCain:



(poll results via Real Clear Politics)

And good job by ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and most of MSNBC, too. A very nice coordination of effort.

MSNBC is doing a great job of showing how nimble it can be at doing General Electric's bidding. Last night, Dan Abrams performed a neat trick by painting himself as outside of the "D.C. Media" and doing his part to try to reinforce the "Hillary is Inevitable" meme:



Impressive, Dan. You've done your part for GE. Give yourself a raise.

Meanwhile, within five minutes of tuning into Morning Joe this morning, Chuck Todd was on the phone with Scarborough trashing Barack Obama.

The media establishment and their corporate masters have always wanted a matchup between Hillary Clinton and John McCain. This is the matchup they want because while they want John McCain to be president, if the plan goes wrong, at least they can do business with Hillary Clinton. If you don't believe that the media have a strong role in the framing of candidates and the manipulation of voters' views of them, I have four words for you: "John Kerry Is Electable."

I didn't know the New York Times had been bought by Rupert Murdoch. Actual headline from today's online edition:



The story is about a pharmaceutical company in China that exports to many countries, including the U.S., that is at the center of a scandal involving tainted drugs after 200 leukemia patients had serious adverse events from use of one of the company's cancer drugs:

Chinese drug regulators have accused the manufacturer of the tainted drugs of a cover-up and have closed the factory that produced them. In December, China’s Food and Drug Administration said that the Shanghai police had begun a criminal investigation and that two officials, including the head of the plant, had been detained.

The drug maker, Shanghai Hualian, is the sole supplier to the United States of the abortion pill, mifepristone, known as RU-486. It is made at a factory different from the one that produced the tainted cancer drugs, about an hour’s drive away.

The United States Food and Drug Administration declined to answer questions about Shanghai Hualian, because of security concerns stemming from the sometimes violent opposition to abortion. But in a statement, the agency said the RU-486 plant had passed an F.D.A. inspection in May. “F.D.A. is not aware of any evidence to suggest the issue that occurred at the leukemia drug facility is linked in any way with the facility that manufactures the mifepristone,” the statement said.

When told of Shanghai Hualian’s troubles, Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, a leading consumer advocate and frequent F.D.A. critic, said American regulators ought to be concerned because of accusations that serious health risks had been covered up there. “Every one of these plants should be immediately inspected,” he said.

The director of the Chinese F.D.A.’s drug safety control unit in Shanghai, Zhou Qun, said her agency had inspected the factory that produced mifepristone three times in recent months and found it in compliance. “It is natural to worry,” Ms. Zhou said, “but these two plants are in two different places and have different quality-assurance people.”

The investigation of the contaminated cancer drugs comes as China is trying to restore confidence in its tattered regulatory system. In the last two years, scores of people around the world have died after ingesting contaminated drugs and drug ingredients produced in China. Last year, China executed its top drug safety official for accepting bribes to approve drugs.

Shanghai Hualian is a division of one of China’s largest pharmaceutical companies, the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group, which owns dozens of factories. Neither Shanghai Hualian nor its parent company would comment on the tainted medicine.

Last week, The New York Times asked the F.D.A. whether the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group exported to the United States any drugs or pharmaceutical ingredients other than the abortion pill. But after repeated requests, the agency declined to provide that information; it did not cite a reason.

On at least two occasions in 2002, Shanghai Hualian had shipments of drugs stopped at the United States border, F.D.A. records show. One shipment was an unapproved antibiotic and the other a diuretic that had “false or misleading labeling.” Records also show that another unit of Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group has filed papers declaring its intention to sell at least five active pharmaceutical ingredients to manufacturers for sale in the United States.

One major pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, declined to buy drug ingredients from Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group because of quality-related issues, said Christopher Loder, a Pfizer spokesman. In 2006, Pfizer agreed to evaluate Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group’s “capabilities” as an ingredient supplier, but so far the company “has not met the standards required by Pfizer,” Mr. Loder said in a statement.

Because of opposition from the anti-abortion movement, the F.D.A. has never publicly identified the maker of the abortion pill for the American market. The pill was first manufactured in France, and since its approval by the F.D.A. in 2000 it has been distributed in the United States by Danco Laboratories. Danco, which does not list a street address on its Web site, did not return two telephone calls seeking comment.

The headline implies that the story is primarily about the inherent danger of "the abortion pill" (RU-486). But if you actually read the article, it's actually about lax import standards, lax FDA oversight, and how the fetophile movement's influence in government has created an environment in which importation of RU-486 was the only way to get it here.

By running a story with an inflaamatory and inaccurate headline, the Times has allowed the RU-486 aspect of the story to overshadow the larger picture, which is that as the pharmaceutical industry outsources more of its manufacturing overseas, and Republican-dominated government insists that any regulation of industry is a bad thing, what we end up with is tainted drugs. The factory that produces RU-486 isn't even the same one that manufactured the tainted cancer drugs, though the quality control at one plant certainly calls the trustworthiness of all of them into question. But since the Times earns a fair amount of advertising revenue from pharmaceutical companies, it's much easier to tar the story by identifying it solely with a controversial drug than to examine the dangers posed to a society that pops pills for everything by an industry that outsources its manufacturing process to questionable players.

Labels: hack journalism, pharmaceutical industry

I heard this morning about John Edwards' withdrawal from the presidential nomination race while in the car on the way to work, which is why I haven't written on it yet. Well, that and the fact that every time I think about it I get all blubbery and want to wait until I don't sound like one of the overgrown babies posting over at the Edwards blog who are planning to throw a tantrum, scream a lot, then hold their breath till their faces turn blue.

It isn't that I didn't know it was coming; I just didn't want it to happen this soon; didn't want to have to face the choice of voting for the woman who is unrepentant about voting for the war in Iraq and equally unrepentant about giving George W. Bush a free pass to go to war with Iran via Kyl/Lieberman; and a man who's a great orator or speeches that may be written for him, but who phumphers when put on the spot, a certainly transformational candidate who just seems a bit too idealistic to be able to survive once the wingnut hate machine really gets ratcheted up.

Just once in my life, I'd like to be able to cast an enthusiastic vote in a general election. Time after time after time, I've seen the candidates I've supported in the primary races -- smart, capable candidates who see further than next week and think about things other than amassing power -- fall by the wayside because the party hacks will do whatever is necessary -- even lose -- to retain their control over the process. Whether it was Gary Hart in 1984, or Paul Tsongas in 1992, or Howard Dean in 2004, or John Edwards this year, these capable candidates are always shoved out of the way by those who toe the party line, who wait their turn, and dare I say it -- know their place.

When you look at some of the Democratic nominees over the last few decades -- Walter Mondale...Michael Dukakis....John Kerry...you wonder if the Democrats even want to win. It took a dirty skunk like Bill Clinton to finally beat the Republicans at their own game -- and even then he had to fight them (and much of his own party) for eight years just to stay in office. Then in 2000 we watched as Al Gore refused to demand a statewide recount in Florida, and in 2004 we watched as John Kerry joined up with Dick Gephardt to tag-team Howard Dean in Iowa, only to see Kerry take his $14 million in leftover campaign cash and go home before the Ohio vote count was even finalized.

After the tag-teaming of Howard Dean in 2004, I was so depressed and so disgusted and disillusioned with the system that it was all I could do to get out of bed and go to work the next day. I promised myself I would never, ever put myself through that again. It isn't as though I'm not used to disappointment; I am, after all, a Mets fan (though please don't get me started on this Santana trade; does the name "Bret Saberhagen" mean anything to these people?). And yes, there was this disconnect between John Edwards' voting record and the progressive populist agenda he ran on this year.

But while Hillary and Bill Clinton are embodying everything people hate about the baby boomers, with their "Me, me, me" campaign, and Barack Obama has seemed to either not get or refuse to acknowledge the ugliness that has permeated politics, while at the same time seeming to lack the toughness he'll need to get anything accomplished, I felt that a guy who'd made millions of dollars fighting big corporations on behalf of families like the Lakeys was worth supporting. Supporting Hillary Clinton was out of the question because of her hawkishness and her insistence at Yearly Kos last summer that corporate lobbyists are people too, and Obama's tendency to want to reach across the aisle seemed more like dipping his hand into a swamp full of crocodiles.

This isn't the first time the media have set the agenda and selected the candidates for us. It was the media who decided that a dry drunk like George W. Bush should be president because he was a guy you'd want to drink beer with (despite the fact that he's by all accounts a pretty mean drunk). It was the media who turned down the crowd noise at Howard Dean's post-Iowa rally in 2004 so that he sounded like a raving madman. Diane Sawyer later 'fessed up on Good Morning America, but who saw it? And the damage was done. Then it was the media who decided that the allegations of the Swift Boat Liars for Bullshit, allegations they pulled out of their asses, deserved equal time to, say, the truth. It was the media who decided that John Kerry "looked French". Kerry didn't do himself any favors by being the least telegenic candidate in recorded history, but the media aided and abetted in the smear campaign against him. And this year, the media painted John Edwards as a lightweight and a hypocrite, focusing on his haircuts and the size of his house, because he represented a threat to the power of their corporate masters, and because the Black Guy and the Woman made a far more interesting story than just another Southern white guy.

And now that he is gone from the race, after (according to Jonathan Alter on Countdown tonight) becoming frustrated with the fact that even winning EVERY SINGLE DEBATE wasn't enough to garner any attention. And of course in leaving, he finally gets the attention from the media. As if feeling contrition, the nightly news reports spoke of Edwards' departure in hushed tones of admiration, as if it were Mother Theresa herself who had just left the presidential race. Now that he is gone, they've decided maybe he wasn't so bad after all.

But if you're thinking that the talking heads of the media have learned anything, guess again. For Tweety is tweeting his "John McCain is a maverick" meme and insisting that some of John Edwards' voters may go over to McCain, despite the fact that John McCain has done nothing but suck up to George W. Bush for the last seven years. Assuming that McCain continues to prevail, the corporate media will get their candidate on the Republican side. And if the Republican race is over before the Democratic one, Barack Obama had better be prepared. Because these people who are the public face of Viacom and General Electric and Disney Corp. and News Corp. want Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain, and as John Edwards knows full well, they will tear down anyone who gets in the way of the candidates most likely to do their bidding.

And so the nation is a more dismal place tonight. James Lowe goes back to West Virginia, where no one who doesn't already know about him will know that he was unable to speak for 50 years because he had no health insurance until a doctor agreed to waive the fee to repair his cleft palate. The Sarkisyan family will go back to California to mourn their daughter, knowing that the most ardent advocate for universal health care is no longer running for president. The many people who worked tirelessly to fight back the tide that has run against John Edwards will also go home. The offices will be shuttered, the stickers removed from the windows.

And out here in the Super Tuesday states, the Edwards bumper stickers will go into the box with the Howard Dean buttons and the Gary Hart '84 buttons -- relics of days when we were able to delude ourselves for a little while that the game wasn't entirely rigged. And we will decide where we go from here. We'll choose, and we'll go through the drill of voting, knowing full well that it ultimately doesn't mean jack shit; that the corporations always win.

A few months ago, Marc Maron did an amazing rant while subbing for Randi Rhodes that I posted about a month ago about how America manufactures nothing but need and appetite; that instead of "Land of the Free", our motto should be "America: All You Can Eat." But I think he's mistaken. For America's motto is really "America: Show Me The Money."

Labels: 2008 election, Democrats, John Edwards

For the last 4,567 years, the radio program Woody's Children, hosted by Robert Sherman, has been a fixture on New York Radio, first on the classical station WQXR, and now on Fordham University's WFUV. In the spirit of the show's notion that those who are inspired by pioneers are their "children", I bring you (via the fabulous Kate) the first web site that can truly be featured as one of "Stephen Colbert's children". Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you The Health Institute of Nutrition. Go, read, and laugh. Then grab a snack.

Labels: bloggers, comedy, weight

In Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont amuse herself by using sex to humiliate the people around them. Sex is the weapon, but the amusement is in the pair's ability to manipulate people into participating in their own self-destruction.

While reading MoDo this morning, Glenn Close in full 18th century regalia was the image that crept into my head. MoDo may not be directly manipulating the Obama/Clinton race, but the viciousness with which she approaches both candidates seems to come from a similarly demented place.

Today it's Barack Obama's turn, as MoDo decides to perpetuate the meme of The Snub:

It’s already famous as The Snub, the moment before the State of the Union when Obama turned away to talk to Claire McCaskill instead of trying to join Teddy Kennedy in shaking hands with Hillary.

Nobody cared about W., whose presidency had crumpled into a belated concern about earmarks.

The only union that fascinated was Obama and Hillary, once more creeping around each other.

It would have been the natural thing for the Illinois senator, only hours after his emotional embrace by the Kennedys and an arena full of deliriously shrieking students, to follow the lead of Uncle Teddy and greet the rebuffed Hillary.

She was impossible to miss in the sea of dark suits and Supreme Court dark robes. Like Scarlett O’Hara after a public humiliation, Hillary showed up at the gathering wearing a defiant shade of red.

But the fact that he didn’t do so shows that Obama cannot hide how much the Clintons rattle him, and that he is still taking the race very personally.

On a flight to Kansas yesterday to collect another big endorsement, this one from Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Obama said he was “surprised” by reports of The Snub.

“I was turning away because Claire asked me a question as Senator Kennedy was reaching forward,” he said. “Senator Clinton and I have had very cordial relations off the floor and on the floor. I waved at her as I was coming into the Senate chamber before we walked over last night. I think there is just a lot more tea leaf reading going on here than I think people are suggesting.”

But that answer is disingenuous. Their relations have been frosty and fraught ever since the young Chicago prince challenged Queen Hillary’s royal proclamation that it was her turn to rule.

Last winter, after news broke that he was thinking of running, he winked at her and took her elbow on the Senate floor to say hi, in his customary languid, friendly way, and she coldly brushed him off.

It bothered him, and he called a friend to say: You would not believe what just happened with Hillary.

Again and again at debates, he looked eager to greet her or be friendly during the evening and she iced him. She might have frozen him out once more Monday night had he actually tried to reach out.

But now Obama is like that cat Mark Twain wrote about who wouldn’t jump on the stove again for fear of being burned.

It was only after the distortions of the Clintons in South Carolina that he changed his tone and took on Hillary in a tough way in the debate there. Afterward, one of his advisers said that it was as though a dam had broken and Obama finally began using all the sharp lines against Hillary that strategists had been suggesting for months.

Why had it taken so long for Obama to push back against Hillary? “He respected her as a senator,” the adviser replied. “He even defended her privately when she cried, saying that no one knows how hard these campaigns are.”

But Obama’s outrage makes him seem a little jejune. He is surely the only person in the country who was surprised when the Clintons teamed up to dissemble and smear when confronted with an impediment to their ambitions.

Knowing that it helped her when Obama seemed to be surly with her during the New Hampshire debate, telling her without looking up from his notes that she was “likable enough” — another instance of Obama not being able to hide his bruised feelings — Hillary went on ABC News last night to insinuate that he was rude Monday.

“Well, I reached my hand out in friendship and unity and my hand is still reaching out,” she said, lapsing back into the dissed-woman mode. “And I look forward to shaking his hand sometime soon.”

Something’s being stretched here, but it’s not her hand. She wasn’t reaching out to him at all.

The New York State chapter of NOW issued an absurd statement on Monday calling Teddy Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama “the ultimate betrayal”: “He’s picked the new guy over us.”

But Obama is the more emotionally delicate candidate, and the one who has the more feminine consensus management style, and the not-blinded-by-testosterone ability to object to a phony war.

As first lady, Alpha Hillary’s abrasive and secretive management of health care doomed it. She voted to enable W. on Iraq so she could run as someone tough enough to command armies.

Given her brazen quote to ABC News, Obama is right to be scared of Hillary. He just needs to learn that Uncle Teddy can’t fight all his fights, and that a little chivalry goes a long way.

Dowd's depiction of Hillary Clinton as the frigid bitch is nothing new; she's been doing it for fifteen years now. But note her feminization of Barack Obama. That's the kind of thing that's the kiss of death to some of the centrist voters Obama's supposedly trying to engate.

A photograph is a millisecond frozen in time, and it's easy to read something that may or may not be there. Both Barack Obama and Claire McCaskill attest that McCaskill had asked Obama a question and that's why he turned around. But even if that weren't the case, is this really a big enough deal to beat it to death?

Labels: 2008 election, idiocy, Maureen Dowd

Drifty. Just Go Read.

Labels: bloggers

Well, it looks like Judi Nathan's dreams of being America's Queen have been dashed on the shoals of Dade County. No longer will we have her zombie, plasticene, Botoxed-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life rictus of an adoring smile to make shivers of revulsion run down our collective spine. "Little Louis", her affectionate name for her Louis Vuitton handbag, won't be residing in the White House after all. (/meow)

And Rudy Giuliani's dreams of huge armies goosestepping through the streets at his command as they head off to endless, expansive war in the Middle East, of long prison sentences for potsmokers and jaywalkers and murderers alike, similarly must be put away, perhaps to be resurrected later, but for now -- simply a dream deferred.

And the rest of us can heave a deep sigh of relief.

For now.

Because the Republican nominee who will treat us to either an entire summer and fall of strolling down Whitewater Vince Foster Rose Law Firm Monice Lewinsky Lane, or a summer of turning Barack Obama into either a cousin of Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden's mole here in the U.S. will be either the craven Bush whore John McCain or the even more craven panderer Willard Mitt Romney.

And one of them could still pick Rudy as a running mate.

So what went wrong? Is the age of fearmongering past? Was it his personal life? Last night on MSNBC, the horror that is Pat Buchanan was offset by the treat of a rare appearance by Bob Herbert and of course the insights of Rachel Maddow. Herbert is dead-on here, that Giuliani is at heart a cop -- and it actually says something redeeming about Republican voters that this ultimate punitive daddy figure was so soundly repudiated:



However, the redemption stops there. For as noted at ThinkProgress (with more video), John McCain's vision for America is "less jobs and more wars."

So what went wrong for Rudy? Why is it that his attempts to reframe himself as a conservative were such a spectacular failure whereas Mitt Romney's same game has him still in the race? Is it simply a matter of Romney being better-looking? Was it the Vanity Fair article about his sleazy business dealings that include representing Middle Eastern dictatorships that have harbored the very terrorists he decried at every turn? Or the article in the New York Times revealing the police memo that unequivocally urged the then-mayor to NOT locate his command center in the World Trade Center? Did the revelation of his use of city vehicles to chauffeur his then-goumah around turn off socially conservative voters, and was the "Eww!" factor triggered by Judi's gushing about her hot, manly husband a symptom of just too much information? Did Joe Biden distill that nagging something that people didn't like about Rudy but couldn't put their finger on when he famously and accurately said in a debate that every sentence out of his mouth is a noun, a verb, and 9/11? Or is it just that he's an openly authoritarian prick, and Republicans prefer their authoritarian pricks to have a stupid grin and a towel-snapping frat boy demeanor?

If there were no other reasons to wish Steve Gilliard was still here, the spectacular fall of Rudy Giuliani would be enough reason all by itself. But since he's not, let's let one of his torch-carriers, the great Lower Manhattanite, answer the question:

Take the worst elements of Captain Queeg, Nellie Oleson, Stinky from Abbott & Costello, and an STD'd scorpion, bundle it into a man and put said man in charge of a complex, challenging city and you'll get what Rudy Giuliani was really all about. Tourists and outsiders didn't get him. They didn't have to live with him. They got the cathode-ray Bing Crosby of the pipe, red alpaca sweater and the Christmas specials. We lived with the drunken Bing swinging the extension cord and windmilling signet-ringed fists as he prowled the house looking for someone to fuck up.

Time won out, though, and it managed to utterly expose him. Quite honestly, Rudy was nearly as lazy and disinterested a candidate as Fred Thompson was—both of them lazy honoraria-grabbers swearing somebody owed 'em something because they thought they were somebody . And in the end, they can now go meet at Tree's Loser Lounge and swap notes on star-fucking and prosecutorial malfeasance.

Me? I'm gonna sit here with the icy blonde tonight, and get around town a bit later in the week. I'm sure I'll see a bunch of her doppelgangers out and about with my fellow revelers in town. But for now, the mind wanders.

What's Ol' Judith gonna do now? Cialis and dough is fine, but mama wanted more. Access to power was the drug. What new doll will she start crawling after in the “Valley of Delusions”?

The Aqua Velva's gone—along with the leathery, old-man skin. And now, so too is the “tough cop”—his precious Sipowicz. It's down to McCain for Tweety to toss the lettuce, tomatoes and ranch dressing for. Ick. I just threw up in my mouth. Not a little. A lot.

And the irony isn't lost on me that Rudy's final come-down is tomorrow in California—of all places, Simi Valley. Home of the Reagan Library, and home of the springboard for the police-brutality-fueled L.A. riots. Rudy should be right at fucking home.

Full circle. Bullshit's end. And please let the door hitcha' on the way out—and may there be a patch of ice right in front of the Goddamned door.

(And while you're at it, don't miss installment one of his series The NY/DC Power Play on the Giuliani/Kerik/Judith Regan Axis of Evil.)

Whatever the reason, today we can all breathe a deep sigh of relief that Republican voters in Florida -- especially the transplanted snowbirds -- saw how cynical the relentless repetition of 9/11 was, and how terrifying the Foreign Policy of Norman Podhoretz was and said "No!". We can be thankful that Jewish voters in Florida are not the blind, crazy Zionists that Rudy thought they were and didn't think turning the entire Middle East into a sheet of glass was a swell idea. Today we owe a debt of gratitiude to the state of Florida.

But don't get too cocky, there, guys. Don't forget, your state is still, and forever will be, the scene of the original crime of November 2000.

Labels: I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning, Rudy Giuliani

Baltimore --- President George W. Bush is never one much for introspection. Yet, as his second term winds down, the President has been unusually open about his personal experiences and impressions in the last two days. Today, at the Jericho Program, the president admitted that faith played a significant role that enabled him to beat drinking and Saddam Hussein.

"My Christian Methodist faith enabled me to stop seeking answers at the bottom of a bottle. So instead of being addicted to alcohol, the Lord addicted me to changing the world and the Middle East, starting with Iraq."

The President, speaking only to one reporter and two pre-screened participants in the Jericho outreach program, elaborated with a wicked grin.

"There was this one time in New Orleans, heh heh, I may have mentioned this at the airport right after Hurricane Katrina..." the chief executive started before White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten dragged his index finger across his neck.

"Oh, right. Anyways, first is to recognize that there is a higher power," Bush said. "It helped me in my life. It helped me quit drinking."

"That's right, there is a higher power," one of the outreach men said.

"Step One, right?" Bush said, referring to the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-steps program.

"Actually, it's Step Two, Mr. President", said the man just before he was hustled out of the building by seven Secret Service agents.

"Well, it's the first step, now, 'cuz it's the most important one. There's a step where you gotta apologize to everyone for making a dick of yourself but I was never too good at that, heh heh..."

...before Lee Atwater came on the scene and turned presidential races into a contest as to just how dead the corpse of the opposition would be after you finished with him; and his spawn Karl Rove turned a brain-damaged idiot into a president.

There used to be Republicans and Democrats who may have disagreed about the best way to get there, but whose goals weren't really all that dissimilar. Yes, there were always the kind of right-wing elitists who seemed to think the Gilded Age was the optimal American society and that the existence of a middle class had caused the Haves nothing but trouble. But at one time, legislation could be hammered out in a way other than one side capitulating to the other.

As Bob Herbert reports today, Sens. Chuck Hagel and Chris Dodd are working on legislation that would form a kind of WPA for rebuilding this country's crumbling infrastructure:

The country could do itself a favor by paying more attention to the efforts of Senator Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the Banking Committee, and Senator Hagel, a Nebraska Republican. They have co-sponsored legislation that would create a national infrastructure bank to promote and help finance large-scale projects across the nation.

Part of their mission is to generate a sense of urgency. In an interview yesterday, Senator Dodd told me: “At a time when we’re worried about rising unemployment rates and declining confidence in this country, infrastructure projects have the dual effect of putting people to work — and usually at pretty good salaries and wages — while also creating a sense of optimism, of investing in the future.”

The country has been hit hard by lost jobs in manufacturing and construction. As government and political leaders are scrambling for ways to stimulate the economy in the current downturn, infrastructure improvements would seem to be a natural component of any effective recovery plan.

“In terms of stimulating the economy, there is nothing better than a job,” said Senator Dodd.

The need for investment on a large scale — and for the long term — is undeniable. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, in a study that should have gotten much more attention when it was released in 2005, it would take more than a trillion and a half dollars over a five-year period to bring the U.S. infrastructure into reasonably decent shape.

Will we wait until another New Orleans-style disaster occurs, or another heavily traveled bridge plunges into a river?

As things stand now, the American infrastructure is incapable of meeting the competitive demands of the globalized 21st-century economy. Senator Hagel noted that ports are overwhelmed by the ever-expanding volume of international trade. Rail lines are overloaded. Highways are clogged.

“The basic infrastructure of a country will determine that country’s future,” he said, “and we are far behind.”

We appear to have forgotten the lessons of history. Time and again an economic boom has followed periods of sustained infrastructure improvement. It’s impossible to calculate all of the benefits from (to mention just a few) the Erie Canal, which connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean and helped make New York America’s premier city; the rural electrification program and other capital improvements of the New Deal; the interstate highway program of the Eisenhower administration.

The tremendous costs and vast reach of today’s infrastructure requirements means that the federal government has to take a leadership role. It’s inevitable. The only question is when.

The financier Felix Rohatyn, who served as ambassador to France during the Clinton administration, and former Senator Warren Rudman, a Republican, have been sounding the alarm for a number of years now, urging the government to get over its unwillingness to invest adequately in public transportation systems, water projects, schools, dams, the electric grid, and so on.

I remember Mr. Rohatyn telling me, “A modern economy needs a modern platform, and that’s the infrastructure.”

The current concern over the economy should be taken by the government as a signal to finally move ahead on this critically important issue.

Last night in his State of the Union address, George Bush mentioned his record on job creation, never once acknowledging that the number of jobs created during his years in office has never been sufficient to offset new entrants into the workforce, let alone those who have been put out of work by offshoring and corporate mismanagement. What Dodd and Hagel offer is a real opportunity to create jobs for the displaced and at least stop our crumbling infrastructure from turning us into the next superpower to crumble into irrelevance.

Labels: Chris Dodd, Chuck Hagel, real bipartisanship

You have to go a long way to piss off Harry Reid, if you're a Republican. Reid is hardly a guy to go to the mat on anything for principle, as progressives know, since we've watched him and his counterparts in the House cave to the Bush Administration time and time again. But yesterday Reid finally did the right thing, pulling a squeaker of a majority against a member of his own party's attempt to do the contributors' bidding. Yesterday, prevailing against the Republicans' attempt to vote immediately on revising FISA to permit warrantless wiretapping by the government, using the telecommunications companies:

The 48 to 45 vote put Democrats in the odd position of opposing a vote on a bill supported by Democratic leaders and authored by fellow Democrat-Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Va., chairman of the intelligence panel.

Rockefeller and most Democrats said they opposed the Republican motion because it would have prevented a full airing of Democratic amendments to the controversial bill.

“The FISA legislation before the Senate has been taken hostage,” said Rockefeller in a floor speech urging Democrats to vote against ending debate and bringing his bill up for a vote. “In a transparent attempt to score political points off of national security issues, the White House has decided once again that scaring the American people with unfounded and manipulative claims is in order.”

A temporary measure providing expanded wiretapping authority approved last August is scheduled to expire on Friday. The Senate voted 48 to 45 to reject an effort to extend that measure.

The bill, co-authored by Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., cleared the Senate panel last fall by a wide, 13-2 vote. It would update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which forces law enforcement agencies to obtain a court warrant before eavesdropping on suspected terrorists and spies.

The next step is uncertain. Civil liberties groups, which lobbied hard to prevent the bill come to the floor, said one option is to do nothing and force the administration to revert back to the original 1978 law.

The proposed law is controversial because it essentially makes permanent President Bush’s program that secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on telephone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists without a court warrant as required under the law.

The bill also contains a provision, sought by the White House, that would give telephone companies legal protection from dozens of lawsuits now pending against the telcom industry for participating in the president’s terrorist surveillance program without a court warrant.

Republicans, just hours before President Bush was to address the nation in his annual State of the Union speech, portrayed Democrats as being weak on terrorists for failing to end debate and vote on the Rockefeller-Bond measure.

Prior to congressional action in August, the nation’s intelligence agencies were unable to collect vital foreign intelligence without the prior approval of a court, said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, speaking on the floor.

“This will be the case again if we do not make permanent these changes,” Chambliss said. “Our intelligence community told us that without updating FISA, they were not just handicapped, but that they were hamstrung.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, urged Democrats to vote with Republicans to end debate and vote on the intelligence committee bill. It is time to support a bipartisan bill, Cornyn said, and give the intelligence community the tools they need to thwart future terrorist attacks.

The Republicans' claims are, of course, crap. The existing FISA legislation does allow a "tap first, get a warrant later" approach. It in no way hogties intelligence agencies from conducting wiretaps where there is a reason to do so. What it does do is prevent telecommunications companies from conducting the kind of mass data mining of all communications of all Americans that flagrantly violate the Constitution. And despite what Republicans claim, all this vote yesterday does is allow time for a thorough vetting of the proposed updates.

Glenn Greenwald has been all over this from the beginning, and wrote yesterday:

It now seems highly likely (though not certain) that the Democratic filibuster to prevent a vote on the Senate Intelligence Committee bill will succeed. This afternoon on the Senate floor, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter even indicated that he would support the filibuster, making it extremely unlikely that Senate Republicans will be able to get 60 votes to cut off further debate and proceed to a vote.

That means that the Senate will then proceed to debate and vote on all of the pending proposed amendments to the Senate Intelligence Committee bill (including one from Dodd and Feingold to strip telecom immunity out of it, one from Feinstein to transfer the telecom cases to the FISA court and let that court decide whether there should be immunity, one from Feinstein re-iterating that FISA is the "exclusive means" for legal eavesdropping, and one from Specter/Whitehouse to allow the telecom lawsuits to continue but to substitute the Government for the telecoms as defendants).

But the most interesting question at the moment is whether the Senate, once it blocks a final vote on the bill, will be able to pass a 30-day extension of the Protect America Act. The House is scheduled tomorrow to vote on the extension, but either way, the President has vowed to veto it.

If there is no 30-day extension, then it is difficult to see how this is going to play out. The deadline for expiration of the PAA is this Friday. If the House and Senate do not pass identical bills by that date -- and, provided the Senate sustains its filibuster this afternoon, it seems impossible that they will -- then that means (in light of Bush's refusal to accept a 30-day extension) that the PAA is almost certain to expire on Friday without any new bill being in place. Given Bush's endless insistence that the PAA is necessary to save us all from The Terrorists, it is -- as I explained this morning -- one of his most brazen acts ever that he will simply allow the PAA to expire. How can expiration of this "Critical Intelligence Tool" possibly be preferable to a 30-day extension?

The only conceivable way that this could all work out for the White House is for there to be a repeat of what occurred back in August, when the pro-warrantless-eavesdropping Protect America Act was foisted on our country: namely, the Senate hastily passes at the last minute a terrible bill demanded by the White House right before the deadline, and then forces the House to choose between (a) passing the terrible Senate bill or (b) allowing the deadline to pass with no bill at all. But given the rather strong opposition in the House to telecom immunity and vesting vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President, it's hard to imagine the House capitulating to the Senate again in that way.

This afternoon, I asked a well-placed and knowledgeable source in the House about what would likely happen if the Senate passed a bad bill tomorrow or Wednesday and left the House with very little time either to do the same or let the PAA expire. This is the reply:

As to how it plays out, I'm sure that you saw the editorial in the New York Times yesterday that suggested we pass a 30-day extension and leave town, much like Senate did to us in August with S. 1927 (the PAA).

We're not in session this week after tomorrow afternoon. House vote on HR 5104 [to extend the PAA by 30 days] is contemplated tomorrow.

If the bill fails over here [because] of Republican opposition, or in the Senate, or in the President's veto pen, then any "going dark" would be on their hands.

That's the right way to think about it and one hopes the House will do that. Moreover, since the House isn't in session until after tomorrow, it seems impossible that there will be a bill ready for the President's signature before Friday -- which means Bush will have to choose between retreating from his veto vow on the 30-day extension or leaving us all vulnerable to being Slaughtered by the Terrorists and unable to listen in when Osama Calls.

I've long suspected that the purpose of the wiretap program was as much to gather dirt on the Adminstration's supposed opponents as to prevent terrorism, and among those opponents are people like Harry Reid and other Democrats who would attempt to put the brakes on the Bushista march towards totalitarianism. But at least for one day, enough Democrats were able to break free of their fear of, or thrall to, the sniveling little man behind the curtain of Bush the Great and Powerful, and do the right thing for the country.

Labels: FISA

State of the Union chat is being hosted this year by P.J. Sauter over at Morning Seditionists. So clicky-clicky and join us over there! The chat is going on now (7 PM) and will go till whenever.

Jane Hamsher reports that the Clinton and Obama campaigns has said that both candidates will return to Washington to vote "no" on cloture on the Intel version of the FISA bill.

Does anyone honestly believe that without the netroots, and without John Edwards tugging on the leftmost end of that ideological cord, either of them would have been willing to take a stand on this, and leave themselves open to Republican attacks on their "seriousness about fighting terrorists"?

I don't. And get used to it, folks. Because regardless of which of the two of them gets this nomination, we will have to keep the pressure on at all times, because we are dealing with two candiates who don't exactly have stellar histories of being willing to take a strong stand against the worst excesses of Republicans and their enablers.

Labels: FISA

Countrywide Financial outgoing CEO Angelo Mozilio thinks that by stuffing his pockets with only $24 million, he can make the perception of him as a corporate scumbag go away:

Angelo Mozilo, head of Countrywide Financial, has bowed to pressure and will give up his controversial $37.5m (£18.9m) severance package from the ailing US sub-prime mortgage lender.

Mozilo, one of America's most highly paid executives, had been due to collect the pay-off following Countrywide's $4bn takeover by Bank of America.

The takeover has not yet been completed, however, and there have been reports that the continuing turmoil in the US housing market could derail the deal.

"I believe this decision is the right thing to do as Countrywide works toward the successful completion of the merger with Bank of America," Mozilo said in a statement.

He is also giving up the $400,000 a year he was due to be paid as a consultant to the company after his retirement, together with benefits including the use of a private jet.

The Countrywide chairman and chief executive has come under fire from politicians, with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently describing the payoff as "outrageous" and accusing 69-year-old Mozillo of being "one of the principal architects of this whole house of cards".

When the pay-off was first revealed earlier this month, Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis said the package would enable Mozilo to go away and "have some fun".

He should still be able to do that, however - Mozilo retains a pension and retirement package worth around $24m and still has a sizeable shareholding in the company he co-founded in 1969.

My retirement fund has lost every penny that I've put into it this year, with no end in sight, since overseas markets are tumbling again this morning before the U.S. stock market even opens.

Tonight George W. Bush gives his final (thank God) State of the Union address. Word is that the speech will focus on the economy. My prediction is that he'll talk about the economy being "structurally sound", as he said last week when signing quickie legislation to get cash-for-votes checks in the mail for Americans, passed by Congress and signed by the Idiot-in-Chief. He'll probably talk about "optimism". Chances are he'll have some white guy from a red state who started a business in 2007 and hired two black guys sitting next to Laura Bush, right there in the seat Ahmad Chalabi used to occupy. He'll point to that guy, who created two whole jobs, as emblematic of the success of endless tax cuts for giant corporations like Countrywide. Maybe he'll even bring back that "uniquely American" woman with the disabled son who works three jobs -- assuming she can get the time off.

Tonight, George W. Bush will try to make a shit sandwich out of the steaming pile of rotting trash into which he's turned a once great nation. It's probably the last time Americans will pay attention to anything he says. Of course, listening to what he says has always been a fool's errand. As Jacob Weisberg notes today,

Mr. Bush began his February 2001 address by hailing the new spirit of cooperation he hoped would characterize his relations with Congress. “Together we are changing the tone in the nation’s capital,” he declared. The new president’s top priority would be education. He intended to marry the liberal desire for more federal money to the conservative demand for higher standards.

The rest of the speech was similarly moderate in tone and substance. Mr. Bush planned to use part of the enormous fiscal surplus he inherited for a broad-based tax cut. But he also wanted to expand Medicare benefits, preserve Social Security, extend access to health care and protect the environment. He concluded with an exhortation to bipartisanship — in Spanish. “Juntos podemos,” he said. “Together we can.”

I'm not as charitable towards Bush as Weisberg is, in that I never "kind of liked" that or any George W. Bush. It's hard to "like" a president that you know full well stole the office. But there's no denying that over the course of his presidency, any small spirit of cooperation devolved into the tantrums of a small man with messianic delusions and no conscience whatsoever.

As he surveys the wreckage that is America under his leadership, a better man would use it as a moment of introspection. Perhaps he might try the "I meant well" approach. But George W. Bush is incapable of admitting a mistake of any kind. And in defending his catastrophic record, he's going to prove himself as tone-deaf and clueless as the guy who thinks that taking only $24 million for running a company into the ground and putting thousands of people out of work is somehow an act of redemption.

Labels: corporatism, economic death watch, George W. Bush

Emily Stover DeRocco has been cozying up to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and other business interests for the last several years. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that she recently left her post as Assistant Secretary of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) to become president of NAM's Manufacturing Institute's National Center for the American Workforce.

As Patrick Buchanan wrote on page 230 in his book, Day of Reckoning,

The National Association of Manufacturers converted to free trade - to be free of its American workers, free to move its factories abroad, free to export back to the United States, free of charge.

Could things change with the addition of DeRocco to the staff?

The AFL-CIO weblog has a nice tidy little article about how DeRocco helped deliver the entire Department of Labor to the hands of business interests. Indeed, look at this damning little tidbit from NAM's 2002 CWS Workforce Development Conference, where it was reported "Assistant Labor Secretary Emily Stover De Rocco informed conference attendees of the Bush Administration’s desire to refocus the Department of Labor toward valuing the voice of business." It's too bad that the link purportedly giving us the text of her speech is now defunct.

John Engler, the President of NAM, gushed in the press release,

"Emily provided exemplary leadership as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training and is widely regarded as a leading authority on workforce development,” Engler said. “Finding qualified employees is a daunting challenge for the great majority of manufacturers and the skills gap will become an ever greater problem as older manufacturing workers retire. Emily comes to us at a pivotal moment when her leadership is greatly needed.”

Based on past performance, I don't think we should get ready to usher in a new era of prosperity for the American manufacturing industry workforce. By looking at one of the quarterly DOL/ETA's 2004 Workforce System Results, you'll see how she helped throw an awful lot of money towards programs that only affected a few hundred people here and a few thousand people there. (Honestly, does anyone know anyone who's ever participated in or benefited from any of these workforce training programs?)

On page 8 of the .PDF file, notice how the results to goal ratio for Foreign Labor Certification functions were about the best of any category. The report proudly displays how the Department of Labor reached their highest grade by processing 99% of employer labor condition applications for the foreign H-1B professional/specialty temporary worker program within 7 days of receipt!

Pages 12 and 13 of the file describes the old H-1B Technical Skills Training Program, first authorized in 1998, which had the ".....long term goal of raising the skill levels of domestic workers in order to fill specialty occupations presently being filled by temporary workers admitted to the United States under the provisions of the H-1B visa." Notice how quickly this program was dropped, as it seemed to have completely disappeared from the Quarterly Workforce System Results by the end of 2005. The IEEE-USA reported in February 2005 that many people were disappointed with the performance outcomes of the program. However, the program was doomed much earlier than that, as witnessed by this statement issued by Emily Stover DeRocco on February 27, 2002:

We will propose to redirect fees previously used to fund the H-1B training grants to reduce the growing backlog of permanent foreign labor certification applications. Over 300,000 employer applications are pending processing, 78% of which were received between January and April 30,2001, when Congress extended section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. An estimated $137.5 million will be available for this purpose. The H-1B grants were authorized to increase training for American workers for jobs in which labor shortages have caused employers to hire high skilled foreign workers. We have no evidence that spending $100 million to $200 million annually will have any measurable impact on reducing the reliance of American employers on workers with H-1B visas.

Does anyone think the program failed to reduce "..the reliance of American employers on workers with H-1B visas" because it's cheaper to pay H-1B visa holders than to pay American workers?

A direct outgrowth of the redirected fees "previously used to fund the H-1B training grants" was the establishment of backlog elimination centers for the processing of applications under the DOL's Permanent Foreign Labor Certification (PERM) program. See my "Pearl Street Scam" post for additional information.

The Department of Labor couldn't seem to make a go of the H-1B Technical Skills Training Program in order to train American workers for American jobs. However, they seemed to do a stellar job of reducing the PERM applications backlogs and bringing in as many foreign workers as they could, as quickly as possible. The Department issued a proud announcement on October 1, 2007 that:

.......the permanent foreign labor certification program’s backlog has been eliminated, with nearly 99 percent of cases completed and the remainder awaiting responses from employers. For almost three years, more than 300 workers in two processing centers reviewed approximately 363,000 pending labor applications, a backlog created as a result of legislative changes in 1997 and 2000.

Even more proudly:

"We applaud the accomplishments of the dedicated individuals whose critical role allowed the ongoing operation of employment-based immigration programs,” said Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training Emily Stover DeRocco. “Their resolve to the mission of seeing the task through to its successful completion is an inspiration to all who serve and do the public’s business.”

Based on what we know about Ms. DeRocco, forgive me if I have my doubts as to whether the numbers of Americans employed in the manufacturing sector will rise at any time in the near future.

(Cross-posted to Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: Emily Stover DeRocco, globalization, H-1Bs, John Engler, National Association of Manufacturers