AARP, ACLU, YMCA, Whatever

Less than two years ago, the AARP was regarded as practically an appendage of the Republican Party, as it lobbied (at considerable expense) in support of Bush's Medicare destruction bill. How quickly things change. Now the AARP is the enemy of the Bush administration, to be dealt with by the same people who brought you the Swift Boat Vets slander against Kerry. Josh Marshall has the details about USANext... sorry, no link from here. The short version: United Seniors Association (USA) was initially a slush fund through which the pharmaceutical industry funneled money to the GOP. Now it has apparently been assigned to create the bizarre anti-gay ad against the AARP, found, for example, on the American Spectator web site... again, no link from here, but I'm sure you have already seen it. Marshall points out that one of his readers discovered that there are more ads in the works, ads attempting to link the AARP to (among other org's hated by the right) the ACLU. Well, they both start with 'A' ...

I discovered something, too, though not quite so sensational: American Spectator is passing on its own page referer to the page you get if you click the USANext ad. That is to say, if you were to

• Visit Josh Marshall's site, Talking Points Memo,
• Click his link to American Spectator to view the USANext ad, and
• From American Spectator, click the USANext ad,

USANext would be informed that the site you visited previous to American Spectator was Talking Points Memo. I've used the same mechanism for benign purposes... e.g., sending a user back to an earlier page in a sequence of pages, when that earlier page can vary from one circumstance to another... but I've never passed the referer on to an advertiser. I don't know if this is sinister... it doesn't identify the viewer as an individual... but it does seem to me a bit of gratuitous information gathering when the info is passed from one site to another unrelated site.

And now your earworm for the day: the parody "AARP," to the tune of "YMCA" by The Village People. It's stuck in my head; why should I be alone in my misery?

Steve
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Slides

I'm both too busy and disinclined to write about politics at the moment. But if you're the kind of person who actually enjoys viewing other people's slides, check out the pictures of our day trip to Armand Bayou Nature Center and other areas near Clear Lake. The old farm, at least, was pretty interesting. Click here:

I'm reminded of an old New Yorker cartoon decades ago (sorry; I can't remember the cartoonist), depicting a dinner party in which the host is dressed in a baseball uniform complete with spikes on his shoes, carrying a home plate into the living room, while the hostess is saying something like, "Oh, Harry, no one wants to watch your slides!" If that's you, please don't click!

(Hints: if you're on a dialup, don't use the automated slideshow; use the manual controls instead. If you use IE or Firefox, hit F11 before you start, to accommodate the larger images.)

Steve
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Every Garden Has A Wead

Bush's garden has Doug Wead. The NY Times tops David D. Kirkpatrick's article on Wead's secret tapes of phone conversations with George W. Bush from about 1998 to 2000 with the rather mild-mannered headline, In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President. The Houston Chronicle's hed on an AP article is rather more blunt: Secretly taped phone calls to Bush appear to reveal drug use.

There is little in the tapes that is new, at least in those tapes Wead chose to reveal to a Times reporter. Bush was, as he is today, arrogant, hypocritical, touchy, angry at the press and convinced that the world is against him. The reporter's excerpts (as far as I can tell there are no transcripts at this point) do make for interesting reading, and place Bush's later lies in context.

On the other hand, if I were Wead, I'd watch my back.

Steve
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Belated Valentine's Day

Stella and I spent the day in the NASA - Clear Lake area, visiting Armand Bayou Nature Center, eating wonderful food, amusing each other with good conversation, snapping photos, shopping at Half Price Books, and generally making up for having spent Valentine's Day apart. Pictures at 11. No, actually, I'm in no condition to post-process and post those pictures by 11... maybe in the next day or two. Thanks for your patience while the YDD, who is very slightly the older of the two of us, recovers. "I'll be back" ... and no, I'm not running for governor of CA.

Steve
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No Place To Hide (Book Review)

( #)

Bush's Intelligence

Bush has appointed John Negroponte as the first director of national intelligence. A New York Times editorial is mildly positive on his appointment, and not quite but almost dismissive of his dubious past. Jeanne of Body and Soul has a good summary in her post, He may be a terrorist, but he's our terrorist, including links to articles (con and pro) on Negroponte's long, varied and controversial career, and as always some conclusions of her own. Be sure to follow all the links, including the one to a Guardian article posted by one of the commenters.

Negroponte's appointment is proof of at least three things: one, credible evidence of a nominee's illegal facilitation of massive human rights violations is no disqualification for high office in today's United States; two, old and ideologically obsessed cold warriors never die, they just get named to positions in which they can do still more damage; three, Bush can appoint anyone he wants no matter what the world thinks, safe in his assumption that our Senate will confirm his appointee with hardly a fuss.

Steve
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Women's Rights In Iraq

Please read Riverbend today. Here's a sample:

     ...

Abu Ammar shook his head and sighed, “Well if we’re New York or we’re Baghdad or we’re hell, it’s not going to make a difference to me. I’ll still sell my vegetables here.”

I nodded and handed over the bags to be weighed. “Well… they’re going to turn us into another Iran. You know list 169 means we might turn into Iran.” Abu Ammar pondered this a moment as he put the bags on the old brass scale and adjusted the weights.

“And is Iran so bad?” He finally asked. Well no, Abu Ammar, I wanted to answer, it’s not bad for *you* - you’re a man… if anything your right to several temporary marriages, a few permanent ones and the right to subdue females will increase. Why should it be so bad? Instead I was silent. It’s not a good thing to criticize Iran these days. I numbly reached for the bags he handed me, trying to rise out of that sinking feeling that overwhelmed me when the results were first made public.

It’s not about a Sunni government or a Shia government- it’s about the possibility of an Iranian-modeled Iraq. Many Shia are also appalled with the results of the elections. There’s talk of Sunnis being marginalized by the elections but that isn’t the situation. It’s not just Sunnis- it’s moderate Shia and secular people in general who have been marginalized.

     ...

There are those who say BushCo™ never thought of this outcome when they preemptively invaded Iraq, killed a lot of people and later facilitated some semblance of elections while the war continues. I don't know that I believe those who say that. Considering Bush's actual attitudes toward women, as manifested not in his mouthed platitudes but in his implemented policies, I think it's possible that a male-dominated theocracy is exactly what he has in mind... for Iraq and possibly for America. Mission accomplished?

Steve
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Friday Circular Cat Blogging

Yin and Yang, I mean, Tabitha and Samantha (who moved at the very last instant, as usual)...

Steve
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Horowitz The Humorist

Who knew. They accuse the Left of being humorless. I always thought that some right-wingers, David Horowitz definitely among them, were missing a funny-bone. But I admit it. I was wrong.

I guarantee that if you waste a half hour clicking the picture links on this page, you'll be ROTFLYFAO.

Some of the material is just plain silly. Some is probably libelous, not that anyone depicted on that page cares. Some of the people pictured have made a career of being noticed for their politics... Seeger, Sarandon and Robbins. (On this page, we learn that the last two have children together but are... gasp!... not married!) And some... well, notice how many of the Evil Left are dead people. Rachel Corrie? Give me a break. Whatever you think of her politics and how she pursued them, her death was a tragedy. And the wingnuts accuse us of being "shrill."

But the real prize is the photo of that evil old commie Ted Kennedy. Who's going to volunteer to sneak into David Horowitz's bedroom and snap a similar picture of him? Warning: should you accept this mission, the Moonbat Central Agency will disavow all knowledge of it, and of you... and you'd better take your anti-nausea medication before going in.

Meanwhile, the page is mildly entertaining. I recommend it for a bit of amusement. Maybe someone could parody it, though it's difficult to write parody when the original is itself a farce. (By the way, does their little circular map of links remind anyone else of a cat's sphincter?)

Steve
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Miscellany

• Fossil Reanalysis Pushes Back Origin of Homo sapiens

  A new analysis of human remains first discovered in 1967 suggests that they are in fact much older than previously believed. The results, published today in the journal Nature, push back the emergence of our species by nearly 35,000 years.

  35,000 years, back to about 196,000 years? I just knew it. I've been feeling older recently...
  
  
• Microsoft forced by security concerns to fix IE browser

  Bill Gates announced a new, more secure version of Microsoft Internet Explorer this week in response to general public dissatisfaction with holes in the browser and to particular worries that the open source Firefox browser was emerging as a strong alternative.

  Gates, Microsoft's Chairman and Chief Software Architect, said the company will release a test version of IE browser that better protects users from scams and malicious code while surfing the Web.

  Additionally, reacting to a an increasing number of online scams involving spyware, Microsoft has decided to offer its antispyware product free of charge, Gates said.

  The company's previous plans called for a new version of the ubiquitous browser to be included in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, due in 2006, IDG News Service said. "We have decided to do a new version of Internet Explorer," Gates, speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, said. The new IE 7 will "add new levels of security," he said. A first beta is due in mid-2005.

       ...

  Yeah, Bill, get on the bandwagon. A secure browser and free security software... who'd have thought of it. Oh, wait, a few people not owned by Microsoft already have thought of it, quite a long time ago...
  
  
• Coffee May Reduce Risk of Liver Cancer

  NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Habitual coffee drinking seems to be associated with a lower risk of developing liver cancer, according to a study conducted in Japan and reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

  A second study in the same journal suggests that caffeinated coffee consumption is not tied to colorectal cancer, although decaffeinated coffee may decrease the risk of rectal cancer.

  Dr. Manami Inoue and colleagues at the National Cancer Center in Tokyo surveyed approximately 90,000 individuals in 1990 or between 1993 and 1994. The subjects were followed through the end of 2001, during which time 334 were diagnosed with liver cancer.

  The risk of liver cancer among those who almost never drank coffee was twice as high as for those who drank coffee on a daily basis.

       ...

  So... does my drinking cancel the bad effects of my other drinking? or vice versa?

Steve
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Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter? on the other side?

Via Atrios, we have this quote from Powerline (no, I'm not going to link that post directly; for one thing, I'm tired of playing whack-a-troll):

Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side.

To anyone who says Carter is on the other side: God damn you to rot in Hell.

I can say that with no qualms; I'm an old-style UU, and the Universalist side of the tradition holds that there is no Hell. And there's no great consensus among UU's about the nature of God. Whatever. May the undefinable God do Her/His/Its best to damn the Carter-bashers to rot in that nonexistent Hell anyway.

When Carter was president, I was not overly impressed. Since then, I have come to realize that Carter may well be the finest human being who ever served as president in my lifetime, quite apart from his performance as president. All you fundamentalist right-wing Christians out there: look to Jimmy Carter for an example of how a Christian life is lived, not merely talked about.

I'll reverse the challenge made by one wingnut commenter on Atrios: name me one thing, just one, that George W. Bush has done that is morally or ethically superior to anything Jimmy Carter has done, during or since his presidency. Right... you can't do it. Bush's actions have been uniformly immoral and unethical.

(Grrrrr...)

Steve
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The Gravatar

Some of you already have them. Most of you have probably noticed them in comment threads here and on other blogs. Rather than define a gravatar myself, I'll quote the fellow who runs the site that serves them:

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

So what's an avatar? That gets complicated. You can delve into Hindu mythology, where it is a physical incarnation of Vishnu (among other deities... forgive me if I'm simplifying), but for our purposes, it's an image that represents you on the web. The Gravatar site sensibly allows you to provide a small image yourself, and looks it up by your email address whenever you drop a comment on a site that supports them. (Pharyngula is the prime example of a site at which lots of commenters use gravatars.)

Why is this relevant? Well, HaloScan has made gravatars available through its comment services. So far, they can be displayed only at 28x28 pixels, which is more a little fingernail than a thumbnail. But they're free, and they're pleasant. I encourage you to get one. (You do have to comment consistently over the same email address to make them work properly.)

My gravatar is absolutely inscrutable at the resolution at which HaloScan causes it to be served. Here is the full-size (80x80) version of it:

If it's still unclear who it is and what I'm doing, let me know, and I'll post the original picture. Meanwhile, I encourage all of you to get one. You can't argue with the price!

---

An aside: if you use HaloScan comments, and you want gravatars to appear on your own site, until Jeevan enables them for everyone, you'll need to use HaloScan's beta HTML template. If you're not inclined, or not a premium member, don't worry; as I understand it (and don't take this as gospel), eventually, gravatars will appear on all HaloScan sites. If you are inclined, and are a premium member, I highly recommend using the beta template; it has other advantages... notably, a Preview button that works better than my old hand-tapped one ever did.

Steve
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Dense Fog Advisory

According to the NOAA weather page for Houston, the area is experiencing a dense fog. After writing four posts yesterday, and celebrating Stella's return from Atlanta, so is the Doggerelist. If I take a break until this evening, don't be too surprised. Thanks for your patience. As compensation for the lack of a real post, I offer this joke someone sent me...

"Feb. 2 was Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address. It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a small creature of little intelligence and limited capacities for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog."

Steve
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Miller, Cooper, Time Lose Appeal

From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

New York, February 15, 2005 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed that a federal appeals court has ruled that two journalists can be jailed for not revealing their confidential sources.

A panel of three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled today that Time magazine, Time White House correspondent Matthew Cooper, and New York Times correspondent Judith Miller, must either provide evidence or testify before a criminal grand jury in the CIA leak case.

The journalists could be jailed for up to 18 months, and Time magazine faces a daily fine of $1,000 for refusing to turn over written materials also demanded by prosecutors in the case. The case will now return to the U.S. District Court, presided over by Chief Justice Thomas F. Hogan, whose original decision has been now upheld by the appellate court, for sentencing. No date has been set.

Today's decision, written by Circuit Judge David Sentelle, with the appellate court's two other judges concurring, found that "there is no First Amendment privilege protecting the evidence sought" by prosecutors from the journalists, and that "if any such common law privilege exists, it is not absolute, and in this case has been overcome." Eight-and-a-half pages of the 83-page decision are redacted to maintain the secrecy of the ongoing grand jury proceedings.

     ...

Sentelle... Sentelle... why is that name so familiar?

Steve
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Who Watches What We Read?

Two articles in the Houston Chronicle online caught my attention today: this...

Mayor wrote a new page in library history
Previously, the librarians decided if books removed
...

It wasn't unusual for the Houston library to receive a complaint about a sexually explicit book like porn star Jenna Jameson's autobiography.

What was unusual was that the mayor dealt with it personally, according to a Chronicle review of 10 years of library complaints.

"I think it should have never been bought, but that's my opinion," Mayor Bill White said Monday about Jameson's best-seller, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, which contains lurid confessions and some nude photos.

After Councilwoman Pam Holm complained last month that the book had been displayed prominently at a branch facility, the library system's 12 copies of the best-seller were ordered to closed stacks at the central library. Books in those stacks are available for browsing or check-out, but patrons must request them specifically.

White said he did not order that move but asked the library's interim director to use "common sense" and was under the impression that she ordered the book to the private stacks. That decision — since reversed — prompted protests about First Amendment issues as well as complaints from the American Library Association that the mayor bypassed established library procedures.

     ...

... and this...

Islamic leaders say no radicalism preached here
Anti-American material found in 2 local mosques is disavowed
...

Local Islamic leaders say Houston's Muslim community does not practice the radical, anti-democratic theology preached in some books and pamphlets that a human rights group said were found in two local mosques.

In a recent report, Washington, D.C.-based Freedom House said the Saudi government has distributed in U.S. mosques anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda that reflects a "totalitarian ideology of hatred that can incite violence."

The propaganda, the group said, espouses Wahhabism, the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia.

In Houston, Wahhabism-related materials were found at the Islamic Society of Greater Houston North Zone Masjid at 11815 Adel Road and the Masjid El-Farouq at 1207 Conrad Sauer Drive.

"Just because those books were there does not mean that the organization condones such books," said Rodwan Saleh, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston. "All of these books ... they don't express the views of that Muslim community."

     ...

First things (almost trivial things) first: the Mayor should pull his oar out of those waters. Whatever he thinks of that book and books like it, those decisions should be made by professional librarians, who are in general well-equipped by experience to deal with almost daily assaults on the public's right to have access to controversial material.

Last things (and in some ways more important things) last. Freedom House seems to have changed a bit since its founding by Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie etc. It is interesting to see financial support from the Soros Foundations and the Sarah Scaife Foundation on the same supporter list (along with the other usual suspects), but it is not difficult to get a read on the motivation for the statement quoted from the report. One can gather some of their slant from the title of their report: SAUDI PUBLICATIONS ON HATE IDEOLOGY FILL AMERICAN MOSQUES (note: link to .pdf; also, caps in title are original).

Well, no; that's utter crap. There are many things in American mosques other than Saudi publications on hate ideology. And there's no way of telling how those publications got to those mosques, or, for that matter, why someone reported their presence to Freedom House. It even occurs to me that the same person may have both dropped the material and informed about it.

Regrettably, the statement made by the title is echoed in the body of the report. Here's an example:

The Saudi literature is bent on instilling in its followers the conviction that whenever they are not in Saudi Arabia or other Islamic countries, they are in enemy territory and accordingly should struggle to establish Islam, or else return to the Islamic world.

A Saudi-government text [Document No. 32] for tenth-grade students entitled Science of Tawheed, copies of which were obtained at the Al-Farouq Mosque in Houston, Texas, teaches the impropriety of mixing with, or imitating, the unbelievers.

“Residing among the unbelievers continuously is also forbidden because it is dangerous for the belief of the Muslim. That is why Allah made it obligatory to emigrate from the land of disbelief to the land of Islam.” [Document No. 32]

The message is that the peaceful coexistence of Muslim and non-Muslim in a multi-cultural state is not simply unachievable, but is undesirable and even punishable: If a Muslim “thinks it is permissible to be under their control, and he is pleased with the way they are, then there is no doubt that he is no longer a Muslim” [Document No. 32]. Muslims content to live in the West are therefore delegitimized, and, in fact, declared apostate. Anything positive they may say about the West is thereby discredited.

Well, OK; the Saudi publication contains a statement offensive to most Americans of whatever religion. But does its appearance on the shelves of a Houston mosque have any significance? Let me put you an analogy. I own several books on Communism. Does that make me a commie? One of the books is from the 1950s, written by a scholar attempting to fathom the whole phenomenon of the "Red scare" while living in the American society in which the scare was taking place. The book is anything but positive toward Communism, but it is very informative about American perceptions of Communism and of foreign influences in general. Should I get rid of that wonderful old book because it talks about something many people find distasteful or dangerous?

Before the web came into being, one's libraries... public and personal... were one's most prized resources in pursuit of the truth, or at least of accurate information. One should be able to have anything... literally anything... in one's library, without being surveilled by the government as it pursues potential terrorists. The notion that one should never read publications by Communists or by Saudi religious extremists is an anti-American notion. Concluding from its presence in a mosque that members of that mosque espouse the publication's violent anti-Christian or anti-Jewish philosophy is nonsensical, yet that is exactly what Freedom House does in its report:

A Saudi government high school text instructs Houston mosque-goers that even celebrating their own birthdays, as unbelievers do, is forbidden:      ...

Oh, please. That high school text does no such thing. At most, it "instructs" Houston mosque-goers that some Saudi Muslims have ideas different from their own about living in American society. Get real: textbooks don't instruct people; people instruct people.

The more I read this document, the more I believe Freedom House is attempting to use someone's surveillance (whose?) of the libraries of these mosques to instill yet more fear in non-Muslim Americans by promoting a false implication that any significant number of American Muslims support this kind of extremism.

I've known a few Muslims in Houston... not nearly enough to generalize, but a few... and they are peaceable people, dedicated to their families and their faith. They do not deserve this kind of fearmongering... one might even legitimately call it persecution.

Freedom House: you belie your name. Shame!

Steve
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How Bush Supports The Troops

From David Savage of the L.A. Times:

WASHINGTON — The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

     ...

(Yeah, yeah; emphasis mine.)

Excuse me; I think I'm going to be sick. What is wrong with Bush? And how can he get away with this?

(Via AMERICAblog.)

Steve
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Republican Ethics In Texas

Yes, I know... these days, "Republican ethics" may be an oxymoron. And so it seems, based on this post by the Stout Dem called Delay's Law. Quoting an article on Drive Democracy, which in turn quotes the Austin American-Statesman (sorry for the long list of attributions), we have this jewel:

A member of Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick's leadership team wants to give the Texas Ethics Commission veto power over local prosecutors' prosecution of crimes under the election code.

Rep. Mary Denny, R–Aubrey, chairwoman of the House Elections Committee, would create an office under the state commission to conduct election code violation investigations such as Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle's two-year investigation of the Texas Association of Business, Texans for a Republican Majority and Craddick.

House Bill 913 would prohibit a prosecutor from pursuing charges if the state office determines there is no criminal offense.

Shannon Edmonds with the Texas District and County Attorneys Association said the group is taking a wait-and-see attitude on the legislation but added, "It seems to keep prosecutors from prosecuting crimes."

     ...

(Emphasis mine.)

Are we about to see the principle of IOKIYAR (it's OK if you're a Republican) enshrined into law in Texas?

It is an understatement to say that these folks have a lot of nerve, introducing a bill that literally places them above the law. Republican ethics, my Democratic ass!

Steve
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Fame! I Want To Live Forever! - UPDATED!

Well, no, actually, I don't. But Ray Kurzweil does. This creative inventor... he is responsible for inventing some of the earliest effective text scanners for computers (initially for use by blind people), as well as one of the highest quality keyboards for musicians... apparently partakes of the traditional craziness that supposedly goes with genius:

WELLESLEY, Mass. (AP) - Ray Kurzweil doesn't tailgate. A man who plans to live forever doesn't take chances with his health on the highway, or anywhere else.

As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his "tactile sensitivity." Adjustments are made as needed.

"I do actually fine-tune my programming," he said.

The famed inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in his new book is no more than 20 years away.

It's a blink of an eye in history, but long enough for the 56-year-old Kurzweil to pay close heed to his fitness. He urges others to do the same in "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever."

The book is partly a health guide so people can live to benefit from a coming explosion in technology he predicts will make infinite life spans possible.

Kurzweil writes of millions of blood cell-sized robots, which he calls "nanobots," that will keep us forever young by swarming through the body, repairing bones, muscles, arteries and brain cells. Improvements to our genetic coding will be downloaded via the Internet. We won't even need a heart.

     ...

We won't even need a heart, eh? I suppose that means George W. Bush is ahead of the curve. But I'm afraid Kurzweil hasn't thought through a few of the social implications of his grand notion: people won't stop making people, and people won't stop making war.

In a worst-case scenario, Kurzweil is right, and George W. Bush lives long enough to put into place his Orwellian vision. In that case, I plan to rebel: I'll stop taking my supplements. Well, all of them except my (ahem) Antidepresident™.

---

Oh, I almost forgot. Happy Purchase-Dozens-Of-Greeting-Cards Day Valentine's Day! Stella is in Atlanta until tomorrow evening, so our celebration... possible for those of us who do have a heart... will be delayed. I hope your V.D. is a good one!

---

UPDATE: be sure to read the comment thread. It's nothing about Kurzweil and all about Valentine's Day and vacuum cleaners. And it's very lively, and it even contains some doggerel... old doggerel, but it's learned new tricks, I assure you.

Steve
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Boxer On Social Security

Even Josh Marshall is beginning to notice Sen. Barbara Boxer. He directs us to a speech she made recently at a senior center in San Francisco:

     ...

Is it true that Social Security is in crisis? Is bankrupt? Is collapsing?

The answer is a resounding NO. According to the most conservative estimates, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits for 38 years. In other words, a 37-year-old worker today will get full benefits until he or she is 75 years old if we do nothing to make adjustments to the Trust Fund. A 47-year old worker today will get full benefits until he or she is 85 years old if nothing is done.

     ...

Have we ever faced a similar Social Security challenge before? Yes. During the Reagan presidency in 1983. Working together, Democrats and Republicans, we resolved the challenge then just as we can do now. So why would an otherwise optimistic George Bush turn into a prophet of pessimism on Social Security?

Because, his initiative is not about meeting the challenges of Social Security to keep it sound; it is not about bringing together Democrats and Republicans as Ronald Reagan did to ensure that full benefits will be there for all Americans. It is about one thing and one thing only: destroying Social Security.

     ...

Boxer discusses not-for-attribution White House memos and tactics for a while, then draws an analogy:

     ...

So let’s talk about these scare tactics for a moment – the “iceberg” strategy. If someone told you that your family would be in solid shape for the next 38 years, you would probably breathe a sigh of relief because that would mean you had done everything necessary to prepare for the next 38 years to pay for your rent or mortgage, feed your kids, take care of your health care, and send your kids to college.

During those 38 years, keeping your eye on the future, you would have to try to earn more, save more, and prepare for that 38th year. You wouldn’t have to throw up your hands and sell your house. And you certainly wouldn’t call your situation a crisis. Frankly, we all face the fact that expenses go up over the years and our families need to prepare for those challenges.

When it comes to Social Security, President Bush not only wants to sell the house, but the car, the antique grandfather clock, and the wedding band. In essence, he is walking away from the foundation of America’s most successful insurance program using scare tactics.

     ...

Then Boxer takes the gloves off (sorry, I couldn't resist):

     ...

Of course we should be used to this by now from this administration. They are the ones who told us that tax cuts to the wealthiest among us would bring unparalleled economic growth – which hasn’t happened.

They are the ones who told us that $50 to $100 billion of oil in Iraq would pay for all the reconstruction of that country – which hasn’t happened.

They are the ones who told us “Mission Accomplished,” when tragically it wasn’t.

They are the ones who told us that a booming economy would lower our deficits – and they are now the highest in history.

They are the ones who told us that the Medicare prescription drug bill would cost $400 billion over 10 years – when, in fact, it is now reported to cost $1.2 trillion.

So a message I have for the American people is this: beware of scare tactics and false information.

     ...

Read the rest, then follow the developing comment thread on the same topic over at the President Boxer blog.

It surely is good to see a Democrat exhibiting courage, advocating for people like us, calling the Bush administration on its blatant lies... in other words, acting the way a Democrat should act.

Steve
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Why Do They Hate Houston So Much?

From the Chronicle:

EFFORT IN BILL TO HELP RAIL DELETED
Proponents question whether 2 congressmen still oppose plan
     ...

Language that would have sped up Metro's light rail expansion got stripped out of a massive appropriations bill in the last Congress, prompting a debate about whether two Houston congressmen are still blocking the city's rail plan.

The deletion came to light last week after the Federal Transit Administration left Metro's Northline and Southeast rail extensions out of its annual funding recommendation report to Congress.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, offered a rider to the Senate version of the appropriations bill that would have forced the FTA to accept the Metropolitan Transit Authority's nontraditional financing proposal. House staff members said they inadvertently inserted similar language in the House version, but it was deleted during frenzied conference-committee negotiations days before Thanksgiving. A similar rider for a San Francisco light rail project was not deleted and is now law.

The deletion has infuriated rail proponents, especially in light of the success of San Francisco, represented by U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Metro and its supporters contend that completion of the next four light rail lines will be postponed.

     ...

Note that it just happened. No one did this. The language just appeared in the bill, then it just... disappeared. There must be stage magicians in that conference committee. So... who really did it? Round up the usual suspects:

Hutchison's amendment would have authorized 100 percent federal funding for the Northline and Southeast extensions in exchange for Metro funding two later rail lines solely with local tax dollars. While DeLay and Culberson say they had nothing to do with the deletion of the amendment in the final version, they say they opposed Hutchison's rider, which by authorizing full federal funding, exempted Metro from federal law requiring at least a 20 percent local contribution on each rail segment. The typical local share is more like 50 percent.

     ...

Hutchison's proposal "would have changed the way we've funded rail projects," DeLay said Friday while attending a Fort Bend County Republican Party dinner. "Metro wanted 100 percent funding, and I don't agree with that. It's the wrong thing for Metro to see if they can get full funding from Congress. They should come up with some matching funds."

Culberson said Friday that Metro asked him in October to support the amendment. He sent letters to the chairmen of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, Don Young, R-Alaska, and the House transportation appropriations subcommittee, Ernest Istook, R-Okla. Both responded they strongly objected to the exemption Metro sought.

     ...

"What Metro was asking for is illegal and utterly inappropriate because all 200 rail-transit projects across the country would then ask for the same 100 percent full funding deal," Culberson said. The conferees "should have struck it, you bet."

     ...

Wait a minute. Since they make the laws, are they not able to make an exception for Houston if they choose to do so? And, um... don't those guys work for us? Houston area members of congress have an obligation to work for the Houston area, not against it.

Look: I'm not saying it isn't reasonable to require Houston to come up with the 20 percent local share. I'm saying it's unreasonable to kill all federal assistance to Houston's rail over a technicality. If other major cities get this, Houston should get it, too.

Metrorail's Red Line is very popular. Ridership has exceeded expectations. Yet rail opponents tried every trick in the book to stop the construction of our one and only line, even after citizens had unequivocally voted for that line and for the whole plan. (They even tried once that I remember to stop the line after construction was already underway.) These members of Congress are obviously in the pockets of local road contractors, but that is nothing new. DeLay and Culberson (whose district I was gerrymandered into) have reasonably secure seats in Congress: Culberson will probably be there forever, and DeLay will be in office until he does the perp walk. So it's hard to explain the need for their opposition on political grounds alone... they have security and they have money. That leads to an obvious question, and I ask it again...

Why do they hate Houston so much?

Steve
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Food From The Mouths Of Babes

Krugman:

It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they're willing to take it.

First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.

     ...

The Bush budget helps that "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" (Paul Simon) as well:

More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.

It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal.      ...

What about it, Dems? Is our leadership up to the task of shooting these fish in a barrel? (Not that I'd ever advocate shooting fish, in a barrel or otherwise...)

Steve
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