A Happy (If Shaky) New Year!

All of you have a safe and happy beginning to 2009! Yes, this shaky photo is really from a July 4 fireworks display a few years ago in Hermann Park, Houston, TX. I'm posting this a few hours early; we're headed for a party.

Steve
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Saturday Signs - Tuesday Edition

I think one can credibly argue that the United States has one of those. Come to think of it, so does Israel.

Steve
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If 'Blog' Is The Answer, What Was The Question? - UPDATE: DOGGEREL!

Q: For liberals, is blogging effective (i.e., does it contribute toward our goals)? If so, is it efficient (i.e., time well spent compared to time spent on other efforts toward those same goals)?

I don't know. I have my doubts. That's why I'm asking you for your thoughts. Well, that, and I just like making a weak pun on the text of an old, delightfully annoying bumper sticker...

UPDATE: with due apologies to Dorothy Parker, here's a litany of alternative political activities:

Résumé, or Mé Not

Steve Bates

Steve
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Herbert: 'Stop Being Stupid'

Bob Herbert says what a lot of us have been thinking:

I’ve got a new year’s resolution and a new slogan for the country.

The resolution may be difficult, but it’s essential. Americans must resolve to be smarter going forward than we have been for the past several years.

Look around you. We have behaved in ways that were incredibly, astonishingly and embarrassingly stupid for much too long. We’ve wrecked the economy and mortgaged the future of generations yet unborn. We don’t even know if we’ll have an automobile industry in the coming years. It’s time to stop the self-destruction.

The slogan? “Invest in the U.S.” By that I mean we should stop squandering the nation’s wealth on unnecessary warfare overseas and mindless consumption here at home and start making sensible investments in the well-being of the American people and the long-term health of the economy.

     ...

Herbert goes on to enumerate instances of the American tendency he points to as the center of the problem: paying for things with "money that wasn't there." I agree with him, though I believe we are all paying the price for the bad behavior of some people, particularly of very badly behaved, very wealthy people playing with enough funny money to have a devastating impact on the entire economy. Perhaps an auto worker in Michigan or a musician in Houston (not me) may mismanage household money so badly as to go bankrupt, but not all who go bankrupt have mismanaged, and no ordinary people have any impact on the shape of the system that brought them to ruin. That power was reserved for [deep breath] Wall Street's finest and CEOs of huge corporations and Madoff and Greenspan and Paulsen and Bernanke and the Bush family and all too many members of Congress. America's economic descent was triggered and driven by the very wealthy, who re-engineered the system so they could pay for their hearts' desires with "money that wasn't there."

And therein lies the problem in Herbert's observation: if all ordinary Americans "stop being stupid" (that imperative is surely a headline writer's, unless Herbert is one of those rare columnists privileged to write his own heds), no solution will obtain. The problems are deeply rooted and broadly distributed across our wealthiest, most powerful citizens, those who have the least incentive to stop being stupid. Where is the motivation for Bush to avoid stupidity? For him, stupidity resulted in fourteen years (don't forget his years as governor of Texas) of unparalleled power, exercised in myriad criminal enterprises, culminating in even more obscene wealth and a likely retirement to an exclusive Dallas community (and I use the word "exclusive" quite literally) rather than a much-deserved jail cell. Why should he stop being stupid? Why should any of those who got us into this jam stop being stupid? They lack nothing; what does it matter to them if many among us lack everything?

Herbert quotes a line from a Wall Street Journal article years ago (he provides no link, and I don't have a subscription to search for one): "Markets are a great way to organize economic activity, but they need adult supervision." We haven't seen the adult supervision since sometime prior to Ronald Reagan's pie-in-the-sky approach to economics. At this point, it seems to me that Republican fantasy capitalism (with the collusion of significant numbers of powerful Democrats) has failed to provide even an adequate life for a huge percentage of Americans. Ideology aside, the grand American economic experiment has been driven, probably deliberately and premeditatedly, into utter failure, from the viewpoint of all but the wealthiest Americans.

Welcome back to the Nineteenth Century, or perhaps even earlier. It's the Bushes' world; we're only suffered to live in it... and that only barely.

(H/T ellroon for the Herbert link.)

As you can tell, in my current frame of mind, I believe that all our years of blogging have had little effect in the face of powerful forces controlled by people most of us would consider genuinely evil. At best, we have merely slowed the decline of the world we hoped to improve. The concepts on which our nation's founders created America are effectively ignored by the people in charge, especially the idea that all [wo]men are created equal. While I still believe firmly that we should fight the good fight, I do not see our way from here to there, at least not through the vehicle of blogging.

Obama wrote of "the audacity of hope." I can only reply that hope is not a plan, and I hope, irrationally I'm afraid, that his actual plans have even the least chance of pulling the world out of its downward spiral. If that continues to appear to be the course of things, there is not a lot of point in continuing political blogging. Do not be too surprised if these pages turn into a full-time personal blog, with lots of pictures of cats, plants, signs and friends.

Steve
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Cheney: I Decide What Gets Archived

Via Mustang Bobby, the NYT tells us the White House is about to overload the National Archives with more electronic data than all past presidents:

Bush Data Threatens to Overload Archives
By ROBERT PEAR and SCOTT SHANE
Published: December 27, 2008

WASHINGTON — The National Archives has put into effect an emergency plan to handle electronic records from the Bush White House amid growing doubts about whether its new $144 million computer system can cope with the vast quantities of digital data it will receive when President Bush leaves office on Jan. 20.

The technical challenge was an inevitable result of the explosion in cybercommunications, which will make the electronic record of the Bush years about 50 times as large as that left by the Clinton White House in 2001, archives officials estimate. The collection will include top-secret e-mail tracing plans for the Iraq war as well as scenes from the likes of Barney Cam 2008, a White House video featuring the first pet.

Under federal law, the government has “complete ownership, possession and control” of presidential and vice-presidential records. The moment Mr. Bush leaves office, the National Archives becomes legally responsible for “the custody, control and preservation” of the records.

     ...

Questions about the archives’ capacity have added a new element to the uneasiness felt by open-government advocates and historians, who already fear that departing White House officials, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, may not turn over everything. Mr. Cheney asserted this month in a court case that he had absolute discretion to decide which of his records are official and which are personal, and thus do not have to be transferred to the archives,

[Note: the paragraph-ending comma is original. - sb]

     ...

(Emphasis mine.)

There's more of interest; read the article itself. But that is the essence, and the most chilling sentence.

I have a suggestion: obviate the question of which items to archive by placing Mr. Cheney himself in the Archives. He wouldn't even take up that much space, if they used modern compression algorithms, which I understand the CIA knows how to use. And they already have a secure if disclosed location deep underground; he could stay in the shaft with the Constitution he shredded.

Meanwhile, bring on those Barney Cam videos!

Steve
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Friday Kitty Corner Blogging

Even when not constrained by Tabitha's presence to do so, Samantha likes to stay on the diagonal...

Yeah, I know... this site is getting mighty graphics-intensive. Hey, it's the holidays!

Steve
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Now Here's A Switch

Santa sits on Stella's lap, occasionally asking for something...

It was a good Christmas for a rather sizable number of Einsteins (to borrow Stella's screen surname), including this Santa, who is not only very young but also female. The times, they are a-changin' ...

Steve
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Merry Winter Holiday

Pick your favorite Winter Solstice holiday. Celebrate with family and friends. Have a great one!

Steve
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You're Going To Eat WHAT?

Surely this silly pun is as old as the hills, but I've never seen this item before. The label calls it "sponge pudding"; Google's definition involves the word "suet," which sounds even less appealing. Not for vegetarians; not for the faint of appetite... I am always the former, and the thought of this makes me the latter.

One web dictionary says, "This is probably the most unhealthy thing one can put in one's mouth--currents or raisins and other spices in a sweet suet 'pudding'." I'll take their word for it.

If I am not careful, I learn something new every day.

Steve
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Banks To Public: Up Yours

So the banks have already received hundreds of billions of your taxpayers' dollars. What have they done with it? It's a simple enough question, and via Steve Benen, here's a paraphrase of their simple answer:

Fuck you... we don't have to tell you.

AP writer Matt Apuzzo was particularly impressed with this snippet, and so was I:

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

(Emphasis mine.) If that's not a fuck-you-very-much, I don't know what would be.

This vigilant monitoring of the spending of your hard-earned dollar is brought to you by your very own U.S. Congress. It suggests we must assume the alternate meaning of the term "oversight."

(H/T dday.)

Steve
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Bush's Medical Malpractice

If this doesn't constitute practicing medicine without a license, I don't know what does:

The Bush administration yesterday granted sweeping new protections to health workers who refuse to provide care that violates their personal beliefs, setting off an intense battle over opponents' plans to try to repeal the measure.

     ...

The far-reaching regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable. It was sought by conservative groups, abortion opponents and others to safeguard workers from being fired, disciplined or penalized in other ways.

     ...

I hardly need to go into the arguments against this deplorable regulation; you know them all. I'll just address a part of the solution: Professional associations for affected branches of the healthcare professions should yank the licenses of any healthcare professionals who refuse to provide any standard, legal medical procedure or product to any patient in need. Here's the message that needs to be conveyed with no ambiguity: refuse to provide care, lose your license to practice... find another line of work that does not involve directly imposing your personal beliefs on unwilling patients.

Start by pulling the licenses of all of the Bush family's doctors. Oh, wait; they probably provide abortions... no questions asked, all secrets kept... to persons of privilege. After all, it has been reported that in his youth, back when abortions were illegal, Bush arranged an abortion for a friend. Can you spell "hypocrite," children? I knew you could!

Steve
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Saturday Signs On Monday

I believe GeeDubya Bush must own this dumpster company...

Steve
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GoogleGlitch Of The Day

From Google News:

I'm not sure I'd say Israel wovs to, but they're not shy about announcing their intention to do so...

Steve
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The Greatest Celebration - Today!

Chanukah? Yes, I like that one. Winter Solstice? Yes, that's a great one, too.

But my personal favorite among today's causes for celebration? Our friend Catherine's birthday! Stella and I are headed out to help her celebrate; we'll see y'all later.

Steve
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The Silence Of The LANs - UPDATED

... or, rather, of the web sites. Or, more to the point, of the guy who created all those GOP web sites. Karl Rove's web guru, Mike Connell, has been killed in a plane crash. It was a small plane. He was the pilot... and the only victim.

Lisa Derrick of Firedoglake (see above link) tells us a bit about Connell, his links to the vanished White House emails, and more. Read the whole thing; there's too much to summarize. But to say that Connell must have known a lot of... things... is probably to make a gross understatement.

Since the death of the much lamented Paul Wellstone in a plane crash, whether or not there is publicly announced evidence of foul play, I have privately wondered how far the current GOP crew would go to achieve certain results. Call me paranoid; I don't care. This crash, like that one, smells really bad to me.

Start by questioning Rove. I presume some of the Gitmo interrogators will soon be looking for work...

UPDATE Sat. 21:35: Larisa Alexandrovna has a great deal more. It seems Connell was one of her sources on something to do with the US Attorney scandal, the alternate White House email scheme and Karl Rove's email anomalies. Alexandrovna's third update has some details of interest to the aviation types among you.

Steve
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All That Glitters

Last night we shopped a tiny bit at a major chain bookstore. Bookshopping is hardly what it used to be: I came out with two items, a popup book by Robert Sabuda as a gift for Stella (she picked it out; it's safer that way) and a remaindered Al Franken book for myself, for which I paid $1.97. Restraint is the order of the day; 'tis the season to be cautious. Just before we checked out, I spotted this chaotic display of vaguely Christmas-related decorations. I noted that the three glitter-coated statues looked a lot more like adult Jesuses (Jesi?) than three Magi. Stella, seeing an identical statue near where she was standing, observed, not hesitating even an instant, "All that glitters is not God!"

Steve
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Vatican Quotes Goldilocks

Reuters:

VATICAN CITY, Dec 19 (Reuters) - The Vatican on Friday urged governments around the world to decriminalise homosexuality but said a proposed U.N. resolution on the issue went too far.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Holy See's delegation explained the position at the United Nations late on Thursday, criticising the wording of a European-backed text that champions decriminalisation of homosexuality.

"The Holy See continues to advocate that every sign of unjust discrimination towards homosexual persons should be avoided and urges States to do away with criminal penalties against them," read the delegation's remarks, released by the Vatican on its website (www.vatican.va) on Friday.

"At the same time, the Holy See notes that the wording of this declaration goes well beyond the above mentioned and shared intent."

The Vatican singled out the categories of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" in the text, saying "these would create serious uncertainty in the law" -- in what appeared to be reference to its well-known concerns about gay marriage. The Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, has previously warned the proposed European-backed text could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage.

     ...

In other words, the Vatican's preference for anti-LGBT discrimination is "not too hot, not too cold... just right."

And Catholics, down to their local parishes, are bound, at least in theory, to observe the Vatican's Goldilocks approach.

The expression of religious belief is indisputably an activity protected by the First Amendment. Anti-LGBT advocacy... undeniably a political activity, however bigoted... is also indisputably protected by the First Amendment. There's nothing to debate there... end of (Goldilocks) story. But it is increasingly clear that the Catholic Church is, among other things, a political advocacy group. The major environmentalist org's also receive First Amendment protection for all of their speech, but nonetheless must maintain two separate arms, an educational foundation and a political advocacy group, for tax purposes. One should be able to say anything, and one should be able to believe anything... but one should not be able to mask political speech as religious belief as a means of maintaining a tax exemption.

Steve
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Friday Mutual Admiration Blogging

A meeting, two months ago, of the Sunday Mutual Admiration Society...

(Posted early, so Stella can see it before bedtime.)

Steve
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Getting Away With Worse Than Murder

The Senate Armed Services Committee's bipartisan "torture report" is out, and by all rights it should shake America's moral guardians to their core. A New York Times editorial lists the broad outlines of the atrocities committed under direct orders from members of the Bush administration, naming names and listing the nature of the crimes. Here is the introduction to the editorial:

Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

The report shows how actions by these men “led directly” to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons.

It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America’s standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. Until the Bush administration, their only use in the United States was to train soldiers to resist what might be done to them if they were captured by a lawless enemy.

The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the “war on terror” — the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.

     ...

The catalog of horrors relentlessly continues, allowing no respite from the editors' conclusion: the Obama administration must reverse all the Bush administration's illegal policies, recommit America to adhering to the Geneva Conventions, close Guantánamo and all the known and secret "rendition" operations, and finally... this is paramount in my opinion... prosecute the Bush administration officials directly responsible for the institution of horrifying human rights violations in the name of protecting America and Americans.

Much of what the NYT urges is exactly what Obama committed to do, early in his campaign. But will he actually do it? Increasingly one hears, in the name of "bipartisanship," exhortations to put it all behind us, to let bygones be bygones, to decline to prosecute people who may be guilty of the most heinous crimes in over a generation, played out on the world stage with no apparent concern for the victims, for America's military, for America's standing and reputation in the world, or for the long-term consequences of reintroducing practices so atrocious that historically, America's only involvement with those practices has been to teach its troops how to survive the cruelties of their application against them.

Bygones? Bygones?

And yet there is a manifest reluctance on the part of the topmost Democratic leadership, Reid, Pelosi and yes, Obama, to come forward, to call for prosecution, domestic or international, of these American criminal suspects, to do what must be done to restore some shred of human respectability to Americans who go forth in the world.

The looming depression is a distraction from all of this, but any neglect of America's obligation to clean up its act by prosecuting or cooperating in the prosecution of these high-level alleged criminals will threaten the very survival of our nation, as surely as financial collapse.

How high up do you have to be to have America's new leadership, the one committed to "change," respond to war crimes of this magnitude by saying "Bygones"? Who is too big to prosecute? How much resulting political controversy is sufficient to quash prosecution of those who apparently committed atrocities? The same leadership seems willing to leave in place criminal laws, e.g., drug laws, so draconian that little people go to jail for passing a J; shouldn't the higher-ups at least go to jail for ordering or inflicting waterboarding, stress positions, prolonged extremes of temperature or lighting, deliberate degradation of prisoners independent of interrogation, etc.? Just how evil do the above-named officials have to be in their behavior before they are called to account for it?

Afterthought: be sure to read Glenn Greenwald's post on the subject.

Steve
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Classic Typo Of The Day

From an Amazon mailer advertising a DVD of Leonard Cohen that Stella would like (or perhaps already has):

By 1978 Leonard Cohen had already produced a staggering body of work that had firmly set the standard for the singer-songwriter genre and contained numerous classic songs within its cannon, but the 6 studio albums released...

Given what I know of Cohen, that cannon doesn't lack balls. Just be careful where you point it when you fire it up.

Steve
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Font Family Values

Years ago, this was a sort of political humor site, and most of the posts were doggerel. Faced with recent reminders that Comic Sans is uncool for more Serious pursuits, I have begun tinkering with the fonts again. Let me know what you think, if you care, which for the most part I don't.

I'm not actively sick (some would tell you otherwise), but I'm not feeling my best, either. Apologies in advance for the light blogging.

Steve
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Cheney's War Crime, Bush's 'So What?'

Mustang Bobby (among many others) tells us of Bush's recent response to a reminder during an interview that it was his order of a U.S. invasion that brought Al Qaeda to Iraq in the first place: "Yeah, that’s right. So what?"

Meanwhile, looseheadprop of FDL discusses Cheney's response to the question of whether he personally authorized the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (question shown and analyzed by Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley - YouTube video), the very real possibility that Cheney confessed to a war crime in his answer, and whether anything can be done to hold him accountable for that crime.

These two sociopaths, Bush and Cheney, hold not only our fate, but that of the entire Earth, in their hands for a few weeks more.

Now I'm putting on that old Miles Davis tune, So What?, going back to bed, curling into a fetal position and pulling a blanket over my head...

Steve
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Amnesty's Taser Study

Amnesty International says Tasers are anything but "non-lethal," and much tighter controls are needed over their use. BBC:

     ...

The study - which included information from 98 autopsies - found that 90% of those who died after being struck with a Taser were unarmed and many did not appear to pose a serious threat.

Many were subjected to repeated or prolonged shocks - far more than the five-second "standard" cycle.

Some people were even shocked for failing to comply with police commands after they had been incapacitated by a first shock.

In at least six of the cases where people died, Tasers were used on individuals suffering from medical conditions such as seizures - including a doctor who had crashed his car when he suffered an epileptic seizure.

He died after being repeatedly shocked at the side of the road when, dazed and confused, he failed to comply with an officer's commands.

     ...

It's increasingly clear that, despite manufacturer's claims, the Taser is a lethal weapon. We need laws limiting their use to circumstances in which deadly force is appropriate.

Steve
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Chris Bell For Texas Senate 17 - TODAY!

If you live in Texas SD 17, today is the day you vote for Chris Bell as your state senator. By now, you know the whole dirty-tricks story that forced him into a runoff. Just go vote. Note: NOT ALL POLLING PLACES ARE IN USE IN THIS RUNOFF! Be sure to check with the county here to find a poll you can use.

(This post will float to the top today.)

Steve
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Selected Links To Recent Posts

 
Click any permalink below to go to the original article on a previous page. Click a comment link below to add a comment to the original article. Your comment will be noticed, by the YDD at least: HaloScan has a page allowing me to view recent comments, no matter which post they refer to. Some very recent posts may be included in their entirety.

Sargent: Obama Sticks By Net Neutrality

Greg Sargent of TPM debunks a thinly substantiated WSJ story asserting that support for net neutrality is eroding and Obama, who has expressed strong support for net neutrality, is softening or backing off on his position. Not so, says Obama spokesperson Nick Shapiro. This steadfastness of support was verified in a way increasingly unusual among news organizations:

     ...

The Journal story (which was strongly disputed by Google and many others) also suggests, based on scant evidence, that Obama's position may have softened. But the paper didn't appear to contact the Obama team for any comment.

So we did. Asked if the Obama camp had shifted its stance in any way on net neutrality or softened its commitment to it, Shapiro answered: "No." Even limited public declarations (such as this one) from the Obama transition team about the incoming administration's priorities have been few and far between.

     ...

Contacting the transition team itself: how... quaint! Kudos to Sargent and TPM for this bit of much-needed journalistic "quaintness." And of course, praise to Obama for sticking by the principle of content neutrality so fundamental to the value of the Internet to a free and open society.

Steve
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The Shoe Is Off The Other Foot Now

Steve
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Object Lesson In Security

Steve
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John Dean Writes Obama Re: Blagojevich

Steve
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Never Forget -- OLD DOGGEREL!

Steve
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Friday Lap Trap Blogging

Steve
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Potemkin Justice

Steve
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'Tis The Season

Steve
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Stella's Brother

Steve
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Snow? What's Snow With You?

Steve
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Joe The Plumber, One More Time

Steve
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Headline Of The Day

Steve
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[Expletive]! - UPDATED

Steve
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Willie Nelson

Steve
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Reduce, Re-Use, Oops, Can't Recycle?

Steve
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GOPer Defeats Dem, YDD Celebrates

Steve
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Saturday Signs

Steve
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Joining The Ranks Of The Uninsured

Steve
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Friday Old Cat Blogging

Steve
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Hannitas

Steve
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Boy, 8, Killed While Firing Uzi

Steve
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Chris Bell SD17 Runoff Dec. 16 - UPDATED

Steve
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Protecting Financial Capital, Neglecting Human Capital

Steve
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Shameless Win

Steve
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Even A Small Smile Helps

Steve
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No News Is NOT Good News

Steve
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Military Suicide Prevention Through... Creationism?

Steve
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