Policy and Politics
tfk | April 1, 2008I hope this happens. Truly, the people of San Francisco deserve a way to remember George W. Bush's presidency, and as ideas go, this is top-notch:
The Presidential Memorial Commission is proposing an ordinance initiative for the November 2008 San Francisco ballot, to rename the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility the George W Bush Sewage Plant. We believe this is a appropriate and enduring legacy, for no other president in modern American history has accomplished so much in such a short time.
Sign up to help get this important initiative on the ballot in November.
tfk | April 1, 2008Oy.:
The Council of Economic Advisers is down to one adviser.
The nice thing about April Fool's day is that most people go back to being smart at the end of the day.
tfk | March 31, 2008I haven't written a lot here about Expelled: No Intelligence. It'll be a crappy movie, and all the PR in the world won't change that. All the whining about PZ Myers, and criticism of his desire to see the movie he's featured in won't make the movie any better. Plus, I'm helping develop NCSE's response to Expelled, and I don't want to tip our hand.
That said, I will predict that Mike Huckabee's endorsement will not save the movie. By all accounts it is boring, and everything I've seen from the producers and writers has been laced through with inaccuracies. I doubt the movie is any better…
tfk | March 31, 2008The York Daily Record (known for its coverage of the Dover ID trial) interviews Barack Obama:
Q: York County was recently in the news for a lawsuit involving the teaching of intelligent design. What's your attitude regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools?
A: "I'm a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there's a difference between science and faith. That doesn't make…
tfk | March 27, 2008Drew Ryun, twin brother of equally clueless Ned Ryun, discusses:
the feeling that a vast majority of Americans share. The Democrats are not good on national defense.
Hmmm. "Next, please tell me if you think the Republican Party or the DEMOCRATIC Party could do a better job in each of the following areas:
Making wise decisions about foreign policy: R=40%, D=45%.
Making wise decisions about what to do in Iraq: R=37%, D=47%
This isn't new. Gallup found Democrats taking the lead on national security issues between 2006 and 2007, while Rasmussen found in early 2006 that more Americans trusted…
tfk | March 27, 2008Ned Ryun, former White House staffer and son of fmr. Rep. Jim Ryun, thinks Iraq is just like Germany:
The Dems think they’re going to really nail McCain on his 100 years of war in Iraq comment. Can I just say Germany, Korea . . . still there, folks. I would question why we’re still in Germany, but that’s besides the point. The point is that, for better or worse, when we come into a region to provide stability, many times that translates into dozens of years. So McCain was being realistic about Iraq. When you look at Germany and South Korea, they are still free nations and democracies. I have…
tfk | March 26, 2008The Washington Post digs in an finds interesting parallels:
Sen. Barack Obama offers himself as a post-partisan uniter who will solve the country's problems by reaching across the aisle and beyond the framework of liberal and conservative labels he rejects as useless and outdated.
But as Obama heads into the final presidential primaries, Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, "a down-the-line liberal," as McCain strategist Charles R. Black Jr. put it, in a long line of Democratic White House hopefuls.
Sen. Hillary Rodham…
tfk | March 25, 2008Regular readers know why I'm fairly sure that the decline in coalition fatalities recently can be attributed to the unilateral ceasefire by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. He announced it in August, deaths were way down in September, and have remained at a low level since October. The announcement of an extension of the ceasefire last month was encouraging, but apparently it won't last:
The Mahdi Army's seven-month-long cease-fire appears to have come undone.
Rockets fired from the capital's Shiite district of Sadr City slammed into the Green Zone Tuesday, the second time in three days, and…
tfk | March 25, 2008Forest Service May Move to Interior - washingtonpost.com:
Among some lawmakers who hold the purse strings, there is a belief that the U.S. Forest Service is out of place.
The 103-year-old agency, which manages 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, is part of the Department of Agriculture. Its bureaucratic cousins -- the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, which manage 84 million acres, 96 million acres and 258 million acres of public land, respectively -- are in the Interior Department. …
At the request of the House…
tfk | March 24, 2008Gun Goes Off Midflight:
A US Airways pilot accidentally discharged his gun in the cockpit during a flight from Denver to Charlotte, N.C., according to the Transportation Safety Administration.
The round was discharged by the pilot in the left seat and did not result in depressurization, according to government aviation sources.
The Airbus A319 landed safely after the incident Saturday and without any injuries to the 124 passengers on board, a spokesperson for the TSA told ABCNEWS.com today.
The pilot was a member of TSA's Federal Flight Deck Officer program, which trains and licenses…
tfk | March 20, 2008Jerome Armstrong sez:
Pull off the blinders that have you supporting a particular candidate, while being blind to the bigger issue. If progressives are not going to have the guts to call out those who foster divisive talk, and demand their renouncement, no matter where it comes from, it's a bigger loss than an election.
I think we can fairly refer to this as divisive talk. He is dividing the progressive movement into the group who will renounce certain people and those who will not. And yet, I will not renounce Jerome Armstrong. He's a good guy, wrong on this issue, but with his heart in…
tfk | March 20, 2008After 5 years of pointless war in Iraq, you'd think that John McCain would have picked up a few things about who we are supposed to be fighting over there.
tfk | March 19, 2008There's much discussion and analysis of Obama's speech yesterday. I continue to be amazed, as I look at Obama's speeches, simply that they are written with complete paragraphs, and not (as in so many speeches, even Hillary's) with a single sentence per paragraph. That is how Obama thinks, and I truly believe the time has come for a president who thinks in paragraphs, not in talking points.
The emphasis on the speech is on the notion of a "more perfect union," the idea of perfectibility, and the entirely uncontroversial notion that we aren't there yet. Our Founding Fathers promised more…
tfk | March 18, 2008There has been much wringing of hands over video of a speech delivered by Sen. Obama's pastor. Pastor Wright says various and sundry things which go well beyond what ought to be said at a pulpit, and beyond what a presidential candidate would consider, well, presidential. Obama has responded, rejecting those statements (in language stronger than McCain's tut-tutting over Hagee's bigoted statements) but standing by his affiliation with the church. Defending that choice, Obama cites Wright's imminent retirement, with a successor already chosen, and Obama's and his family's ties to the…
tfk | March 18, 2008Via Brave New Films Tony Perkins takes on eco-friendly Southern Baptists.
Perkins says "people are told and taught to look inwardly and making sure that they are spiritually prepared to meet the End Times, not throw away the keys to your SUV and jump on the Al Gore bandwagon."
In other words, global warming is real, will hurt people, and will harm creation, but that's OK. To say that this is bad theology is trivial. It is horrific, practically inhuman, and surely indecent.
tfk | March 13, 2008Todd Tiahrt, Republican congressman from Wichita, is worried. In the course of a heated debate, he told his colleagues on the House floor "If you have a single ounce of self-preservation, you'll vote no."
What, you might ask, is so crucial to their survival? Is this more heated rhetoric over FISA? Funding for the war on brown people terror?
No, an ethics bill, creating a bipartisan panel to investigate ethics complaints against congresscritters. This is what Tiahrt sees as a profound existential crisis. Says something, doesn't it?
Tiahrt's power over the Kansas 4th district is being…
tfk | March 12, 2008Pew reports:
Public awareness of the number of American military fatalities in Iraq has declined sharply since last August. Today, just 28% of adults are able to say that approximately 4,000 Americans have died in the Iraq war. As of March 10, the Department of Defense had confirmed the deaths of 3,974 U.S. military personnel in Iraq.
In August 2007, 54% correctly identified the fatality level at that time (about 3,500 deaths). In previous polls going back to the spring of 2004, about half of respondents could correctly estimate the number of U.S. fatalities around the time of the survey.
In…
tfk | March 11, 2008Geraldine Ferraro:
I really think they're attacking me because I'm white.
More precisely, they're attacking her because she told a Los Angeles paper:
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
Yes, the marvelous life of black men in modern America. Truly, how could anyone think that dark skin in America could be a disadvantage.
One presumes that the Clinton campaign will shortly combine the prefixes "de-" and "re-"…
tfk | March 10, 2008In an article arguing that "sniping by aides hurt Clinton’s image as manager," this quote from senior adviser Harold Ickes doesn't help:
“It’s hard to draw conclusions about her management style,” he said, “because she is, in fact, not the manager of her campaign.”
The image projected in the piece is that Clinton has left most decision-making to a small team of aides, with no single point of authority. In principle, she should have been that final voice, but Mr. Ickes claim that she isn't running the show is borne out by others interviewed.
As Professor James Thurber told the Times "She…
tfk | March 7, 2008Yesterday, Pulitzer-winning author and Obama advisor Samantha Power told reporters:
"We f***** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.
"She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.
She added:
"You just look at her and think: ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put…