Florida Constitutional Amendments: Back of the Ballot Explained

I just finished voting, and I realized that one problem I almost always have, even though I pay attention, is decoding those Constitutional Amendments on the ballot. You know; YES ON 2! NO ON 4! All those signs and ads you see are normally put out by special interests that have a stake in these things passing or failing, and there's not a lot of good information out there without heavy spin. So, for your convenience, here are the Amendments you'll be voting on if you live in Florida, along with an explanation in English of what they'll actually do, and my opinion on them, which you can take or leave as you like.


Amendment 1
Relating to Property Rights/Ineligible Aliens

Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to delete provisions authorizing the Legislature to regulate or prohibit the ownership, inheritance, disposition, and possession of real property by aliens ineligible for citizenship.

This non-controversial Amendment was put on the ballot by the Legislature. It proposes to remove some language dating back to the late 1800's from Florida's Constitution about Asian immigrants not being allowed to own land. Most other States had similar provisions at some point, which have of course been removed, and this is basically just housekeeping for the State.

My Vote: Yes, because this archaic wording is already superseded by reality everywhere in FL.


Amendment 2
Florida Marriage Protection Amendment

This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.

This Amendment is fairly straightforward, and most people already have an idea of where they come down on gay marriage. It's worth noting that this is already effectively the reality in FL, the purpose of this Amendment is to make it much more difficult for future groups to propose changes to the law that would give same-sex couples more rights. The Amendment was proposed by a group that opposes gay rights.

My Vote: No, because I don't believe this needs to be in our Constitution, when it is at best a matter of personal preference, and at worst a blatant attempt to block people's rights. I don't believe in legislating what goes on in the bedroom, and I think same-sex couples are our Constitutional and Human equals, and should be treated with the same respect as other couples.


Amendment 3
Changes and Improvements Not Affecting the Assessed Value of Residential Real Property

Authorizes the Legislature, by general law, to prohibit consideration of changes or improvements to residential real property which increase resistance to wind damage and installation of renewable energy source devices as factors in assessing the property's value for ad valorem taxation purposes. Effective upon adoption, repeals the existing renewable energy source device exemption no longer in effect.

Huh? OK, this Amendment basically means the following: If you install home-hardening features like storm shutters, hurricane glass, etc, OR renewable energy features like solar panels, wind-gathering devices etc, the Property Tax assessment for your home would not factor these types of improvements into your home's value, and by extension your owed tax. Basically, it's an incentive to get people to install this stuff, because they won't incur a tax penalty if they do so.

My Vote: Yes. I like renewable energy, and part of the "Green Collar" job creation plan involves creating a bigger market for this stuff, creating jobs for installers, manufacturers, etc. I'm for anything that incentivises that. Plus: Lower taxes, and lower insurance premiums for storm features. All around win.


Amendment 4
Property Tax Exemption of Perpetually Conserved Land; Classification and Assessment of Land Used for Conservation

Requires Legislature to provide a property tax exemption for real property encumbered by perpetual conservation easements or other perpetual conservation protections, defined by general law. Requires Legislature to provide for classification and assessment of land used for conservation purposes, and not perpetually encumbered, solely on the basis of character or use. Subjects assessment benefit to conditions, limitations, and reasonable definitions established by general law. Applies to property taxes beginning in 2010.

This is an environmental measure. It would lock in property tax exemptions for privately-held land being used for conservation purposes, and prevent future tax assessments on conservation areas from being based on "Best possible use," and keep them based on "Current use." Example: Say you've got a beach that's a designated conservation area. Now, from one extreme to the other; this land could be taxed at the rate that it would bring in if there were Condos on it, or it could be exempt from taxation at all, provided that it will be used as a conservation area permanently.

My Vote: Yes. I'm all for keeping Conservation areas undeveloped.


Amendment 6
Assessment of Working Waterfront Property Based Upon Current Use

Provides for assessment based upon use of land used predominantly for commercial fishing purposes; land used for vessel launches into waters that are navigable and accessible to the public; marinas and drystacks that are open to the public; and water-dependent marine manufacturing facilities, commercial fishing facilities, and marine vessel construction and repair facilities and their support activities, subject to conditions, limitations, and reasonable definitions specified by general law.

This is similar to the last Amendment, but deals with waterfront use. It would lock in taxes on "Working Waterfront" areas at rates based on their current use, rather than what their potential tax could be. For example, a marina with a few commercial fishing boats and various other uses would be locked in at the rate for those services, not what the potential tax revenue would be if you bulldozed them and built multi-million dollar yacht condos.

My Vote: Yes. Have you been down by Tin City lately? Two of my favorite local businesses and countless others were eliminated by the crazy taxes down there, torn down, and replaced by condos, most of which now sit empty, collecting no tax at all. I come from a long line of boat builders and fishermen, and this will protect real Floridians' livelihoods.


Amendment 8
Local Option Community Funding

Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to require that the Legislature authorize counties to levy a local option sales tax to supplement community college funding; requiring voter approval to levy the tax; providing that approved taxes will sunset after 5 years and may be reauthorized by the voters.

This Amendment would authorize local governments to raise sales taxes to supplement local Community College funding. Pretty straightforward.

My Vote: Yes. If we're going to have these services, we need to pay for them somehow, and I don't mind kicking in a little more to support education.


And that's it. I realize it's a lot to digest, but these are important measures, it's vital you understand what you're voting on. I'll be re-posting this as we get closer to the Election, but you may want to print it out for future reading, if you find it helpful. Your thoughts are welcome below, and please remember to vote early, request an absentee ballot and use it. It helps your chosen candidate, whoever they might be, and it makes your life easier, allowing you to sit down and research local candidates and issues like these.

John Adams Doctor Atomic

opens October 13th at The Met.

From Alex Ross' fine blog:

Thanks to a generous $500,000 donation, the house is offering a slew of prime orchestra seats for $30 as part of its Rush Ticket program.

If you're anywhere near NYC, you should try to see this.

And this critique of the McCain campaign.....

is brought to you by our dear friend, Jordan C. Clark, who writes:

McCain's campaign has consistently seemed to rely on a warped philosophy that suggests that the truth is less important than what people are willing to believe.

The insulting fact of the way they've run the campaign is simple.

They banked on a majority of Americans to be the Fox News audience who trust and buy into the "spin-free zones" and empty polls, or choose the least articulate liberals to defend valid perspectives against any member of the right-wing elite willing to appear.

They lie, or, at the very least, mislead the public and the reach they have is stunning, but they gambled on a majority that just isn't there. Unfortunately for them, there are a fair number of Republicans with analytical, critically-thinking minds, who are not fooled by the same sources over and over again.

Perhaps, of the unthinking masses, this may be true, but in supposing that the dumbest sector of their voting base made up enough of a majority that they could win the election with only their votes, they abandoned the most valuable, thinking members of their party. (Example: George Will)

Maybe there is more to it.

If the candidate were able to back himself up, make a real case, then maybe he would have been able to win the intelligent republicans by speaking articulately, clearly communicating his strengths as a candidate. Instead, his opportunities to face off with Obama have been squandered with vague responses when he should have offered clarity, attacks where he should have tooted his own horn, and condescension when he should have been respectful. If his strength isn't policy, but rather his honorable character, then he should have worked harder at being more charismatic and less insulting, both to his opponent, and, in this longed-for town hall format, to those asking questions ("You probably never even heard of Fannie Mae or Freddy Mac before two weeks ago!")

McCain was vague and avoided questions, but wasted plenty of Tom Brokaw's time with condescending quips directed at question-askers and "that one."
Obama, on the other hand, directly and articulately addressed people's questions, like what the "Rescue Plan" (yeah, okay, sure) did for regular Americans, and why it was necessary. McCain didn't do that - he just pointed fingers and said that he had mentioned Fannie and Freddy two years ago, even though as recently as this spring, he was touting deregulation policies.

Another insult to the general public was his bet than the undecided women, following Hillary's loss in the primary, could be con over with another female on a ticket - any ticket, even one that favors overturning Roe v. Wade, the taxation of health insurance such that anyone with a comprehensive policy actually pays more money, drilling for oil when that is obviously not the way of the future, and as American innovation is falling behind in the changing scope of the global economy. (Did ANYONE read PART of Zakaria's book???)

Proposing a moratorium on spending, excepting Defense and Veteran's Affairs is maybe the WORST idea ever, since so many domestic programs are at or beyond the brink of failure. But maybe for a candidate who banks on ignorant voters, education shouldn't be a priority. Welfare? Who needs it! If the people who needed it actually got it, then it would only extend their life expectancies, granting them the opportunity to elect more Democrats. If they didn't get it, then they'd starve, die sickly and depressing, lonely deaths, and decrease the blue to red ratio on the maps, simultaneously decreasing the demand for said programs. Social Security? People today won't ever reach retirement anyway. In the economy post-crisis, they'll be working until they die. Besides, by the time we reform that program, generations who could actually see the benefits will never have even heard of such a thing. By then they won't even know it ever existed.

But maybe McCain's campaign hasn't been all wrong. Maybe they simply assumed that even though they were insulting the intelligent members of their party's base, they could count on those votes anyway, because the thinkingest Republican brains could be trusted not to vote for Obama's policies, just because they didn't like McCain. They'll still support McCain before they'd vote for Obama, for gosh sakes.

McCain's "maverick" reputation has thwarted fundamental Republican initiatives in the past, and his hasty decision-making has been a real head-scratcher. Barack Obama has shown a skill for being an inspiring and mobilizing force on both sides of the aisle. Maybe the intelligent Republicans can say, in the face of W's imminent departure from the White House, "No, it's time for intelligence, and it's time to do something that the country can be proud of." Maybe it will all be okay, and maybe McCain's biggest mistake was assuming the worst of the American voters. If he turns out to have been right in this gamble he's made, and enough American voters really are that thoughtless (and stupid), I fear for the future of this country, because with a McCain administration, education won't get the reform it needs, and Americans will never get smart enough to think critically about what's being said to them.

The Debate on Russia tonight

Jesus. I....I really can't respond. It is so unbelievably discouraging to have the level of discourse in this country on such a monumentally important foreign policy question as Russia be so unbelievably entrenched in decades-old, dichotomous ideals disproved in the past two decades.

Why? Why are we resurrecting the Evil Empire meme? I hope that this idiotic back and forth doesn't lead me to be so hungover tomorrow that I can't point out how stupid LEAGUE OF DEMOCRACY and rambling "I can't really say that Russia is evil, but I think they are because you folk think they are" really is as a talking point.

I really don't know where to begin. This debate is ridiculous.

Uh...

So, it looks like Mikhail Gorbachev and really rich dude Alexandr Lebedev are forming a new Independent Democratic Party because "without independent political institutions" Russia can't progress a country.

So yeah. Great, I suppose. But this is bizarre and one reason why I love Russia so much:

Lebedev, a former State Duma deputy and a billionaire who describes himself on his LiveJournal blog as a "capitalist-idealist," said it was too early to talk about possible participation in the 2011 Duma elections.

Naturally, LJ - whose parent company is a Russian corporation - is big in Russia and it shouldn't be surprising that it's popular for those wanting to get their message out. It's just weird that literary figures and political operatives over there all use an online social network noted in America for its numerous communities devoted to slash fiction. Just saying.

Quote of the month?

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski sez:

Of course we don't like it when the Russian president or Russian generals threaten us with nuclear annihilation. It is not a friendly thing to do, and we have asked them to do it no more than once a month.

It's really seeing the small requests in life fulfilled that bring to us the most joy.

h/t: Joshua Keating.

Dear Keith Olbermann,

You mock McCain for stating that Pakistan is a failed state. This is kind of misplaced and there are a number of other things you could legitimately make fun of him for.

Pakistan is ranked eighth on Foreign Policy and The Fund for Peace's Failed States Index. A state is deemed to have failed by the following criteria:

• mounting demographic pressures
• massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples
• legacy of vengeance - seeking group grievance
• chronic and sustained human flight
• uneven economic development along group lines
• sharp and/or severe economic decline
• criminalisation and delegitimisation of the state
• progressive deterioration of public services
• widespread violation of human rights
• security apparatus as "state within a state"
• rise of factionalised elites
• intervention of other states or external actors

Now, that comes from the first goddamn thing my dumb, half-remembering ass typed into a popular, efficient search engine. And despite my miraculous laziness, I have figured this out; despite the tempting piece of fruit that is John McCain saying something stupid about foreign policy, I have resisted. Because, Keith, Pakistan has had a few bureaucratical snafus over the last decade or so. I've gathered as much from casual observation. So it didn't seem like that much of a stretch and lo and behold the marvels of the modern age have shown me the wonder of truth.

Thems the breaks, though. The ability to perceive grey areas and humility alone have yet to land me a high-ratings vehicle through which to bloviate and be incredibly condescending.

So please give me a job after this election, okay? When properly groomed I am quite decorative and especially suited in social functions to the distribution of small edibles with charm and with wit.

Thank you,

Benjamin Estes (age 8)

You're Being Robbed

This is going to be a bit of a downer. I'll preface it by saying this: The Democrats do not currently have a plan to replace the one the White House and Treasury Secretary proposed. This is because the Bush plan is just a money grab, not a real solution to what's wrong with our economy. The Democrats intend to fix our economic crisis the old fashioned way, by creating new wealth from the bottom up, by supporting American innovation and creating jobs. They also plan to roll back most of the irresponsible deregulation in the Finance industry that the GOP rammed through in 1999. This will prevent the type of speculation that got us where we are now from happening in the future. It's going to take time, not the "quick-fix" that appeals to the short attention span and unwillingness of most Americans to consider how government actions affect their lives. We are a country that needs to start paying attention. This is about preventing a massive theft from your pocket and mine, one perpetrated by our government on behalf of people who do not deserve it.

The $700 Billion dollar bailout plan you've heard about in the last few days is a dangerous, horrible idea. Treasury Secretary Paulson says it's necessary to prevent a major liquidity crisis in the world financial market, but it's a lie. This plan is simply a parting gift from the Bush Administration to the financial industry, and a brazen attempt to saddle a possible Obama administration with a crushing debt that will prevent them from making any progress on the issues that matter most to Americans. I heard just the other day someone contending that Obama wanted $670 Billion in new spending. They didn't bother to mention that most of it is revenue-neutral, and won't cost the taxpayers a dime. This plan, on the other hand will cost every single American Citizen over $2000.

We are told that this "Emergency" plan is a reaction to the fluctuations on Wall Street last week. If so, why has the Bush Administration been planning it for months? WH Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto:

"Fratto said it would be “unthinkable” for Congress not to pass legislation this week, asserting the result would be a “very, very serious situation” for the U.S. economy. “It shouldn’t take much analysis to remember what happened last week, which was a very serious freeze-up in our credit markets,” Fratto said. “Our financial markets right now do not need uncertainty, they need increased certainty as to how this rescue plan is going to go forward — and that they can be sure that there is a plan to go forward — and that will begin the correction in our financial markets.” Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough. "

Source: http://www.rollcall.com/news/28599-1.html?type=printer_friendly

If the White House and Treasury saw this coming, why didn't they act earlier, or at least consult Congress as they were drafting a piece of legislation that represents the largest transfer of public funds into the private sector in history? Don't you think the people that represent you and I should have been allowed to help shape this plan? Why was it written in secret? I remember another Bush pet project that was cooked up in secret for years before being hastily announced and forced through Congress without meaningful oversight; we're still In Iraq, still presumably looking for those "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Our brave servicemen and women are still dying.

I'll tell you why this was a secret; it's because Congress never would have agreed to it. Among other things, it renders the office of the Treasury Secretary above the law. Decisions made by the TS would from now on be legally untouchable, and immune to legislative review. I don't know about you, but I want any decisions made about my tax dollars to be subject to scrutiny from Congress, the Supreme Court, and whoever else we've appointed or elected to oversee this stuff. That's why we elect them in the first place, right?

Another example of the foolishness in this bill? Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have asked that companies receiving assistance from you and I must limit their Executive's salaries to the amount of the highest-paid government employee. That would be $400,000 a year, that's what we pay the President. The corporations are pushing, with support from Bush, to keep salary caps out of the bill. I don't think it's right to expect taxpayers to foot the bill for Financial CEOs' extravagant lifestyles, especially when their "leadership" has put their companies in the position of needing a taxpayer handout. If they're on my dime, 400k is plenty. It's about 10 times the average salary in America. I refuse to cry for them because they have to sell a couple houses. I can barely afford gas.

The Bill also opposes something called "warrants," which are effectively stock options that would be owned by the federal government on the Mortgage-Backed Securities that you and I are about to purchase. There are two problems here; one is that the plan calls for taxpayers to purchase all this bad debt at ABOVE market price, for some reason, and the other is that at whatever price, we would not be profiting from those assets if and when they increase in value. To simplify:

You are being asked to loan a company money to buy a stock that's only worth $2. But they want you to pay $5, since they feel like it's worth more than the market dictates it's worth, and they need the capital. Then, after you pay $5 for the stock, if it eventually goes up in value to $10, they will be keeping all the money. And you've lost $5, they've earned $8. Good for them, Bad for you.

The bottom line is this: This is probably not a crisis. If it is, I'm sorry to say, $700 billion is not going to solve it. IF we are about to enter a period of severe financial depression, this plan only serves to give one last gift to the rich before it all comes crashing down, it WILL NOT FIX THE PROBLEM. The problem is regulation, and the reckless attitude that allowed Wall Street to gamble away your home's value and your 401k. And giving these idiots more money to play with is not going to help.

There are indications that the market is already self-correcting. Warren Buffet announced today he was buying $5B worth of Goldman-Sachs premium stock, and possibly more in common stock. Now, this may have been a reaction to the news that Goldman stands to benefit massively from the bailout, but the point is this: Some people gambled and lost. There are companies out there that are still strong, and they are absorbing the weak ones. A lot of people made bad decisions, and this is the beginning of the reckoning for them. I'm not interested in propping them up. These failures are either the beginning of a massive liquidity crisis, or they're not. Nothing we do is going to prevent it from happening, the market is what it is. If you think that $700B is a lot of money, google "credit default swaps." There's about $65 TRILLION dollars worth of heavily leveraged, crazily unpredictable debt floating around out there that could bring down the world financial system eventually. But it probably won't, because the market is ruthless, but not dumb. Companies that are strong will survive, and those that are weak will die. It's natural selection, maybe that's why Bush doesn't believe in it.

Call your Congressperson. Tell her that you oppose this gift to people who were incompetent and stupid at their chosen profession. Tell her that you demand oversight, not another blatant power grab by the Bush Administration. Here's the number:

http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/mcapdir.html

It is time to admit that Conservative Fiscal Policy, Reganomics, and "Trickle-Down" are all failed ideas. We have, for the better part of the last 30 years, been ruled by these ridiculous notions, and the events of the last 8 years have proven them to be false. The rallying cry against Liberal financial policy has always been that it is "Socialism" in disguise. That Democrats are "Communists" who want to take all the money and ruin the country by handing it out to the poor, or something. Who are the "Socialists" now, Mr. Bush? You have, in the last 8 weeks, taken over the largest Mortgage Company in the Country. The largest Insurance Company in the World. You are preparing to assume ownership of most of the Financial Sector as well. We, the taxpayers, now own these companies. But I'll tell you why it's not Socialism. Socialism implies public ownership of industry, with public distribution of profit. Your current policy is public ownership of industry with distribution of profit going to a select few in the private sector. There a word for that type of Government, too Mr. Bush. It's called Fascism.

There is a solution. But we have to wake up. The economy is broken because of Republican-backed deregulation that allowed it to get that way. Democrats have consistently opposed the laws that got us into this mess. We are at the end of the failed experiment with GOP fiscal policy. We must act now to elect the people that know how to fix it. I'm tired of being led by those that only know how to give more and more of our money to the rich.

Volunteer. Call your local Democratic party and ask how you can help. Florida People can find the number here:

http://www.fladems.com/content/county_organizations

If not there, visit the campaign website, sign up, and get moving.

http://www.barackobama.com/

Now is not the time to panic.

I think this is an excellent point:

At the Republican National Convention, McCain adopted Obama's rhetoric and has promised that he and Palin would be the true agents of change, though he declines to specify exactly which Bush-era policies he would change. Ironically, a common castigation of Obama is that he isn't setting the narrative of the race -- that the debate isn't on his terms. But it should be clear by now that this isn't true: The race is about change and who can bring it to Washington. Obama's campaign is betting that its message will be the one that resonates with voters, and McCain's will be seen for what it is: pure rhetoric. Maybe that's a bad bet, but nonetheless Obama's story has set the frame, and McCain is the one who's had to work within it. Obama should not get nasty because that undermines the entire narrative of his candidacy.

I have a lot of faith that Obama's an intelligent guy who's surrounded himself with intelligent people and that the recent polling and the Palin phenomenon are not really things to get doom and gloomy over. We'll see how this plays out, but I'd wager that we've finally got a candidate who knows what he's doing.

:(

I love this blog, but there's something about this post that strikes me as self important in the same way I can't really stand to watch Keith Olbermann's "special comments" - because their indignant tone completely misses the point of their intended message.

According to him, we've forgotten 9/11:

It's hard to remember the national mood right after 9/11. The pall that fell upon American life the moment the planes shattered the towers. Irony was declared dead. The late night comics went dark. Bush ceased to be a figure of fun. The world was dangerous, and existence was a heavy burden. It needed to be taken seriously.

Ezra forgot, apparently, about the wonderful semicolon - whose absence in the above passage is indicative of our neglect of one of the most fascinating, terror-inspiring and abused punctuation marks in our grammar.

on iTunes 8

The new Genius function, which creates playlists FROM MAGIC, is really stupid and obvious and pisses me off to the extent that the utter triviality of my displeasure towards it makes me that much angrier.

Surrounded by weak neighbors and fish

David Frum wrote something. And some may ignore his histrionic accusations of elitism and think that he has a point beyond that. He doesn't, sadly.


He doesn't waste any goddamn time. The closing sentence of the opening paragraph is such an exquisitely envious jab at a foundation of liberal thinking - diversity - that I almost want to recommend that you read the article in reverse so that your reading pleasure can have the properly cathartic terminal sensation it deserves.

With wealth comes diversity — and what is inequality but diversity in monetary form?

What a goddamn opening salvo! This is seriously like the Beethoven Fifth of ridiculous, hand-wringing articles.

Because I'm a dick, I was going to quote these next two out of context. Imagine, I was going to tell you, that a very disgruntled, hippo-joweled manchild is furiously denying the possibility of being incorrect by pounding his fists on a Risk board, throwing pieces into the air in glorious suicide before having to face the humiliation of admitting one's wrong move. I thought it would make them that much more special. But then I realized there is no need for context because they're fundamentally true. The logical pillars which Frum has so carefully erected underneath them are nothing more than pathetic attempts to gloss over that simple, damning fact.

Equality in itself never can be or should be a conservative goal.

Well, maybe if it were more like what I was talking about, he'd have said that in modern conservative policy equality can not be a goal. No really, I suppose the one that must hurt Frum the most is:

Conservatives need to stop denying reality.

Well, having said that in 2002 and 2003 would have saved several thousand American lives and several trillion dollars or whatever the hell it's up to now.


But Frum doesn't want conservatives to confront the reality of their own failed policies. In fact, the overarching theme of the article is Frum's nascent leitmotif. In 2005 it was that if two men who may or may not possess the body type right-leaning, coddled war nerds salivate over in action movies were to somehow be able to kiss and hold hands in public, then the world would be engulfed in the subsequent celestial fury. Now, as Summer 2008 fades it's the old chestnut that Democrats are elitist. To insist that the divide in this nation is political and not economic, to insinuate that the rich only vote Democratic, is a pretty spurious argument. Elitism should not be bandied about as a weapon by someone who earns his living telling people what he thinks about things in major, national publications. Period.

There's understatement! Yay!!

Republican economic management since 2001 has not yielded many benefits for middle-income America.

Again: he's on the money, folks. This reminds me of the oft passed around Soviet bit of punditry that Brezhnev's policy of alternating the color and effectiveness of the fuzzy balls (made from his own hair!) which the dour Russian premiere would stick in his ears for months at a time was rather small comfort to the out of work factory laborer, living in near medieval conditions 60 kilometers east of Moscow.

There's also denial! Or ignorance! Maybe?

Indeed, the Democratic tilt of the very richest Americans could be exploited as a powerful conservative recruiting tool.

I love the usage of the past tense here, as if exploiting the resentment of the wealthy (often, shocking as it may seem, by wealthy people themselves!) were not the central theme of his present argument.

In summary, David Frum is going to be applauded for trying to "save" his beloved ideology without dropping the immature reliance upon bitter projection and manipulative logic nor - and this is bizarre - admitting his own culpability.

Try again, I guess.

Best PSA Ever?

Yes. The answer is yes.

?

Quaint.

By the way, the only country other than Russia to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is Nicaragua.

Celebrity

In lieu of posting anything of actual substance and because I have little time to actually write about the many ways in which Palin, Putin, and most of the rest of the internet is insane and wrong, I'll go ahead and quote - in its entirety - this great post by Anonymous Liberal:

Did anyone else notice that the primetime segment of last night's Republican National Convention began with a video tribute to movie star who later became president (Ronald Reagan)? And that was followed by a speech by an actor (Fred Thompson) who later became a senator, eventually returned to acting, and then ran unsuccessfully for president this year. And he was filling a speaking slot that originally belonged to another movie star turned politician (Arnold Schwarzenegger).

But remember folks, don't vote for Barack Obama because he's a "celebrity."

A story-link for you, Ben.

Amazing.

Oh, if it were true...

Funny stuff.

Via the always wonderful Ezra Klein.

Pandering with Palin

I disagree with this completely.

Sarah Palin may be one of the smartest tactical moves made by the McCain Campaign and the Democrats should be very careful in their line of attack against her. Depending on how she is defined at the Republican Convention she could be a game changer.

Palin was not a smart tactical decision, by any stretch of a normal, rational person's imagination. While it's true that sexism (check out the google hits for VPILF and Matthews' "sexy librarian" comment) in attacking Palin makes me want to vomit in my own mouth, and while there may be some legitimate concern that Biden could utter a gaffe that would exacerbate this, I don't think that the Obama campaign's current line of attack (that she's inexperienced and was a cynical pick made to pander to disgruntled Clinton supporters) is in any danger of backfiring.

Barack Obama is underperforming among female voters in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin in our polling. In these states he is only leading John McCain by 2% to 3% among females where traditionally there has been a double digit lead for Democrats. If Palin can help keep these voters in play and then energize base Republican voters, these states have the potential to flip.

Except that Palin won't bring these voters into play. C'mon! Give me a goddamn break. Clinton is an incredibly smart, incredibly successful politician who is both articulate, witty and knows stuff about the position for which she was running. Palin, by contrast, stated a few months ago that she didn't even know what the VP office does. Clinton is pro-choice; Palin anti-choice. Palin is an extreme conservative who doesn't believe global warming is influenced by humans and she's a freaking creationist. Do you know many Clinton supporters that believe that? This is such a ridiculous debate that we have to have now! I know several Clinton supporters in my office, who in turn know dozens of Clinton supporters - all of whom are insulted by this pandering bullshit.

Finally, by attacking Palin as being inexperienced the Obama Campaign may actually help bolster McCain's own arguments of inexperience against Obama. If Palin is inexperienced to be Vice President based upon her record in Alaska, how can Democrats argue that Obama is experienced to be President based upon his record.

This has to be trolling. Let's see, Palin has been governor for less time than McCain has been a presidential hopeful. Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored hundreds of pieces of legislation. Inexperienced, now? I don't understand how this could possibly "bolster" McCain's statements about Obama's supposed lack of experience. This indicates that McCain's judgement is suspect if he's putting someone with no understanding of the position to which he will presumptively appoint her to and then if McCain's health were to make him incapable of governing, she would take over. Does that make sense to anyone? Does that even compare to a ticket that combines someone who has had years of grassroots organizing and legislating under his resume with one of the Senate's most experienced foreign policy experts?

The answer is no. And the answer to the question of whether this was a smart tactical pick is no.

During the lull between meetings this morning....

Want to get back to what I'm sure will be the main focus of the blog for the immediate future, Russia and its relationship with the West.

Yulia Latynina, arguably the one Russian journalist most capable of picking up the mantle left by Anna Politkovskaya, has an excellent op-ed in The Moscow Times about what most in the Russian press are dubbing The Olympics War. There's an implicit message in it that the "blame game" over who started the war is utterly trivial: Sakaashvili's decision to send troops into South Ossetia was a colossal mistake, a tragic underestimation of Russia's response and a naive reliance upon American support. This is the kind of middle of the road take she's espoused countless times over the past week on her radio show on Ekho Moskvy. I don't have direct sources, so you'll have to take me on faith, but there are very few people in the Russian media - even the decimated "liberal" stations and those journalists who aren't government apologists - who are taking a similar stance; very few who are willing to admit the tragedy of it. Most journalists of this ilk are simply astonished by Sakaashvili's idiotic decision to invade and very few of them want to be aligned with Putin so they're taking the equally ridiculous position that the invasion of Georgia is on par with the invasions committed by atrocious men from the last century with ridiculous mustaches.

I don't know why there are so few people who are capable of sensing that the tragedy of this war was that it was so completely unavoidable, there's nobody to single out for blame, just a number of poorly thought out, easy to ridicule decisions.

RIP

Del Martin died.

Four years ago, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed marriage licenses to be issued to gay and lesbian couples in San Francisco in defiance of state law, Ms. Martin and Lyon were the first of some 4,000 same-sex couples to wed. Those marriages were later nullified by the state's high court but paved the way for the successful legal challenge.

"We would never have marriage equality in California if it weren't for Del and Phyllis," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat. "They fought and triumphed in many battles, beginning when they first bought a home together in San Francisco in 1955."

Oh Toobin

Jeffery Toobin is a goddamn idiot. He said on CNN that Biden fumbled his "best" lines - hard to believe as sincere from a man who stumbled trying to get the accusation of stumbling out of his froth-filled, half-agape mouth - and that it had no thematic union. You know, no thematic unity except for the repeated phrases indicating the massive difference between the two candidates' policy positions and the fact that one of those candidates has been consistently proven correct - well, except for that there was nothing of substance, at all, in the speech. Sure.

From the Convention

Gov. Ted Strickland (D-OH), in reference to an old joke about George H.W. Bush having been born on third base and thinking he'd hit a triple:

Well, George W. Bush was born on third base and stole second.

Hey, I kind of like that!

What the hell is wrong with Sakaashvili?

Not good news for fans of stability in the Caucuses.

“We had a choice here,” he said. “We could turn this country into Chechnya — we had enough people and equipment to do that — or we had to do nothing and stay a modern European country.”

He added: “Eventually we would have chased them away, but we would have had to go to the mountains and grow beards. That would have been a tremendous national philosophical and emotional burden.”

That line, at the end of the NYT's account of Sakaashvili's response to the terms of the peace agreement with Russia, is certainly funny. But it's also reflective of just how delusional the Georgian president is. His army was crushed, territory was lost, and their chances to join NATO are shot. Yet, he's going to go back to the same policy that existed prior to his instigation of the current conflict. He even stated that Abkhazia and South Ossetia would be "forever as always" a part of Georgia's territory.

That is absolutely insane.

Russian stocks fall as NATO severely criticizes

Could Putin have underestimated his country's recent domination of Georgia?

Tuesday's sell-off on the Russian equity market comes at a time when investor sentiment has already been damaged by the military conflict between Russia and Georgia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent call for an investigation of steel company Mechel, which wiped out billions of dollars of its market capitalization, as well as by the ongoing dispute between BP PLC and their Russian partners in their joint venture TNK-BP.

On top of all of those concerns, the prices of Russia's key commodity exports -- such as oil, natural gas and metals -- have fallen steeply in recent weeks.
Russian equities have fallen on a "combination of geopolitical disruption and state interference [in the economy] that many people don't feel comfortable with," said Jack Dzierwa, global strategist and co-manager of the Global MegaTrends Fund at U.S. Global Investors.

Nobody ever expects a boom - even one predicated on the notoriously inconsistent prices of a commodity like crude oil - to end, I guess.

Dobbs and Remnick weigh in on South Ossetia

Two Russian experts weighed in on the conflict today and both articles contain some of the best commentary that I've read.

First, Michael Dobbs gives a concise summary in the Washington Post of the three principles in the conflict, the US, Russia and Georgia, and he apportions some of the blame onto the Bush administration's foreign policy. This is the final paragraph:

Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia.

That pretty much sums it up, folks. What's also mentioned in the article, and is something we really should be hearing more about, is that our positions on Kosovo and South Ossetia are blatantly hypocritical. It's hard to say that Putin wasn't correct when he stated that Kosovo set a dangerous precedent.

In the New Yorker, David Remnick has a great comment. There are a number of stand out quotes and you should really check it out (it's only a page), but I've got to quote this in full:

Taken individually, the West’s actions since the collapse of the Soviet Union—from the inclusion of the Baltic and the Central European states in NATO to the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state—can be rationalized on strategic and moral grounds. But taken together these actions were bound to engender deep-seated feelings of national resentment among Russians, especially as, through the nineteen-nineties, they suffered an unprecedentedly rapid downward spiral. Even ordinary Russians find it mightily trying to be lectured on questions of sovereignty and moral diplomacy by the West, particularly the United States, which, even before Iraq, had a long history of foreign intervention, overt and covert—politics by other means. After the exposure of the Bush Administration’s behavior prior to the invasion of Iraq and its unapologetic use of torture, why would any leader, much less Putin, respond to moral suasion from Washington? That is America’s tragedy, and the world’s.

This will be a top story for some time, it seems. It's been definitive proof that Putin remains in charge. I'm still not sure if Medvedev is a puppet or is getting pushed out of any chance of wielding influence in the Kremlin or what's going on.

Next up to keep an eye on is whether Sakaashvili is done. For the sake of peace, I hope that Putin is smart enough to realize that the Georgians will eventually grow tired of their president and that Moscow doesn't need to forcibly depose him.

Then there's Ukraine. I wonder what this means for them? August wars have had a tendency to expand into broader conflicts and this needs to be resolved immediately.

There's been a number of things I wanted to mention, focusing mostly on the media's coverage of this and, more specifically, the conservatives' baffling rhetoric towards Russia. I'll try to post more tomorrow as I've the day off.

Damn

Malcolm Lowry was awesome. This Harper's article contains Lowry's response to a scathing, unfairly degrading review of his masterpiece, Under the Volcano:

At all events I am now writing another book, you will be uninterested to learn, dealing roughly speaking with the peculiar punishment meted out to people who lack the sense of humour to write books like Under the Volcano. So far, I am pretty convinced that nothing like it has been written, but you can be sure that just as I am finishing it–

Sans blague. One wishes to learn, one wishes to learn, to be a better writer, to think better, and one wishes to learn, period. In spite of some kind of so-called higher education (Cambridge, Eng.) I have just arrived at that state where I realized I know nothing at all. A cargo ship, to paraphrase Melville, was my real Yale and Harvard too. Doubtless I have absorbed many of the wrong things. But instinct leads the good artist (which I feel myself to be, though I say it myself) to what he wants. So if, instead of ending this letter “may Christ send you sorrow and a serious illness,” I were to end it by saying instead that I would be tremendously grateful if one day you would throw your gown out of the window and address some remarks in this direction upon the reading of history, and even in regard to the question of writing and the world in general. I hope you won’t take it amiss. You won’t do it, but never mind.

With best wishes, yours sincerely,
Malcolm Lowry

The book is terrific and often hysterical. I'd recommend to anyone who likes Hemingway but who dislikes his hyper-inflated machismo bullshit.

More of the South Ossetian War

Great video from Reuters:



Read the article here.

Also, I'm hopeing this isn't related but I highly doubt it's not, but I was listening to Echo Moskvy - the only remaining liberal radio station that broadcasts internationally that I'm aware of - and on the air were a lot of comments about how Russians were pissed at the apparent confusion in their government's response to the crises. Essentially, they were unsure of who to listen to: Putin or Medvedev. This has been repeated in a few of the articles I've read today on the subject, most notably in the NYT's four page summary published today.

Well, now it's not on the air. At all. I can only hear static. There's been nothing in the news about it, but I'd be curious to know if it's not broadcasting in Russia either, or if their international or internet feed is down.

South Ossetia - A Sad History

I had initially been made aware of the situation in South Ossetia early this morning while I was watching CNN's coverage, shortly before I left for Sarasota. They, uh, neglected to mention that Georgia initiated the conflict by invading the region. Then they stopped covering it altogether, apparently, and switched to the unbelievable news that the National Enquirer turned out to be dead on about something. Luckily, there have been a number of people following this story all day and there's a lot of information available now.

Turns out that the timing of Georgia's incursion - to coincide with the opening of the Beijing Olympics - was not coincidental.

Naturally then, it's not nearly so clean cut as McCain would like it to be. We can't just put all the blame on Moscow. That's not to say that their reaction isn't tragic and avoidable, but like the vast majority of military conflicts there are vast shades of grey.

For those of you unfamiliar with the background to the story, I'll use the rest of this post to summarize what has been a long-standing, complicated and volatile situation.

The South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast (Russian word for "region") was established by the Soviet Union in 1922, shortly after the invasion of and occupation of Georgia. Aside from some outbursts towards and immediately after the end of the First World War, the Georgians and the Ossetians co-existed. However, by the late 80s a sweeping nationalist trend, influenced by the Soviet Union's imminent collapse and other nationalist movements in Eastern Europe, pushed both the Ossetians and the Georgians toward outright hostility. The South Ossetians wanted to be united with the North Ossetians and have a separate oblast recognized by Moscow, effectively making them no longer a part of Georgia. Georgian nationalists, led by a man with a wonderfully easy for Western media to ignore name, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, marched to the de facto capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali - where the majority of the fighting took place today - and blocked roadways, eventually forcing Soviet tanks to intervene.

This next bit is really important: after the break up of the Soviet Union, we recognized the legitimacy of the borders established before the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1933, meaning that we regarded as independent the Baltic States, but regarded the territory disputes of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia as internal Soviet problems.

The conflict lasted on and off until a cease fire was agreed upon in 1996. This was in the middle of Russia's First Chechen War. Enter Eduard Shevardnadze - an opportunist and corrupt prick who would eventually be denounced by the international community in 2003 for rampant election fraud - who was receiving massive amounts of money from the US. Moscow accused his government of hiding Chechen rebels. This accusation, whether legitimate or not - we're dealing with two very suspicious and notoriously manipulative regimes, here - added to the tension caused by Shevy's cozy relationship with the West.

The aftermath of the peace agreements were a disaster. The region, lacking a strong and organized government, collapsed and became a hotbed for organized crime, specifically drugs and smuggling.

In 2004, Gerogia got a new president, with a name less inclined to be appropriated in a Dubya-esque nickname, Mikheil Saakashvili. He turned out to have a flair for violent, incendiary language and the inability to tolerate others' disagreements with him. He also quickly addressed the South Ossetian problem by closing a market which was a hub for tax-free good from Russia. Tensions mounted, the Ossetians closed a road from Russia to Georgia and some Georgian soldiers were captured and eventually released. The Duma that same year also passed a resolution recognizing South Ossetia's right to secede. Some fighting took place for a few days in mid August before Saakashvili agreed to remove all non peace-keeping forces. Later in November, an effort to demilitarize the zone was agreed to.

Georgia looked to Europe to help solve the problem and both the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, endorsed the Georgian peace plan, which granted Autonomy to the region, and agreed to give Ossetia a voice in the national government. In addition, Saakashvili would also propose to improve the social and economic conditions in South Ossetia and offered a three year proposal to integrate the Ossetian police and armed forces into the united Georgian Armed Forces.

In 2006, an attack on a helicopter, accusations from South Ossetia that the Georgians hired Chechens, armed them, and sent them into the region to carry out terrorist attacks and finally some good old fashion election scandals would escalate tensions. The next year, a stricter conflict resolution would be pushed by Georgia, specifically outlining the region's status within Georgia. The authorities in Tskhinvali were outraged at this.

Another bad thing that happened in '07 was that the Georgians accused the Russians of firing a missile into Tsitelubani, north of the capital, Tiblisi. NATO confirmed that the jet entered Georgian airspace from Russia, but Russia denied having anything to do with it.

This brings us to this summer. Most sites are giving August 1st as the beginning of the "War in South Ossetia", citing the eruption of intense gun battles which left numerous civilians dead, and reports of Georgia moving tanks and artillery into the area. Yesterday, overnight, Georgia began a full-fledged invasion to restore order in the region and attacked a Russian base in Tskhinvali. Georgia accuses the Russian peacekeepers of not being a neutral force and demanded their removal, prompting the Russian's response.

A very important post by Nathan Hodge asserts that Georgia has also been on the receiving end of US military support, receiving arms, uniforms and armor.

So, in summary: this is the Caucasus, people. This region is ethnically diverse, with borders that do not recognize this diversity, and it has a long, long history of brutal colonial oppression. It's been a war zone since the USSR fell. This time, sadly, it could last a long while.

Russia at war?

Russian tanks entered Georgian territory, apparently. I don't have access to the internet for half a day and this shit happens?

Saakashvili's probably exaggerating a bit and his pleas for American intervention are somewhat naive. But whether provoked or not, Russian military aggression right now is just bad.

Hopefully more information will be forthcoming today or tomorrow.

Uh....

Hamdan - bin Laden's driver - was sentenced to five years and six months in prison. Well, sort of:

The military judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, had already said that he planned to give Mr. Hamdan credit for the 61 months he had been held, meaning that Mr. Hamdan could complete his criminal sentence in five months. After that his fate is unclear, because the Bush administration says that it can hold detainees here until the end of the war on terror.

That italicized portion is incredible. It is a statement which is completely impervious to parody or satire. It's the equivalent of a little boy, cheeks red, pounding his fists on the table and telling his parents he'll clean as room as soon as he beats Morrowind.

Links

I might resort to doing more of these over the next few weeks as I move (once again) and continue to earnestly seek gainful employment with a political campaign.


Lopez Lomong, a Sudanese refugee, was chosen to be the flag bearer at the Beijing Olympics. China's relationship with Sudan has been, to put it mildly, criticized.

President Musharraf is on the way out, possibly.

Anonymous Liberal (a blog everyone should check out) does a marvelous job of detailing how the GOP's threat to shut down the government over off shore oil drilling is a perfect opportunity for them to galvanize their supporters with the insane zealotry that makes them oh so very special.

There's an excellent interview with David Skaggs and Porter Goss - of the newly formed Office of Congressional Ethics - up at the American Prospect website.

The University of North Dakota's most recent Law Review contained six - out of seven - articles devoted to attacks on same-sex marriages. A local paper rightly took them to task for it, stating that they used "dubious" scholarship and questioning the appropriateness of devoting an entire issue to one side of an argument. Another interesting fact mentioned in the In-Forum article is that, in its 2009 session, North Dakota's legislature will seek to amend the North Dakota Human Rights and Fair Housing Acts to include sexual orientation and gender identity. (I could find nothing else that mentions this on a quick google search.)

Finally, for those of you that don't have the time to watch C-SPAN all day, Rep. Louise Slaughter sums up her testimony about the Department of Defense's attempts to circumvent congressional oversight of sexual assault allegations.

Incredible

I love this picture so very much.

The Straight Talk Express was trying to get out of a left-only lane and lost control after merging right without checking its blind spot.

I realize everyone else IN THE WORLD is making this exact same joke, but, yeah, you know.

The Miami Times has the story here

"They take pride in being ignorant"

See, this is a good response. It's not dirty politics to point out that someone's criticisms of your statements are not grounded in reality.

Now, if only the television media can start actually calling certain individuals out on getting their opponents policy positions completely wrong, or actually using facts to contradict spin without worrying about being perceived as "biased", then we might have an honest to God political debate leading up to this thing in November. Of course, if that's the case, we'll win by a landslide.

You've got to be kidding me

The Bush administration wants to define the pill and IUD as abortion.

This is unbelievable, especially for a lame duck administration. If you'd like - and I strongly encourage you to do so - please take a few minutes to fill out Planned Parenthood's open letter. Or, you can contact the following organizations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
Telephone: 202-619-0257
Toll Free: 1-877-696-6775

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt
Office Phone: 202-690-7000 or 202-205-4708
Email: mike.leavitt@hhs.gov
Fax: 202-690-7203
Correspondence Secretary: 202-690-6392

1918-2008

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday of either a heart attack or a stroke. The article linked to is probably the most comprehensive obit in English I've come across.

I am so glad that this man died of natural causes. Hopefully his legacy will inspire for generations to come.

Things from 20th Century Russian History which would piss off PETA vol XI

For those of you interested in exploring the discomfort in laughing at stupid decisions which cost a whole bunch of lives a long time ago, you can't get any better material than a history of the Soviet military in World War II. Aside from one good general and the willingness to sacrifice in grotesque number its citizens and soldiers, the USSR could have easily collapsed (the long standing joke about the Russian winter helped, yes, but not nearly as much as those other factors) and thus the Allies may have lost the war. There's something for everyone: Stalin's paranoia leading to the execution of almost all of his top ranking military advisors, Stalin's naive belief that Hitler would never betray him, the fact that in some battles between the siege of Leningrad and the turning point of Stalingrad, Russian soldiers had to take arms (uh, weapons, not appendages, though I wouldn't be surprised) off of casualties.

None of that compares to the Anti-Tank Dog. The idea was to train the dogs by starving them and hiding food underneath tanks - since they were training, the tanks were obviously Soviet; this is important to remember. Once in battle, the soldiers would strap explosives onto the backs of the dogs and then hope they would run underneath the assaulting German tanks looking for food and then they could detonate them.

This however, was one simple idea that did not work terribly effectively in combat. As the dogs were trained by placing food under Soviet tanks they would run to the familiar smells and sounds of any Soviet tanks in battle rather than the strange smells and sounds of the German tanks, and with hindsight, one would also expect that in battle a dog would run anywhere but towards a moving tank firing overhead, and in doing so become a menace to everyone else on the battlefield.

Eventually, they must have succeeded because the Germans had a name, hundminen, for this crap and the Germans are pretty serious about naming things. They noticed that the tanks had a hard time hitting the small puppies and so decided to come back at them with flame throwers. Jesus Christ.

I'd like to know what the Soviets had against dogs. It may be that there are so damn many of them running about the country. But they have a long history of doing crazy shit to canines: there was Laitka, the dog they shot into space, the anti-tank dogs and, let's not forget Pavlov. I wonder.

McCain's New Add Apes Triumph of the Will

Respectful campaigning, indeed.

More on Stevens

No big surprises in the indictment; he was charged with accepting more than $250,000 from one of Alaska's biggest oil companies. From the Times' article, though, we get what makes this story particularly salivating for Democrats:

But the indictment dealt a sharp blow to Mr. Stevens’s effort to win re-election in November, and raised the hopes of Democrats who have not won a Senate race in Alaska since 1974. Democrats were already relishing the chance to unseat Mr. Stevens, having recruited Mark Begich, the popular mayor of Anchorage, to challenge him. Mr. Stevens first must face six Republican challengers in the state’s Aug. 26 primary.

This is causing some speculation that the Ds could pick up enough seats to get to 60 - what amounts to a majority now in this marvelous political climate - but I don't think they'll get more than 57, and that's still a bit wide eyed.

About Time

Ted Stevens was indicted today.


A four year investigation. Hope they have some good stuff on him. More to follow when they release the actual indictment.

Putin accuses Russia's biggest coal and steel producer of price-fixing

Mechel's billionaire owner, Igor Zyuzin, did not attend the meeting, claiming that he was ill. This was Putin's rather ominous reply:

"The director has been invited, and he suddenly became ill,'' Putin said. "Of course, illness is illness, but I think he should get well as soon as possible. Otherwise, we will have to send him a doctor and clean up all the problems."

The company is accused of doubling prices for Russian costumers as compared to international ones.

Okay...

I can't sleep. Watch the above and you won't be able to, either. It's an animated farm propaganda piece from the USSR - about 1970 - and it has a whole lotta disco.

Don't worry about the lack of subtitles. I speak the language and I understand nothing.

An easy target, of course, but I'm a little off today

The man whose understanding of our country's questionable history of imperialism is inversely proportional to the smug feeling of manliness he gets out of his surname, Charles, Krauthammer, knocks one out of the park today. Really, a must read for anyone who wants a concrete example of how ridiculous the hand wringing to Obama's recent trip has been.

Matthew Yglesias pretty much sums up what I found to be insane in Krauthammer's understanding of Maliki's endorsement: we, the American people, should vote for McCain because he is the candidate with the cojones to force the Iraqi government into a relationship with us which is repugnant to them.

Actually fuck that, don't read this article. It's smarmy and sounds like a freshman debate position paper written by an overweight ex-video game clerk with snickers stains on his shirt. Spare yourself, read only this paragraph:

McCain, like George Bush, envisions the U.S. seizing the fruits of victory of a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

The stand out euphemism for conquest and imperialist dominance is "fruits of victory" naturally.

But hey, can anyone give two examples of how the situation in Iraq is different than those in Germany, Japan or South Korea?

The Speech

That was a fantastic speech. He didn't falter at all and the number of people who showed up to hear him was inspiring. Watching the coverage afterwords, however, I've noticed that both CNN and MSNBC have suggested that the tone of Obama's speech and the general demeanor of his trip in general could be "used" by the Republicans to show that Obama is arrogant and already acting like the Commander in Chief.

I don't get this, at all. How is that going to be a valid criticism. How else could a contender for the presidency act? You go overseas to show the world and folks watching back home how you will differ from your opponent and how you will differ from your predecessor. Can you imagine McCain drawing the kind of numbers Obama drew in Berlin, were he to give a similar speech? I doubt it. This trip is proving to be disastrous for Republicans who tried to "force" Obama into going overseas in the first place. We get that the Iraqi government agrees with Obama's Iraq policy and now we have this Berlin speech, which will further motivate Obama's base and perhaps lead some people on the fence to view Obama has having confidence not arrogance. Hopefully, anyway. I doubt it'll convert anybody who resolutely thinks McCain has more foreign policy knowledge and expertise than Obama. But those people are fucking nuts, anyway.

What?

I don't understand. Roger Cohen says many things which I do not understand.

That was before Nicolas Sarkozy, who never saw a habit he didn’t want to overturn, became president 14 months ago. Now we have another beautiful singer, who happens to be his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, strumming these lines to him on her new album:

“I gave you my body, my soul and my chrysanthemum/ For I am yours/ you are my lord, you are my darling/ you are my orgy/ you are my folly.”

Old and settled in its ways? I think not. America’s first lady may love her man, but not like this. France has stepped out of hibernation on amphetamines.

What?

But this man is a tonic to his country and the most important European leader of his time.

The most important man in Europe in the past 14 months? What?

Because you can’t build a Europe that’s divided toward the United States, as Iraq illustrated, his pro-Americanism has aided E.U. cohesiveness.

What?

In the same way, his warmth toward Israel has given France the room to emerge as a credible Middle Eastern intermediary.

What?

Maybe my salmonella is acting up again but I do not understand anything in this.

It's naive to hope a different poll would have Prokofiev or Shostakovich higher up...

A lot has been made in the past few months of this contest, Name of Russia, which, as one might expect, is designed to find a name from history which can be used as a symbol, an outward face, for Russia to the world. It's inspired by a BBC contest, Great Britons, which named Winston Churchill as its symbol; South Africa named Nelson Mandela.

Russia is on the verge of electing either the dumbest possible man to be at the helm during the worst possible time, Nicholas II or....

Stalin.

Pushkin - who practically invented the modern Russian literary language - is in sixth. About the only good news is that the great bard Vladimir Vysotsky is in third.. Vysotsky was a sort of a Russian Bob Dylan, had Dylan been writing under a regime that would have sent him to a labor camp for performing "North Country Blues."

Anyway, as the article mentions, it’s not as if this poll is definitive or one hundred percent representative or anything; but it is distressing.

And every time I read one of these articles about the resurgence of popular support for Stalin, I’m reminded of why it’s acceptable (in the sense that I would not be socially ostracized, I admit it might not be in good taste) for me to tack up a Soviet propaganda poster, or for that matter wear a tee shirt emblazoned with the hammer and sickle, but it wouldn’t be acceptable for me to put up Nazi propaganda or wear a shirt with a swastika on it. The first can be explained by the fundamental differences between Stalinist propaganda and Nazi propaganda: the Stalinist variety tended towards denial of reality in service towards the idealistic goals of the state and the wisdom of its leader, thus propelling the language into the absurd - 400 page homoerotic novels about factory workers and ridiculously grandiloquent nicknames for Stalin; Nazi propaganda, on the other hand, avoided abstract concepts as its aim, rather focusing on specifics like the Treaty of Versailles and the Jews and that specificity of the targets makes it less apt to ridicule because we can more easily see the subjects the propaganda destroys, making it more disturbing; not to mention that it was also more effective – there isn’t a Stalinist equivalent to Triumph of the Will.

The difference in attitude with regards to the respective symbols of the regimes is a bit trickier. It’s not enough to say that the hammer and sickle are representative of an ideology which transcends its earthly manifestation since the swastika was adopted precisely because it was a mystical symbol of good luck. We can rule that out. But since the tactics we employed battling The Reds were often as brutal and murderous as we made Theirs out to be, I’d venture that most folk who don a shirt with the Soviet emblem on it are doing it more as a denunciation of their own culture than an endorsement of the Soviets’. Also, there’s the point that the swastika and Nazism (as a governing power) died when Hitler did. Despite its simplicity, victory may be all there is to it. However, as hostile as the relationship we’ve had with an economically independent and powerful Russia has been, it may very well turn out that the alliance we struck with Stalin in order to save European culture from Hitler may prove to be a Faustian bargain. I still hold out some hope for Medvedev to be a different leader than Putin, but there’s no denying there is a certain regressive trajectory in our countries’ foreign policy.

To go further and give a concrete example of the type of baffling double standard exists, when Dmitri Medvedev was sworn in as President of Russia, he took command of the Presidential Regiment and honored it on its 72nd anniversary. The Regiment was founded in order to protect Stalin from and to find and root out counterrevolutionary groups in 1936, on the cusp of his most brutal year in power; the next year approximately 700,000 people would be executed during the Great Purge. With that in mind it's hard to see the Regiment as anything other than a terrorist organization given legitimacy by a government whose own legitimacy was brought about by brutality and, well, terrorism.

And can you imagine if Angela Merkel honored a comparable institution founded during the Nazi years? It would be viewed as a grotesque act and an international outcry would probably force her to resign. Yet, so often as that hypothetical comparison is made, there seems to be an undeserved consensus that Russians simply view their “dark period” differently. It utterly baffles me, regardless of whether it’s unnoticed or simply left unsaid that the singular reason why that is happens to be that Stalin sat down at Potsdam and Hitler shot himself in a bunker as his regime fell apart.

Because of that victory, Western textbooks (leaving out college curriculums here for obvious reasons) can feel free to not highlight that millions more died under Stalin than under Hitler; and Russian textbooks can proclaim that the horror of those years was necessary to industrialize the country and helped forge a nation capable of winning WWII. That Russia won WWII despite Stalin is rarely mentioned. He denied that Hitler would even go back on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, despite intelligence reports indicating otherwise. Furthermore, by the time Operation Barbarossa was launched, Stalin had liquidated basically all of the top military advisers and leaders. The USSR won because of the leadership of Marshall Zhukov and the fact that Soviet generals could send wave after wave of cannon fodder soldiers at the Germans.

So, let's get back to reality here. Stalin was an awful, awful leader. Militarily, economically and scientifically incompetent, his inabilities had disastrous consequences that affected almost every citizen who wasn't in the top circles of power. There's a reason why the Russians refer to WWII as The Great Patriotic War. They deserve to feel a sense of pride about the outcome. They arguably did more to cripple Hitler than any other Allied country and the West has yet to recognize that properly. But, to repeat, all of this needs to be understood under the context that, amazingly, they did thus under the leadership of a paranoid lunatic.

Should the ICC go after Bashir?

Julie Flint and Alex de Waal wrote a very interesting op-ed about the current ICC situation in Sudan. You all should take a look at it!

Basically they argue that the ICC shouldn't go after Bashir right now since it would severely endanger the sudanese people, relief workers, and the north-south Comprehensive Agreement.

Last time I vouch for you Mitya

Figures that right after I post about how Putin's not really running things it seems that, at least with regards to Foreign Policy, Putin will be running things. This is a huge reversal in Russian precedent, the Prime Minister has generally focused on domestic stuff. No more.

I don't think this necessarily means that Putin is the real master, yet, but it does indicate that there may be a power struggle developing.

And who knows, maybe the Czech debacle and the G8 summit catalyzed this.

Obama Gives Global Marshall Plan Style Speech

What do we all think, read the speech here.

At one point Obama states:

I will make the case to the American people that it can be our best investment in increasing the common security of the entire world. That was true with the Marshall Plan, and that must be true today.

That's why I'll double our foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012, and use it to support a stable future in failing states, and sustainable growth in Africa; to halve global poverty and to roll back disease. To send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.

Anyway it's a pretty great speech, especially when he starts pointing out all the 'what could have beens' if Bush had spent money and diplomatic weight properly.

But I honestly will await a nice policy brief with some details outlining how Obama will do this...you know, get some development experts to write down some specifics.

Good stuff.

This is amazing

From here:

Zizek has won himself such a broad audience that he was approached by Abercrombie and Fitch to write copy for its unashamedly homoerotic clothing catalogue. You might balk at the idea of a Marxist philosopher selling polo shirts, but Zizek understood it as only the next facet of his at best pluralist, at worst contradictory, career. So, next to a Bruce Weber photograph of two hunks in bed with a blonde, we get this: "Does this constellation not merely explicate the fact that, while a man cheats his feminine partner with another real woman, a woman can cheat a man even if she makes love only with him, since her pleasure is never fully contained in enjoying him?"

Zizek has admitted to the Boston Globe that the writing for the Abercrombie catalogue is theoretically barren -- and that he wrote the copy in 10 minutes. But he is undaunted. "If I were asked to choose between doing things like this to earn money and becoming fully employed as an American academic, kissing ass to get a tenured post -- I would with pleasure choose writing for such journals!"

I love that man.

Speculation about Russia's veto.

It's odd to decry a country's lack of transparency and then insist upon reacting to every single one of their actions in strictly black or white terms. And yea and verily do I once again find myself in disagreement with Blake Hounshell over Russia. The Passport blogger suggests that Russia's veto of sanctions against Zimbabwe happened because Putin is still running the shots in Moscow, not Medvedev. He believes this because last Tuesday, Medvedev stated that Russia had concerns over Mugabe's violence during the aftermath of the election. According to him the reversal of this position isn't simply because Medvedev never had any intention of following through on sanctions - that would be uninteresting, banal, and based in reality - nor does Hounshell take into account that it might have anything to do with the Czech-US radar deal which was signed the day Medvedev apparently changed his mind about Zimbabwe. This agreement is something which Russia feels very strongly about and I believe it would be enough for them to retaliate. I also believe that Russia never had any intention of voting for sanctions, but the radar deal incited them to move from abstaining to vetoing. I, uh, also should point out that I think that Russia's veto is wrong.

Also, another possibility is that Russia really doesn't want to go on record as criticizing another country's electoral process. Just throwing that out there.

I really don't think speculation about Russia's political decisions has ever been something that is immediately discernible. That caveat aside, I doubt Putin is the head of a shadow government. It's more likely that Medvedev is sitting in a precarious position atop a massive bureaucratic structure which was built and staffed by Putin. Even if Putin is not the head of the government, in many ways Russia's is a Putinist government. But that hardly means that he's nefariously running the show and maneuvering to contradict Russia's president.

There will inevitably be conflict and tension between Medvedev and Putin (not to mention between Medvedev and Putin's bureaucracy) but I don't think the veto was one of those conflicts. And even if it was I don't think it's as big a deal as Hounshell is implying.

Innaugral Dowd Bash

I think it's a requirement for any aspiring progressive blog to have at least one to two posts every three months reminding everyone that Maureen Dowd is fucking nuts.

Most weeks I read her columns when they're published in print, on Sundays, and invariably she ruins my Sunday. Granted, as of about a month ago, I read them at work and since I didn't particularly get a whole lot of satisfaction from my job, becoming frustrated on a political level was at least something I could handle. Anyway, I waited almost an entire day before giving in to the masochistic urge to read the Feng Shui Princess of Georgetown this week and good lord did she not disappoint.

Her point - and I wish I were kidding here - is that Obama is both a Clintonesque political centrist and that his biggest flip-flop so far was to regret his decision to put his daughters on Access Hollywood because they revealed to a stunned and distraught nation that the Democratic nominee does not care for ice cream.

There are also these two classic moments which I will look back on with either uncontrollable rage or hilarity depending on the outcome in November:

Whether Obama was irritated that he had slipped up and exposed his daughters or was annoyed that his kids were exposing more delicious details about his finicky, abstemious tastes, we’ll never know.
...

The bad news and the good news is that Obama can be opportunistic. He’s more pragmatic than dogmatic. He’s flexible and a bit of a situationalist. If Bill Clinton weren’t still sulking, he would appreciate Obama’s emulation of his style in ’92, taking a bit from the left and a bit from the right.

The self-pitying Bill and the self-flagellating Barack both need to take a cue from the Obama girls.

I'd like to point out that if you're coming down on a political candidate for being potentially elitist, don't use the word "abstemious", okay? Also, as Ives points out in the entry I linked to earlier - even as someone who has no kids and has no plans to have kids in the near future - I would love for MoDo to find one parent who has never second guessed themselves as a parent. It seems to me to be done more out of care than pathological regret, but whatever.

Also, the italicized note at the end, "Thomas Friedman is off today." is too precious for words. I'm glad she brought her A-game to fill Tommy's air bubble with the necessary hot air.

The New Yorker Cover

Thought I should comment on that. Obama's camp is apparently livid at what the magazine calls an obviously satirical photo.

I'm torn, honestly. On the one hand, I think it's a funny image. Hell, I laugh at much, much more inappropriate things every day. Most New Yorker readers will also be able to see it as satire. The magazine claims to have used the cartoon as a cover image to generate discussion as well as controversy. On the other hand, though, I do think that the image is inappropriate and the fact that it's on the cover as opposed to on the inside of the magazine bothers me for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. It's probably a deep mistrust of cable media's ability to really take this picture and use it as a springboard for serious discussion. Hell, I think that one of the groups satirized by the image is the media who run with these right wing talking points so very well.

It's frustrating that people do think that Obama is a terrorist Muslim fanatic and Michelle a radical America-hating Black Panther. Precisely because of that, I think it's a funny image. I'm not a national magazine, however. I really think this will generate more press about the New Yorker than it will spark serious discussion on CNN and MSNBC about why some people hold this view of the Obamas.

And here is another good point, although a bit overly dramatic.

[Edit -- Neither of the Obama-related articles in this issue of the New Yorker - one, a brief comment lampooning the flip-flop nonsense, the other a quite long piece about Obama's Chicago roots - have anything to do with the subject matter the cover satirizes. This just further makes me question why that cover was approved.]

Time to Reevaluate?

Two bits of Russian news this afternoon and both of them highlight the incessant hostility between Russia and the West, hostility which stems from our pushing to develop an anti-balisitic missile system in Eastern Europe. The Bush Administration states that this shield will be used to deter an attack from Iran. Russia has maintained that this is unnecessary and that the shield will affect their strategic interests.

Well, now Russia may be cutting off gas to the Czechs in retaliation for allowing the US to build a radar on their territory. Russia, as the article mentions, is the world's largest exporter of energy resources and ever since their current economic windfall, they've been looking to reestablish their influence in Eastern Europe.

I'm anxious as all hell to hear what the Russians' excuse is going to be, what they'll say is "really" the reason they're cutting off gas. They've done this twice before, once in Lithuania after they decided to sell a non-Russian company and once in Ukraine shortly after the Orange Revolution. I think those two incidents were overreactions and unnecessary, but I'm hard pressed to fault the Russians too much for not liking this anti-balistic business. Russia points to recent tests to indicate Iran is incapable of getting a missile that deep into Europe.

But then again, maybe I'm too disillusioned by our saber-rattling towards Iran and want to prove they aren't a threat. It certainly seems as though our pushing the matter isn't helping anything on any side.

And while flexing their energy muscles is arguably sensible, Russia's grudge is pushing them so far as to veto sanctions against Zimbabwe, a move - whether they realize it or not - which is incredibly embarrassing.

On a final note, Robert Farley makes an interesting point: with this current veto, Russia has moved from using its veto power to protect its interests, but not going out of its way to oppose the US, to going out of its way to oppose the US. It's not back to the Cold War, but.....

I Love you Pravda

This is hilarious. I can't find this in Russian and that just makes it more amazing to me. The thrust of it is that Russians take a lot showers. But Russians aren't as insane as Americans!

An average American takes a shower twice a day – this is a holy ritual in the States. A person who neither takes a shower, nor changes his or her underwear for two days is considered an outcast in the USA.

Specialists say that Russians have developed a passion for cleanliness through TV series, films, books and other objects of mass culture, which actively imitate the American lifestyle.

Behind all of that is the half-articulated point that this obsession with cleanliness is pushing Russia to the brink of an ecological disaster because they, along with all the other clean nations, are rapidly depleting the world's fresh water resources.

Just one of several major ecological disasters Russia seems to be on the brink of, honestly. I just love the tone of this article so very much.

Charity and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa, Too Much Money on AIDS?

I just came across an interesting article by two dutch economists arguing that the rate at which international aid targeting HIV/AIDS has grown in the past decade is doing more harm than good. It essentially misses the most important demographic issues and fails to strengthen health infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. As they conclude, and many of us already adhere to, "Foreign aid ought to be guided not by fleeting opinion and charity but by evidence and true engagement, aiming at long-term sustainable solutions."

The authors specifically point to the decrease in maternal health care as the major problem. The graph posted shows the evolution of AIDS funding crowding out family planning and basic reproductive health service.


Two interesting points from the authors:

1) HIV/AIDS programmes would profit considerably from a more balanced approach, as maternal health and family planning investments go to the heart of the problems of Sub-Saharan countries – high population growth rates keeping numerous countries trapped in poverty...

In most countries, the total fertility rate, the expected total number of children per woman, hovers around five, far above the replacement rate of 2.1 children. Judging from the demographic health surveys carried out in developing countries, desired fertility rates fell faster over time than the actual rates. This is reflected in high levels of unmet need and high proportions of births that are ill-timed or unwanted. High fertility leads to rapid population growth rates, exacerbating scarcity in health care, education, land for farmers, and all other public domains of life.

2) The unprecedented rise of HIV/AIDS funds is disrupting fiscal policy and local health care systems whereas a more balanced investment in reproductive health and HIV/AIDS would make use of the existing infrastructure.

Vertical programs like HIV/AIDS erode the primary health care systems in developing nations. The new HIV/AIDS funds are swamping public health budgets, in some cases exceeding 150 percent of the government’s total allocation to health care (Lewis, 2006).

Too much money must be spent in too short a time. Such a situation, particularly in the conditions of extreme poverty and poor governance prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, easily results in “poaching” of health care workers and bureaucrats from other worthy public projects.

Does this beg the question of how and if the big charities should go about fighting AIDS?