Alabama Steps Up
I have to commend the State of Alabama and it’s Republican Governor Bob Riley for taking a long overdue step into the present.
Gov. Bob Riley signed a resolution Thursday expressing “profound regret” for Alabama’s role in slavery and apologizing for slavery’s wrongs and lingering effects.“Slavery was evil and is a part of American history,” the Republican governor said. “I believe all Alabamians are proud of the tremendous progress we have made and continue to make.”
Alabama is the fourth Southern state to pass a slavery apology, following votes by the legislatures in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Alabama’s Democrat-controlled Legislature approved the resolution last week.
Minnesota US Attorney Targeted for Supporting Voting Rights
The LA Times has the latest breakdown on the voting rights abuse “pattern” that makes up one big part of the Gonzales DOJ scandals.
It’s really not that hard to understand.
Biting The Hand That Feeds You
Okay, this whole immigration thing is getting really interesting, I guess it’s time I went and learned something on the subject so I could write about it.
As it turns out, Bush tried biting the hand that feeds him, and it would seem they are biting back!
I don’t know who to give this advice to, Bush, or the wingnut radio blowhards, but for whomever wants it, here goes: Careful who you get in bed with guys, you may have to look ‘em in the face in the morning.
Thompson’s Impact
Yeah yeah yeah, Fred Thompson’s going to run… ooooooh. I’m quaking in my little space boots. But seriously, considering the support the guy has won without even entering the race, now that it looks like an inevitability, it’s time to take a look at how Thompson’s entrance into the race is going to affect the Republican field.
Everyone Hates America!
Conservative wingnut braintrust Madame Malkin has done it again. Yup… I didn’t think it possible, but she managed to turn the booing of Miss America at the Miss Universe pageant in Mexico City, and turn it into… wait for it MEXICANS HATE AMERICA!!!!
Holy crap! I never knew. They hate us, and obviously there is only one course of action for us to take. We must bomb the ever living shit out of them until they like us, kinda like we did with Iraq, because, you know that worked awesomely well.
As anyone knows the way to get people to welcome you with candies and flowers is to invade their country, and kill a bunch of people. That’ll do it.
After all, how dare ANY country hate America? Where do they get off as sovereign nations not under American rule to dis us? Our course is clear, the path is set, we must wage a holy war against all peoples until they come to see how great America is. Countries swapping out their old flag for ours is preferable, I mean, why not just turn Mexico into another state, yeah?
The funny thing here is this better than thou tone that Michelle takes, like Americans don’t boo! Apparently, Michelle has never watched professional sports, or Michael Richards doing a stand up routine. I mean really.
She tripped, and fell, of course people are going to boo. And yeah, sometimes things do get tense between us and our Southern neighbor, but you know something, if you don’t like people not liking you, quit doing things that piss them off. You either have a country like you, or you piss them off, you don’t get to do both, so pick one Michelle. If you’re going to be one of these illegal aliens are evil, and we should militarize the border types, that’s cool, but don’t expect them to be happy about it, okay?
Now, here’s the part that Michelle leaves out. Yes, Ms. Smith got booed, but with a little poise and grace on her part, and a little by the audience, by the end of the night, our Miss America garnered applause and laughter from the audience.
So I suppose people are making political hay out of the event, but you know something? It’s an effing BEAUTY PAGEANT! Get over yourselves.
Creation Museum; Not Following God’s Law
I just found this kinda quirky. The very controversial Creation Museum finally opened to a huge crowd of 4,000 visitors. But this isn’t what I found quirky.
No, the thing that strikes me as odd is that if you look at the Museum’s homepage, you’ll find something very… well… odd. There, in large friendly letters are written the words, “Now Open 7 Days a Week.”
Er… wait a minute. Okay, if this museum is running off of strict interpretation of the Bible, thereby saying that the world is only a few thousand years old, and that God created the Earth in six days, then something here doesn’t make sense.
If we’re going along with a strict interpretational look at the Bible, then shouldn’t the Creation Museum only be open for 6 days a week? You know, because it’s a sin to work on the Sabbath Day? Sure, the visitors won’t be sinning by visiting the museum on Sunday, but what about all of the Museum employees?
What the hell (or should that be Hell) is going on here? I mean even Chic-fil-a remains closed on Sundays for His sake.
Alright, now that I’m done with the cheap shot, it’s time for the typical liberal boilerplate that I suppose bears repeating because, well, this museum exists.
Let’s be clear, I’m not against a Christian museum. Not at all, really, so long as it is privately funded, or at least receives funds from the government in accordance with the constitution and the law, and so long as no one has qualms with me putting up a Pagan museum, or Muslim museum, or anything of that ilk. We’re cool.
What I do got a problem with is passing this stuff off as science. It’s not, and even if you try and get a Creationist to engage in the discussion, which isn’t all that hard considering, it always boils down to pretty much the same thing. Science’s answer to everything is improbable, therefore there must be a God.
Sadly, this is neither scientific, nor particularly faithful. It’s not scientific because, well, it doesn’t employ the scientific method of hypothetizing, experimenting, and repeating until you can no longer disprove the hypothesis. It is by this tenet of scientific method that we call such things as The Big Bang and Evolution theories in the first place because the only way something can progress from theory to law is by completely and without refute proving the theory. Considering that we don’t have time machines yet, we can’t go back in time to observe what actually happened, and so these theories cannot progress from theory to law.
The point is, Creationism is not born from this. Instead it merely offers another untestable hypothesis to account not even for discrepencies in modern scientific theory, but merely improbabilities. Conversely, Big Bang and Evolution is based off of scientific procedure, primarily observations, and calculations that are grounded in law, for instance, the Big Bang, in case you didn’t know, is based largely on laws of physics and the observation of heavenly bodies.
But Creationism isn’t even good faith. Faith is something that someone holds IN SPITE OF conventional knowledge and wisdom, IN SPITE OF the observable, IN SPITE OF the knowledge about them. I don’t know the Bible all that well, I admit, but there is a passage in there that goes something like trust in the teachings of God, not of man. I’m not one for religion, but I dig on faith and spirituality, and to me, it really cheapens the whole idea of a faith in God and his creation of existence as described in the Bible to try and take that faith and turn it into something else.
It’s just insulting to Him to do it so badly.
And Now For Something I Hope You’ll Really Like
Sorry for the Inconvenience
For those of you who regularly visit Comments From Left Field, you may have noticed over recent weeks that our website has not been dependable, and has often times been unavailable. We really apologize for this, and in getting in touch with those who run our server, it would seem that something technical has occured that is WAY over my head.
Still, they tell us that the problem is fixed, and hopefully we shouldn’t have any more problems.
Sorry for the inconvenience, and hopefully we will no longer be plagued with sketchy service.
Thanks!
You Can Oust Me Only If I Let You!
So, let’s say you have a guy, the most powerful guy in all of governance. Despite having a head of state, who is largely ineffectual, this guy who is the head of the legislative body is the real man in charge.
But, let’s say this guy is widely unpopular, and in a land with two political parties, not even his own party likes him, and therefore everyone wants him gone. As a result, the rest of the legislative body attempts to put together a bipartisan front in an attempt to oust this guy. But when they go to vote, this guy refuses to recognize them.
Over and over again, the head honcho pointedly does not recognize anyone who will bring up his ouster, thereby preventing a vote on the precedings. Things get out of hand, legislators attempt to rush the podium just to get to the microphone, the guy in charge is forced to retreat to his office a couple of times to hide from the rest of the legislative body that is now out for his head, and guards are required to physically restrain some of the lawmakers.
Sounds like the kinda shenanigans one might expect in some backwater country ruled by warlords, right? Nope. It happened right here in the US of A in a little state I like to call Texas.
Bush… Craddick… Maybe there really is something in the water.
Democratic Debates: Round 2
Well folks, we’re almost there, the second Democratic Debate in New Hampshire is set to happen this Sunday evening, and of course, we here at Comments From Left Field will be liveblogging the event with our usual pith and political insight!
As with all other liveblogging events here at CFLF, we do our liveblogging right in the comments section so that you guys can join in on the running commentary as well, the kind of innovation and interactivity you’ll be hard pressed to find elsewhere.
What’s at stake:
Anyone who has been watching the trends lately knows that for the most part the candidacies have been in a kinda lockstep since the previous debate. Hillary is still leading the pack, but overall has been undergoing a very very gradual downward slide (nothing that would put her in danger, as of yet). Obama has seemingly plateaued, and while Edwards is still dragging the bottom of the front runners, he is on a slow incline.
Of the lower tiered candidates, the big news seems to be Richardson whose overall national polling still has him hovering between 2 and 3%, but some successful and innovative ad buys have garnered him a boost in support in the early primary states.
Keeping this in mind, here’s what I think we are going to see. Hillary’s lack of increase in support stems largely from the long held public images of her, images that have only been bolstered by a couple of biographical books released about her by prominent journalists and not GOP hitmen. This points to probably the biggest challenge of the Hillary camp and that is to portray her as something other than the overly ambitious, calculating, and manipulative person so many people see her as. Look for her to stay strong on National Defense and Foreign Policy, but at least try and inject a softer less aggressive side in other arenas.
Anyone watching the first debate has learned that Barak Obama really does take sixty seconds just to clear his throat. As one commentator put it, he has a wide turning radius. But of the mistakes made from all the candidates in the first debate, I think Obama’s were possibly the biggest and probably the easiest to correct. In national defense and foreign policy, I think he knows he needs to appear more firm and surefooted. But in general look for Obama to at least attempt to streamline his answers, and attempt to cram that charisma that has won him so much support early on into the sixty/thirty second answer format.
For John Edwards… First… Let me say that my opinions do not necessarily reflect those with whom I work with here at Comments. I have to throw that out there because I’m pretty much of the mind that Edwards can go eff himself as of late. Healthy primaries are cool, but at the same time, I’m of the mind that one shouldn’t bloody up your opponents too badly, and in this context, I find his constant braying about how the Senate has voted on the Iraqi War Appropriations is pretty cowardly considering he himself doesn’t have to vote. There, I said it, I personally probably won’t vote for the man except maybe in the general election, and only if it is looking really bad for him against a republican, but then, I never said I don’t hold a grudge. As for his performance on Sunday, despite Obama and Clinton cutting him off at the pass by voting against the War Appropriations bill, look for Hair Boy to keep on the war path, and possibly even making things exciting. He definitely does seem to be the candidate most willing to draw first blood out there.
Richardson is going to make a big effort to turn around his performance from last time. If you’ll remember he often seemed confused and nervous and out of place. Since then both he and his campaign have pointed to him having a hard time hearing as the reason for his poor performance, so look for the Governor to reappear in the debates as much more surefooted and presidential.
As for Joe B, I have one fear regarding him. He delivered what has now been called the best moment of the first debate. His infamous “no” answer as to whether he will be a verbose gaffe machine. What scares me is that I think he may try and take this act on the road. I say this because I was watching him on Hardball the other day, and Chris Matthews asked him a question, can’t remember what, and again Biden said, “no.” And waited. Expectantly. It looked almost as though he were waiting for Chris to break out in laughter, and I could have sworn I saw the Senator’s face fall when Christ asked him, with a very stony face, to expound upon the one word answer. If Biden tries to pull the one word answer off again in this debate, write him off now, he’s done.
So that’s that… hope to see you folks on Sunday!
Political Math and the Iraq War
Even if you are a math geek, political math is pretty tricky. I may not have fared so well in calculus oh so many years ago, but to this day I still think it’s a little simpler and definitely a lot more fair than the mathematics of American politics.
The main reasoning behind this is that while in virtually every other discipline under the arithmatic banner two plus two equals four, in politics, this is rarely the case.
Sometimes two plus two equals three, others, it equals five. Still, on some days, two plus two equals a massive headache that usually can only be drowned out with a liberal dousing in beer.
So I suppose I shouldn’t have been all that shocked when, following the passage of the Iraq War Appropriations bill, there was a large outcry from the anti-war left. Despite the addition of benchmarks, something that only months ago Bush would have vetoed but now gratefully signed into law, this wouldn’t be enough.
And if this were a perfect world, it wouldn’t be. If politics and governance operated by normal math, than yeah, we got the majority, it’s time to bring the troops home, bring them home now, and let’s move on. But we’re dealing with political math here.
The real problem with political math is that there is never a one hundred percent correct answer. Even Social Security, the most successful socia program in American history, is not one hundred percent correct, garnering the ire of many anti-tax, do-it-yourselfer libertarians and big business I’m in it for myself and the rest of you can go pack sand types.
You just can’t please everyone, and it is so often with a population as diverse and different minded that the best answers are also the ones that piss the most people off.
But there is other math at work here, the ones that you really see the outraged left spouting off with no end. We have the majority, we should keep sending the president the same bill over and over again until he signs it.
If wishes were horses.
The problem is that this gambit is subject to the laws of probability and political math, and, quoth the magic eight ball, “Outlook Not Good.”
It’s a pretty characteristic trait of those of us over here on the left that we want our cake, we want to eat it too, and if it doesn’t taste just right, we go ahead and stand in a circle and start shooting each other until everyone’s dead, and I’m afraid that is exactly the situation we have found ourselves in, led primarily by a sense of betrayal and disappointment.
But with all of this antipathy, how much effort is spent looking at the math?
In the senate, 60 votes are required to end a filibuster, and 67 votes are required to override a veto. The House, not restricted by rules of a filibuster and cloture, doesn’t have to worry much about that part of the legislative process, but it still has to contend with overriding a veto, which could prove to be an even more daunting task as it would take more votes to turn in order to do so (rougly 80 votes over the 50% margin brings you to 67%).
And then there are polling trends and public approval. A majority of Americans want us out of the war, however; a majority of Republicans don’t, which makes things interesting for those caucuses in the House and Senate in the GOP. Senators and Representatives from deeply red states and districts can make a pretty simple case for voting against the will of America if they are voting on behalf of a populace that is going against the grain of the majority.
But what about Bush? He’s sitting on some all time low polling numbers, but what does he care? He’s not going to run for anything ever again. At this point, public opinion really has little bearing on how he will act, and at this point it’s all about his legacy.
Considering that the bulk of his presidency is defined by Iraq, his legacy can be summed up by a pretty simple calculus; be known for a largely unpopular war, and finally admitting defeat and backing out of it, or staying in until the end of his term, leaving the final judgement on his efforts in Iraq to be a question mark answered by the person who takes his job.
The latter is obviously the more desirable for him. At that point, whomever takes the White House, if they pull out of Iraq, Bush can always say that the lily-livered pol who did that ended the war “just as we were about to turn the corner.”
Even more, it’s difficult for Bush to pull out now, with some breakthrough just around the next bend. Sure, May might have been yet another deadly month, but maybe something really good will happen in June!
And then there are the Democrats. Those weak, no spine having Democrats that gave up the ghost on the fight to end the war, and caved to Bush and the GOP. Damn them! Damn them to Hell!
The big answer everyone wants right now is to the question, why didn’t the Dems stand up? Why did they cave? The thought process here being that if the Dems kept sending the bill back over and over again until either the President or the GOP relents, than we would eventually get our troops back home.
But, this thought process fails to take into account political math. To get an idea on how bad the numbers really stack up against the Democratic party, keep in mind that they can’t even get the requisite number of votes to actually send the already vetoed bill back.
Screw the sixty-seven votes needed to actually affect change, Dems can’t even break a filibuster, nor can they reintroduce a bill. So maybe send the president different bills, right? The Republicans will break for our side eventually, they have to.
Not exactly. Okay, some more math, and an “if/then” statement for all you geeks. If congress can not produce more than 67% support for a bill, then 1 > 535. Or, in other words, the president is more powerful than the House and the Senate.
So what we are banking on in forcing Bush’s hand is at least enough republicans to override the veto, that is the ONLY way that this is going to come to an end, and tragically, the political calculus didn’t look good for the Democrats going into this vote.
Prior to September, Republicans are going to side with Bush. Two thirds of their constituents believe in the war, and this whole, “We’re now on the right track,” malarchy seems to actually be bought. As of this moment, congressional Goppers have no incentive to turn anti war all of a sudden, which means that should the Democrats put forth another defunding the war bill, it too might pass, assuming that all the Democrats like it, but it will also suffer the fate of a veto.
The end result of continuing to not pass legislation that would fund the troops is that, well, the troops would go unfunded. The pentagon earlier this year said that it was good until about early to mid summer, but should our now hypothetical battle go on beyond this time frame, something I’m apt to believe would assuming that the Democrats remain stalwart, you would now be faced with unfunded troops.
Bush is going to keep them there, and Republicans have no reason to change sides, and given the circumstances, this is a situation that is easily spun to their favor, especially given the fact that yesterday was Memorial Day, and all. Does anyone really want to get pinned with not funding the troops on Memorial Day?
A possible backlash here is also that Democrats would lose support from the middle in their attempts to end the war. Keep in mind that non politicos, particularly the middle of the road types, are extremely fickle, and susceptable to well architectured ad blitzes. Imagine, if you will, the shift in public support should Democrats allow funding to lapse. Republicans would go into overdrive to blame them, and the Pentagon would be releasing stats and stories to back them up. Support to end the war could quite feasibly shift to funding the troops because our young men and women are over there risking their lives for pity’s sake.
This highly likely scenario is one that the Democrats could not win, and moreover, could potentially act as a setback in the attempts to ending the war. We must remember that the only thing that is going to get the GOP to join the anti war crowd is the threat of them losing their jobs, and giving the Goppers and Bush ammo to make the only people in DC fighting to actually end the war look bad could significantly reduce this public pressure on congressional Republicans to the point where they don’t have to worry about pulling out anymore, at least not for a while.
In far fewer words, to stand up now is, with this president and this minority party, playing chicken with the troops in the headlights. I can’t imagine what an unfunded war would look like, thankfully I don’t have to, but should Bush persist in keeping troops in Iraq without funding, there will be losses, there will be a need to reallocate resources, and I have little idea on how that would affect the boots on the ground, but I can’t imagine it being good.
As Newsweek’s Howard Fineman put it on Hardball last week, “I don’t know how the Democrats could have played this any better, but I don’t know how they could have played it any worse.”
Iraq is a quagmire, not just logistically, but politically. Logistically, it is such because of the planning, the motivations, and the incompetence with which it has been managed every step of the way. Politically, it is like quicksand because the Republican party has been hijacked by a radical prowar faction that has become the majority despite the non-interventionist roots that dark horse presidential candidate Ron Paul reflect. The status quo is stuck on like glue, and any solutions to the contrary are difficult and ugly.
Which provides us with probably one of the more depressing aspects of what is going on in politics right now. Democrats will be instrumental in ending the Iraqi war, or at least American involvement in it, but they will not get credit for it.
Back when the first war appropriation was sent to the White House and vetoed, not long after, George Will said, and I think rightly so, “Congress has voted to end the war, so it will end… It’s just a matter of when.”
It was that first spark that I think will later be looked upon as the beginning of the end, a largely symbolic gesture. But what Democrats and some of the more level headed followers of politics see is that they can not do this without at least some Republican support, which means that they need some leverage. Until they can hit that 67%, anything and everything that they try will be utterly symbolic and nothing more.
As Speaker Pelosi has made clear, there will be fight over this continuing on through the summer, and congress will continue to have votes that will continue to pressure the president. In July, it is highly suspected that congress will move to, and succeed, in defunding Guantanimo Bay, there will be more controls fought for, but again the big one, the one that we want to see is us out of Iraq.
As Green Day now prophetically has sung, “Wake me up, when September ends.”The key time here is September. This is when we are supposed to get our progress report and decide if things are working or not. Even more importantly, Republicans have gone on the record stating that if things don’t take a turn for the better, their minds will begin changing, falling lockstep with the will of the rest of America.
This is when Democrats need to make their last stand, and undoubtedly will. By then they will either have the support of congressional Goppers, or they won’t, but they’ll have lots of juicy tidbits and soundbites to throw back in their faces should they not follow through on their promises.
And this is likely to happen. Bush must not have very much faith in his new plan as he has already said that things are most likely going to get bloodier over the summer. Expect more of this as time and death tolls go on, a constant spinning from the White House just like we’ve seen throughout the duration of this war. And you can expect some Republicans to follow suit. But I think the key thing here is that people are going to be watching, they are going to be looking for results, and they are just going to see more and more death, and the Iraqi government take a two month vacation.
Despite Gopper attempts to spin the war George’s way, I don’t see a new resurgence of support for the war under these conditions, and Republicans will no longer be able to ignore their constituents.
It is under these conditions that we will finally see the proper climate to affect a pull out of the Iraqi war. Though this has already been undoubtedly mapped out by much of the Democratic leadership, it will be the Republicans in congress who vote against the war that will most likely get all the credit, asserting themselves as brave mavericks who have finally stood up to the head of their party, meanwhile Democratic leadership will still be seen as weak for letting the war carry on through the summer when they apparently should have stopped it earlier.
Ultimately, yeah, they could have solidified themselves as heroes by foolishly trying to cram the end of the war down Bush’s throat while the entire time the math was stacked up against them, but I find it far more effective that they are willing to forgo the heroics in favor of actually building a strategy that actually has a shot at working.
Much like their bringing about an increase in minimum wage. Sure, they could have energized the base and been seen as heroes by trying and failing to pass it on its own, but instead, they slip it into a highly unpopular war appropriations bill because they know it will pass. This isn’t trying to glean any and all good press they can from
Another Bush Victory In Iraq The Media Has Overlooked
The New York Times has the latest on a conservative, moral values victory that the media has mostly overlooked.
The piece is entitled: Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria.
Who Is Alan Foley?
Who was the the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) who is reported to have made the following statement to his staff in December 2002:
“If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so.”
If there is any justice, we should be hearing a lot more about this in the near future.
(vis Kevin Drum).
Conservative Christians Victimized Through Media Overrepresentation
I don’t know if there is a more annoying rant than that of Conservative Christians claiming to be victims of the media.
Media Matters, however, has done a study that has bore some fruit for this rant.
Among the study’s key findings:
* Combining newspapers and television, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed in news stories 2.8 times as often as were progressive religious leaders.
* On television news — the three major television networks, the three major cable new channels, and PBS — conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed almost 3.8 times as often as progressive leaders.
*In major newspapers, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed 2.7 times as often as progressive leaders.
Maybe Christian conservatives wouldn’t look so bad if the Pat Robertsons and Bill Donohues weren’t on the airwaves all the time. Maybe if the media quit referring to conservative Christians by their chosen nick of “morals voters,” others wouldn’t be so offended by such arrogance.
Are Americans Willing to Endure 100+ Troop Deaths Per Month?
For the second month in a row, troop deaths in Iraq have easily surpassed the 100 mark; with 117 dead last month and 118 dead so far this month. These aren’t logs to throw on the fire in the hope of warming Bush’s legacy. Each one of these lives touches many others and we lose the contributions each of these valuable individuals would likely make to our society.
My rough calculation is that the surge is increasing troop deaths by approximately 50%.
America doesn’t want this war, hates this President and will not stomach these deaths.
How The Retarded Blogger Lost His Pajamas
Pay Your Respects This Memorial Day
On this Memorial Day, please take a moment to pay your respects to the 3,454 Americans who have lost their lives to date in the current war in Iraq. Clicking the graph above will take you to iCasualties.org’s list of fatalities by month since the beginning of the war.
In addition, give a read to the following piece in the Washington Post entitled “I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.“
Below is the list of soldiers who have lost their lives this month.
| Date | Name | Place of Death - Province |
| 26-May-2007 | NAME NOT RELEASED YET | Diyala Province |
| 26-May-2007 | NAME NOT RELEASED YET | Baghdad (western part) |
| 26-May-2007 | Specialist William Lee Bailey III | Baghdad |
| 26-May-2007 | NAME NOT RELEASED YET | Salah Ad Din Province |
| 26-May-2007 | NAME NOT RELEASED YET | Salah Ad Din Province |