Heavens to Murgatroyd!

By J. Thomas Duffy

With, apparently, the new rules of Scrabble, you can use the proper name "Snagglepuss", which will net you a whopping 15-points (maybe more, if any of your tiles are on a double, or triple, score).



They be messin' with a lot of heads;

Beyonce on a triple-word score? Scrabble to upset purists with 'dumbing down' rule change

The decision, by games giant Mattel, will allow the celebrity, geographic and sports worlds to invade the most popular word game, leaving many a Scrabble fan bemused, or as the regular player may prefer, bumbazed.

For why memorise some of the 30,000 eight letter words in our rich and quirky English language when the names of pop stars such as Jay-Z or sportsmen like Zico may get you many more points

[snip]

Mattel defends its decision to make the game easier by saying it will level the playing field between experienced players and novices.

But the announcement has caused outrage among regular players with accusations that the company is 'dumbing down' the game.

Keith Churcher, chairman of the Reading Scrabble Club, was dismayed.

He said: 'Players like myself have spent decades memorising words in the dictionary.

'To be trumped by someone with knowledge of the current top ten pop chart is not a welcome prospect.

'They're dumbing down a classic.'

Mary Elizabeth Williams, over at Salon;

I'll get the smelling salts ... Proper nouns? Why, that would be like letting the rook move diagonally in chess! Building a hotel before you've bought all the houses on Monopoly! Installing elevators in Chutes and Ladders! Playing quarters with dimes!

But wait, as Williams points out, there's a catch!

But not so fast. Writing in Slate, Stefan Fatsis, author of "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players," told lexicon addicts across the land to call off their dogs. The poorly disseminated real story was that "Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble outside of North America, is introducing a game this summer called Scrabble Trickster. The game will include cards that allow players to spell words backward, use proper nouns, and steal letters from opponents." In other words -- it's just a spinoff. And American Scrabble, which is owned by Hasbro, isn't even affected.

As Fatsis explains;

So how did this latest games marketing gimmick turn into a global foofaraw? A combination of deceptive corporate shilling and media incompetence. The news of the game, I'm told, first appeared as four lines in a toy industry trade magazine. Then the British media started calling Mattel, and the company appears to have done nothing to disabuse gullible reporters of the idea that a Major Change is occurring. In the Daily Mail, a Mattel spokesman implied that the rules of the game had officially been changed. Mattel would still sell a Scrabble with the "old rules," but this new and improved game would help "level the playing field" between "experienced players with a vast vocabulary" and "players with a love of celebrity or football." Reporters didn't bother calling the Mattel executive in London who oversees competitive Scrabble play outside North America. In the United States and Canada, reporters mostly didn't even make the distinction between Mattel and Hasbro, the game's dueling corporate overlords.

Hmmm ...

Competing Scrabble owners?

Rather abstruse on why they would create this discombobulation, leaving all of us in quite the discomposed state.




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

What went wrong with the banks and how can we fix it?

By Carol Gee

This disturbing headline, "A Congressional Panel, Hobbled in Its Financial Inquiry," is via The New York Times.  Group theory experts would have an interesting challenge in figuring out what went wrong with this commission.  In contrast, the 9/11 Commission seemed to have a great deal more success with its widely read and effectively utilized report.  To quote from the Times:

In recent months, a top investigator resigned, frustrated by delays in assembling a staff. Behind closed doors the panel’s chairman and vice chairman have had heated disagreements over whether to make public preliminary findings or revelatory documents. . .


The people appointed to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission last July, six by Democrats and four by Republicans, say they hope to publish, by the Dec. 15 deadline, a volume much like the 9/11 Commission report, which was acclaimed for its narrative sweep and became a surprise best seller.


But that goal seems increasingly out of reach, given what the commissioners themselves acknowledge has been a haphazard approach and a lack of time and resources. Given the delays, the commission’s impact on policy could be modest; the House has already voted on a sweeping financial reform bill, and the Senate could vote on it by summer.

Chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Chris Dodd will be retiring at the end of his term. As he leads this Congressional reform effort, he does not need to be distracted by reelection issues. Senator Dodd can comfortably push for regulation reforms that can truly protect the nation, and particularly vulnerable consumers, from another Great Recession. If Congress does not go far enough, the next banking greed bubble-and-burst episode could become the Great Depression-II.


My banking reform  suggestions include: 1) Establish an independent Financial Consumer protection agency. 2) Break up the biggest banks -- who are really investment banks, not banks who serve banking customers. 3) Regulate exotic derivatives.See original Democratic Strategist quote at Amplify.

My own initial take on this Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission story is that, as always, it comes down to the qualities of leadership that appointees and staff bring to the task. People associated with the 9/11 Commission were very outstanding. I did not get that same impression regarding the current commission.  To quote further from the NYT article referenced above:

. . . In an interview, the commission’s chairman, Phil Angelides, said the panel was struggling to satisfy a broad mandate to examine the role of 22 factors in bringing about the crisis. He pointed out that the panel had a budget of just $8 million, compared with the $38 million spent by a federal bankruptcy trustee who dissected the collapse of Lehman Brothers.


Even though the panel is backward-looking and will not issue formal recommendations, Mr. Angelides said he hoped its findings would be authoritative and useful for future policy makers.


But Bill Thomas, the Republican vice chairman of the panel and a former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, acknowledged, “We are limited by time.”


. . . The commission’s executive director, J. Thomas Greene, was named in September but took several months to assemble a staff of 49, leading one investigator, Martin T. Biegelman, an expert on corporate fraud, to resign during the winter. Twelve staff members are on loan from agencies like the Federal Reserve. The commission struggled to hire researchers and investigators with expertise in areas like structured finance or accounting.


. . . Commissioners also said that Mr. Angelides and Mr. Thomas recently clashed over whether to release preliminary staff reports or some of the 500,000 pages of materials that had been gathered so far. When Mr. Angelides floated the idea of releasing some of the materials to reporters, Republicans threatened to look into the panel’s work if they took control of the House, a person briefed on the dispute said.

Lack of money cannot be used as an excuse for an overly ambitious congressional mandate, too much political bickering, lack of transparency and obviously poor organizing.  The FCI Commission has until the end of the year to finish its work.  The key to its success will be for members and staff to do the best they can from here on out with the marginal hand they were dealt.  This body's work is,  in a very different way -  of course, of comparable importance to the work of the 9/11 commission.  The Great Recession did great damage to our nation.  We need to know why it happened and how to prevent a recurrence, just as we did with the 9/11 attacks.


(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Smartest Republican of the Day: Tom Coburn

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Wait... what? Tom Coburn? Is this bizarro reality? I despise Tom Coburn. He's one of the worst Republicans in the Senate, a partisan and ideological extremist.

But, well, credit where credit is due, I suppose. At a recent town hall meeting, the Oklahoma Republican a) defended Nancy Pelosi:

She is a nice lady... [boos and jeers]... Come on now. She is a nice... How many of y'all have met her? She's a nice person. She's a nice person... Let me give you a little lesson here. I hope you will listen to me. Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't mean they're not a good person.

And b) criticized Fox News:

What we have to have is make sure we have a debate in this country so that you can see what's going on and make a determination yourself. [applause] So don't catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good.

Wow. I mean, he's hardly a grammarian, and he's still way over on the right, but this was pretty caution-to-the-wind, and pretty darn admirable, for a Republican -- and especially for a hardened conservative like him.

Not that he'll be mistaken for a liberal anytime soon, nor even for a sensible human being, but still.

Internet neutrality and the Courts

By Capt. Fogg

Marconi was still a young man when the need for government control of communications became all too obvious. Newsmen using the new wireless telegraph began to jam each others' transmissions accidentally and on purpose and battles were fought over frequency allocations. Someone had to step in with some rules to allow the technology to develop, to prevent it being used as a weapon in restraint of free trade and to make sure that those using the public airwaves would use it without disregard for the public interest.

I can almost hear throats clearing at those last two words, almost see lips forming words like collectivism, socialism, Communism, but without it, the guy with the most money has the podium and the guy who owns all the podiums: press, broadcast and now the Internet, might just as well be the government with all that power. The difference between a fair trial and murder; between a Hockey game and a viking raid (if there is a difference) is the rules, so save your breath. I don't want to hear it.

The FCC was formed for these reasons, but during the last administration, it's been almost exclusively concerned with promoting the interests of power companies who want to use the power lines to get into the Internet business, and sometimes to the serious harm of other users of the frequency spectrum. Whether or not this has changed under the Communist/Fascist Antichrist from Kenya seems to matter less than the current posture of the courts. The District of Columbia Federal Appeals Court decided yesterday in favor of Comcast and against the authority of the FCC in it's attempt to mandate "net neutrality."

The new administration has been in favor of equal treatment for all Internet users; in favor of a policy that would prevent Comcast, for instance from slowing down and restricting the content they don't like and making content they approve of faster and cheaper. Yes, yes, I know all about free market competition, but I'm talking about the real world here and that's a world where corporations collude rather than compete. It's a world where a small group can control information to the point where no one can compete successfully. As I said, the difference between boxing and assault and battery or even murder is the rules.

It's too soon to make scary assertions about how this will work out, but as restrictions on how much of all media outlets can be owned by one person, real or corporate have been loosened along with restrictions on how much information they can restrict in their own interest, it looks to me like we're once again shooting ourselves in the foot, slow motion style. Our obsessive fantasy of a 'no holds barred' marketplace leading to peace and order, prosperity and a well informed electorate is, along with our phobic horror of phrases like "public interest" may be making corporate demagoguery a more valid vision of the future.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Busy

By Creature

Work is keeping me from the Internets, but I have had a chance to Tweet and re-Tweet over on the Twitter. So feel free to follow if you need a fix.

Quote of the Day: John McWhorter on Sarah Palin (and her all-American toddler-speak)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This, it seems to me, is spot on:

Palin is given to meandering phraseology of a kind suggesting someone more commenting on impressions as they enter and leave her head rather than constructing insights about them. Or at least, insights that go beyond the bare-bones essentials of human cognition -- an entity (i.e. something) and a predicate (i.e. something about it).

*****

What truly distinguishes Palin's speech is its utter subjectivity: that is, she speaks very much from the inside of her head, as someone watching the issues from a considerable distance. The there fetish, for instance -- Palin frequently displaces statements with an appended "there," as in "We realize that more and more Americans are starting to see the light there..." But where? Why the distancing gesture? At another time, she referred to Condoleezza Rice trying to "forge that peace." That peace? You mean that peace way over there -- as opposed to the peace that you as Vice-President would have been responsible for forging? She's far, far away from that peace.

*****

This reminds me of toddlers who speak from inside their own experience in a related way: they will come up to you and comment about something said by a neighbor you've never met, or recount to you the plot of an episode of a TV show they have no way of knowing you’ve ever heard of. Palin strings her words together as if she were doing it for herself -- meanings float by, and she translates them into syntax in whatever way works, regardless of how other people making public statements do it.

*****

The modern American typically relates warmly to the use of English to the extent that it summons the oral -- "You betcha," "Yes we can!" -- while passing from indifference to discomfort to the extent that its use leans towards the stringent artifice of written language. As such, Sarah Palin can talk, basically, like a child and be lionized by a robust number of perfectly intelligent people as an avatar of American culture. And linguistically, let's face it: she is.

Ouch. It doesn't exactly say much for American culture -- and the American people -- that it's essentially personified, linguistically, by Sarah Palin.

But something has to explain her ongoing popularity, at least on the right -- which, let's face it, is child-like (and not in a good way, and I don't mean to insult children) -- and this at least partly does.

She's one of you, my American friends. Like it or not.

Does Hamid Karzai have a drug problem?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Maybe so, says Peter Galbraith, former U.N. envoy to Afghanistan:

In an interview on MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown," Peter Galbraith described Karzai as "off-balance" and "emotional." Galbraith also called for President Barack Obama to vastly limit Karzai’s power to appoint officials within the war-torn country until he proves himself a reliable partner to the U.S.

"He's prone to tirades. He can be very emotional, act impulsively. In fact, some of the palace insiders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan's most profitable exports," said Galbraith, in an apparent reference to opium or heroin.

When asked whether he meant Karzai has a substance abuse problem, Galbraith responded: "There are reports to that effect. But whatever the cause is, the reality is that he is -- he can be very emotional."

Well, it would explain, in part, his recent, well, instability, if I may put it nicely. (And, drugs or no drugs, he does seem to be immensely unreliable, and possibly not worth the investment. Is he just another would-be American puppet -- Iraq's Ahmed Chalabi comes instantly to mind, along with America's various favoured tyrants during the Cold War, many in Latin America -- who duplicitously goes his own way and undermines American interests?)

Laura Rozen has more.

Freedom's just another word

By Capt. Fogg

Somehow I've never been able to understand why preventing enormous and hugely profitable insurance corporations from dropping you because you kid was born with a heart defect or not covering your leukemia treatments because you forgot to tell them you had acne in high school makes us no longer a free country -- or perhaps only a "mostly free" country according to the Heritage Foundation.

But more confusing and more difficult to reconcile than quantum mechanics and relativity is the idea that allowing warrantless wiretaps and other unconstitutional government abuses don't have the same effect. Seems that President Ford was comfortable with giving the FBI discretion on whether or not to seek a warrant for probable cause for wiretapping on the advice of his Attorney General William B. Saxbe. That's a long time before the Patriot act that cemented the "almost free" condition into law - a law that the Democrats haven't yet repudiated. Silly of me that this might have interfered with my freedom nearly as much as an extra 2% on what I might make over a net $375,000. Freedom's just another word for profit.

Is it the threat to monopolistic and feudalistic aberrations of free-market Capitalism that make us almost free or is it things like restrictions on civil rights? I think the answer is obvious. Freedom isn't at stake when Exxon-Mobil payed less in income tax last year than a minimum wage worker did, but the minimum wage itself is a threat to freedom and a harbinger of a Communist takeover. But don't ask me to explain. Ask some other millionaire from the kind of "think-tank" funded by the oil cartel.

Because that's exactly who is telling us what freedom means. That's who would rather you didn't think of it in terms of freedom from want, fear, privation - or the FBI rummaging through your life looking for anything they like. There's little profit in privacy -- in your privacy anyway. There is big profit in usury so our freedom hasn't suffered by finance companies that can charge 200% and ask for more, but it's damn near communist tyranny to ask Exxon to pay what my gardener pays.

No, Obama is a tyrant and he's made us less free, not for the things he's done or hasn't done to force responsibility on Wall Street, not for failing to undo constitutional infractions or abuses of executive power, not for actually give most of us a tax cut, but for giving some of the protection we've been asking for against financial ruin, against having to choose between feeding our kids or dying of a curable disease.

I'm glad we have people like the Heritage Foundation around to explain things like freedom to us. We might have gone on thinking that being able to vote, to use public facilities, to be served in restaurants and hotels, to buy property wherever we can afford it, to get a job if we're not white or protestant or male or young or to send our kids to school had something to do with being free -- all those things that such grand sounding patriotic spokesmen like the Heritage foundation assure us are nothing of the sort. Without them we might have forgotten how free we were years ago when we had slavery, segregation, race laws, male suffrage, restricted housing, poll taxes and lynching parties. I'm glad they continue to keep up the good fight.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Patty Murray murder threat: Yet another example of right-wing unhingedness

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Seattle Times reports:

A 63-year-old Yakima County man has been charged with threatening to kill U.S. Sen. Patty Murray over her support of the National Health Care Reform Act.

The FBI and local police arrested Charles Alan Wilson at his Selah home early Tuesday. Wilson was scheduled to make an appearance in U.S. District Court in Yakima, and he will then be transported to Seattle, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

According to the charges, staffers in Murray's office in the Jackson Building in downtown Seattle had become concerned over a series of phone calls by an unknown man over the past several months. The calls came from a blocked number, and often were made in the evenings or on weekends.

Usually, according to a staffer identified by the initials "M.G.," the calls were merely vulgar and harassing.

But on March 22, "the caller began to make overt threats to kill and/or injure Senator Murray," according to the complaint signed by FBI Agent Carolyn Woodbury.

In that message, a man the FBI says it has identified as Wilson stated, "I hope you realize there's a target on your back now ... Kill the [expletive] senator! I'll donate the lead."

In several other vulgar and profanity-laced messages left over the next week, the caller repeatedly threatened the Democratic senator's life and said he "hopes somebody kills" President Obama as well, according to portions of transcripts in the complaint.

As I put it in a recent post entitled "The consequences of conservative speech: Violence against Democrats over health-care reform," cross-posted at HuffPo:

[W]hat do you think is going to happen when you call the president illegitimate, a foreigner who essentially stole the election? Or when you stoke fears of a socialist-fascist takeover of government and of government assault on freedom? Do you not think that some out there will convert your speech to action -- hording guns, building bunkers, and otherwise preparing for violence? And do you not think that some will actually take to the streets to wage whatever war they think you're calling on them to wage?

This guy, who may have acted out regardless (he's obviously got problems), certainly seems to be unhinged. But, then, so is much of the Republican Party, along with most of the conservative movement that supports it. And while it is this guy who has been arrested and charged, and deservedly so, it seems to me that much of the blame must be laid directly at the feet of the right-wing rabble-rousers and propagandists -- at Fox News, in talk radio, on Capitol Hill, and elsewhere -- who have been pumping their zombie-like followers full of lies, smears, and delusions.

Is is really any wonder the unhinged are acting out? Is it any wonder it has come to this? And this could only be the beginning, given that the rabble-rousers and propagandists haven't let up, and in fact have stepped up their vicious attacks since the Democrats' health-care victory.

This, you see, is what much of American conservatism has become, an ideology of venom that is poisoning the body politic and leading some of its adherents to violence.

Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell looks to take Virginia back to its Confederate past

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's always great when Republicans show their true colours, isn't it? Take what Gov. Bob McDonnell is doing in Virginia:

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has quietly declared April 2010 Confederate History Month, bringing back a designation in Virginia that his two Democratic predecessors -- Mark Warner and Tim Kaine -- refused to do.

Republican governors George Allen and Jim Gilmore issued similar proclamations. But in 2002, Warner broke with their action, calling such proclamations, a "lightning rod" that does not help bridge divisions between whites and blacks in Virginia.

This year's proclamation was requested by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

I get that a great many Confederate soldiers died in the Civil War, and they ought to be remembered in some way. But Confederate history? Let's see...

-- Slavery? Check.

-- Rebellion? Check.

-- A bitter, divisive legacy? Check.

-- The antithesis of progress, enlightenment, and America's purported ideals? Check.

Does McDonnell really need to appease his pro-Confederate constituency? Won't the Sons of Confederate Veterans vote for him, and any Republican, regardless?

Or does he just happen to have a real soft spot for the Confederacy, for what it stood (and went to war for), and for all that it continues to represent?

Whatever the case, it's a terrible, terrible decision, a big gubernatorial middle finger to every black person in Virginia, to every person who would have been deemed sub-human by the Confederacy, as well as to every good and decent person in that state and beyond.

But what a truly Republican decision, too -- especially in a state where there is a clear dividing line between the two parties on this issue. At least we know, quite clearly, that Virginia Republicans are pro-Confederacy while Virginia Democrats are trying to bring their state past its ugly past.

Virginians, it seems to me, along with Americans around the country, should consider that when they head to the polls.

Tennessee Tea

By Capt. Fogg

Some people might give them credit for never giving up and of course, like congenital stupidity and genital herpes, the Republicans never really go away.

Yesterday's e-mail viral outbreak flared up with another version of a letter excoriating Barack Obama for such inexcusable acts of treason as not placing a flower at the World Trade Center crater with a sensitive enough wrist action and of course referencing that old groaner, the photo of him singing without his hand on his heart. Both these things and more, insisted the weeping and wailing writer are proof of his Christian hating Islamic faith and his mission to destroy all that is held dear by the pretend conservatives who hang upside down in belfries and eat bugs.

Not that such people actually write these things. Virtually all of the phony celebrity letters libeling and threatening Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton and the Obama family are written by the same, easily recognizable hand, although the attributions change from day to day. The faux outrage and breast beating pretend patriotism are always the same.

The letter I got was attributed to Sherry Hackett, the wife of the famous and raunchy comedian although she didn't write it nor likely did the others it's been "from" in the last 6 months. The person who forwarded it to me was crying for our country or so she says. Actually I think she welcomes any scurrilous and seditious screed that oozes from the Republican cesspool. I think it just hasn't sunk in that far from shoving things down America's throat, democracy has shoved change down theirs.

The desperation seems to call for deliberate denialism and cultivated delusion. If Obama takes off his shoes, that means he's a Muslim and not a Christian was a sentiment presented by a small townTennessee Tea Party organizer along with a picture of a shoeless president. Frankly I wish he were, but even so, it's a statement that could only be applauded by people not likely to be found at a Mensa meeting unless they're simply dishonest exploiters of the traditionally stupid.

For a group whose meetings sometimes draw dozens of people, God willin' and the creek don't rise, it can't be hard to avoid the leaders knowing that it's a tiny minority cult representing a fringe Right element, yet their solution to the problems posed by an electorate that emphatically rejected the Right in the last election is to go further right. The Washington Post quoted David Nance, the founder of the Gibson County Patriots, in Jackson, Tenn as saying

"This effort is to try to get the Republican Party to try to give us more conservative candidates"

and he believes it's working, yet his choice of Stephen Fincher, gospel singer and cotton farmer from Frog Jump, Tennessee for the State's 8th Congressional District seems to have little to do with stated Tea Party goals of reducing the cost of government and eliminating "entitlements" what with Fincher raking in a cool, conservative $200,000.00 per annum in farm subsidies and being financed by others riding the same gravy train. He's pulled down over $2.5 million since 1995. Of course that' just all tea in the harbor and doesn't seem to matter as much as the president with his shoes off or the stories about flag pins and tardy salutes, a too small flag on his campaign jet and the laying down of a flower at the WTC with insufficient wrist action as discussed in the letter Sherry Hackett didn't write.

The shame of it all really is that Barack Obama, with his continuing support of some unpopular Republican policies may be too conservative for Liberals and perhaps even for some centrists while this collection of Beverly Hillbillies wants to tell us he's a Muslim version of Pol Pot while selling a faux populist version of Corporatism.

It's more of a shame we don't seem to have any genuine conservative opinion worth reading these days, and of course if we'd had it earlier, we might not have needed it so badly now.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Civilized leadership: Obama, changing long-standing U.S. policy, wisely restricts conditions for use of nuclear weapons

By Michael J.W. Stickings

NYT:

President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.

But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for "outliers like Iran and North Korea" that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Mr. Obama's strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation's nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Conservatives, of course, will scream bloody murder -- and already are. At Power Line, for example, John Hinderaker calls the president's decision "unbelievably stupid" and objects to the removal of ambiguity: "The cardinal rule, when it comes to nuclear weapons, is keep 'em guessing. We want our enemies to believe that we may well be crazy enough to vaporize them, given sufficient provocation; one just can't tell."

Oh, come on, please. It's like conservatives think the world is some Hobbesian playground that can be ruled by the bully who's prepared to cause the most harm to others.

Better not cross America... they might nuke us! They're craaaaaaaaazy!!!

Is that really how a civilized country operates? Well, conservatives would argue that that's just the way it is in the real world -- and that Obama is weakening America, and possibly destroying it.

But Obama isn't abandoning the possible use of nuclear weapons. What he's doing is saying that the their use would be heavily restricted. As it should be. Indeed, they should never be used at all, and Obama is certainly working towards the ultimate abolition of such weapons altogether. That may be an unrealizable ideal, but he ought to be applauded for breaking from decades of reckless saber-rattling and using the American example as one for other countries to follow, not to fight against. Sure, it's easier to push for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation when you have so many nuclear weapons yourself than to disarm and trust the U.S. and the other nuclear powers, but it seems to me that Obama is trying to use American power for good, not to scare the shit out of everyone else.

"I'm going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure," he said yesterday. That's fine, but what he seems to understand, unlike most of his predecessors, is that one of those tools is peace. And what kind of peace can there be in a Hobbesian playground?

The fact is, while many conservatives might very well be so crazy as actually to use nuclear weapons even when only mildly provoked, Obama realizes that the U.S. would, should, and could respond to such attacks differently -- with force, perhaps, but not with a potentially suicidal/genocidal counter-aggression that would likely destroy America's credibility and moral authority.

Health-care reform was a genuinely historic accomplishment for the president, and for the Democrats. There are other areas where such progressive change is needed, such as climate change. But in this case, should he succeed in his goal of making nuclear weapons obsolete, tossed into the dustbin of history, or should he even succeed in moving the U.S. away from its reliance on the nuclear threat, using America's renewed credibility and moral authority to allow civilization to triumph over brute force, he will truly have changed the world for the better.

Lies, damned lies, and John McCain claiming he was never a maverick

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You've heard about conservatives rewriting history, right? Well, how about one conservative, John McCain, trying to rewrite his own history by denying he was ever a maverick?

Sounds crazy, eh? I mean, the guy must be losing his mind, or must have lost a good chunk of it already. Either that, or he's so stupid or arrogant as to think that no one actually remembers all that maverick talk during the '08 campaign.

Whatever the case, there he was, telling Newsweek's David Margolick:

I never considered myself a maverick.

Uhhhhhh... what?

I mean, of course he did. All the time. The whole mavericky thing was a centerpiece of his campaign, and he and Palin revelled in it, pushing it at every opportunity. Right? Surely that wasn't some horrible dream that we all dreamed together?

At Politico, Ben Smith helpfully posts a McCain-Palin '08 campaign ad that, well, let's just say it pretty much proves, as if we really needed any further proof, that McCain is full of shit. You can watch the ad below. (It was originally uploaded by johnmccain.com and -- who knows? -- may be taken down if this new non-maverick thing takes holds as campaign rhetoric, what with McCain lurching to the right to try to fend off an extremist conservative primary challenge from J.D. Hayworth, who is calling himself, contra McCain, "The Consistent Conservative.")

(UPDATE: Smith also posts a pre-election SNL clip featuring McCain joking about just how mavericky he is. Meanwhile, Hayworth, predictably enough, is hitting back, but it's McCain's fault for giving him such a huge opening by saying such a stupid thing.)

Or just go to YouTube and do a search for "John McCain maverick." Look what comes up first (as of right now). An even more helpful montage from TPM. You can watch that below, too.

The point: John McCain is either senile or a liar. Or maybe both. (Or maybe he's just really, really desperate and willing to do/say anything contra Hayworth. Like appear at campaign rallies and do interviews with Palin, who just makes McCain look awkward and uncomfortable with her mindless blather.)

(Of course, he was always more faux maverick than genuine maverick, and he used the maverick/independent label for self-promotional political purposes. While he has shown himself to be somewhat mavericky on some issues, like torture and immigration, he's generally been a solid conservative and loyal Republican throughout his political career.)

Game, set, and (almost) match

By Carl 

With a victory on healthcare firmly in his back pocket, and embarassing the crap out of the GOP who thought they had it lock, stock, and barrel, wither Barack Obama?

For one thing, despite our grousing about Congress and the Democratic leadership, he owes a few chits from the healthcare reform battle, and he will have to mend a few fences for Congresscritters back home, but the news for Dems this year is looking better and better.

That said, there are landmines out there:

1) Justice John Paul Stevens - Republicans have already made it clear they will be obstructionist... gee, what a shock! An avowed and confirmed liberal is leaving the bench and rather than give it a pass, the Republicans have decided to try to move the court further to the Fascist, errr, I mean, right! While Stevens hasn't given a date certain beyond 2012, the sense between the lines is that this retirement may come as early as this summer. Before the midterm elections, forcing a Senatorial spectacle, something Obama really doesn't need. His options would be limited: either fight a nasty fight over an avowed liberal to replace Stevens' ideology, or choose a warm body that Republicans can't put up that much of a fuss over.

I have a suggestion that solves both aspects: Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. It would be hard to pin him as a true-blue liberal when he is personally pro-life (altho supporting choice for women,) but he's old enough (nearing 80) that his service to the bench would be short in duration.

2) Immigration reform - This is the real trap for Obama, but one he can sidestep in the short term. Immigration reform is the most polarizing issue on the national political landscape after healthcare reform. The Teabaggers are licking their lips... er, maybe that's an image you don't need... in anticipation of letting the racist-freak flag fly. Democrats are running scared because on the one hand, a significant bloc of their new-found strength is the Hispanic vote and on the other, immigration reform that doesn't include strong penalties for illegal immigration will rally Teabaggers and allies, as well as some normally perfectly liberal people who see immigration as yet another pool of people taking advantage of a bountiful society.

My suggestion: duck and weave. This is not a fight you need to take on until after November, despite the gathering momentum. If you could delay healthcare for over a year, as unfair as this may be, you can delay taking up immigration until the end of this year. John McCain needs this issue, so maybe throwing him a bone in exchange for his help on the Teabaggers would make a little sense, but don't risk your Congressional majority over this. Not until you run for re-election and can take the heat off them in 2012.

3) Jobs - There was desperate good news on jobs last week, in that the jobs report was very positive, based on the hiring of temporary census workers. Obama needs momentum in this direction, and while he's actually lost fewer jobs in his first year than Reagan did in his, the perception is strong that bankers came first. Obama needs a big win here.

Fortunately, Obama has a little political cover on this one: no one wants to see unemployed Americans, no matter how desperate they are for power.

4) Financial reforms - This, I think, will be Obama's next stump speech topic. He can paint any opposition as anathemic to the American people, and simultaneously distance himself from the dance he had to do after Bush's bailout in 2008. The GOP will be painted into a corner, and he picks up an easy win.

Come November, the American people will want to see a government that works. They are less concerned with ideology so long as they see legislators earning their pay and keeping the problems of Americans front and center. We're an adventurous group when the chips are down, and I suspect that if Obama can reel off a few wins in a row this spring and summer, the 2010 elections will be seen less as a referendum on the direction the country is going and more as an endorsement of how fast its getting there. 

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

John Ensign, money launderer

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I think we all know that Repubican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada is a breathtaking hypocrite. But did you also know that he is, quite possibly, a criminal money launderer, and that an indictment may be on the way? As the Las Vegas Sun reported yesterday:

In the federal penal code, it is known as "structuring."

And it is a word Sen. John Ensign should remember because it is very likely to be on any indictment with his name on it.

*****

Structuring is a broad term that refers to the crime of creating financial transactions to evade reporting requirements -- for example, a $96,000 payment to your mistress laundered through a trust controlled by your parents and calling it a "gift" instead of what it obviously was: a severance payment that had to be reported.

That the feds are looking at structuring as a possible crime will not surprise many old hands who have watched the sordid Ensign saga play out, morphing from a fairly grotesque he-slept-with-his-best-friend's-wife-who-was-also-his-wife's-best-friend story to a fantastically creepy tale of a senator trying to keep the cuckolded husband quiet by any means necessary, including, perhaps, structuring transactions with businesses in exchange for campaign contributions.

Of course, in the Republican Party, money laundering, like infidelity and bribery, may very well be considered a core family value, so perhaps Ensign's conduct in this matter isn't all that surprising. But it's a good thing that the FBI is looking into it.

As Steve Benen explains, "Ensign's controversy, for quite a while, looked like a simple sex scandal -- the 'family-values' conservative was sleeping with one of his aides who happened to be married to another one of his aides. But as we've seen the matter unfold in recent months, there's now ample reason to believe the Republican senator may also include ethics violations, hush money, and official corruption."

For more on this and similar Republican scandals (e.g., Vitter, Sanford), and on how Republicans tend to "forgive and forget" their own kind, see this great post by Mustang Bobby from last year. It includes this Ensign-related quote from Salon's Joe Canason:

For more than a decade, Ensign lent his name to Promise Keepers, the all-male Christian prayer movement run by a former Colorado football coach, whose mass rallies highlighted men's integrity, purity and uncompromising domination of family life. Both he and Sanford have worked closely with the Family, a secretive Christian fellowship on Capitol Hill that maintains a brick townhouse where Ensign and other members of Congress have resided. Over the years both men have won the highest marks from the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition and the American Family Association...

Awesome.

Our baseball essay... a day late, but we'll explain who's playing shortstop

By J. Thomas Duffy

For the second day, we offer one of our special essays, our letter-producing, much-heralded, all-you-need-to-know, "Could You Please Tell Me, What Is This Thing Called Baseball?"



While officially the season began last evening (and what planet has a baseball season opener at night? aim your rotten tomatoes at MLB and ESPN), the full slate begins today, in daylight, under afternoon sunshine (hopefully).

And if you attended or watched last night's game, and felt like a polka-playing accordionist time-warp-thrusted into a discotheque, not understanding the game of baseball, not knowing the lingo, or positions, incumbent on being a member of the official fandom of "our national pastime," then you need our essay.

There are various breeds of relief pitchers. You have long relievers and short relievers. The title refers not to their size but to the length of time that they pitch. After all, you have long relievers that are short and short relievers that are tall.

Sometimes a relief pitcher will do so well (he’ll have his stuff) that he gets credit with the win.Other times (not having his stuff) he’ll get pinned with the loss. On some occasions, he’ll only get a save, with the win going to the starting pitcher who didn’t have his stuff and couldn’t finish the game, thus being relieved. It even happens that relief pitchers get relieved by other relief pitchers.

Don't worry, we cover all the other positions (including the "opposite field" and "utility fielder"), so after reading "Could You Please Tell Me, What Is This Thing Called Baseball?," you can belly up to any bar and banter with the best of them.

And, no, "Who's on First."

Bonus B'Ball Riffs

Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, Welcome to Fandora... Root, Root, Root for the Owners... Is Baseball a Fading Allegory for the Fading American Way of Life?

The Savvy Girls of Summer

Breaking News! ... Baseball Bombshell Expands Steroid Scandal ...Giants’ Bonds Tests Positive For Landis Testosterone ... Cyclist Said To Be Kingpin Of Lucrative Doping Ring, Selling His Own DNA

Politics and Sports Collide ...Paperwork Mix-Up Has Feingold Censuring Bonds and MLB Investigating Bush

South Dakota Not Waiting, Bans All Home Runs ...MLB Mulling Changing Status Of Home Runs In Wake Of New Bonds Allegations

Top Ten Cloves: Things That Might Have Happened To Ted Williams' Head

You Don't Hit With Your Face




(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Let's pity the victim

By Capt. Fogg

There should be an emoticon for a dumbfounded guffaw or something less childishly vulgar than 'WTF?' to express my reaction to Michael Steele's attempt to make himself a martyr instead of a hypocrite. It would save so many keystrokes.

It takes a desperate man and a little man to dismiss the scorn over his involvement with the kinky strip club incident GOP contributors unknowingly funded. There's something distinctly oily about his assertion that he has a "slimmer margin of error" as a black man, even though that might be true in general.

It's a different role for me to play and others to play and that's just the reality of it. But you just take that as a part of the nature of it,

he explained on Good Morning America this morning.

Whether or not he actually is held to a higher standard than a non-African American in his position as RNC chairman would be, that frisky business is certainly at a level where anyone would be condemned for it and above the level where a white Democratic president might be impeached for it.

Yes, it's true that an honest politician (we're speaking hypothetically here) has to walk on eggs, so to speak and it's true that one of a minority group has to have even more delicate toes, but that certainly doesn't apply to a gleeful romp in the slime bucket, does it Mr. Steele? Falsely posing as a victim doesn't help real victims either.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The year-round campaign exacts a heavy price on governance

By Carol Gee

Blocking Obama appointees from Senate confirmation --

One way the losing party can be perceived as winning in the court of public opinion, is by keeping the majority party from being successful. A favorite tactic during President Obama's term has been to object to his nominees for key positions, or to put holds on their passage through committee, and floor votes on final confirmation. Ezra Klein at The Washington Post (2/14/10) maintains that there is "the hidden cost of Senate gridlock: Obama can't fire anyone." When a department of agency is understaffed or operating with an acting head, The entire operation could be jeopardized, along with the president's agenda. 

The Senate confirmation process has bogged down in recent years, causing frustration for nominees, according to Congress.org (3/29/10). A variety of issues can slow the process.  Senators can refuse to comment or reject a nominee from their home state. Or a "hold" by any senator can keep a nomination from progressing through committee and to the floor for a vote. Not long ago, for example, Senator Shelby (R-Ala) put holds on 70 of President Obama's nominations. "Delays slow Obama's nominees" is the headline leading this good story. To quote:

It's a different story for people in the running for jobs that require Senate confirmation. They might have to complete lengthy questionnaires, provide detailed information about their finances and appear before a panel of lawmakers.

After all that, they could still wait for months, or sometimes even years, for the Senate to vote on whether to confirm them.

It's a daunting process — and one that some say is too daunting. It's also a major factor in President Obama's decision over the weekend to make 15 recess appointments , a process that bypasses the typical Senate confirmation process. 

The upcoming nomination of a well respected Harvard University scholar to head CMS (the agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid) very well might reinvigorate the health care debate when Congress returns from its spring recess, according to CQ Politics (3/29/10). The ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee has hinted that nominee Donald Berwick would face tough treatment at his confirmation hearing. The site headlined, "Expected CMS Nomination Is Next Step in Health Care Debate." To quote:

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the administration plans to nominate Donald M. Berwick to become the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

A clinical professor of pediatrics and health policy at Harvard Medical School, Berwick founded the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in 1991 to identify and foster best practices in medicine that would save lives and reduce suffering.

If confirmed, he would take over the long-vacant CMS post as the agency prepares to impose hundreds of billions of dollars of Medicare cost reductions mandated by the new health care overhaul law, as well as undertake an expansion of Medicaid. 

When the Supreme Court's recent "free speech for corporations" ruling came down, a year-round campaign was virtually guaranteed. Corporations will now be allowed to pour unlimited amounts of money into the political process. Governance will become more and more politicized and less and less effective at meeting citizen needs. The new FEC rules could impact the effect of the Supreme Court's campaign-finance decision, reports Susan Crabtree at The Hill (2/14/10). This year the election commission will set the rules governing how outside entities coordinate with candidates and parties. The FEC heldhearings on the matter March 2 and 3. The public will be able to comment on the issue of the SCOTUS campaign finance decision. Congress is also gearing up to try to legislate to counter the court ruling.

The year-round campaign has become self-reinforcing.  And we all play a part in it. When we watch popularity polls to see who is ahead, when senators and members of congress spend part of every day raising campaign money, when President Obama goes on the road to campaign for a program he wants to institute -- or has already signed into law, or when the mainstream media never reports on issues, but only on who won the latest little skirmish that day, we are in permanent campaign mode. And governance can easily go by the wayside.

For reference:

• "The Obama presidency: In-depth news, commentary and analysis on Barack Obama's White House agenda" -- The Financial Times
• The 10 Quirkiest Congressional Twitter Users -- OhMyGov! (2/14/10)

For your toolbox:

1. CQ Politics: 111th Congress: Congressional Seats In Transition Charts of those who have resigned, vacancies, etc.
2. CQ Politics: Congress Tweets -- Latest tweets from House and Senate members who post on Twitter
.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Be careful what you ask for, Mr. Karzai

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Talk about disrespect:

KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai lashed out at his Western backers for the second time in three days, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn't stop.

Mr. Karzai, whose government is propped up by billions of dollars in Western aid and nearly 100,000 American troops fighting a deadly war against the Taliban, made the comments during a private meeting with about 60 or 70 Afghan lawmakers Saturday.

At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side -- that is, the Taliban -- if the parliament didn't back his controversial attempt to take control of the country's electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to three people who attended the meeting, including an ally of the president.

Mr. Karzai blamed the lawmakers' resistance to his move on a foreign conspiracy, they said. The Afghan president's latest remarks came less than 24 hours after he assured U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he was committed to working with the U.S. That phone call was precipitated by a similar -- but less vitriolic -- anti-Western diatribe Mr. Karzai delivered earlier last week.

So, basically, Karzai is talking out of both sides of his mouth while threatening his own country's parliament, trying to ensure that he can fix elections at will and ensure the preservation of his own rule, and attacking the hand that feeds him, the very hand that put him in power in the first place, behind that hand's back.

Of course, the hand, in this case the U.S., is bound to find out about the attacks. And I tend to think that the U.S., instead of continuing to prop him and his corrupt rule up, should tell him to fuck off. Diplomatically, of course. And that goes for every other country involved in the Afghan War, too, every other country fighting this seemingly pointless war in support of an ungrateful jackass, every other country losing lives to support a would-be tyrant, every other country pouring money into a barely legitimate kleptocracy that governs Kabul and little else.

Call Karzai's bluff. He needs the U.S., because he's nothing without its support, and he knows it. And he isn't about to switch sides and throw in his desperate lot with the Taliban, who would never accept him, never trust him, and certainly never allow him to rule.

There's no doubt that Afghanistan is better off without the Taliban in control, and without al Qaeda using the country as a launching pad for its activities. But I suspect that the country would be better off without Karzai, too.

A long weekend

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Whatever you happen to be celebrating -- personally, it's a secular Easter with a lot of chocolate and a roast chicken dinner in the oven as I write this -- I hope you're all having a nice and hopefully long weekend.

Stay tuned for more blogging.

-- Michael

Teabagging Democrats; or, The World According to Fox News Lite (aka CNN)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

"Disgruntled Democrats join the Tea Party," blared the headline at CNN.com. Oh, really, I thought. Name five of them.

This sort of thing infuriates me. Once again, it's CNN, once a respected news network, trying to be Fox News Lite. It's enough to make you throw up, as I put it recently at HuffPo. And it's just the sort of gross misrepresentation of reality we've come to expect from what used to be, it never failed to remind us, "The Most Trusted Name In News."

As Libby points out, the article focuses on two disaffected Democrats at a rally in Colorado. That's it. Two. That's hardly a movement. That's hardly anything at all. There are all sorts of Democrats. Some are insane. I'm sure you can find a "Democrat," of a kind, in the KKK. But so what?

"Some Americans who say they have been sympathetic to Democratic causes in the past -- some even voted for Democratic candidates -- are angry with President Obama and his party," notes CNN. No, really? Say it ain't so! This may be the most pointless sentence I've ever read. Well, it's up there.

Apparently, only four percent of teabaggers self-identify as Democrats. So, CNN, what the hell's the point of the article? Here's Libby:

What CNN also fails to mention is they have a vested interest in promoting the tea party *movement*. CNN has a reporter currently embedded on the astroturfing Tea Party Express bus and the studio anchor is just dying to get on the bus for a couple of days himself. Without this kind of pimping by the tradmed, the tea parties would have deadended by now. Disgraceful. No wonder CNN is dying.

Disgraceful indeed. And a deserving collapse into oblivion for CNN.