Hope is not a plan

Last week I saw a "Condi for president" bumper sticker.

Pros

First woman president
First African-American president

Cons

Desperate inability to rationally and empirically assess reality

Just in case you're checking blogs and not news:

Tom DeLay has been indicted on criminal conspiracy charges in Texas, and will temporarily leave his position as House majority leader as a consequence.

The CNN story

The indictment

Television adds are appearing that now point to todaysmilitary.com, a general-purpose recruiting site for the American armed services. The commercial I saw featured a young man speaking to his mom, viewed from the mom's POV, about his decision to enlist. That, and the site's tagline, "Make it a two-way conversation" are clearly geared toward the concept that parents will resist a decision to enlist.

In the commercial, the young man is joining because he can be in an environmental response team. Though recruiting ads in general have always emphasized something other than, "You may end up having to go get shot at," it seems even more ridiculous to be presenting military careers as training programs for various extramilitary career paths.

One interesting element of the site is this short section on Myths vs Reality. It never occurred to me that people would expect that "ordinary people" can't complete Basic. Maybe growing up around people in the military has kept me from mythologizing them, but I generally expect a reasonably motivated person to finish Basic.

After a thorough pelting with criticism vis-a-vis her lack of qualification and the vague, tap-dancing approach taken by Bush in trying to indicate that she might be antiabortion, Harriet Miers has withdrawn from consideration as a future supreme court justice.

The cover story is that she withdrew to avoid having to reveal presidential confidences from her current role in the White House. In her words:

Repeatedly in the course of the process of confirmation for nominees for other positions, I have steadfastly maintained that the independence of the Executive Branch be preserved and its confidential documents and information not be released to further a confirmation process.

I feel compelled to adhere to this position, especially related to my own nomination. Protection of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and continued pursuit of my confirmation are in tension.

I feel sorry for Ms. Miers, but I am glad she is no longer a candidate. I don't know how much realism this will inject into president Bush's thought process, but I hold out a small hope that he has gained some reason from this experience.

Her letter
The BBC story
The CNN story
The Xinhua story

Jun Choi was just voted in as the mayor of Edison, a town of 100,000 in New Jersey. He's the second Korean-American elected mayor in the United States, and the first in the mainland.

The Chosun Ilbo article

From the article:

Edison, one of New Jersey’s five major towns, has a population of 100,000, 40 percent of whom are Asian. Koreans number around 3,000. Choi defeated incumbent Edison Mayor George Spadoro, who had been in office for 12 years, by 1,000 votes in the June Democrat primary. At the time, anchors of local broadcast stations made racist remarks to the effect that putting colored people in charge would be a bad idea, thus practically handing Choi the nomination on a platter.

Demographically, Edison sounds rather like Cupertino.

Thanks to SSO for pointing out this article link:

Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleads gulty and resigns

Cunningham, a congressman from San Diego, pled guilty to all sorts of bribery related to the awarding of defense contracts, in addition to some other offenses:

Before resigning, Cunningham, 63, entered pleas in U.S. District Court to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud, and tax evasion for underreporting his income in 2004.

After the hearing, Cunningham was fingerprinted then released on his own recognizance until a Feb. 27 sentencing hearing. He could receive a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Cunningham spoke at the San Diego Eagle Scout dinner the year I received my Eagle.

Bush spoke at the Woodrow Wilson Center today, in defense of our effort in Iraq. I'm not going to do much analysis here, but it's notable that Bush seems to be transitioning into giving more reasoned arguments in his speeches as public dissent takes away his option of just reiterating jingoistic buzzwords.

It's disconcerting to see that the sunk cost fallacy still appears in Bush's Iraq policy - "We have to succeed to make all the sacrifices so far worthwhile."

I also question Bush's analogy between the modern Iraq situation and Truman and Japan. I know he's trying to make the case that enemies can become allies, but Truman was not some general democratizer of Asia. Truman was a good president, but his policy was driven by pragmatic concerns as much as in any other era, which is why he backed the French in their attempt to retake their colonial territories in Southeast Asia.

The main news angle of the speech is Bush accepting responsibility for "faulty intelligence" leading to the war. He denied misleading anyone, of course.

Anyway, here are some articles covering the speech:

BBC
CNN

This paragraph comes from President Bush's recent address to the 2005 National Boy Scout Jamboree:

As President, I have the privilege to work with Scouts every day. When I come to the Oval Office in the morning, the first person I see is a Scout -- my Chief of Staff, Andy Card, from the state of Massachusetts. (Applause.) Down the hall is Vice President Dick Cheney, a Boy Scout from Casper, Wyoming. (Applause.) And across the river at the Pentagon sits an Eagle Scout from Illinois who Americans count on to "be prepared" -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (Applause.)

Apparently Rumsfeld's Eagle training didn't stick, as he is now perpetually unprepared. Of course, as proud as I am of being an Eagle, there are a lot of idiots who made it there as well, as evidenced by this site that uses a fear- and hate-mongering approach to get people worked up about Scouting's current struggle to keep homosexuals and athiests out. I have to say that such an approach is neither Trustworthy, nor Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Brave or particularly Cheerful. It is Loyal and perhaps Obedient, but only a sick kind of each.

I was, perhaps, in a "liberal" troop in the sense that we didn't give people a lot of crap as long as they were responsible and good to others. That troop produced doctors, Ph.D.s, Rangers and many more people who actively make the world a better place. Our troop taught us citizenship, personal strength and teamwork. I can't imagine how much we would have missed if we'd been caught up in a struggle to exclude people because of religion or sexual preference -- neither of which even came up, of course. A real Scout doesn't give a damn about that stuff -- he's learning about how his nation works, how to be a good person and how to hike, shoot and survive. Everything else is trivia.

After noting that one of the search results hitting HiNaP this month was Condi for president, I decided to see how far down that list HiNaP is.

As it happens, pretty far. But on the way, I ran into American Women Presidents, a PAC that has endorsed both Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice as presidential candidates for 2008.

That would be an interesting election.

In light of President Bush's faith-based decision to cut taxes while trying to conduct a war, I wondered about the relationship between taxes and war in American history.

As it happens, war (the Civil War) induced the creation of the first income tax, as well as subsequent spikes in income tax. Consider these income tax ranges:

Civil War: 3-5%
World War I: 6-77%
World War II: 23-94%
Korean War: Up to 87%
Vietnam War: 14-70%
Now: Up to 33% (dropped from a pre-2001 top rate of ~40%)

I understand the reasoning behind the idea of reducing income tax in an effort to buoy the economy, but it is unsettling to consider that, in opposition to the three wars we won, we are taking the route of lowering taxes. If this really is a legitimate, important war, we should be willing to suck it up, accept some hardship and actually increase taxation rather than going into debt. This spend and burn policy is going to bite us someday, and bite us hard. After all, how much power do we have to tell the People's Republic of China what to do when they're our creditors?

Full historical notes on income taxes in America in the extended.

During a CNN Live Today report about the second day of student walkouts in Los Angeles high schools protesting new immigration laws, host Daryn Kagan ended with a comment to the effect of "Walking on the Harbor freeway isn't the smartest idea even when it's not rush hour; maybe these kids need to go back and get a little more education." (This is a close paraphrase -- their transcript page does not have this comment posted yet.)

It's fascinating that this capping comment basically devalues the point of what the kids are doing and suggests that they really are a bunch of idiots -- so the final message is not "people care enough to protest" but instead "people who protest are fools."

But Kagan is also missing the fact that these kids figured out how to garner television coverage -- whether local or national -- in a way that honestly wasn't that dangerous. By walking on the freeway in a group, they picked up a police escort, weren't in any danger of being hit, and made it on CNN. Effective, nonviolent protest that picked up national television coverage.

I think they're pretty smart already.

The United States army has broadened its acceptance of tattoos on recruits:

Soldiers can now have tattoos on their hands and back of the neck as long as they are not "extremist, indecent, sexist or racist," army officials say.

Women recruits can also wear permanent eye-liner, eyebrows and lip makeup, although it must "not be trendy".

The BBC story

The current "immigration and security" debate has given us a number of straw man arguments and flawed premises to deal with.

During the News Hour today, the host asked (paraphrased): "What about people who complain that you want to hold onto your culture?"

To this, I have to say, "What about it?" While you're celebrating Saint Patrick's day, Oktoberfest and, for God's sake, Cinco de Mayo, ask yourself again what is wrong with holding onto culture? Can I not go to a Highland Games to celebrate my very, very recent Scottish heritage? Does this make me less of an American?

It's racism. Back in the day, Americans feared an influx of Germans and Italians. Now German and Italian heritage are an integral part of American society. All those poor, unwanted Irish folks who made their way over here are now our stereotypical police officers. This is the way our country works.

Representative Tom Tancredo has a double-threat hated-immigrant heritage: his last name is an Italianized version of a German name. I guess he must be both lazy and a drunk.

The other flawed idea is that this debate has anything to do with security. As Tim has pointed out, we have nothing like the ability to make a reasonably sealed border. Even two of the most sealed borders in history, the Korean DMZ and that between the two Germanies, were breached repeatedly. More to the point, none of the foreign terrorism we've encountered, successful or otherwise, would have been stopped by a wall lining the South Arizona border. The most devastating attack we've seen to date was carried out by men who entered the country with no equipment and by legitimate means.

I'm going to put down my prediction now. The next successful Islamist terrorist attack on continental American soil will be carried out by British or American citizens and will involve little or no material assistance from foreign nationals.

And we will look very, very foolish for having ostracized several million hard-working immigrants who actually like this country and want to live here.

Yesterday, Senate majority leader Bill Frist and other Senate Republicans announced their Gas Price Relief and Rebate Act, whose big selling point is a $100 gas "rebate", along with theoretical increases in consumer protection against price inflation and some rollback of oil company tax incentives (you can read Senator Frist's summary sheet here).

In this act of elegant, brutal stupidity, Frist and the rest are making a play to buy you off with your own money. Rather than, say, addressing prices at the level of oil or final gas supplies, they're going to effectively hand me back one hundred of my dollars, so I can go fill my car up a few more times. So instead of wielding the potential tremendous leverage of the United States government as both a regulatory body and a massive fuel buyer, they prefer to divert money from (1) the war in Iraq, (2) homeland defense, (3) federal education programs, (4) fighting against illegal drug imports, (5) any other Federal program you can think of that has any importance to you -- say, farm subsidies that keep your produce artificially cheaper, or research money for lifesaving biomedical advances.

It's insulting to hand me my own money back, stealing it from places where it is desperately needed, because you're so in hock to the oil industry that you can't imagine challenging them directly.

Hand in hand with this unpleasant Senate effort, President Bush has ordered a simultaneously meaningless and dangerous halt in deposits to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As noted in the linked article, this will add back 0.14% of America's daily oil onto the market, for a negligible change in price, while simultaneously depleting our national strategic reserve. It's a hat trick of image manipulation, callous disregard for our national wellbeing and selling the future for minimal present gain. It's irresponsible, but this isn't new.

Porter Goss is resigning from his position at the head of the CIA.

The BBC story
The CNN story

The CNN report includes speculation that Goss is cutting out because John Negroponte was appointed as the new DNI instead of him. I'll add that it's also possible that after two years at the head of the CIA, Goss believes it's a lost cause and doesn't want to be in charge when the next big crash happens -- especially as that may not be on Bush's watch, so he can't expect to receive a medal for his failures, the way Tenet did.

Or it could just be that he was doing a bad job.

In his May 13 radio address, President Bush had this to say about the recently revealed NSA domestic wiretapping programming:

The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.

This disingenuous deflection tries to put you off the trail of anger by pointing out that the program doesn't listen to your conversations. As exciting as that may be to learn, it leaves the important problem that someone is still potentially tracking every person you call and every person who calls you. Even absent content, this is definitely personal information. Are you calling the free clinic to check up on your condition? Are you calling someone from another business because you're thinking of changing jobs? Are you calling your in-laws to plan a surprise party for your spouse? Are you calling a psychological help line? Do you want someone tracking all this?

Consider this in very digestable terms -- the American police drama. When the detectives show up with the clinching telephone record evidence, they don't say, "We recorded your call and know what you said," they just say, "So, why did you call the victim for two hours the night of the killing?"

Traffic analysis directed at you is just as personal as being followed all day. Sure, they can't hear what you're saying, but how much better do you feel knowing that?

Louie Gohmert, representing the first district in Texas, launched a pointless attack on Representative Murtha of Pennsylvania, suggesting that had Mr. Murtha's attitude prevailed during World War II, we would be under Nazi or Imperial Japanese rule.

Though I congratulate representative Gohmert on his own valiant service as a JAG from 1978 to 1982 (nestled nicely between Vietnam and Grenada), I wonder if perhaps he might like to apply that test to the war Murtha actually served in.

What if the view of pulling American troops out had prevailed early on in the Vietnam conflict? Tens of thousands of Americans would be alive today, millions of Vietnamese would be alive, and America would not be scarred by a pointless war that tore at what it meant to be an American.

It's horrendously disingenuous to suggest that recommending that we pull out of an elective war in a mid-size Middle Eastern nation is equivalent to trying to back out of the late part of a war against a genocidal world conqueror.

Whether you agree with Murtha or not (for the record, I believe that we volunteered our nation to be responsible for the well-being of Iraqis once we invaded, and should not arbitrarily leave), Louie Gohmert has shown that he is weak, rhetorically and morally. It's hard to trust or listen to someone who spends Federal time and money attacking a coworker rather than providing a reasoned argument against them. It suggests that he has no reasoned arguments.

A constitutional amendment preventing desecration of the American flag narrowly (very narrowly) missed passage in the Senate. As it had already been passed through the House, this would have handed it off to the states for potential ratification.

This is a horrendous waste.

When some fool burns a flag, they glorify the freedoms and protections that flag represents.

However, when some fools try to outlaw that, they cut away at those same freedoms and protections that make America great. More so, I have to admit I'm a little annoyed that many who voted for protection for our flag come from places that still fight for their right to fly the flag of a bunch of secessionists who didn't want to be part of America anymore.

You think they'd have picked a side by now.

Perhaps that should be a requirement for voting for a flag-protection amendment.

Full text of the failed amendment in the extended.

Recently, Republican House and Senate members have championed pointless legislative exercises such as amending the Constitution to prevent free speech and calling people unpatriotic for not blindly supporting the war, or for being the New York Times and reporting on news that every major paper reported on, and which was discussed in press releases from the White House. Democrats are often guilty of participating in this wasted time out of a fear of appearing weak.

Get over it. Seriously.

The current baseline congressional salary is $165,200 per year. Assuming a generic work-year, that comes to roughly $83/hour. What's the significance of this figure?

Well, a basic, occasionally faulty Interceptor vest as currently issued to our troops runs $1,100, or 13 congressional person-hours. The upgrade from Interceptor to a superior armor vest from Pinnacle is about $5,000, or another 60 congressional person-hours.

So, purely in terms of salary and assuming everyone is paid the minimum rate (many are paid more), every 36 minutes the Senate spent debating a flag-protection amendment was another soldier who could have had better body armor. Every 7.8 minutes was a soldier who could have had at least had the basic protection offered by the current body armor (and not all of them have even this!).

All of these estimates are based on pure salary, of course, and do not consider the extensive benefits available to members of Congress.

As of today, there have been 4.7 Congresses-worth of American military deaths in Iraq, with 3.5 Congresses-worth from enemy fire. I imagine better body armor would help save some of those lives.

So do you really want any time spent on acrimony, pointless amendments and other political deflections?

I do not like Lou Dobbs in terms of policy or approach, but he nonetheless has brought up some worthy data points in his July 26th editorial on CNN. All of them point to both neglect and active ignoring of the rule of law in America by George Bush. Some key points:

• Bush has used signing statements to challenge elements of more than 100 laws, whereas all presidents before him, combined, issued only 600 signing statements
• The first four years of Bush's presidency saw 318 fines against employers of illegal workers, whereas eight years of Clinton saw 5,587 fines for the same offense
• From 1995 to 1998, from 10-18,000 undocumented workers were arrested at worksites each year; in 2004, 159 were arrested
• Border arrests dropped from 1.52 million during Clinton's second term to 1.05 million during Bush's first

Now, I can't say that I see as much of a problem with the other points as Lou does, but the fact that Bush has outpaced all other presidents in using signing statements while letting other concerns slide speaks directly to his attitude about power -- or, perhaps more accurately, the attitude of those around him who are vying for a monarchy rather than a presidency. I disagree with Lou Dobbs on most things -- certainly, on his backing of the racism disguised as national security pushed by Tom Tancredo -- but I agree that the combined arrogance and negligence of George Bush and his cadre of controlling staffers is destructive and problematic.

In case you missed it, it's now official -- the president can revoke Habeas Corpus at will.

If you're curious, some details on who voted for what in the extended. A grand total of seven House Republicans and one Senate Republican voted against this law. For a party that's supposed to prize personal liberty and despise big government, it should be shocking that so few Republicans stood against this notion of giving the President the power to "disappear" people at will.

Except, sadly, I'm not shocked.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow has demanded that Senator John Kerry apologize for a (slightly misstated) dig he made at Bush in which he said that people who don't do well in school get "stuck in Iraq." Snow and others have chosen to deliberately misinterpret this so they can claim that Kerry, a veteran himself, would somehow decide to criticize American soldiers.

Kerry's not having any of it:

"If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq," states Kerry, "and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy.

He concludes, "No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq."

Just so. This one line captures everything: "Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they're afraid to debate real men." The current administration policy is about misdirection to avoid blame and an appearance of failure. I understand that some people feel a deep party loyalty, and will line up behind Bush and his circle regardless of what they say, but I can neither get behind that nor respect it.

Your nation is more important than your political party. Or, at least, it damn well should be.

Quote taken from Raw Story, courtesy of my random Google RSS feed.

President Bush gave a press conference on the 25th that tried to strike the right tone of candor, acknowledgement of "difficulties" in Iraq, and promise of success there anyway. With the press corps becoming increasingly skeptical, he must pretend to engage the reality of the situation and, as we have seen this week, step away from the concept of "stay the course" as much as possible, now that it's unpopular.

Even so, his press conference was still rife with the half-messages and misdirections that characterize his approach to politics. It's not policy tempered by spin; it's only spin. Let's look at some of what he said.

"Our security at home depends on ensuring that Iraq is an ally in the war on terror and does not become a terrorist haven like Afghanistan under the Taliban."

I might have believed this at one point, but I can't say I do now. Until we purge every possible terrorist "hiding place"*, there will always be somewhere for their training camps and ideological indoctrination grounds -- and remember that the most important part of the 9/11 hijackers' training was carried out right here in the United States. Even bombing the entire mideast into paste wouldn't have helped stop an American flight school.

(*Good luck.)

But Bush is on top of things. He knows we've met some surprises in Iraq.

"We learned some key lessons from that early phase in the war. We saw how quickly al Qaeda and other extremist groups would come to Iraq to fight and try to drive us out. We overestimated the capability of the civil service in Iraq to continue to provide essential services to the Iraqi people. We did not expect the Iraqi army, including the Republican Guard, to melt away in the way that it did in the phase of advancing coalition forces."

Let's rephrase this. "We did not expect the Iraqi army to melt away in the way it did after we disbanded it following the invasion." Of course, that version makes less sense, and makes it more our fault that the security situation in Iraq completely fell apart post-invasion.

Moving on...

"And I know it's incumbent upon our government and others who enjoy the blessings of liberty to help those moderates succeed because, otherwise, we're looking at the potential of this kind of world: a world in which radical forms of Islam compete for power; a world in which moderate governments get toppled by people willing to murder the innocent; a world in which oil reserves are controlled by radicals in order to extract blackmail from the West; a world in which Iran has a nuclear weapon. And if that were to occur, people would look back at this day and age and say, what happened to those people in 2006? How come they couldn't see the threat to a future generation of people?"

I thought we were going to reduce our "addiction to oil", making control over foreign oil reserves a non-issue? On the latter note, does our clever plan for preventing acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran involve making sure North Korea gets all of them? Or is it just that there's no spin to counter last month's successful nuclear test on the peninsula, so we'll stick with the other country that, through no real effort of our own, doesn't yet have nukes?

Extremists have now played their hand; the world can clearly see their ambitions. You know, when a Palestinian state began to show progress, extremists attacked Israel to stop the advance of a Palestinian state. They can't stand democracies. Extremists and radicals want to undermine fragile democracy because it's a defeat for their way of life, their ideology. "

Hm. As I recall, when the Palestinians elected a government we didn't like, we cut off all financial aid. And we haven't done much of anything there since, even though the afore-mentioned extremists still have that Israeli soldier and Israel is still pounding the snot out of the territories in retaliation. Sure, extremists made the provocation, but don't we care enough to try and intervene? Maybe lay some money and good will down and undercut them? Instead, we're starving out the Palestinians just because their democratic process elected people we don't like. I don't like them either, but we're not helping them, us, Israel or anyone in the area right now.

But that's okay, because he believes.

"He [Rumsfeld] is a smart, tough, capable administrator. As importantly, he understands that the best way to fight this war, whether it be in Iraq or anywhere else around the world, is to make sure our troops are ready, that morale is high, that we transform the nature of our military to meet the threats, and that we give our commanders on the ground the flexibility necessary to make the tactical changes to achieve victory.

This is a tough war in Iraq. I mean, it's a hard fight, no question about it. All you've got to do is turn on your TV. But I believe that the military strategy we have is going to work. That's what I believe, Peter. And so we've made changes throughout the war, we'll continue to make changes throughout the war. But the important thing is whether or not we have the right strategy and the tactics necessary to achieve that goal. And I believe we do. "

Why do you believe our strategy is going to work, Mr. President? We aren't meeting our benchmarks. We're losing soldiers every day -- October was a terrible month for us. The civil war in Iraq means that each one soldier we lose is matched by the deaths of tens or perhaps hundreds of Iraqis. If that's not failure, then what's the metric? The last place I want pure faith and guesswork is in military action -- especially if it's as critical to our national defense as you suggest.

But never mind that. What's the key message?

THE PRESIDENT: I think the coming election is a referendum on these two things: which party has got the plan that will enable our economy continue -- to continue to grow, and which party has a plan to protect the American people. And Iraq is part of the security of the United States. If we succeed -- and when we succeed in Iraq, our country will be more secure. If we don't succeed in Iraq, the country is less secure.

So the two issues I see in the campaign can be boiled down to who best to protect this country, and who best to keep taxes low. That's what the referendum is about. "

Really? Security and low taxes? I appreciate that you modified the inheritance tax exemption so that instead of applying to most Americans ($675,000) it now applies to almost all Americans ($3.5 million!), and soon we'll just revoke it altogether. I'm glad the economy will be spurred by a tax cut that swooshes right past most Americans without even a glancing blow to their income. I'm also glad that the focus on tax cuts means that we can have a $500 per child tax credit, such that every three kids means one less armored vest for our troops. I think it's entirely coincidental that we raised taxes in every war we ever won. Let's just go ahead and drop taxes, especially for wealthy people and rich corporate entities.

Maybe we can give them all some more no-bid contracts in Iraq while we're at it.

Anything to help.

David Kuo understands the 24-hour news cycle. It is voracious and amnesiac.

Earlier this month, the news was abuzz with revelations from David Kuo's book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. The biggie was that members of the Bush administration refer to evangelical Christians as "nuts."

But that's not really the point.

In his deeply personal and honest memoir, Kuo addresses head-on just how faith is manipulated to entirely political ends. As a true-believing, religiously conservative Christian, he worked for years in Washington to achieve the dream of a government of fellow believers who would pursue their goals of making the world a better place by stamping out drug abuse, poverty, crime and more.

Instead, Kuo became an inside witness to the way evangelical Christians have been manipulated for political purposes over the last decade or more. He has experienced, first hand, the disappointment of watching President Bush promise billions in tax credits for charitable giving and $200 million in "Compassionate" funding for community and faith-based groups, only to fail to deliver on either. He has written speeches aimed at convincing evangelical Christians that a politician really is one of them, while keeping that belief sufficiently "under the radar" to keep everyone else from thinking the person is too much of a winger.

He was part of the 2004 election-year effort to stage "nonpartisan" conferences or minorities and faith groups -- concidentally in battleground states.

He has seen the very thing that I have seen among other Christians -- the tendency to believe that because someone professes our faith, that means they're the best choice and can be trusted to look out for our beliefs once they're in office. More to the point, he's seen -- as we all really have -- that this is absolutely untrue.

Through it all, Kuo still believes that Bush is a good Christian and a smart man. It's worth pointing this out -- and the fact that Kuo also likes Karl Rove and others in the White House -- by way of saying that Tempting Faith is not a character assassination piece. In reality, it's a testimony to the fact that we can't legislate our way into a better culture, and even if we could, we can't honestly rely on political figures -- even those who seem to genuinely share our faith -- to push for that legislation.

Kuo paints politicians of all parties with the same brush of indifference, and I believe his account. His book is a good read for everyone, but is especially important for those in the Christian community who have been told, based on their beliefs, that they belong to a certain political party. If you're really a Christian, you belong to just one person, and He doesn't have a party affiliation.

Kuo advocates taking a two-year fast from political life. Not from voting, of course, but from lobbying, from mobilizing voters, from being a political rather than a religious entity. His message, as I read it, is to no longer let politicians -- any of them -- assume your support based on your religion or any other aspect of your life.

I've included some notable quotes from the book in the extended.

Here's an interesting excerpt from today's press conference that will probably go largely unreported due to the focus on the electoral drubbing and Rumsfeld being replaced:

Q Thank you, sir. During this campaign season some religious conservatives expressed support and appreciation for the work you've done. But some also expressed that they felt like they expended a lot of effort on your behalf without a lot of results. I wonder if you could tell us what parts of their agenda are still on your radar screen, and if you think they're right to be frustrated?

But, you know, Michael, you're probably following all these -- the different lists of concerns people have with my presidency, and I respect that. I just -- frankly, I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about in this question. I'm sure there are some people who aren't perfectly content, but there are some people that aren't perfectly content from different parties and different philosophies.

Bush indicates twice that he's not sure what the reporter is talking about in terms of dissatisfaction from religious conservatives. Look at this bit one more time:

And so I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about, but I can tell you that I believe the faith-based and community-based -- the faith- and community-based initiative is a vital part of helping solve intractable problems here in America. And I would hope that I could work with Congress to make sure this program, which has been invigorated, remains invigorated.

Then go reread my review of David Kuo's book, or better yet, read the book itself. As Mr. Kuo detailed, President Bush's administration, in six years with a friendly Congress, never pushed for their promised religious initiatives. There was no credit for charitable giving, and the Charitable Choice fund was first underfunded (at $30 million rather than the promised $200 million) and then retasked entirely.

The faith-based initiative program was never invigorated by the Bush administration. He knows this. The religious conservative community was used for their votes, and then no effort was made to mobilize funding to faith-based groups, either directly from the Federal government or via a charitable giving tax credit.

Sounds like time for another letter.

Latest letter to the President, following these remarks.

Mr. President -

In your press conference today, you said:

"And so I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about, but I can tell you that I believe the faith-based and community-based -- the faith- and community-based initiative is a vital part of helping solve intractable problems here in America. And I would hope that I could work with Congress to make sure this program, which has been invigorated, remains invigorated."

This is literally untrue. You have not invigorated the faith- and community-based initiative program. You instead have underfunded the Charitable Choice fund by about 85% and have failed to make even a mild push for a promised multi-billion-dollar charitable giving credit -- and all of that with six years of a friendly Congress. Instead, you and your party spent time on projects that explicitly help wealthier Americans, such as pushing the exemption on the estate tax from a reasonable $675,000 to a very high $3.5 million, leading to a projected loss of billions in charitable giving.

First-person accounts witness the fact that you have been told, more than once, about the continuing problems in this area. You have done nothing about them.

When you say the program has been invigorated, you are lying. If I could, I would say that directly to your face.

You help no one in doing this. It is callous and cowardly.

Cut it out.

CNN filed under "Offbeat News" the story of Randy Wooten, who lost in his bid for mayor in the small, small town of Waldenburg, Arkansas.

The ostensibly funny part of the story is that Mr. Wooten voted for himself, yet the voting machine tallied eighteen votes for each of the other two candidates and none for him.

So, to put this in a slightly less "news of the weird" manner -- a voting machine demonstrably failed to register a vote.

We're all shocked, I'm sure.

The CNN story

...and not in the good way.

President Bush says that we need to expand the military, and he's considering the possibility of increasing troop strength in Iraq.

Like a child, Bush runs things his way as long as he can, ignoring valuable advice given by experts in the field. Only a severe time out in the form of the congressional defeat of his party, gave him sufficient pause to start this half-assed attempt to change his plan.

But despite talking about "hard choices" and his usual return to the concept of sacrifice, Bush is mainly running his same old game. This week he signed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 into law. When this is mentioned in the next election cycle, keep in mind that Bush is buying your affections very cheaply -- the average savings to you individually amount to just $99.33, and it will cost our country $45 billion over the next decade.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have $45 billion to spend on supporting our soldiers? Because for every four households getting a new tax break each year, one more American soldier doesn't get body armor. It's not such a pretty tax cut after all.

Someone should perhaps remind Bush, again, that in every war we ever won, we raised taxes. If he's not serious about this war, he probably shouldn't have started it.

The GAO's report on Transportation-Disadvantaged Populations came out this month. It opens with this precious line:

The evacuation of New Orleans in response to Hurricane Katrina was considered relatively successful for people with their own vehicles;

It then goes on to note that the 100,000 people without their own vehicles had a hell of a time getting out. Key points from the report:

• Private transportation providers may feel constrained by liability concerns
• 12% of urban plans (and 10% of state plans) adequately address evacuation of transportation-disadvantaged groups (that is, anyone without a car)
• "Furthermore, in one of five major cities GAO visited, officials believed that few residents would require evacuation assistance despite the U.S. Census reporting 16.5 percent of car-less households in that major city."
• Most state and urban areas seriously underestimate the preparation and planning required to move disabled people

The upshot? Have your own plan ahead of time, either your car or someone else's.

You can download the whole report by clicking here.

One sticking point for anti-immigration polemicists in the immigration debates of 2006 was that some individuals in pro-immigration rallies flew Mexican flags.

How un-American, right?

Well, that all depends. Are you perhaps a resident of Arizona or New Mexico? Because your flags have colors taken from Spanish standards. Admittedly, that's pretty historical.

Are you from California or Texas? Because your flags are actually the flags of independent nations, annexed either quickly (California) or after a while (Texas) into the United States.

Are you from Hawaii? Because your flag has a British flag on it.

Are you from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, or South Carolina? The flags of Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida all include reminders of the Confederate flag. Georgia's flag is the first national flag of the Confederacy, with the state seal superimposed in the middle. Mississippi's flag contains the stars and bars, the second national flag of the Confederacy. South Carolina continues to fly its flag from the secession years.

If the flag of a secessionist force that tried to destroy the United States and led to the deaths of millions of Americans is an acceptable part of our national cultural heritage, then I defy you to produce a legitimate complaint against immigrants to this country waving a Mexican flag at a rally. All the good people in my neighborhood who have Mexican flags on the backs of their cars go to work every day, pay into Social Security every day, and contribute to the fabric of my very healthy local community. If they want to acknowledge where they came from, that's great.

I'm glad to have them. I hope they're glad to have me.

I'll just quote the AP reporting, as quoted in this CNN article:

The Army general who was Joint Chiefs chairman when the Pentagon adopted its "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays says he no longer opposes allowing them to serve openly.

"These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers," Shalikashvili wrote in an opinion piece in Tuesday's New York Times.

This is a map of U.S. fatalities grouped by city, as shown by icasualties.org on their US Iraq Fatalities: City Map page (they hold the copyright in this image, which I'm using here in a review capacity).

I was struck by how much this looks like a map of "blue" states from the 2004 presidential election.

And if you look at California, you can see why it's a little harder to forget about war deaths here, especially if you live in Southern California.

The GAO released Comptroller General David Walker's testimony before the Senate Budget Committee today (you can read the full .pdf version by clicking here). The upshot? We're headed toward a financial crisis. With current administration policies, it's happening a good fifteen years earlier than it otherwise would, but it's happening no matter what, unless we enact major changes. Some notables quotes from his report:

The Prescription Drug Bill and tax cuts are both problems:

Even with short-term surpluses, we had a long-term problem in 2001, but it was more than 40 years out. Certainly an economic slowdown and budget decisions driven by the attacks of 9/11 and the need to respond to natural disasters have contributed to the change in outlook. However, these items alone do not account for the dramatic worsening. Tax cuts also contributed but the single largest contributor to the deterioration of our long-term outlook was the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill in 2003.

Our liability now is over twice what it was in 2000 -- $50 trillion instead of $20 trillion:

As widely reported, the $248 billion fiscal year 2006 unified budget deficit was lower than originally forecast and lower than last year’s deficit of $318 billion. While this improvement in the 1-year fiscal picture is better than a worsening in that picture, it did not fundamentally change our longterm fiscal outlook. In fact, the U.S. government’s total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the nation’s total output, or gross domestic product (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year
2000.

We can't "grow our way out" of this financial hole:

The government can help ease future fiscal burdens through spending reductions, revenue actions, or both that reduce debt held by the public and enhance the pool of economic resources available for private investment and long-term growth. Economic growth is essential, but we will not be able to simply grow our way out of the problem. The numbers speak loudly: our projected fiscal gap is simply too great. To “grow our way out” of the current long-term fiscal gap would require sustained economic growth far beyond that experienced in U.S. economic history since World War II.

Economic growth will slow as medical and social spending rise, and by 2017 (ten years!) Social Security will no longer run a surplus:

Next year members of the baby boom generation start to leave the labor force. Reflecting this demographic shift, CBO projects the average annual growth rate of real GDP will decline from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 2.6 percent in the period 2012-2016. This slowing of economic growth will come just as spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will begin to accelerate—accounting for 56 percent of all federal spending by 2016 compared to 43 percent in 2006. As I noted earlier, today Social Security’s cash surplus helps offset the deficit in the rest of the budget, but growth in Social Security spending is expected to increase from an estimated 4.8 percent in 2008 to 6.5 percent in 2016. The result, as shown in figure 8, is that the Social Security surpluses begin a permanent decline in 2009. At that time the rest of the budget will begin to feel the squeeze since the capacity of Social Security surpluses to offset deficits in the rest of the budget will begin to shrink. In 2017 Social Security will no longer run a cash surplus and will begin adding to the deficit. That year Social Security will need to redeem the special securities it holds in order to pay benefits. Treasury will honor those claims—the United States has never defaulted. But there is no free money. The funds to redeem those securities will have to come from higher taxes, lower spending on other programs, higher borrowing from the public, or a combination of all three.

A group of Methodist ministers from across the nation launched an online petition drive Thursday urging Southern Methodist University to stop trying to land George W. Bush's presidential library.

They're trying to prevent the linking of a well-known Methodist institution with Bush's name, as well as the establishment an associated think tank that would be "dedicated to the philosophy of the Bush administration."

I don't know how you devote a think tank to covering your ass, but there you go.

You can read more about their effort at their petition site, www.protectsmu.org

CNN article

It's good to write down the promises and claims made during any State of the Union address. As David Kuo can attest, despite repeated claims of support, faith-based initatives were ultimately hung out to dry by a fundamentally uninterested President Bush. In that light, let's look at this year's State of the Union address and tally the promises and claims, in that order.

Overall, the address was unsurprisingly vanilla, choosing only the easiest applause lines, by and large. As many commentators pointed out, too much dead silence or half-hearted applause just wouldn't play well.

The Promises

Balance the Federal budget without raising taxes. As the GAO recently pointed out in an official report, although the 2006 unified budget deficit was lower than the year before, our national liability has more than doubled, from $20 trillion to $50 trillion, since Bush took over. In 2017, Social Security will no longer run a surplus, and then that particular "trick" of budget balancing will no longer be available.

Stop earmarks which amounted to $18 billion in 2005 -- notably, a year when the President's party was in power, and deeply disinclined to talk about this kind of thing. Also note that $18 billion is (1) a good savings and (2) chump change compared to our national deficit. Still, this is an easy claim for him to support -- although Republicans in Congress may hate him for it, when their own constituents get angry about lost earmarks.

Tax deductions for healthcare amounting to $7,500 for single individuals and $15,000 for families. Let's see if this happens, and if employers try to ditch health care plans as a consequence. This one is among his easy fixes -- it sounds good, it could actually help some people, and it doesn't require addressing anything about health care on a larger scale.

Provide Federal funds for state health care programs as long as they're programs that provide only private healthcare for the uninsured. There's no money there for any state-run programs, naturally.

Doubling the size of the Border Patrol which is a fairly meaningless increase, although it will cost a lot of money. Based on real-world examples of mostly secured borders (such as the Korean DMZ), we would need many, many times the current number of Border Patrol agents to have a chance of effectively shutting down border traffic. A doubling is like 20,000 more troops to Iraq -- half-assed. This part of the speech included the waffling statement that, "We need to resolve the status of the illegal immigrants who are already in our country without animosity and without amnesty." That's another fabuluous splunge moment from Bush. Perhaps he'll see more success now that fewer of his fellow Republicans are around.

Comprehensive immigration reform is nothing new. Maybe it'll work this time.

A 20% reduction in gas use in the next ten years along with improved automotive efficiency standards, a mandate of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017, a doubling of the strategic oil reserve, and increased drilling. All of these are achievable, although the 20% decrease and the 35 billion gallons would require a heroic effort of a type that this administration has not shown any inclination toward. On the other hand, more drilling is, again, easy. I'm going to bet on that one for sure -- after all, it can be achieved within two years.

The Iraqi government must stop the violence or else nothing. Bush's tone is one of consequence, but his words speak of no consequences. They "must" do this, but we're not going to do anything if they don't. I think this empty statement is a pretty solid promise of things to come.

Set up an advisory council for the war on terror, consisting of members of both parties who, if Bush operates as usual, will be ignored regardless of party affiliation.

Add 92,000 soldiers to the military. This is a desperate need, largely as a consequence of Bush's Iraq misadventure.

Design and establish a volunteer civilian reserve corps with an unclear mandate. It sounds like he's trying to find a workaround for expensive contractors by making a "nonmilitary" that follows the structure of the current reserves. If they can find volunteers, more power to them. I'm sick of no-bid contracts to KBR and others who fail to feed our troops as required and overcharge for the unfinished job. I know volunteers will at least try.

$1.2 billion over 5 years to fight malaria in Africa. I hope he does this. More than any attempt to democratize the world, this will make it a better place and buy us decades of good will.

Fund the Millennium Challenge Account, which provides economic aid tied to performance indicators in developing countries. You can read more about the MCA by clicking here.

The claims

Minority students are closing the achievment gap if, by minorities, you mean Asians. Or, according to some reports, all minorities have improved, but others point to the troubling practice of dropping some minority tests scores, possibly to evade penalties under No Child Left Behind.

We have made advances in energy including solar, wind, clean diesel, biodiesel, clean coal, and ethanol. Of course, that's mainly on the backs of venture cap and some minor subsidies, and most of that has pushed toward ethanol, which is a dubious and incomplete solution. Biodiesel, which could actually provide all our fuel needs domestically (ethanol can't), has seen little to no Federal support.

Everything that went wrong in Iraq started with the Golden Mosque of Samarra, except that it really didn't, and Shiite militias were engaging in violence from the tail end of 2003 onward -- that would be about twenty months before the Golden Mosque was hit. And if you're honest with yourself and you paid attention to the news, you remember a whole lot of violence before then. In fact, about 2,300 or so of our soldiers were killed between the 1st of November, 2003 and the bombing of the Golden Mosque. That's right -- most of our people were killed well before anyone hit this particular Mosque.

"Every one of us wishes this war were over and won." But only he had the hubris to actually claim we'd won. Back in 2003.

"We didn't drive al Qaeda out of their safe haven in Afghanistan only to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq." Let's shorten that to "we didn't drive al Qaeda out of their safe haven in Afghanistan." Indeed, later on in the same speech, we hear that "In Afghanistan, NATO has taken the lead in turning back the Taliban and al Qaeda offensive..." which suggests that even Bush knows we didn't clear al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. This is a perpetual message of his administration, of course -- that they have solved our problems, but that the same problems remain, so it'd be best if we kept him in office without questioning his methods.

Our new axis is Cuba, Belarus, and Burma, because things most be said in threes to achieve rhetorical strength. This time, Bush picked nations that are highly unlikely to develop nuclear weapons and cause him to look weak anytime in the near future.

Although I eschew hope as a plan, I cleave to hope as a fundamental ingredient in my worldview. I have never believed that "the world is getting worse." I have never, ever wanted to live in the past, and I don't expect that to change.

Which is not to say that the things that give us hope will not be bleak. Two reasons I continue to have hope for America:

Man charged in 1964 killing of two young black men

US soldier jailed for Iraq deaths

The first story is hopeful because it demonstrates that we will, even after over forty years, attempt to seek justice, both individually and institutionally. The second story is hopeful because even in a time of war, we hold ourselves and our people to higher standards than the rest of the world. What other military actually charges its own with murder, convicts and jails them -- because the act was wrong, even in time of war?

There is always a struggle between those who think that we can give up that which makes us fundamentally American and yet somehow remain Americans, and those who know this is not true. But as long as the trend keeps going the way it's going, I have hope.

Glenn Greenwald writes here about the misuse ot the "commander in chief" title to imply that the President is everyone's war leader, rather than an elected public servant. In doing so, he mentions a Gary Wills editorial that notes that Eisenhower didn't trade salutes with military officers when he was President, because he considered himself a civilian -- but never-in-combat Presidents Reagan and Bush Jr. both follow(ed) the practice.

He also brings up the following quote on dissent with a wartime President, written by Theodore Roosevelt during the first World War:

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

You can read this and other TR quotes at www.theodoreroosevelt.org

This sentence is the one you want to remember, should it come to a debate:

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. "

Remember, TR says failing to criticize is treasonable.

Amnesty International has begun offering Amnesty Wireless, a cellphone service that sends 10% of your phone charges to Amnesty and offers free calling to other Amnesty Wireless members as well as 30 minutes of free calling to certain political leaders each month.

This struck me as just an interesting new fund-raising mechanism until I hit that last bit, which is pure genius.

The Federal government plans to archive DNA samples from suspects detained by Federal authorities, following new rules instituted by DoJ in January of this year. This represents as change from previous policy, which only allowed archiving of DNA samples from convicts.

Naturally, this is upsetting to many, including folks from the ACLU. Carol Fredrickson, legislative office director for that group, made two good points, one of which I hadn't thought of before:

"DNA is far more than a simple fingerprint.

"The huge backlog of rape kits waiting to be tested will continue to grow as the government collects DNA from hundreds of thousands or even millions of individuals arrested or detained."

The former point will be more and more true as we gain more understanding about the genetic basis of many medical conditions and medical proclivities. Will your insurance company be able to issue a claim for access to DNA collected when you were held by the Park Service after failing to acquire a proper camping permit? Can they then change your rates based on that information?

The second point is very important. Have we checked to make sure we have the capacity to process all the new samples this will produce? Will evidence from violent crimes get absolute priority over processing the latest sample taken from a would-be illegal border crosser?

For the moment, we'll just have to wait and see how it's managed. A similar policy went into effect in California with the passage of Prop 69 in 2004. You can check on its status at the Office of the Attorney General by clicking here. According to their third quarter 2006 report, they have 827,066 samples on file, received 50,947 submissions in that quarter and have achieved 2,949 hits since their inception, aiding 3,191 investigations. According to the January, 2007 monthly report, they were able to cut their sample backlog from 176,220 to 158,546 and had 261 hits in that month. Given that they did that backlog clearance along with covering an additional 19,000 samples that came in that month, it looks good for them to be up to speed by 2008.

Of course, there's no indication if or how this may be impinging on other forensic DNA lab tasks.

al Jazeera article

Although I couldn't find any record that he was ever a Boy Scout, General Pace obviously picked up some solid training on American citizenship that Bush and Cheney lack:

A top Pentagon leader weighed in yesterday on the war debate and appeared to undercut the argument advanced by the White House and many GOP lawmakers that a congressional debate challenging the Bush plan would hurt troop morale.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the dialogue here in Washington strengthens our democracy. Period," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. He added that potential enemies may take some comfort from the rancor but said they "don't have a clue how democracy works."

Of course.

Democracy works because our means is our end. Chant it like a mantra. Our means is our end. There is no American "end" that can be achieved by non-democratic means such as saying it's unpatriotic to argue about a war plan or call the President on his stupid acts.

Theodore Roosevelt knew how this worked. It's sad that Bush and Cheney don't.

But then, one's a C student and the other never made it to Eagle (or Vietnam, but you know...).

Washington Post article

From the AP:

Nearly 60 countries signed a treaty on Tuesday that bans governments from holding people in secret detention, but the United States and some of its key European allies were not among them.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined comment except to say that the United States helped draft the treaty, but that the final text "did not meet our expectations."

Lest you get too caught up in the fact that we haven't signed on, consider everyone else who also declined to commit: Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain...

Notably, various Americans are currently being prosecuted (in absentia) or considered for prosecution in at least two of those countries for renditions carried out within their borders. Of course, inasmuch as the EU member states appear, based on documents from meetings with the US, to have agreed to the policy of allowing these renditions, the pending legal proceedings represent the people in those countries disagreeing with the official policy of their respective nations.

Or, in other words, carrying on a dialogue that will strengthen their respective democracies.

Everyone in charge ends up being a little suspect from time to time, don't you think?

The SF Chronicle has a good little story by Tyche Hendricks on Irish illegal immigrants. It's not a historical piece -- there's an active, present-day Irish illegal immigrant community in the U.S., with their own lobbying group in the form of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform.

Elaine, a San Francisco nanny who wouldn't give her last name because she lacks legal immigration status, plans to leave her 6-year-old son with her sister and fly to the nation's capital to join the call for comprehensive immigration reform on March 7.