We Write Social Security Ads

Josh Marshall's posts about the wall some Republicans are confronting when attempting to persuade their consitutents to approve the destruction of Social Security, and the failure of most Republicans to even explain their position to their constitutents, leads of to believe that now is the time for those who wish to protect Social Security from Il Ducetto's greedy, rapacious schemes to run some ads.

We believe such ads should be constructed around a few principles:

1. Don't even mention Il Ducetto - He's not running for anything. God help us, half the country likes him. Blame Congress and Wall Street.

2. Create a "we can win this thing, we're turning the corner" mood in the ads. People like to participate in a winning political campaign. People like to be on the right side of a moral crusade. Hit that button. Moreover, wouldn't it feel good to have people united and charged up behind Democrats?

3. Frequently use the word "gamble" in the ads.

4. Use people who have actually benefited from Social Security in the ads (both famous and ordinary).

5. Run these ads in Connecticut, asap.

For example:

1. An ad about the Social Security program that gives payments to minors whose parent has died. These might include the children of civilian contractors who have died working for Halliburton in a Bush war. We might include a famous person and an ordinary person. We should include folks who represent the diversity of American citizens for whom survivors benefits have made a difference. E.g.:

Joe Jones talks about what Social Security has meant to him.

When my Dad died, my mom didn't know what to do. She had spent her married life making the family. Dad was the breadwinner. The Social Security checks she got as a widow, and we got as children meant she could stay home and raise us. It wasn't easy for her, but you know, without those Social Security checks, it would have been impossible. There's a word for the kind of person who'd take an orphaned kid's last chance to make it and gamble with it in the stock market. But I'm not allowed to use such words on T.V.

There's only one person who can save Social Security from the folks in Congress and on Wall Street who want take a sure thing and turn it into a crapshoot, and that person is you. Call Congressman/woman XXXX and tell them Social Security is supposed to be safer than investments in companies like Enron. We can win this thing. We have to.

2. An ad about the Social Security program that give payments to persons who suffer from disabilities that prevent them from working. Again a range of famous and ordinary persons.

Jane Doe talks about her experience with Social Security.

I'd been out of college for almost a decade when I was in the accident. Losing your vision in a car crash takes quite a toll on your career plans, let me tell you. I can't imagine what I would have done without the disability check from Social Security. It took me years to recover, to get back to school, to learn how to navigate the working world without sight. Every month during those years I got a check, which helped pay the rent and the grocieries and the tuition. When these people in Congress and on Wall Street talk about "reforming" Social Security, I think, "reform yourself first." How could they possibly want a person in my situation to gamble the only lifeline she has on stocks? When I had perfect vision I didn't know the first thing about the stock market. What happens if you pick the wrong stock, one of those high flying companies that blew up. Does Congress want us to sell pencils or something?

There's only one person who can save Social Security from the folks in Congress and on Wall Street who want take a sure thing and turn it into a gamble, and that person is you. Call Congressman/woman XXXX and tell them Social Security is supposed to be safer than investments in companies like Enron. We can win this thing. We have to.

3. An ad about a retiree who doesn't use a keyboard for a living.

Bill Thomas talks about his experience with Social Security.

I was a logger all my working life, just like my father. It's a good job, but it's not an old man's job. You work a chain saw, swing an axe, cable the logs, load the skidder. I suppose everybody who does my kind of job just chuckles when they hear the folks in Congress talk about raising the retirement age. What do they want us to do? Die on the job, while we're swinging an ax? I made about $30 grand a year, which was enough to raise my kids, but you don't get rich in the business. And you don't have enough to learn about Wall Street investments either. I was glad enough to hand the equipment over to my kids when I turned 65. All those years I was working, I knew my wife and boys would be provided for if I had an accident. And I knew when my day came I'd have enough to pay for my groceries and my medicine.

I don't know why Congress doesn't think my kids don't deserve the same promise I got. And I sure don't know why they want to gamble with a working man's security. Maybe they have enough corporate and foundation jobs to take care of them when they leave Congress. But for the rest of us, Social Security is our security. For a lot of us, it's our only security. Only one person can keep these fools in D.C. and on Wall Street from ruining what's good for ordinary folks. You are that person. Call Congressman/woman XXXX and tell them Social Security is supposed to be safer than investments in companies like Enron. We can win this thing. We have to.

We think the blogpac ads from There Is No Crisis were good for phase one, but don't have the zing needed to get folks out of their chairs and on the phones.

UPDATE: We think that NPR story on Richard Neal, the Democratic Rep from Springfield, MA is a good example of the material that would be effective in a Type 1 ad. His mom died when he was 13, his dad shortly thereafter. The Social Security payments meant he was able to put himself through college and famiy members were able to support his younger sisters. We can't find the NPR link, but the Massachussets paper The Republican has the story.

What Happens When Il Ducetto Tries To Create A Democracy?

MSNBC - Iraq's Hidden War: "There are a lot of women in Iraq who are looking forward to the freedom that Iraq's experiment with democracy promises them. And there are hard-liners who would kill them for it." [--snip--]

The terrorists are a minority, yet they are not the only worry for secular-minded Iraqis. As elected officials enter a third week of wrangling over forming a new government, leading Iraqi women are concerned that they'll lose out. On the face of it, they should be pleased. Nearly a third of the newly elected legislators are women, which is unprecedented in the region. (In neighboring Saudi Arabia, for instance, women can't even vote.) And Iraq's politicians have agreed to a transitional law that encourages equal rights for women in the new Constitution. But the National Assembly's makeup was the result of a quota imposed by the former American administrator, L. Paul Bremer III. Only his veto kept an earlier Iraqi government, the appointed Governing Council, from imposing Islamic Sharia on family matters. And Americans don't have such veto power any longer.

When women are driven back into the 8th century in Il Ducetto's Iraq, be assured we will be advised by ill-informed pundits like Mr. Goldberg that we need to respect the cultural values and sensitivies of Iraqis (if only because the sexist, anti-modern, patriarchal pigs Mr. Goldberg will be referring to share so many "Red" values).

We Are Back In Time For The Blizzard

It was warm (30s and 40s) and snow-free in Chicago, and good to see family and friends, even if the occasion (an uncle's death) was sad. It was not all that good for the blood pressure to take the opportunity to attend our niece's 5th grade basketball team's season ending tournament. True, they lost Game One to arch-rival, St. Cyril's. But the Celtics of St. Al's and Pat's soundly defeated St. Joe's in Game Two and finally defeated District 52 (with three girls over 5'5") in a hair-raising overtime nail biter in the third and concluding game of the tournament. We note that our niece's free throw basket in the final minute of regular time was crucial to the victory. We are happy to report that scoring in all three games reached double digits. The final game, indeed, was a slugfest, ending 21-20.

5th grade basketball is far harder on the nerves of the audience than most other iterations of the game, in which the observer is assured with reasonably certainty that a ball released from a player's hands for a shot or a pass will travel somewhat close to the basket or to another member of the team. 5th graders, operating without a net, play with no such certainty.

In our absence, the 10,000th visitor came to Pudentilla's page. She is deeply grateful.

Will The Booted One Claim Credit?

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Mubarak Pushes Egypt to Allow Freer Elections: "'This is a way to improve his image with the Americans and to please them with some formal changes,' said Ibrahim Eissa, a columnist and political analyst. 'While at the same time he is keeping everything else unchanged, like the emergency laws, imprisoning the opposition, the state controlling the media and political parties existing just on paper. This is deception.'

Essam el-Eryan, a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist group that is banned as a party, noted that the revised amendment might limit the choice of candidates by barring those not endorsed by a legal political party."

Mubarak makes an empty gesture. The LRWM* swoons over this evidence of democracy in the Middle East. Il Ducetto claims credit for this "democratic," gesture, pointing to Condi's pique. Little has changed.

*Lying Right Wing Media

Romney Limits College Access In Bay State

Boston.com / News / Local / Mass. colleges see costs rise, aid fall: "Massachusetts cut spending on grants and scholarships for college students by more than $20 million in the past five years, at the same time enrollments increased, and public campuses, battered by state budget cuts, boosted tuition and fees by 50 to 75 percent, according to state budget records and officials."

The result is that fewer needy students are receiving state aid, and many grant awards are smaller than they were in the past, financial aid administrators said.

The state's decision to offer less financial aid while also drastically reducing campus funding differs from the approach of many other states, where officials said financial aid budgets were held steady or increased during the recent recession in an attempt to keep poor students in college.

But in Massachusetts, spending on grants and scholarships fell 22 percent in five years, from a peak of $105 million in fiscal 2000 to $82 million this year. State support for the budgets of the 29 public campuses, which enroll more than 180,000 students, declined at a similar rate.

The Globe's analysis is a bit unfair. Blue governors have indeed increased financial aid as to counter the efforts of Il Ducetto to limit the access of non-wealthy Americans to higher education. Romney's red, however, and the ability of the children of those who aren't rich to go to college is simply not an agenda priority for him. It's just not news that the red governor of a blue state would try to screw working citizens.

Syria or Iran?

Well it looks like they're going to start dropping bombs somewhere. Why? Because the LRWM* is making noises about making nice to queer soldiers. When is the U.S. military nice to queer soldiers? When it doesn't have enough straight soldiers. So in light of the impending expansion of Il Ducetto's little venture, everyone wants to make nice to queer soldiers.

The Economist has called on the American Military to feel the love. The L.A. Times notes that the GAO is reporting that "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" is costing the military a boatload of dough. Of course the Talon News Agency's Ace Reporter has been on this bandwagon for awhile.

As much as we suspect that this is a part of the traditional "be nice to queer soldiers while there's shooting and screw 'em when it's done," we suspect even more that this means more dead and wounded soldiers, tortured and "disappeared" prisoners, and civilian casualties from Mr. Bush's wars.


*LRWM: Lying Right Wing Media

Travelling Gal

We have learned that a beloved uncle died yesterday at 84 and we will be travelling back home for the wake and funeral this week. If we have ever said anything nasty about the people who help you with bereavement fares at United Airlines, we apologize. They were great last night.

We leave you with the following question, Gentle Reader. Why do "Red" Christians privilege sexual sins. What about the Bible says Christians (including Pudentilla) shouldn't be as morally outraged by pollution of the environment God created as they are about violations of Biblical prohibitions against lesbian (oops, there aren't any such prohibitions) Guckert/Gannon style sex? We can't think of one good reason.

See you next week.

It Sounds Like Democracy In Iraq Is Going Great

If by democracy you mean an Iranian style theocratic state.

The Answer Is Yes,

if the question is, "Is Billmon A Genius?"

What Liberal Academy?

The New York Times > Education > Furor Lingers as Harvard Chief Gives Details of Talk on Women: Among his comments to a conference of economists last month, according to the transcript, Dr. Summers, a former secretary of the United States Treasury, compared the relatively low number of women in the sciences to the numbers of Catholics in investment banking, whites in the National Basketball Association and Jews in farming.

He theorized that a "much higher fraction of married men" than married women were willing to work 80-hour weeks to attain "high powered" jobs. He said racial and sex discrimination needed to be "absolutely, vigorously" combated, yet he argued that bias could not entirely explain the lack of diversity in the sciences. At that point, the Harvard leader suggested he believed that the innate aptitude of women was a factor behind their low numbers in the sciences and engineering.

"My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination," Dr. Summers said, according to the transcript. [--snip--]

"The senior member of Harvard's governing corporation, James Houghton, released a letter after the transcript was made public, offering praise and support for Dr. Summers."

We will content ourselves with the conclusion that Summers is a bigoted bag o' excrement and that the Harvard Trustees are just fine with that fact.

Maybe They Think Al-Quaeda's Recruiting Nuns

From Wikipedia's entry on John Negroponte

From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year, a country at that time ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was responsible for "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit (commonly referred to as a "death squad") of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Óscar Romero's assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. But in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.

Or maybe they need someone to do the "wet work" on Gannon/Guckert before he reveals his White House client list.

Will Pro-Life Insist On Holding Polluters Criminally Responsible For Genetic Damage to Unborn Children?

Yahoo! News - Air pollution linked to chromosome damage in fetuses: "WASHINGTON - Air pollution from traffic and power plants seems to cause genetic changes - the kind linked to cancer - in developing fetuses, a federally funded study released Tuesday has concluded."

If the "Red" Christians are sincere, we're looking at stricter factory emission standards and hybrid autos, like, yesterday. If they're not, we should perhaps adopt the term "pro-gestation" for their politics. Because it's not like they want to protect the fetus in the womb from the corporations from whom Il Ducetto wants to lift the heavy burden of Clean Air Act requirements. It's not even "pro-birth." It's all about the zygote, baby.

Don't Worry Jonah, Gramps Has Got Your Back

Yahoo! News - Octogenarian receives Army recruiting letters inviting him to re-enlist: "So the 84-year-old semi-retired dentist from Philadelphia was a little surprised last August when he got a letter from a local Army recruiting station inviting him to re-enlist."

A Throne In Heaven,

as Pudentilla's grandmother used to say, is what the person who invented the fireworks text thingy for html deserves. We are building a web site to use when we teach Greek next year and are astonished at how much easier this device makes the process of creating pages of drills. God bless you inventors of the fireworks text thingy whoever and wherever you are.

Another Very Expensive Pentagon Failure


'Star Wars' missile defense system fails again
Analysts say timing couldn't be worse, as N. Korea says it has nuclear weapons.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

A very good round up of LRWM* coverage of the latest Star Wars debacle. We quibble with the analysts who say are concerned about N.K. nukes, however. The program never worked and never could work. So we are not less safe because it keeps failing its tests. And the defense industry is making a ton of money ($85 million/test whether the thing passes or fails).

True, Il Ducetto plans on actually turning this system that doesn't work on, and it will cost a ton of money to maintain it. But do you really think any military planner is going to rely on it to protect the homeland?

"Missile defense" is to the Pentagon what "trickle down" economics and "private accounts" are to Il Ducetto's domestic economy team: a convenient rubric through which to engineer a massive financial boondoggle for the benefit of a specific "Red" constituency. If the press would stop treating it like it were an actual military weapons program, the analysis would get a lot better.

*Lying Right Wing Media

A Puzzled Scientist Confronts Il Ducetto's Fascist State

Request to Edit Title of Talk On Gays, Suicide Stirs Ire (washingtonpost.com): "But Kenneth D. Stark, director of Washington state's division of alcohol and substance abuse and a member of SAMHSA's advisory committee, said he was surprised by the agency's stance and is unswayed by the 'inclusiveness' rationale. 'You have to ask: What's the problem?' he said. 'I mean, other than something political, what is the problem with these words?'"

Dr. Stark, once you wrap your mind around the idea that it's the people whom the words identify that they wish to remove from mainstream culture, then you will understand that it really isn't about the words at all.

College Republican Create A Campus Culture of Contempt

We continue our explanation of the dangerous values and conduct, which the Republican 527 group, the College Republican National Committee seeks to create on college campuses throughout America. For the sake of brevity we will withhold our comments upon the odious image of Young Republican sex parties that Skippy pointed us to and the disappointing, but hardly surprising, evidence that the CRNC attempted to defraud senile senior citizens. In previous posts we examined the way in which CRs exploit the service of U.S. soldiers and encourace a feigned and parasitical patriotism among its members, the ways in which the CRNC encourages students to committ fraud, and the ways in which the CRNC encourages lawlessness among college students.

In today’s post, we hope to demonstrate how the CRNC encourages its acolytes on college campus to refuse to engage with new ideas in an intellectually coherent, much less responsible manner. Indeed, the CRNC encourages its devotees to treat ideas with which they are unfamiliar or ideas with which they disagree, with contempt. Such an attitude, of course, rather undermines the entire purpose of a liberal arts education, which is to enable students to confront the unknown with a wide-ranging set of analytical skills and to engage propositions they disagree with in an intellectually rigorous and honest way.

The intellectual honesty requirement requires all participants in a discussion to admit the possibility, ab initio, that they may be wrong and that they may learn something from their interlocutor. There are obvious moral limits on this admission. One doesn’t have to concede anything to a Hitler, for example. If a participant in a principled discussion wishes to refuse to admitt the possibility that his/her interlocutor’s ideas may have some merit, however, he or she is under a profound moral burden to explain how and why the ideas in question are fundamentally flawed. If a participant in a principled discussion insists on refusing to admitt any possibility of the correctness of his/her interlocutor’s ideas, moreover, that citizen is also under an equally profound moral burden to remain engaged in the discussion in order to persuade his/her interlocutor to abandon such fundamentally flawed ideas.

This is the kind of citizen those engaged in a liberal arts education hope to produce: committed, passionate, engaged, analytical and honest. The CRNC’s promotion of an attitude of intellectual contempt, therefore, is rather a bad thing for college campuses in general, and Pudentilla believes, the CRs who populate those campuses in particular. Even more importantly, such an attitude is fundamentally anti-democratic and ultimately disastrous for the success of the republican democracy that America’s Founders hoped to create.

We take as our text two passages from the sacred text of CRs, the “Chapter Manual.” The CRNC provides this manual as a pdf file on its web site. First:

Be creative in concocting activities and special projects. Think of every liberal event as an opportunity to get out our message. In conclusion, consider the following creative ideas:
1. The next time a liberal group has hunger strike on your campus, wait a few days, and then have a College Republican barbecue adjacent (and upwind) from the hunger-strikers. This works equally well for any vegetarian protests as well.
2. President Nixon considered using a helicopter to extinguish the flames of the candle-light vigil peace protesters during the Vietnam War. (p. 42)

We marvel at the honor in which the CRNC still holds Richard Nixon, the Republican whose assault on the Constitution of the United States included the burglarly of Democratic party office, the creation of an enemies list, the use of the I.R.S. and C.I.A. to investigate and harrass his opponents and intereference in F.B.I and congressional investigations of his crimes. We note, moreover, that the tactic Nixon apparently contemplated using (dousing candles with a helicopter) would not appear to have met the “liberal arts” test of honest intellectual engagement with those who may in good faith disagree with you on a controversial issue. Indeed, we suspect it may not have passed a simple test for criminality. We pass over in silence the wild irony of the contemporary CRNC’s approval of Nixon’s desire to squash opposition, which history has proven correct, to the Vietnam War, even as modern young Republicans urge others to fight and die in their place in Iraq.

We prefer to concentrate our attention on the CRNC’s advice to its affililates to hold a barbecue next to a “liberal group’s” hunger strike. Hunger strike for what, you well may ask, Gentle Reader. The CRNC’s point is that there is no cause for which a “liberal” group may legitimately demonstrate. A hunger strike in support of North Korean citizens suffering horribly under their totalitarian regime’s corrupt leadership, for example would not, if sponsored by a “liberal group” be exempt from the CRNC’s recommended scorn. Thus CRs may treat any cause suppported by a liberal group with scorn and contempt. The tactic proposed by the CRNC here is particularly invidious be cause of its inherent clownish appeal to many of the post-pubescent youth who populate college campuses. As young students grapple with questions of their own identity (political, religious, sexual) in a new environment, they confront much with which they are unfamiliar. The CRNC offers them no compelling set of analytical principles with which to contemplate the unfamiliar. Instead, the CRs encourage young students to emulate an “Animal House,” vision of “cool kids” behavior. Our second quote from the sacred text, indeed encourages CRs to:

Organize counter-demonstrations to disrupt the events of liberal groups (p. 45)

Note that the CRNC doesn’t actually bother to define who the “liberal groups,” who campus CRs may target. The failure to define “liberals” allows the CRs to create a rather expansive view of their opposition (anyone who is not CR), no doubt promoting deep bonds of fellow feeling between members of a campus CR group. Unfortunately this “us vs. the world,” mentality thereby justifies behavior which if not illegal, is certainly not appropriate on college campuses. The CRNC, for example, urges its campus affiliates to conduct voter registration drives in such a way that only conservatives and Republicans are registered.

Our objective is not to register everyone to vote. Instead, we want to register only Republicans or those leaning Republican who will vote for our candidate. We certainly do not want our efforts to benefit the opposition! Therefore, this project should be conducted jointly with and using the information obtained from the campus canvass. (p. 40)

Pudentilla confesses that she is stunned by this advice. She has volunteered in voter registration drives in her day and she confesses that she always helped those who wish to register as Republicans do so. Helping Republicans register didn’t make her inner-Democrat happy, but it did make her inner-democrat, who believes that the Founder’s republican democracy will flourish all the more when all citizens, regardless of partisan identity, participate in the political process. The CRNC, in contrast, is teaching young CRs on college campuses to stuggle not for what will benefit the country, but for what will benefit their party. What is worse, it teaches them to prefer the party’s claim to the country’s.

So on campuses all across the country, CRs compete to concoct the most scornful, contemptuous and clownish response to ideas that anyone who is not a CR might hold. At Marquette University, during its annual Mission Week, which the University had chosen to devote to the theme of “constructing peace,” and to which they had invited Ghandi’s grandson to speak, the MU CRs decided to launch their “adopt a sniper” stunt.

While the MU CR’s web page gleefully records all the media attention CRs gained from there tactic that nominally was meant to “support the troops,” the page provides no link to AmericanSnipers, the group that actually sends equipment to military snipers whom the Pentagon has failed to adequately equip. While the MU CRs have managed to set up a pay-pal link to obtain donations for themselves, they have no links to any of the myriad of organizations that, in fact, support the troops at home and abroad (like AnySoldier, or DAV (Disabled American Vets). We conclude that the MU CR’s don’t actually “support the troops.” They have managed, instead, to treat an idea that while controversial has some historical support (the occasional political success of non-violent political protest) with adolescent disdain. They have not, as students of the liberal arts engaged in political debate should, explained why a Jesuit university’s decision to devote a week to the contemplation of the activity of constructing peace is so bad.

We should not be surprised to learn, then, that the MU CRs also has been a proud host of a popular CR event, the Animal Rights Barbecue, nominally a response to “PETA’s illegal tactics,” (unspecified of course) which does nothing to engage the very vexed issue of the way in which we mortals exercise our dominion over the animal kingdom. The utter lack of intellectual engagement of this CR exercise may explain its popularity with CR groups through out the country. CRs at The University of Washington, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, the University of Central Oklahoma and Cornell University sponsored such barbecues.

Such stunts are common fare for the “Red” Jugend. The Young Conservatives Club at the University of North Texas held a “capture the illegal immigrant” event. The latest bit of mockery the CRs have devised “Straight Pride Week.” Apparently all they could muster at the University of Texas at Austin was a single “Straight Pride Day”. The CRs at University of Central Oklahoma, announced a “Straight Pride Day,” and received a mention from Rush Limbaugh, but appear not to have actually held the event. You may observe photos documenting the bathos of such an event in North Carolina at Pam’s House Blend.

The question of the civil rights and the legal status of gay citizens in the U.S. has achieved no little urgency in the last year and been the topic of sustained political debate. Pudentilla has her opinions about this question and knows that not everyone shares them. The CRs, unfortunately, appear to be working hard to ensure that their acolytes will be unable to contemplate this question. The will be able to scorn and deride those who disagree with them. But they will be unable to argue with them or to persuade them.

We suspect that the CRNC promotes this nonsense with a purpose. A thousand flowers of buffonery bloom throughout the country as 19 year-olds struggle to be ever more outrageous. The CRNC in D.C. measure the media’s response and highlight activities which they deem successful (rather than respond to such stunts with something approaching an adult’s skepticism). If the MU CR idea is approved we will see, no doubt, many more "Adopt A Sniper" events in which few funds are raised for the troops, but much media play is obtained for the CRs. CRs also monitor each other web sites to get ideas. In their summer leadership camps exploits in utter intellectual irresponsibility are compared and exchanged.

That’s a disservice to the intellectual life of the campuses where CRs reside, but it is, we think, ever more of a threat to political fabric of the nation. Clubs of aristocratic young thugs played no small role in the usurpation of the democratic government in Athens a few millenia ago. There is no reason to think that properly trained to scorn democratic values of tolerance and intellectual honesty, Republicans trained to be the "Red" Jugend won't do the same in this democratic republic. Which is why some classicists are concerned about the culture of contempt the CRNC is cultivating on college campuses.

We Write Letters

Dear Senator,

Did President Bush know that "Jeff Gannon" was a prostitute using a false name when he called on him at his most recent news conference?

If Mr. Bush didn't know this, shouldn't whoever does the background checks at the White House get fired? Maybe you could take a look at the genius who gave "Mr. Gannon" C.I.A. documents about Valerie Plame as well and make sure he/she doesn't have anything to do with protecting America from the terrorists.

If Mr. Bush did know that "Jeff Gannon" was a gay male prostitute when he called upon him at his last press conference, could you explain to me why Republicans are so supportive of the careers of closeted gay Republican prostitutes, but so opposed to granting civil rights to out gay couples with kids who want to get married and are happy to use their real names?


Sincerely,

Pudentilla

Sullying the Brand

Democracy, or an Exercise in Fraud?: "International monitors led by a former Canadian prime minister said they had no confidence in the voter registration lists. Roman Catholic Cardinal Christian Tumi of Cameroon said the election, like all others in his country, was 'surrounded by fraud.'

But former members of the U.S. Congress on the scene were more upbeat about President Paul Biya's 71% landslide. "In general, the process was free," Ronnie Shows, one of six observers from the Washington-based U.S. Assn. of Former Members of Congress, told reporters in Cameroon. "This is what democracy is about."

By the time some folks are done, most decent places in the world will shudder when they hear the words "American democracy."

Riverbend Is Back

Baghdad Burning: "And Life Goes On..."

And whatever we think about Iraqi elections, you will have more to think, laugh and cry about when you are done reading her account.

What, You Wanted Free and Fair Elections?

Boston.com / News / World / Middle East / Cleric-backed Saudis prevail: "Candidates backed by Islamic clerics won races in the Saudi capital in the kingdom's first regular balloting, an election observer said yesterday. But it was too early to say whether this represented a trend in the landmark municipal elections, which will be spread across three months." [--snip--]

A losing candidate objected to the results, arguing that the circulated list violated electoral law by claiming religious backing. [--snip--]

Only men were allowed to vote Thursday and balloting was confined to Riyadh and adjacent districts.

Well, we Blues know how the poor folks in Riyadh feel.

FBI In Gitmo Gone Fishing?

Boston.com / News / Local / Guantanamo-linked illness damages agent's faith in FBI: "But after Foley arrived in October 2003, she said, the experience quickly became far different from what she had imagined. Other FBI agents were fishing or diving during work hours, she said, and she was chastised for working too much, missing after-work parties, and not being part of the ''FBI Gitmo family.'" [--snip--]

Two FBI agents who served at Guantanamo with Foley filed statements for her workers' compensation case. The statements, obtained by the Globe, supported Foley's contention that her health rapidly deteriorated after the FBI assigned her to live in a row house infested with rats. Both agents wrote that they saw exterminators pull large rats from Foley's apartment and recounted that she often awoke with flea bites -- her legs and arms so swollen and painful that she could barely walk. One agent wrote that two agents who lived in Foley's apartment had left it filthy, with old food, dirty dishes, and dirty clothing. [--snip--]

By then, she had contracted a bacterial infection called leptospirosis, caused by exposure to rat urine, according to Dr. John Doweiko at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, a specialist on infectious diseases who has been treating Foley for 18 months. [--snip--]

Foley, who worked 12-hour shifts and often through the weekends, said she thinks the FBI does not want to acknowledge any responsibility for what happened to her. She said she is convinced the bureau has neglected her because while she was at Guantanamo, she complained about what she perceived as unprofessional conduct by some FBI co-workers on the base.

She thinks they after the fishing and the torture anyone has time to work?

Cardinals Continue Policy Of Community Endangerment

Boston.com / News / Local / Archdiocese defrocks four area priests: "The Vatican has defrocked four Boston priests who had been accused of sexually abusing minors, the Archdiocese of Boston announced yesterday.

The archdiocese said it was informed by the Vatican that the priests are ''no longer in the clerical state' over the past several months. The archdiocese offered no explanation for why it decided to announce the changes yesterday." [--snip--]

victim advocate said yesterday's announcement is insufficient because the accused priests will be unsupervised, and blamed the archdiocese for failing to refer the cases for prosecution decades ago.

''Laicization puts unsupervised child molesters into communities," said Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org. ''Who is responsible for these likely child molesters now that they are no longer priests? Who will monitor them? . . . Because the church harbored these criminals when they could have been prosecuted, the church must acknowledge its responsibility for them even when they are no longer priests."

We Told You The Point Of Il Ducetto's Fiscal Farce Of A Budget Was To Screw Blue

Boston.com / News / Nation / Washington / Bush cuts hit Democratic states, analysis finds: "February 12, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Massachusetts and other traditionally Democratic states would see their share of federal grant money shrink under President Bush's 2006 budget, compared to Republican states in the South and West, according to a Globe analysis of funding projections compiled by the White House budget office.

Critics and defenders of the president's $2.6 trillion budget say they do not believe the budget proposal represents a deliberate attack on states that voted for Democrat John F. Kerry, but rather that Bush's budget priorities tend to hurt those states that rely more on the health, community development, and housing programs that are targeted for reductions.

The result is that the highest percentage increases in state and local grant money would go to Arkansas, North Carolina, Arizona, and Missouri, while New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and Vermont would be among the states with the smallest increases. Massachusetts -- with a projected 1.9 percent increase -- is tied for 35th, while liberal-leaning California and Washington state (along with conservative-leaning North Dakota) would see a reduction in federal grants next year.

With the proposal to eliminate or reduce funding for home-heating assistance, the Northeast would be especially hard hit by the president's budget-cutting, said Senator Jon Corzine, Democrat of New Jersey.

''People will ask me whether I think it's political or not," Corzine said. ''I think it's just the philosophy of this administration not to have the government involved."

Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat, said that while the budget may not have been designed to hurt Democratic-leaning ''blue" states, ''they can do it without trying," because many of the budget cuts tend to hit urbanized areas. ''It's not just red state/blue state, but blue communities within the red states," he said. ''Their ideology reflects that."

Observing Failure Of Sky To Fall

Boston.com / News / Local / Mass. / AG backs legalizing same-sex marriage: "February 12, 2005

After playing a key role in the efforts to fight legalization of gay marriage a year ago, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly said yesterday that he now favors allowing legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and that he will oppose any efforts to ban them." [--snip--]

As he ramps up his campaign for next year's governor's race, Reilly is actively seeking meetings with gay and lesbian leaders, hoping he can calm some of the anger that has been directed at him. The former Democratic National Committee chairman, Steve Grossman, is trying to set up meetings at his Newton home for Reilly and the state's gay leadership.

Maybe, as he says, the opportunity to observe same sex marriage and the good it has done for his state changed his mind. Maybe he realizes he can't get elected without the queers. Who cares if right is done?

College Republicans Undermine Campus Rules and Authority

As we noted yesterday and the day before, we believe that the College Republicans seem to be promoting the values of deceit, financial fraud, and a feigned and parasitical patriotism among its adherents. We begin today's lesson with a reading from the sacred text, the "Chapter Manual," available from the College Republican National Committee as a pdf download for use in "organizing your campus."

In Chapter 4, "Running A Successful Membership Recruitment Table," the College Republican National Committee offers the following advice(p. 14) to its campus devotees:

Setting Up

On many campuses, the school administration will want you to reserve a table in advance, or obtain special permission in order to run your recruitment table. If you can get permission and a good location, be sure and do it. Otherwise, don’t let the school administration tie your hands. Remember the most important rule when dealing with the administration: Never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no. Even if you can’t get permission, set up your table anyway. Most of the time you won’t be challenged, and if you are, assertively remind them of your First Amendment rights, or simply move and set up in a different location on campus. By the time they figure it out, you will have successfully recruited a good number of new College Republicans.

How odd to find the party of "law and order", the "moral values" party, encouraging its college cohort to ignore rules and disobey, indeed to scorn, figures of authority, when the rules and the authority are simply too inconvenient. And yet, one dimly recalls a host of arguments by Republicans about the need to impeach Bill Clinton in order to vindicate the rule of law. Indeed, according to the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, in 2001, Scott Stewart, then the chair of the College Republican National Committee, urged an 82 year women suffering from dementia to

"Rush me back $300 right now . . . if we delay then the Rule of Law may be dead and America may turn into a Communist police state."

The College Republicans eventually returned the more than $26,000 they badgered this poor women into sending them. But even lesbian lefty liberals like Pudentilla have to concede with or without the money they're defrauding from the senile, no one ever challenges the "Reds" on their public committement to "law and order." Which is why we find the College Republican National Committee's instruction to campus Republicans to ignore rules and the authority of those whose job it is to enforce rules puzzling.

The only explanation we can think of is the existence of a secret set of rules that apply only to College Republicans. Under these rules, young CRs are bound only by the public rules they like. They may disregard any other rules, if inconvenient, and they should never hold figures of authority who enforce public rules they don't like with any respect. Perhaps the promotion of a belief that young Republicans have such a privileged relationship to rules and authority may explain cases of older Republicans, whose adherence to the public rules the rest of us live under leaves something to be desired.

For example, according to the Concord Monitor of New Hampshire, 34 year old Charles McGee, quondam Executive Director of the New Hampshire Republican party, pled guilty last summer to felony charges arising from a conspiracy by Republics to jam Democratic party phone lines during the 2002 elections. (One of Mr. McGee's co-conspirators was sentenced last week for his role in the crime. Only two months ago the Department of Justice announced it had indicted James Tobin, sometime New England Regional Director of the Republican National Committee in connection with the same criminal enterprise.) Mr. McGee has yet to be sentenced, although he did resign from his position with the New Hampshire Republican party (a day after receiving the New Hampshire Young Republican Federation annual "Gipper" award) when knowledge of his criminal conspiracy became public. Mr. McGee had a happy affiliation with New Hampshire Young Republicans, during his tenure with the NH GOP.

Under the Republican "secret rule" theory, neither old nor young Republicans have abandoned Mr. McGee as he awaits sentencing. Indeed, they obtained a sinecure for Mr. McGee, to tide him over as he dealt with the inconvience "public rules" imposed upon him by federal law. Shortly after Mr. McGee's resignation from his position with the NH GOP, Dick Army hired him to be the New Hampshire state director of Army's outfit, Citizens For A Sound Economy (the same bunch who helped get conservative signatures on Ralph Nader's petition to be on the Oregon ballot in the last election). During that campaign, McGee used his postion with CFSE to promote private social security accounts. Mr. McGee is also Northeast Regional Director of For Our Grandchildren, a pro private Social Security accounts group.

Should citizens conclude that exposure to the morals and values of young Republicans will lead our collegians to grow up with contempt for law and political process Mr. McGee has demonstrated? We believe that it's worth thinking about.

Are The College Republicans Corrupting the Youth Of America?

We owe, we confess, a debt of gratitude to Brandon Henak and the parasitical poseurs (parasitical because they claim the benefit of others' service; poseurs because they do so in the name of a facile and feigned patriotism) of the Marquette University College Republicans about whose efforts to hijack the pathetic plight of poorly equipped American soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan we wrote yesterday. Had they not caught our attention, we would have not have seized this opportunity to offer our assessment of the dangers the College Republicans pose to democracy in this republic.

We are all aware of the propensity of members of the College Republicans National Committee, a 527 group which aims to further GOP goals, to financially defraud senior citizens in this country by bombarding them with misleading and often quite alarming (and inaccurate) fundraising campaigns. Ripping off American grannies, is not the only fraud which the National College Republicans encourages its campus acolytes to employ, however.

Did you know, Gentle Reader, that the National College Republicans openly encourage College Republicans to engage in fraud on their home campuses? We direct you to the "Chapter Manual" (a pdf file you can download and later use for kindling), which, on p. 43, encourages College Republicans to:

Take over the College Democrats or other leftist groups and clubs, and endorse Republicans and conservative causes and issues instead.

Now how would a College Republican take over the College Democrats? Are we to imagine that self-identified Republicans would attend College Democrat meetings and by the sheer power of their arguments persuade College Democrats to endorse Republicans? Or, perhaps we should acknowledge that the National College Republicans are encouraging young Americans to subvert clubs and institutions in their colleges and universities by infiltrating and undermining these groups (cf. Mr. Guckert's infiltration of the White House Press Corp). It sounds like some J. Edgar Hoover fantasy of the Red Menace, only this time, the Republicans are the "Reds." And, in the height of their arrogance they post this call to fraud and dishonesty on the web.

This "urge to subvert" is, we think, not simply a case of encouraging post-pubescent hijinks to be recalled with chuckles over martinis at reunions to come. Colleges and universities allocate funds to student groups, taking great care to ensure that as wide a range of student views and interests as possible are supported on campus. Inevitably the effort involves some level of controversy and in any given semester some students feel that they've been ignored or undervalued. When the "Red" Jugend take over the College Democrats they distort an already complex and vexious funding process, and commit a kind of financial fraud.

Are there campus consequences to this "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" attitude towards financial fraud on campus by the College Republicans National Committee? Well, consider the case of the "Red" Jugend at Rochester Institute of Technology, who, in the minutes (published on the web) of their September 7, 2004 meeting, record discussion of the creation of a "clone" group.

Make a clone group to avoid political affiliations. Can get funding for speakers and events.

Inspired no doubt by the implicit encouragement in the sacred Chapter Manual to dissemble about their political affiliations in order to subvert other political clubs, RIT CRs came up with the idea of dissembling about their political affiliations in a clone group in order to get funding for speakers the College Republicans wanted, which the CRs otherwise wouldn't be entitled to.

Now the dollars involved are probably small compared to the kind of fraud Enron engaged in (say, has Il Ducetto's friend Ken Lay been indicted yet?), but the principle is, we think, rather large. The College Republicans National Committee is encouraging their devotees to dissemble about their actual political beliefs and partisan affiliations in order to gain a greater political voice on campus than they could if they admitted their identities and interests. That such conduct is dishonest and would have unfair financial consequences for (if not actually work a financial fraud against) other campus groups is of no concern to the National Committee.

Someone should mention this tactic to college Deans of course, but all Americans, regardless of their political identity and partisan affiliation, should consider whether the fact that the College Republicans National Committee is promoting dishonesty and fraud among our youth is a very good thing. In later posts we will consider the culture of contempt the CRs promote and the perils, which the beliefs that culture entails, pose for a democractic republic such as ours.

The Masquerade of Masculinity Among Marquette CRs


Republicans, in contrast to the Nazis, who actually trained the Hitler Jugend in military skills, appear to be interested only in teaching the “Red” Jugend how to exploit the serving men and women of the U.S. military. Consider the recent contretemps at Marquette University. The Marquette College Republicans applied, in terms the University found in retrospect to be rather vague, for permission to host a table in the student union in a “support the troops” effort. The Marquette College Republicans decided to raise funds for a program called “Adopt A Sniper” run by AmericanSnipers.org (formerly known as “Snipersonline.org”), by taking orders for bracelets with the inscription: “"1 Shot, 1 Kill, No Remorse, I Decide.” This rather bracing slogan appears to be the unofficial motto of snipers in the U.S. Marines (pix).

AmericanSnipers.org is run by Brian Sain and Keith Deney, policemen trained as snipers (Mr. Deney is also a candidate for local office in Brown County, WI elections to be held on 2/15). The organization, according to an interview that Mr. Deney gave to a conservative Wisconsin radio talk show host supports 109 snipers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq by sending them equipment that has been directly donated to the group or equipment purchased with funds donated to the group. The equipment includes things like range finders and vests designed to hold sniper body armor (the standard military issue apparently prevents snipers (pix) from properly holding their rifles). According to Mr. Deney, the group has raised almost $100,000 in cash, plus equipment donations.

Brandon Henak (pix) , the chairman of the MU College Republicans, is an accomplished young man. In addition to his many services to MU CRs, he plays club lacrosse, studies in the MU College of Business Administration, and is an accomplished web page designer. We have searched the web pages of Marquette's Army, Navy & Marines, and Air Force ROTC and do not believe (but would be happy to correct this statement) that Mr. Henak has made a commitment to serve our nation in its armed forces by participating in ROTC while in college.

The “Red” Jugend have a canned response when one criticizes them for “supporting the war” with the bodies of persons other than themselves. They can do more, they assure us, by staying home and paying their taxes. This statement is patently false, of course. As College Republicans, the “Red” Jugend, for the most part, do not earn much income and therefore pay few, if any, taxes. Some, we suppose, may possess a fair amount of inherited capital, but we believe under Il Ducetto’s regime, such taxes as they may pay on their gilded estates will not fund any military juggernaut. Moreover, as the Secretary of Defense has just admitted, the military is "stressed" and not meeting its recruiting goals. The troops don't need the paltry tax dollars the "Red" Jugend pay, they need their bodies and blood. So we are left to conclude that Juan Cole's response to the ill-informed, war-monger Jonah Goldberg's rather ineffective protest that he couldn't enlist because he was 35 and had a family, is even more applicable to the able bodied men and women of the College Republicans.

I don't think there is anything at all unpatriotic about a young man opposing a war and declining to enlist. But a young man (and this applies to W. and Cheney too) who mouths off strongly about the desirability of a war is a coward and a hypocrite if he does not go to fight it.

Perhaps we are too harsh. Perhaps Mr. Henak and his friends (pix) in the MU CRs are all ROTC or Guard or Reserves and evidence to that effect has simply failed to emerge. In which case, we believe that are neither cowardly or hypocritical, but that Mr. Henak and his posse (pix) be the most profoundly stupid and insensitive students to grace Marquette's campus in many a year. If, as the AmericanSniper folks avow, Marine snipers (pix) in Iraq and Afghanistan are not being issued rangefinders and body armor they can actually use when performing their duties, then once again (see the body armor and armored humvee scandals), we have evidence of profound incompetence in our military command.

AmericanSnipers.org is reluctant to criticize the Pentagon's hideous incompetence in equipping the troops as it quietly tries to raise the funds from police and retired military snipers to solve their brothers' problems:

Q: Why isn't the government buying these things?

A: The commitment in OEF/OIF is huge. Snipers need different and expensive gear than is required by many other troops. This can cause problems when the military tries to maintain a perfectly uniform dress code and the snipers end up doing without. The logistics of running the US military are staggering and snipers are just one small spoke in a very big wheel. We just try and relieve some of the burden from the snipers themselves and also from their families.

Such delicacy is not required of the College Republicans, though. Imagine if Mr. Henak and his pals (pix) had organized a letter writing campaign to Wisconsin's congressional representatives and members of the House and Senate leadership who deal with the military expressing their outrage that U.S. soldiers (pix) were being sent to do what is surely one of the most challenging (both in terms of skills and discipline) tasks available in Iraq and Afghanistan without the proper equipment. Imagine if the MU CRs had called a press conference in which they were joined by the leaders of student organizations across the range of political and partisan perspectives on campus. With so many ROTC students at Marquette it is inconceivable that Mr. Henak and his friends (pix) don't know someone who very soon will be directly or indirectly affected by this latest case of Pentagon incompetence. Had Mr. Henak and his buddies (pix) chosen to "support the troops" in this way, then they might actually have accomplished something which would, in fact, have offered support for the troops.

So we question whether Mr. Henak and his friends (pix) really wanted to "support the troops." We think, rather, that the MU CRs wanted to borrow the honor of the troops and exploit the rather difficult situation that these soldiers face. Marquette's "Red" Jugend wanted the controversy:

Brandon Henak, the group's chairman and a Marquette junior, said the College Republicans chose to promote "Adopt a Sniper" after their request for setting up a general "support the troops" table had been approved. They knew it might be controversial.

Despite post-facto claims of sincerity, they chose not to run their little stunt past anyone in the Dean's office who might have explained to them that Catholic teaching (Marquette is a Jesuit institution) looks askance at the taking of human life without remorse and who might have suggested an alternative way to "support the troops" which would not have allowed the callow tyros of Marquette to imagine that they have a dram of the courage or know a moment of the existential complexity that life as a sniper in Iraq must entail.

The University shut down Mr. Henak's table within half an hour, so we doubt that MU's "Red" Jugend raised very much money to "support the troops." But they did get their 15 minutes of fame, making the evening news on the "Red" networks and gaining the attention of local and national newspapers and bloggers of every political stripe. All of this explains why we find Mr. Henak and his friends exploitive and insensitive. We believe that their own blog, in which they eagerly record every public notice of the controversy they created, demonstrates their stupidity.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, still bitter about their losing horse in this past November's race, cowardly throws tomatoes at the Marquette University College Republicans for their fundraiser for snipers fighting to protect their freedom to write in Iraq:

What you need is a presiding commitment to the proposition that taking a human life, while sometimes justifiable and even necessary, is always a solemn act. Because it is so heavily laden with moral questions, the subject of killing people, even in war, should never be treated in an offhanded way, at least not on the university campus.

We are thoroughly humored by the fact that the Journal Sentinel believes itself to be in the capacity to lecture American fighting men and women about the solemnity of war. American soldiers, and their supporters such as the College Republicans of Marquette, understand the gravity of the war in Iraq.

No, MU CRs, you shallow, self-indulgent parasites, the Journal Sentinel was not lecturing you about the "solemnity of war." It was writing, too gently, about your contemptible desire to rip off the honor of soldiers (pix) without the slightest comprehension of the enormous physical, psychological and spiritual challenges that acquiring that honor imposes in order to gain some notoriety points among College Republicans with whom you compete for the honor of licking Karl Rove's boots. Congratulations, you've "done your bit." Check the "feigned patriotism" box on your resume and move on.

We have provided links to pictures from the MU CR web site and to the U.S. Marines web site so that others might observe the rather vast gulf that separates the work of the Marine sniper who serves in Iraq and that of the College Republican who parties at Marquette. Brandon Henak and his friends wish us to believe that they are men because they have created a media sensation for the keyboard warriors on the right. But we have the pictures and know how hollow their claims are. Some pictures portray men and some portray safe and pretty boys who play at manhood while others bleed in their name.

Brandon and his fellow MU CRs, we believe are simply the most recent example of how the College Republicans are deliberately attempting to corrupt our nation's youth. In later posts we will analyze how this organization operates and of the values, dangerous and deleterious to the nation, which it promotes.

But Wait, They Had An Election Didn't They?

21 Dead, 27 Hurt in Iraq Suicide Bombing: "A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of Iraqis outside an army recruitment center Tuesday, killing 21 other people and injuring 27 more, the U.S. military said. It was the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital since last week's election."

One might conclude that the elections were "oversold," by Il Ducetto's minions, mightn't one.

But The Cardinals And Bishops Are Going To Walk

Former Priest Found Guilty of Child Rape: "A jury Monday found defrocked priest Paul Shanley guilty of repeatedly raping a young boy at a Boston-area church during the 1980s.

Many of the charges were validated in previously secret documents maintained by the archdiocese that showed church officials knew of sexual abuse complaints against the priests. Rather than reassigning the priests to jobs where they would not work with children, church officials moved the accused from parish to parish."

Reminds us of the old story of Cardinal Bevilacqua who all but blamed gay priests for the scandal in 2002 (rather than the bishops who reassigned known child -molesters). Now why would he do that? Perhaps, because, as Wikipedia notes, Cardinal Bevilacqua has been accused of being one of the Red-hatted Racketeers who moved the molestors all over the country.

A Legislative Initiative The Reds Will Surely Kill

Rep. Harman to Offer Bill Banning Torture: "The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said that she intended to introduce legislation that would ban torture by U.S. interrogators and bar transfers of detainees to countries that engaged in torture."

Because we already have laws on the books, and it's just a few bad apples and, we can't, for national security reasons, stop Il Ducetto from permitting soldiers to sodomize disabled prisoners if he really, really needs to.

Red Diplomacy: Using The Imperative Mood With The French

Rice Pitches Cooperation on 'Common Agenda': "PARIS — 'It is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past,' she said. 'It is time to open a new chapter in our relationship and a new chapter in our alliance. America stands ready to work with Europe on our common agenda and Europe must stand ready to work with America.'"

Le Monde:

La France rejette l'idée selon laquelle le modèle américain de démocratie aurait vocation à être imposé partout dans le monde, fut-ce par des moyens non militaires. Mais, fait-on remarquer à l'Elysée, c'est un vieux débat entre Paris et Washington.

N'était-ce pas Madeleine Albright qui, en juin 2000 déjà, avait tenté de lancer une coalition des démocraties, lors d'une réunion organisée à Varsovie ? En accord avec Jacques Chirac, Hubert Védrine avait fait dissidence de façon remarquée, en dénonçant "l'utilisation de l'aspiration universelle à la démocratie à des fins d'influence ou de domination politique, économique et culturelle".

France rejects the idea, according to which the American model of democracy has a mission to impose itself throughout the world, albeit by non-military methods. But, as noted on the Champs Elysee, this is an old debate between Paris and Washington.

Wasn't it Madeleine Albright who had first, in June 2000, tried to start a coalition of democracies during a meeting organized in Warsaw? Agreeing with Jacques Chirac, Hubert Védrine disagreed in a way that drew comment, denouncing "the use of the universal aspiration to democracy for the purpose of political, economic and cultural influence or domination.

No doubt the LRWM* will characterize this as a successful speech.

*LRWM: Lying Right Wing Media

Republican Embrace Big Government And Big Deficits

President Putting 'Big' Back in Government: "Even as President Bush proposes significant cuts in healthcare, farm subsidies and other domestic programs, his new budget makes one thing clear about the legacy of his first term in the White House: The era of big government is back.

Bush's $2.57-trillion budget for 2006, if approved by Congress, would be more than a third bigger than the 2001 budget he inherited four years ago. It is a monument to how much Republicans' guiding fiscal philosophy has changed over the 10 years since the GOP's Contract With America called for a balanced budget and abolition of entire Cabinet agencies."[--snip--]

Much of the deficit growth during Bush's first term was the result of four rounds of tax cuts and increases in defense and domestic security programs after the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush and fellow Republicans have argued for the last three years that eliminating the deficit had to take a back seat in the budget because the country was at war and the economy was sagging. Now that the economy has improved and Iraq has elected its own government, the pressure is on Bush to combat the deficit.

However, Bush's budget projections likely understate future deficits as they do not include the full costs of three priorities at the core of what he seeks as his second-term legacy: ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, making his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, and overhauling Social Security. [--snip--]

That is a far cry from the rhetoric Republicans used in 1995, when their government-slashing fervor was exemplified by former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), the House Appropriations Committee chairman who brought a machete to his first panel meeting to dramatize his commitment to cutting programs. That year, the Republican-controlled Congress abolished 270 programs. They cut discretionary spending by $12 billion — the only year since Republicans took control of Congress that spending did not grow. [--snip--]

"President Bush would never admit this, but he has transformed the party into the party of permanent big deficits," he said.

Maybe Il Ducetto was worried that everyone would think his budgie (is that what they call it in Texas?) was smaller than Clinton's.

A Close Reader of Texts

is LiberalOasis, who studies Rummy's oracular utterances Sunday morning on This Week and infers that we're going to march against Tehran. Time for all middle-aged yuppies to take their adolescent children to Quaker Meeting (or encourage them to fully document the exploration of their sexual identities).

We Write Letters

Our monthly missive to the the editor of the paper which serves the small town in Central Maine in which Pudentilla is fortunate enough to live:

Mr. Bush’s arguments for gutting Social Security would be more persuasive if they were more stable. He wanted to “privatize” Social Security, but the pollsters nixed the term, so now he wants to “personalize” it. Bush said Social Security would be “flat broke” if Congress didn’t adopt his plan. The program’s trustees then announced that they were increasing their projections for the Social Security solvency by two years. Bush promises that his “personal” accounts will do so well in the stock market that retired folks won’t need the benefits he must cut in order to fund them. If the market does that well, however, Social Security will never suffer a funding shortfall. Bush’s aides, moreover, concede the private accounts will have no effect on any possible shortfall. Bush argued Social Security faced a “crisis.” Unfortunately, economists, the press, and the public all concluded that there is no “crisis.” Bush is now reduced to justifying an attack on the most successful government program in history because there’s a “problem.” Social Security, in other words, looks pretty solvent and may face a funding problem in a few decades, which Congress can easily address without gutting the program to enrich Mr. Bush’s friends’ on Wall Street. A cynic might argue that if Mr. Bush were telling the truth he wouldn’t need to use so many shifting and contradictory arguments. But I’m no cynic. As soon as the President finds Saddam’s WMD, I’ll give his plans to gut Social Security a fair hearing.

Rummy's Boat Budget Screws Blue States

Boston.com / News / Nation / Navy to cut orders; job losses seen: "In a revamping of military priorities amid rising federal deficits, the Navy is poised to unveil plans today to slash by up to half its planned orders for vessels that were to be built at shipyards in Bath, Maine, and Groton, Conn., that employ a combined 18,000 people."

We guess the only problem with being a moderate Republican is that the Reds don't pay any attention to you. Do they Senator Snowe? We guess the only problem with being a conservative Democrat is that the Reds will still screw you. Won't they Senator Lieberman?

Famous Self-Proclaimed Christian President's Budget Priorities Do Not Include Preventing Elderly From Freezing To Death

Yahoo! News - Bush Budget Would Cut Law Enforcement Aid: "President Bush (news - web sites)'s budget will propose slashing grants to local law enforcement agencies and cutting spending for environmental protection, American Indian schools and home-heating aid for the poor, The Associated Press learned Saturday. [--snip--]

The budget, the toughest he has written since entering the White House four years ago, seeks about half the increase for school districts in low-income communities he requested last year and a slight reduction for the National Park Service. [--snip--]"

The details obtained Saturday are the latest in a budget that will also seek savings from programs ranging from Amtrak and farmers' subsidies to Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor and disabled. [--snip--]

Defense Department documents obtained Friday show the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s budget would grow by 4.8 percent to $419.3 billion — $3.4 billion less than he planned to seek for 2006 a year ago.

Tax cuts for those earn more than $200,000 appear to be safe, however.

We Want Our Money Back

Thanks to Oliver Willis, we have learned that the a list identifying some 40 people who were to be denied tickets to Il Ducetto’s “Let’s Gut Social Security Pep Rally” in North Dakato, surfaced at two distribution sites for the tickets. According to the AP story, those banned from the event included librarians, college teachers, high school teachers, and Democratic candidates and campaign workers. It looks like the folks who composed the list used a Democracy For America Meet-Up membership list to identify the citizens enemies who were to be barred from Il Ducetto’s little fascist pep rally.

Every “Red” associated with the pep rally has denied involvement in the preparation of the list. None have called for an investigation of the lists to determine who created the lists and sent them to the ticket distribution centers and who at the distribution centers thought that actually using the list was an act that any decent American could actually perform. Well we live in an age of wonders, we suppose. Lists appear, portent like, and the “Reds” deploy them against Americans who naively believe the Il Ducetto’s and the “Reds” have any interest in explaining or defending their policies in a democratic fashion to all the citizens of this country.

Now we do not object to Il Ducetto’s pre-screening of audience for his campaign events – it is his privilege to train his rhetorical abilities against an audience most likely to be impressed by them during an election campaign. Nor do we object to tax payer dollars being used on Presidential campaign-like swings in support of policy proposals. A President is supposed to campaign for public support of his policy proposals and tax dollars will have to be spent to transport him and protect him. We do not even object to requiring audience members at such events to submit to fairly extensive screening to ensure that they are not carrying guns or comparable weapons.

Screening audience members to ensure that they do not carry open minds, however, strikes us undemocratic. Pudentilla objects to is her tax dollars being spent on a private pep rally for a partisan policy. We want our money back.

These Are The People To Whom Il Ducetto Would Entrust Your Retirement Security

The New York Times > Business > 'Unfettered Authority' That Led to Overreaching at the Big Board: "Mr. Grasso had a major influence on who was named to the board. He also 'had the unfettered authority to select http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifwhich board members served on the compensation committee and, likewise, to select the committee chair.' As a result, 'Grasso hand-selected the members of the committee charged with reviewing and recommending his yearly compensation.'"

Who was picked? The report says that Mr. Grasso chose directors who were themselves highly paid, and thus less likely to be surprised by big payments. And he chose people "with whom he had or developed friendships or personal relationships."

One director, not identified by Mr. Webb, was said to have told Mr. Grasso that he had little time to devote to the exchange, and "was assured by Grasso that he did not have to attend all the meetings and it would not be that much work." The director was put on the compensation committee.

The committee often did little work as Mr. Grasso built up a web of interlocking payments under a bewildering set of management compensation plans that reinforced each other in ways the board members often did not understand. Directors asserted that they relied on a consultant who later said that he had never endorsed the big payouts and had objected to them in 2001.

In some cases, board committee minutes appear to have misrepresented what occurred at meetings, the report said.

Our concern is less with the legality of the compensation plan than with the morality of it. It is fine for the Republicans, like their counterparts at the New York Stock Exchange, to run our national political system like a ten year old boy's utopia where a mother is never allowed to check whether you've cleaned up your room.

House GOP Leaders Name Loyalist to Replace Ethics Chief

House Republican leaders tightened their control over the ethics committee yesterday by ousting its independent-minded chairman, appointing a replacement who is close to them and adding two new members who donated to the legal defense fund of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Republican officials have spent months taking steps to ensure DeLay's political survival in case he is indicted by a Texas grand jury investigating political fundraising, and House leadership aides said they needed to have the ethics committee controlled by lawmakers they can trust.

Politics is one thing. When we talk about Pudentilla's retirement, however, we are talking serious matters. We would prefer that our retirement security was entrusted to people, who like us are not "less likely to be surprised by big payments" and will perhaps understand the importance Social Security plays in the retirement plans of most Americans. It would help too, if the people who oversaw our retirement investments did not, like House Republicans, purge those like Rep. Hefly, who believe their job is "to protect the integrity of the institution."

Il Ducetto, who will not rely on Social Security for a significant portion of his retirement, and who does not, we infer, socialize regularly with those who will ("What we have here are the haves and the have-mores! Some people would call you elite- I call you my base."), last night made a statement which we would have characterized as breathtakingly audicious if we had not already grown accustomed to Il Ducetto's capacity for mendacity:

Your money will grow, over time, at a greater rate than anything the current system can deliver, and your account will provide money for retirement over and above the check you will receive from Social Security. [emphasis supplied]

We shall decline to comment on the fact that even as Il Ducetto whispers promises to those of us who will rely on Social Security for a dignified retirement, his aides were informing reporters (off the record, of course) that the government would insist on keeping part of the profits investors earned in "personal" (a new "Red" definition of the term now means, "personal: belong to a person except for that portion which men like Tom DeLay claim for themselves, perhaps as tribute). Indeed, as Atrios explains, the senior aide is saying that while Il Ducetto promises her more than the current system can deliver, his anonymous senior aide is acknowledging that Pudentilla get 18% less than the benefits promised under current law. If we do nothing, Pudentilla will recieve all the benefits promised under current law if Congress does nothing to Social Security. If Pudentilla weren't so bent on praeteritio, she would speculate as to the support Il Ducetto's plan will recieve from the 40-55 year cohorot.

Instead, engaging in the delightfully creative exercise of taking Il Ducetto at his word, we wonder whether any of the investors in Arbusto or Harken would feel great confidence in Il Ducetto's guarantee (cost free to him) of a "sure thing" investment in the stock market. Perhaps, since others always made good Il Ducetto's wretched business losses, he sincerely believes investment in the stock market is a sure thing. The rest of us, however, who wait with baited breath no longer (for even we humble proles must breathe) for the criminal conviction of the host of business men who destroyed the savings of investors in Enron, Worldcom, etc. (noting that the only conviction they have managed is that famous "blue" lady executive, Martha Stewart), are less sanguine about Il Ducetto's reliance on the "free market."

As far as those of us who are rather "likely to be surprised by big payments," can tell, Il Ducetto's market, like his Congress, is a con game run by ethically challenged white guys whose moral code includes no place for personal or institutional responsibility or accountability. It is no place to find retirement security.

Will "The War On Terror" Turn Democracies Into Apartheid States?

a thoughtful and unhappy analysis by someone who actually knows something about apartheid states.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Banning, house arrests - it all sounds eerily familiar: "Since I started working on the issue of Guantánamo, the South African precedent has kept repeating on me. Interviewing fathers whose sons had been swallowed up by the black hole, first of Bagram air base and then Guant�namo, I was reminded of the succession of people who used to come to our Johannesburg home, asking my parents to find relatives who had been picked up by the South African police and then had disappeared."

Hearing of the way British resident Bisher al-Rawi was transported, by the Americans, from the Gambia, via Bagram, to Guantánamo where, three years later, he is still held, or of the way British citizen Moazzam Begg was snatched from Pakistan and taken to Guantánamo, I thought of the kidnapping by the South African security forces of anti-apartheid activists from Swaziland.

And listening to the debate on whether or not torture was being used in the American camp, I wondered why the seemingly indefinite incarceration without access to lawyers or contact with their relatives wasn't recognised for what it was when the South African regime had done likewise - psychological torture. [--snip--]

There are differences. Apartheid involved the systematic exclusion of the majority from their country, the transformation of the black population into foreigners. In contrast, the incarcerations at Belmarsh were only for people who are already foreigners.

But there are also other, equally worrying, differences. In South Africa, at apartheid's height, people could only be detained for 180 days before their detention orders had to be renewed. In Guantánamo, and in England until the law lords judgment, the incarcerated faced the prospect of life-long detention.

This comparison should not be made frivolously. Mullin is right: Britain is not apartheid South Africa. That country disenfranchised its majority, and did not hesitate to use the might of the state, and the firepower of its police and army, to ensure the continuation of minority rule. There is one other crucial difference: apartheid was so systematically and thoroughly embedded in South African law, that resistance by the judiciary was impossible.

Il Ducetto Offers Faith Based Health Care Plan

Aging Population Poses Global Challenges (washingtonpost.com): "Bush has offered no plan to slow the sharper growth in federal health care spending beyond his hope that the prescription drug benefit he approved for Medicare will cut down on costly hospitalizations and surgeries."

Major Red Donor Peddling Porn On Cable

Once-Conservative Adelphia Adds Hard-Core Porn to Cable: "Adelphia Communications Corp. has quietly become the nation's only leading cable operator to offer the most explicit category of hard-core porn. Come Friday, triple-X-rated programming will be available on cable for the first time in a major media market: Southern California. "

We know what you're thinking Gentle Reader? "A "Red" entertainment company? Impossible! Everyone knows those degenerate movie types are all liberal." But here, it's simply not true. According to Open Secrets, Adelphia Communications and its employees made $33,000 in donations to the Republican Party in 2002.

William T. Schleyer, Adelphia's CEO, moreover, made personal contributions to Joe Barton (the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committe, from - that's funny, Mr. Schleyer lives in New Hampshire) John Sununu (Republican Senator from New Hampshire) and John Peterson, a Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania, a member of the House Appropriations and the House Resource Committees - that's funny, Mr. Schleyer lives in New Hampshire).

Ron Cooper, the President of Adelphia, made contributions to John Sununu (that's funny, Mr. Cooper lives in Colorado), Ken Salazar (Democratic Senator from Colorado) and George W. Bush.

So, except for the $1000 that Mr. Cooper donated to Mr. Salazar's campaign, one could not help but conclude that Adelphia is a very "Red" company indeed. We wait with baited breath for the letters from Focus on the Family and Margaret Spellings. We assume that Il Ducetto, as a Christian, will speak to the folks at Adelphia and ask them not to create so great an occasion of sin for so many Americans.

If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be A Sacrament

Medicare to Cover Drugs for Impotence: "Medicare's new prescription benefit will cover sexual performance drugs, like Viagra, in addition to medications for such ailments as high blood pressure and heart disease, program officials confirmed Monday.

The move into what some consider "lifestyle" — rather than life-saving — pharmaceuticals is being criticized by conservatives, who see it as an unnecessary frill for a program that already is projected to cost at least $400 billion over its first decade. [--snip--]

"I don't think Medicare coverage is going to add much to the market size or much to Medicare costs," Gibbons said, because men between the ages of 40 and 60 make up the prime market for the drugs — a group too young to qualify for the federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

He estimated the new Medicare coverage would add $50 million to $100 million in total sales, a potential boost of 4% to 8%."

Could they at least ask the alter cockers if they'd rather pop for their own Viagra and have the government spend $400 billion on research for prostate cancer or heart disease, rather than hand a $100 million to the drug companies?