Obama's wandering eye ... in fun spoiling context

ABC provides context. Damn them for ruining the fun of those who would like to read more into this than there is.

Seriously though, it is nice to see a mainstream media outlet actually pointing out that still photos are really a bad method for identifying intent in situations like this. Ever freeze frame a video in a way that makes a person look like a total goofball?

Sarkozi really does look like he's checking her out. But, he's French so I doubt anyone in France will give a crap. Only Americans could look at this and think there is anything important in this story.

Science has a liberal bias

No wonder Republicans distrust it.

Total Information Awareness

That would be my bet.



Trust the google

My thoughts on property

I think the question of property, who "owns" something, can be answered two ways: (1) no one and (2) whoever has the force necessary to enforce their claim on it.

Really, is there any other way of defining it?

Thoughts on the difference between Bush and Obama

The greatest benefit of a warrant is that it reduces capricious abuse of power. If an official knows he has to get a warrant (even a rubber-stamp warrant like you get from the FISA court) they might just hesitate a moment before deciding to bust down some doors just to teach someone a lesson.

Requiring warrants forces authorities to submit their requests to an outside authority. Even if they know that that outside authority is virtually guaranteed to approve it (again, see FISA), the mere fact they have to make the submission makes them stop for a moment to consider whether it is a good idea to go forward with it.

This was the problem I had with what Bush did and why I object to those who say Obama is perpetuating Bush's crimes. The biggest problem with Bush's model of governance is that he didn't believe he had to get the approval of ANYONE, even a rubber-stamp like the FISA court, to do what he wanted to do and he believed he didn't have to submit his actions for review by outside authority (congress or the courts).

Obama's proposed policies are completely contrary to that philosophy. He wants a clearly defined process for how to exercise the extraordinary powers of the presidency and he wants a well laid out plan for review and reversal. That is what makes him different from Bush and it is a HUGE difference.

The purpose of the American "Health" Care system

What sense is there in getting insurance if that insurance will be canceled once you get sick? Well, it will make insurance company investors really really rich.

The purpose of the American "Health" Care system is not to provide effective health care to its subscribers. Its purpose is to provide effective profits to the system's investors. The subscribers are the profit centers. They are the vehicles by which investors make money.

The subscribers are not the customers. The investors are the customers.

The subscribers are the product.

But, they made jokes about my kid!

That is so much worse than being accused of murder!

Breaking Silence / The magic of 60

I've been silent for quite some time and for anyone still out there who has me in their RSS feeds and hasn't purged me yet, I apologize. I've made fitful attempts to return to blogging but I've never been able to quite restore the bug I had a few years back. Maybe I'll talk more about that later.

In the meantime, this post by the incomparable Bob Somerby just demanded that I link to it and expound on it, in whatever pitiful attempt I can make to improve on it. Bob makes a point about Senate arithmetic that I have rarely heard talked about and he discusses it in a way that really brings home an essential point: 60 Democratic Senators is not the same as having 60 Republican Senators.

As everyone knows except liberal leaders, the logic of the Senate currently tilts toward conservatives—toward the GOP. It does so because small rural states get two senators—the same number the giant states get. Sparsely-populated Wyoming gets two. So does over-flowing California.

And uh-oh! At present, small rural states tend to be conservative. This means that the Senate system strongly favors conservatives—and thus the GOP. Under current arrangements, a Republican president with sixty senators would almost inevitably be more powerful than Obama currently is.

...

To reach the magic number of sixty, Democrats have to elect a bunch of senators f rom red states. On balance, these red-state Democrats are substantially better than the Republicans whom they defeated. But they tend to be more conservative, more corporate-friendly, than their blue-state Democrat counterparts.

...

George Bush never had sixty senators. Amazingly, Obama does. But if Bush had ever gotten to sixty, it would have been a stronger, purer ideological bloc than the group Obama is working with. Obama’s sixty includes a whole batch of red state Senate Dems. But then, there is virtually no way for Democrats to elect sixty senators without including a bunch of red-staters. Had the GOP elected sixty under Bush, there would have been fewer blue-staters. This is unfortunate, but it’s just bone-simple Senate logic.

Small state voters have a disproportionate influence over the Senate because their Senators have a higher Senator-to-voter ratio. Small state voters tend to be more conservative than large state voters. Therefore, conservative voters have a disproportionate influence over the Senate.

Progressives need to understand this and absorb it when they criticize the Democratic leadership in the Senate for not using their 60 votes in the same way Republicans would use them. The truth is that the 60 vote Democratic majority is NOT a 60 vote progressive majority. It's probably not even a 50 vote progressive majority.

Activists should also consider what this means when it comes to increasing the power of progressive causes in the Senate: in order to increase that power, you have to make the small states more progressive. This means you need to swing red states blue not just in their representatives but also in their voter attitudes. You need to win the heats and minds of people living in Montana, Wyoming, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, etc. You can't just write them off ass small town yokels. If you do, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

Political movements triumph when they come from the smaller states. That is the real battleground of ideas.

Obama's Faith

Just got through reading Obama's comments this morning on national security.

Favorite comment:

... the problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.

On holding people accountable:

I think I have a clearer sense of Obama's point of view and where the conflict comes from. Obama firmly believes that an independent commission or a special prosecutor would only inflame partisan finger pointing. He may be right. But does that mean we can't have accountability? No, we can, IF our existing institutions function as they are supposed to. That is Obama's faith. The problem is that many people don't have his faith in those institutions. Many DON'T trust Congress or the Justice Department to bring to account those who got us into this mess. And that's the real tragedy of the hand Obama has been dealt.

We need to be able to trust that the Congress and the Law can act in our best interest. The last eight years (and, arguably, the last couple of decades) have seen a serious undermining of that faith. Obama needs to work to restore that faith. Just saying that he has faith will not be enough. He has to convince us that that faith is justified.

So far, he is failing.

Please explain this to me

How can the Obama administration be both so secretive that they threaten Britain with cutting of surveillance information if they don't suppress information about U.S. torture practices AND so open that they are going to extraordinary lengths to declassify documents that describe those very same procedures?

I know that Glenn doesn't deal in motives, it's not his job. And God bless him for it, he shouldn't let questions of motive get in the way of describing what is actually happening.

But the tone of outrage in his articles continually butts up against a serious conundrum. The picture he is painting of an administration even more secretive than Bush's simply is not compatible with the picture that is painted by the release of various torture memos.

Can ANYONE explain this contradiction?

Yes, it is a job saving plan

I understand Robert Reich's concern, but I think he is missing a rather obvious point here.

What? Having General Motors or Chrysler cut tens of thousands of jobs in order to be eligible for a government bailout reminds me of "saving" Vietnam by bombing it to smithereens. Aren't we giving these companies billions of taxpayer dollars to save jobs? ...

Yes, it seems counter-intuitive that Chrysler and GM need to cut jobs in order to get a "job saving" bailout. Until you consider that, if they don't get the bailouts, even more workers will lose their jobs. If GM doesn't get the bailout and goes out of business, 100,000+ workers could lose their jobs. If they do, only 21,000 have to loser their jobs. 21,000 < 100,000+.

Therefore, this is a job saving plan.

Giving up

Michael Steele:

"Some will use Specter's defection as an excuse to fold the tent and give up. I believe that you are not one of those people. When Benedict Arnold defected to the British, George Washington didn't fold the tent and give up either."

Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor!

(RIP John Belushi)