Rift between political conservatives and mainstream values continues to diverge

Ah, Karl Rove. Keep talking. Your "Permanent Republican Majority" isn't coming any sooner than the Rapture.

The majority of Americans are okay with this.

Two news stories buried in the back pages were incredibly significant nonetheless. On the same day that Tennessee's State Senate voted to forbid any discussion of homosexuality in kindergarten through 8th grade classes, Gallup released a poll that showed a majority of Americans approving of same-sex marriage. That's right. More than half the country wants to hear to guys--or girls--say, "I do."

While I have no doubt that older generations of Americans felt a sincere reservation towards the subject, it was disgusting to watch crass individuals like Rove try to gin up opposition to equal marriage rights while timid Democrats timidly looked at the polls and failed to articulate the right thing. Six and half years later, public opinion has understandably shifted. Gay marriage, along with higher taxes on the rich,
a one-way plane ticket home for our men and women in Afghanistan, and increased regulation of the financial sector, is a majority opinion in the United States.

Just like the photo above, love is love

George McGovern better start filing his papers before it's too late!

Maureen Dowd faces conflicts with reality

Oh, Miss Maureen Dowd, how I once enjoyed reading your bi-weekly column until I realized it was just a waste of time.

I know that sounds harsh, over the top criticism, and maybe a little bit wrong. But so too is her column.

He's Bambi! No, Dr. Spock! Now he's Paul Newman!

I stopped reading her opinion pieces because she was just re-wording, or in some cases, reprinting the news on page 1 and adding adding clever nicknames to the various political players of the day. Problem was, these nicknames had a tendency to reveal her own misconceptions rather than illustrate the mixture of "politics and Hollywood," that she tries to portray. Case and point: Referring to Barack Obama and "Bambi," during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. In the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden's killing, he is now "Cool Hands Barack." Given that Barack Obama campaigned on attacking Bin Laden even if he was in Pakistan without consent of the Pakistany government, it is clear that he was never naive. Barack didn't change, but Dowd's opinion of him certainly did. And if Dowd bothered to watch or at least read about the President's appearance on "60 Minutes" last week, she would have learned that "Cool Hand Barack" doesn't exactly have ice in his veins.

Although these nicknames might be mildly amusing, it is hard to justify extending these nicknames into a 750 word essay. To phrase it another way, it's kind of like the Saturday Night Live sketch that should have ended after the first joke--but just goes on, and on, and on. And given that these nicknames tend to reveal Dowd's own biases rather than illustrate truth, what's the function of giving her a twice-weekly opinion platform in the New York Times--especially now that I'm paying for it!!

Yesterday's piece put me over the edge. The title was "Corsets, Cleavage, Fishnets." Wow. Is Joe Biden cross-dressing? Is this about the absurdity of Fox News anchors? The latest in the absurd parade of Mama Grizzlies? I thought it was worth reading. Alas, not so much.

Dowd instead took deep exception to popular culture. Fair enough, most of pop culture is garbage. But if you thought it was some fault to the American public, or the avarice of corporations appealing the the lowest common denominator, you were wrong. Apparently, there is a vast, male conspiracy in the entertainment industry to put women down, and she's got the scoop!

What evidence does Dowd utilize to support this claim? She quotes two unnamed television executives--one male, one female--who echo each other, each saying that men are confused. Gender roles have changed, and after watching Christina Hedricks' character on "Mad Men," the male sex can't get enough. Everything on television and the big screen is a male fantasy. Sort of. As usual in her columns, Dowd doesn't bother backing up her claims with evidence. "Mad Men" is in limbo because its contract wasn't renewed of creative differences between network executives and the show's creator, Matthew Weiner. The exec's wanted to eliminate characters and broadcast shorter episodes to save money. (Weiner should be commended for not bowing to such foolish demands, but that's another story).

Even Dowd herself has a hard time reconciling her logic when she writes about a redux of Charlie's Angels. "Sure, the angels of Charlie (Robert Wagner) look hot in thigh-high black boots, red vinyl minidresses and devil’s horns," writes Dowd. "But they have skills, like building car engines, cracking safes hanging upside down after drinking two Cosmos, and putting 'the cat in cat burglar.'"

Um, that's always been the nature of the original show. And the movie. Attractive women fight crimes. Was Dowd unaware of that? How can this be some sort of new trend? And yes, the women on television and in movies are attractive, but has Dowd ever noticed so are the men! 

Reading her loopy logic is like a train wreck. The Green Lantern, approximately the 15 billionth comic book-turned movie of the last ten years is another "recent example" of Dowd's newly discovered trend about male domination in the movies. Apparently, Dowd knows what men want, and it's the half-naked Ryan Reynolds. When Dowd writes that Hollywood is a male dominated business, she is presuming too much when she assumes that most of these men are interested in women.

Maureen Dowd makes a false assumption when she assumes
that most men in Hollywood are heterosexual chauvinists.

Maybe my expectations are a little high for Ms. Dowd, who, unlike David Brooks, was once an award-winning reporter who wrote about actual news. Then again, that makes her quoting of unnamed sources all the more inexcusable (see Miller, Judith).

And, in all fairness to Ms. Dowd, she also hasn't completely missed the mark. She grew up in a time when women weren't allowed to do anything (thanks Title IX)! As a result, when she sees attractive women on television, she cries foul, insisting that women are only appreciated for their bodies. Apparently, she forgot that the name of the show "Mad Men," is mad men! It's a scathing indictment of the male behavior of the past, not cause celebré. Don Draper is mad much the way the villains were in great works of Charles Dickens. Would anyone read Oliver Twist as hagiography to 19th century orphan industry?

Sadly, I think David Brooks would answer in the affirmative to that question (it's wealth creation! He would argue), but someone like Maureen Dowd would no know better. The same holds true for summer movies and television shows. Dowd should do a lot more research and back up claims with actual evidence before signing her name to it.

Based on the last 15 years of her career, that may be wishful thinking, but at least for the rest of us, we can retain belief in equal rights of men and women without seeing misogyny everywhere.

Osama Bin Laden never lived in a cave

You heard it here first.

In case there was any doubt, the man never, ever lived in a cave. Osama Bin Laden died the way he lived: in incredible luxury. In a three-story mansion, complete with western cola, Nestle chocolate bars, and homegrown marijuana. And the pornography, lots and lots of pornography.

It's a shame that President Obama dismisses releasing many of the facts related to the recent raid as "spiking the political football." Hey, Barry Sanders never spiked a football, but he knew when had crossed into the Endzone. Right now, President Barry needs to communicate to the millions of Muslims openly sympathize with the terrorist leader, because their sympathy is based entirely on ignorance and misconception.

The misconception is that Osama Bin Laden was some sort of freedom fighter, a man born into wealth who rejected his life of privilege to "go underground" and "fight oppression." The problem with this theory is that Bin Laden's involvement with the Mujahideen has always been subject to debate, with no firsthand evidence that he ever actually fought the Soviet army in the 1980s. The fact that he was born rich and spent the last several years of his life living in luxury is indicative that he never learned to live without.

In time, the truth will come out. The videos of him walking through the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan will be revealed to be nothing more than cleverly staged photo-ops. Each video of Osama and his "death to America tirades" probably started as follows: "All right everybody, hop in the van. I look great in just five minutes--with just for men! We'll drive to these mountains over here, make sure the camera doesn't face the road. I want to do all this in one take. Afterwords, we'll get stoned and eat chocolate!"

The man may no longer be alive, now the myth must die. People all over the world need to know that this alleged terrorist mastermind was nothing more than a psychotic millionaire. People in the Muslim world need to know that he didn't care about them, he merely saw them as pawns in his own web of personal delusion.

So by all means, Mr. President, tell the truth. Granted, the truth must dazzle gradually, but it is better to inform rather than let ignorance and misconception fester. That too, can make the whole world blind.

Someone needs to tell the Grey Lady there is no Room for Debate

Arg. Deprived of one my main sources for news, I finally buckled and paid the damn subscription fee for the New York Times. In spite of how often I criticize it, The Times is still a reasonably good news source more often than not, particularly offering more depth than other news outlets. And I like Paul Krugman, and their Travel Section, and the fact that they police their own comment boards so that the discussions generated actually enhance, rather than obscure meaning.

And then I see something that makes me cringe because it is virtually no value to the reader and producer of news alike.

One of the web-exclusive features of the Times is a somewhat slapdash "Room for Debate" opinion "thing." I really don't know what to call it--other than garbage. I say this because on the subjects the Times chooses, there is absolutely no room for debate among sane, thinking individuals. Basically, some editor for the paper selects a few people of expertise and they write a few paragraphs on a given subject of "debate."

The most recent exercise in this debacle was military spending. Some nameless editor simply phrased the question as follows:

Annual military spending has risen more than 70 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 2001. With the drive to reduce the deficit, the current $700 billion Pentagon budget is considered by budget cutters to be a good place to find savings.
Which areas of the Pentagon budget should Leon Panetta, the next defense secretary, target for savings? What kinds of spending could most easily be cut back? How big a peace dividend might be expected from withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan?

The debate should have been settled last week when an elite team of Navy Seals--not a military force of 100,000 soldiers--killed Osama bin Laden and made off with a virtual truckload of Al-Qaeda information. And for seven of the eight online "debaters," it was. One could read seven different iterations of the same theme: remove American soldiers from large commitments overseas and stop spending a literal fortune on cold-war era programs. I could read this from the perspective of a retired military colonel, A university professor of international relations, a history professor (you know, to mix it up a little bit), a "Lecturer" at Harvard University, an MIT research scientist, and even the Koch brothers funded Cato Institute research fellow. Oh, and Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of Defense. When people of opposing political perspectives agree with each other, that's not debate. That's agreement. The lone outlier in this discussion was Mackenzie Eaglen of the ultra-right wing Heritage Foundation. Her proposal was Donald Rumsfeld's failed policy with her name on it: more troop presence, more money for weapons programs, coupled with pay cuts for soldiers and outsourcing tasks to civilian personnel. Yeah, like that saved money.

Maybe the New York Times can do a little cost-cutting of its own and eliminate this stupid "debate" forum and just report on the facts. The headline and sub-head might read as follows: "Experts across the political spectrum call for reduction in military spending, Heritage Foundation still mired in its own web of delusion.

Just a thought.

The Seven Most Important Things to consider know that Bin Laden has Received the Hot Lead of Justice

Good riddance. Now that Osama Bin Laden's gone, he's all over the news again. In the flurry of talking heads, twits making tweets, and written words, here are the seven most important things to consider now that Bin Laden has met his fate:


The "Biden" Doctrine has succeeded where the Bush Doctrine has failed.

"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.[emphasis mine]. George W. Bush's policy of overthrowing governments--by pre-emption if necessary--to stop terrorism should be viewed as a complete failure. It could be weeks or months before we know how much the Pakistani government knew of Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts, but it seems incredibly dubious that the Pakistani government made any good faith effort to capture the man. Does that mean we should have overthrown the Pakistani government as well, only to let Bin Laden escape yet again?

Bottom Line: Joe Biden's vision of a narrow, focused attack on counter-terrorism is more effective at bringing specific terrorists to justice than trying unilaterally attacking countries to spark a wave of democracy and therefore, stem terrorism.

This should accelerate the splintering of Al-Qaeda.

The Obama administration should not downplay the strategic significance of one man. Fred Kaplan and Daniel Byman over at Slate.com probably have the best analysis based on actual facts of what will happen without the star power of Bin Laden. In the long run, Al-Qaeda's recruiting will likely suffer with the loss of its figurehead, and affiliate groups in Somalia and Yemen are likely to be wary of each other, perhaps creating a power struggle with Al-Qaeda's main branch in Pakistan. Which brings us to point number three:

Justice has been served, but the most effective way to reduce/eliminate the terror threat requires non-military solutions.

For what these polls are worth, Al-Qaeda does not register a majority level of support in any country. Richard Clarke hits the nail on the head with his analysis in Monday's New York Times. Clarke describes the difficult situation in countries like Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, where governments are unpopular due to catastrophically high levels of unemployment:


"Moderate, tolerant and even some secular groups exist, but they often do not have a comprehensive alternative vision, know how to communicate it or have the organizational skills to promote it. American and European experts can assist them in building politically viable organizations, but to succeed these new groups must be homegrown and tap into the Arab and Islamic traditions that speak to many Muslim youth.
"Moreover, without investment to create jobs, new governments in these countries will fail under the weight of youth unemployment. Unless corruption is replaced with efficiency, investment will either not materialize or be wasted"

Osama Bin Laden was Hitler without an army: a man of evil without conscience who had the ability to deceive otherwise decent human beings into doing horrible things. Hitler became popular because he was right when he said that the Treaty of Versailles unfairly punished Germany after World War I. After World War II, the United States and Britain resolved not to make the same mistake again, and would allow their defeated foe to rebuild. Preventing another Osama Bin Laden requires diplomacy and a commitment to global economic prosperity. In other words, we can't just give $1.3 Billion annually to someone like Hosni Muburak. We need to make sure that economic aid goes directly to the people, and not some dictator who turns a blind eye to high unemployment and citizens who become terrorists. Speaking of dubious allies:

With friends like Pakistan, who needs enemies?


The U.S. State Department needs to be more selective when determining who is really "a valuable ally" of the United States. Osama Bin Laden was living in a large mansion with 12 foot high walls not far from Pakistan's military training facility. Neighbors noticed that the building did not have telephone service and that the occupants burned their trash. This did not arouse the suspicion of the Pakistani military? Whether Pakistan was blissfully unaware of Bin Laden's presence or knowingly sheltered him remains to be discovered.

So what do we do with Pakistan? Do we overthrow this government as well? Or should we continue with the diplomacy that Richard Clarke encourages? If we are going to win the hearts and minds of the opposition, we should engage in diplomacy first.

Our continued presence in Afghanistan is continually harder to justify.

The moral justification for overthrowing the Taliban was because they harbored Al-Qaeda, giving them a "home base" to plot terrorist attacks. So does Yemen. So does Somalia. If we need to do so, our Navy SEALs can track down and kill a high-profile terrorist in hot pursuit, regardless of what government the country has.

Taking that into consideration, the question of supporting the Karzai government deserves more scrutiny than ever before. Is he unpopular because the Taliban hate freedom, or because he probably lost the last election? As our current situation stands right now, the United States will have a continued military presence in Afghanistan until 2014, at which point a withdrawal might take place--or be re-evaluated based on conditions on the ground.

That time for re-evaluation is now. President Obama should listen to members of both political parties, in calling for an exit strategy, rather than the increasingly delusional Joe Lieberman. The U.S. government puts itself at risk by supporting regimes like Muburak. We need smarter diplomacy and fewer wars without clearly defined goals in order to truly fight Islamic extremism.

Now is also a good time to restore the rule of law.

"Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?" tweeted the twit Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa).

Spare me. Science tells us that Torture doesn't work. Steve King doesn't believe in science, but fortunately, the Obama administration does. The FBI didn't torture underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab. They even read him his Miranda Rights. The FBI did, however, bring in Umar's relatives, and from that tactic the FBI was able to extract all the information they needed.

Steve King may not believe in science, but the rest of us do. We don't have all the details yet, but it seems dubious that information leading to Obama's capture came through torture, or because those questioned were held as "illegal combatants" as opposed to Prisoners of War. Legal scholar Dahlia Lithwick says that such claims are unfalsifiable, but I disagree. Holding Enemy Prisoners of War does not mean that such individuals could not be interrogated, it only requires that they be treated humanely. And guess what? Humane treatment yields results. Donald Rumsfeld's tactics yielded the Abu Ghraib. I think it's safe to say which tactic resulted in Bin Laden's death. Which brings us to our final point:

If we're going to thank a former president for eliminating Bin Laden from the face of the Earth, it's John F. Kennedy, not George W. Bush.

Either George Bush's statement of not caring about Bin Laden's whereabouts and subsequent invasion of Iraq was a clever ploy to make it seem like he wasn't interested in bringing him to justice, or he really didn't care all that much about bringing him to justice.  And remember when John McCain criticized Obama for wanting attack terrorist targets in Pakistan without help from the Pakistani government? It was President Obama who made finding and killing Bin Laden a top priorty, and relied on the Navy SEALs to do the job with remarkable efficiency.

For that, we should thank President Kennedy. This Navy veteran and war hero understood the need for a small group of elite forces trained in unconventional warfare and established the SEALs in 1962. Sunday's raid did what predator drones, cruise missiles, or cluster bombs could not. To everyone who has ever been a member of the Navy SEAL program: Thank you.

That's all for now. Undoubtedly, these topics will arise in the future. Hopefully, our leaders will take the right path.

Exploring Insanity in America, Part I

Two news stories broke this April, both concerning the September 11th terror attacks and also illustrating the sheer lunacy of those on the political right.


One was the insane notion that the heroes--the firefighters, police officers, construction workers and other crew members risked their lives on September 11th would be forced to cross-check their names on the Terror Watch List before receiving their workman's compensation for illnesses contracted from the disaster. The other piece of outright madness was that 247 people on the terror watch list had legally purchased firearms last year. 247 people who the government suspects has ties to Al-Qaeda. People who wish to do harm to you and me. People who want us dead. But hey, they're only suspects, right?


Predictably, the National Rifle Association opposes any effort on behalf of the government to keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists. The AP story quotes NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam saying what pretty much every NRA spokesman has ever said about any effort to keep guns away from criminals: "We think it's wrong to arbitrarily deny a law-abiding person a Constitutional right."


Leaving aside the question as to why some suspected terrorists are allowed to purchase guns and others are locked up in Guantanamo without formal charges against them (but seriously, what gives!), we still have a clear picture of how upside down Congress has its priorities: Those who worked to keep America safe from terrorists must prove they are not terror suspects in order to receive health care for diseases contracted from Ground Zero, whereas those who actually have suspected ties to terrorism can legally purchase guns and explosives.


How could this happen? What society could produce a human being as disgusting as Cliff Stearns, let alone elect him to Congress? How could such wild and utterly contradictory illogic take route and get passed into law in a civilized society? Why be skeptical of someone who will risk his life to save yours, but permissive to somebody who might want to kill you? That's not falling on the right of the political spectrum--that's outright lunacy that requires intervention.


Many on the political left would throw up their hands and say that America is a conservative country. I disagree. We live in an era where a confluence of factors have brought us in a situation where bad ideas can flourish--sometimes against the will of the majority.


A huge part of the problem is rooted in a remarkably poor reading of the Second Amendment. We know what the NRA thinks, and some have criticized Thomas Jefferson using vague language as to what the Amendment actually protects. The trouble is, Jefferson was pretty clear on what kind of military he wanted the United States to have, and what the function of a well-regulated militia was supposed to be. From the man himself:

"For a people who are free and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. It is, therefore, incumbent on us at every meeting [of Congress] to revise the condition of the militia and to ask ourselves if it is prepared to repel a powerful enemy at every point of our territories exposed to invasion... Congress alone have power to produce a uniform state of preparation in this great organ of defense. The interests which they so deeply feel in their own and their country's security will present this as among the most important objects of their deliberation."

"A well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration."

"Uncertain as we must ever be of the particular point in our circumference where an enemy may choose to invade us, the only force which can be ready at every point and competent to oppose them, is the body of neighboring citizens as formed into a militia. On these, collected from the parts most convenient, in numbers proportioned to the invading foe, it is best to rely, not only to meet the first attack, but if it threatens to be permanent, to maintain the defence [sic] until regulars may be engaged to relieve them."

In other words, Jared Loughner does not have the right to shoot a Congresswoman and point-blank range. People who are not crazy should have guns, but only for the purpose of doing away with a large, standing army. Taking up arms to overthrow the government is called treason, and the Constitution rightly forbids it.

What's really crazy is that one can read all these quotes from Jefferson (and more) at an anti-gun control website! Seriously. Somebody read the argument for the Second Amendment and is still polishing his rifle just in case the Feds come knocking. In my next blog, I'll further examine the origins of this loopy logic and it's implications on our political discourse--and what can be done to stop it.

In the meantime, feel free to call Cliff Stearns Office at (202) 225-5744. Ask him why he would sooner arm a potential terrorist than provide health care to someone who would keep him safe from terrorism.