Sneaky, Sneaky

Houston Chronicle: Kennedy, McCain keep immigration bill closeted

The Senate's march to overhaul the nation's immigration laws is starting in somewhat rocky fashion, with Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and other leading Republicans complaining they've been shut out of the bill-writing process.

"It's not a good way to try to build consensus and to solve problems by withholding information," Cornyn said Wednesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee began debate.

Even the committee's top Republican, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, complained he'd been frozen out of the talks on a bill co-sponsored by one of his GOP colleagues, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and McCain will unveil the bill as early as next week. Senate leaders hope the Judiciary Committee will approve the bill this month, paving the way for a vote by the full Senate in April.

The bill reprises much of what the Senate approved in May: A path to citizenship for most of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, a guest worker program for future foreign workers and heightened immigration enforcement.

McCain is woking as hard as anyone, but I just don't think he's going to get the Democratic nomination.

Sacrifice

Fat Doctor: Soldier's Son

Today, Soldier Mama, who drops her five year old son at preschool around the same time every day as I do, sat at the table talking quietly to her son as he wept. She looked at me and said, "I'm going back to Iraq next week." I watched as she temporarily patched him up for a school day and then left. Her son watched her drive away from the window.

When we first started the school, I noticed that this woman wore fatigues every day. We have exchanged pleasantries over the months, and I knew she was in the active duty full-time Army.

The teacher, who I call Russian Nazi, came over to where we stood, sat down on a little kindergarten chair and scooped the boy into her arms. He rested his head on her shoulder. She spoke quietly while stroking his back.

"She's a Major and is responsible for training the soldiers there," Russian Nazi said. "She spent a year and a half there and just came back in early August. She earned a purple heart last time she was was in Iraq. She's a hero."

Feeling helpless, I said to the boy, "You must be so proud of your Mama. This has to make you sad, too."

He just stared out the window over the teacher's shoulder while she comforted him.....

But how deep is the commitment?

RealClearPolitics: The New Politics of Global Warming

A political issue has reached critical mass when its natural adversaries throw in the towel.

That is what is happening in the United States on global warming, with President Bush and much of corporate America signaling they are through disputing whether temperatures are rising enough to portend future woes.

Of course, even if the disputes about the existence or potential ills of climate change are abating, that doesn't mean the global warming believers will now get the laws they want, or even find that candidates espousing their views win more elections.

In fact, the developing consensus that it is time to deal with the global warming problem rather than argue about its existence is likely to make it less, not more, of a salient domestic political issue.

The reality of Climate change has become conventional wisdom. Americans are all for "someone" doing something about it. Of course that doesn't mean they want to turn down the thermostat or trade the Land Cruiser for a Prius. The Pro-Life Community has spent years working to convince society at large that the unborn child is a human being. That has gained some traction, but the follow on belief, that Abortion should be prohibited by law has gone nowhere fast. Americans still " believe in abortion under only three circumstances: rape, incest, and "my situation."". Substitute "burning fossil fuels" for "abortion" and you aren't too far away from the reality. The oil companies and the auto companies are evil (after all look how high gas is and that Tahoe I bought for $10K under invoice only gets 13 MPG!). Hey, everyone agrees that we should use less gas, but not too many are volunteering. As long as Al Gore is a heroic figure sticking it to assorted faceless corporations he is going to be warmly regarded as a maverick hero. President Gore announces a new carbon tax (which means taxes on gas, electric, and heat) and he's just committed political hari-kari.

The ATA is "thinking" again

Heavy Duty Trucking: Truckers Face Hot Issues In '07

On another safety matter, Dave Osiecki, an ATA [American Trucking Association] vice president, said the association is drafting a new policy on entry-level driver training in anticipation of an FMCSA rule on that subject this year. ATA intends to develop a core training curriculum, he said.
The driver turnover problem is a constant challenge for ATA, and part of the answer may come from immigration reform.
"Unfortunately, last year's immigration bill was not one of the more shining moments of the 109th Congress," Lynch said. That bill mandated erection of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, but did not address other concerns such as a guest worker program or changing the permitting quotas.

Perhaps if driver pay was not below 1980 levels and conditions were improved there would not be a "shortage" of drivers. It's amazing how folks on the bottom are told all the time that supply and demand is the rule and we better deal with it, but when it doesn't work for the megacorporations they want to change the rule.

I wonder too how well these new immigrants will fare on the road. Once they move here they are operating in the same cost environment native born workers are. Try living on what you can get at truck stops and you'll be broke and in poor health. The trick used to be running a 12v cooler and refilling at a Wal-Mart every week or so, but the "no truck parking" signs are steadily going up at stores around the country. Plus I know I usually was "lending" my employer $50+ a week for tolls and scales when I was running Over the Road. Then there are the conditions: weeks away from home sleeping in a metal box, constant exposure to carcinogens, noise, and vibration, going places you would never go otherwise (You haven't lived till you've drug a 53' box into Queens), irregular hours, little sleep, etc.

If it's not one thing, it's another

Houston Chronicle: GMAC's Subprime Mortgages a Threat to GM

The cratering of the subprime mortgage industry could present more than just a pothole for General Motors Corp.

The world's largest auto maker disclosed Thursday that it will need more time to file its 2006 annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, marking the second year in a row the company has postponed the key filing.

Many analysts attribute this year's delay to a substantial hit the Detroit-based automaker might take from the exposure its part-owned finance unit _ GMAC Financial Services _ has to the business of making mortgage loans to people with weak credit or heavy debt burdens.

The entire mortgage industry is feeling the pressure from slowing home sales, intensifying competition and rising past-due loans. Higher delinquencies on subprime mortgages _ in large part due to a sharp deterioration of underwriting standards last year _ have in recent months forced a slew of lenders, big and small, to set aside more capital for potential loan losses.

In many cases, lenders have also been forced to write down the value of their mortgage securities. Many analysts say GMAC's home-lending unit, Residential Capital LLC, known as ResCap, is not immune to the industry stress. The unit is heavily involved in the subprime mortgage business _ making and investing in such loans itself and providing funds to other mortgage originators.

Lehman Brothers analyst Brian Johnson estimated that loan-loss provisions and writedowns of mortgage securities at ResCap could cost GM $900 million to $950 million in cash charges in the first half of this year.

Among the areas of concern to analysts and investors: At the end of the third quarter, ResCap, long viewed as the crown jewel in GMAC's businesses, held $57 billion of subprime mortgages for investment, or 77 percent of its total loans held for investment. Its exposure to "residual interest" in mortgage securities _ the high-yielding slices that suffer some of the first losses if loan defaults are higher than expected _ was $1.4 billion as of Sept. 30. Meanwhile, ResCap is one of the biggest providers of short-term "warehouse" funding to smaller mortgage lenders.
............
The automaker sold 51 percent of GMAC for $14 billion to Cerberus Capital Management. The deal closed in November, but GM and Cerberus have since been trying to determine whether the value ascribed to GMAC at the time is reliable and if either side needs to pay settlements to adjust the purchase price.

GM continues to own 49 percent of the lending unit and relies on GMAC's health, because the unit backs GM's major incentive programs by offering attractive leasing and financing terms.

GMAC had been one of the bright spots on GM's balance sheets. I wonder how long it will take for Cerebrus to start raving "I was robbed, I was robbed!" in court? GM doesn't need either thing, another cash draining business or a high profile lawsuit. I also wonder how this will affect GMAC's credit rating and access to capital, the improvement of which was the reason for the partial sale.

Carbon caps, gay marriage, and the dark art of being a Shrewd servant

Some businesses have went on the record being in favor of carbon caps recently. The most convincing explanation I have heard for this sudden "green" push is business groups figure a carbon cap is coming and want a hand in drawing up the rules.

Hearing the news made me think of gay marriage oddly enough. Right now the Socially conservative wing of the Republican party has been able to keep gay marriage on the other side of the 50 yard line. But the line of scrimmage is slowly (but steadily) being pushed back. To break the analogy a bit, the Republicans are probably facing a shrinking team and a growing opponent's team as the consequences of the Bush term play out. At some point the Democrats are going to push it through. It might be in 2 years, it might be in 2 decades but it is coming. Right now the right could strike deal with the sane members of the Democratic party that would allow some form of gay marriage, but build a fence around churches' tax exempt status., I doubt we'll get such an offer from the Eels

Conspiracy Theories

Angry Bear: The Fed, Presidential Elections, and Coincidence

Since data from the Fed became available in 1959, when there is a Presidential election involving an incumbent from the same party as Fed chairman, the year on year Money Supply (as measured by real M2 per capita) increases each and every month by more than when there is no election or when there is no incumbent. By contrast, when there is a Prsidential election involving an incumbent from a party other than that of the Fed chairman, the year on year Money Supply decreases each and every month. I don't see how one can reach any conclusion other than that the Fed is meddling in Presidential Elections in a blatant and partisan way.

It's interesting, but I find it a bit hard to believe that every Fed chairman since 1959 have been in on this (and has never fingered a previous chair for their nefarious deeds). Maybe it's subconscious....

The bees knees

NY Times:Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril

David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country.

Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.

With all of the challenges our food supply is under (climate, bio-fuels, pesticide resistant insects, herbicide resistant weeds, growing demand) we are increasingly vulnerable to any setback.

War with Iran: Who wins, who loses

Which way will the balls bounce?

Ezra Klein: The Edwards Interview

Iran: His [John Edwards'] position here is more thoughtful and nuanced than his comments at the Herzliya conference revealed. "what happens," he asked, "if America were to militarily strike Iran? Well you take this unstable, radical leader, and you make him a hero—that’s the first thing that’ll happen. The Iranian people will rally around him. The second thing that will happen is they will retaliate. And they have certainly some potential for retaliating here in the United States through some of these terrorist organizations they’re close to, but we’ve got over a hundred thousand people right next door. And most people believe that they have an infrastructure for retaliation inside Iraq. So, that’s the second thing that’ll happen. And the third thing is there are a lot of analysts who believe that an air strike or a missile strike is not enough to be successful. To be successful we’d actually have to have troops on the ground, and where in the world would they come from?"

Something I've been thinking about the last few weeks is who wins and loses if war (or a facsimile thereof) breaks out between the U.S. and Iran. Being as the grunts are tied down in Iraq I imagine a plan similar to Arthur Herman's, heavy on special forces, air and sea power.

Iran: Undoubtedly their air force and navy would suffer terribly. If oil facilities and refineries were damaged they would have a hard time bringing in outside supplies and experts for rebuilding (especially if sanctions were ongoing). Iran already faces declining production aggravated by a lack of investment in the oil sector On the other hand the threshold of victory is a lot lower for Iran than it is for the United States. As we saw in Lebanon, Iran just has to refuse to quit until international pressure forces the U.S. to knock it off. The U.S. will be starting in a P.R. hole (especially after being seen as crying wolf on Iraq's WMDs) and CNN will be rebroadcasting every shot of dead Iranian kids that comes over Al Jazerra. Criticism from allies, rivals, and assorted tinpot dictators will flow in a mighty wave. Even if Iran is whipped militarily they could still "win" the war.

Iraq: Iranian instigated violence against the U.S. and/or the Sunnis would no doubt make things worse. More neighborhoods flattened, more bodies in the streets. If the pessimists are right (and Iraq has been nothing but kind to pessimists) and the U.S. forces come under heavy attack and have to pull back to a few bases or even quit the country, full bore ethnic cleansing and civil war will probably be the order of the day. The Kurds are friendly with the Iranians so the Northern part of the country might not be that good of a spot to pull back to (depends how scared of Turkish intervention the Kurds are). We may have to choose between Iran and Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait: It depends if Iranian missiles reach them and if the straits of Hormuz are blocked for any period of time. If they can keep pumping they will be rewarded with even greater oil wealth as oil prices shoot up. Having the Iranians cut down to size will probably make them feel more secure in the long term. Civil unrest among Shia populations in the oil rich part of Saudi Arabia might cause some sleepless nights in the house of Saud in the short term though.

Russia: Falling oil prices were a big part of what brought down the Soviet Union. So the boost in oil prices will improve job security for the in crowd at the Kremlin. The Soviets won't be happy to see their wishes ignored which feeds into the sense that they are not taken seriously since the end of the Cold War. The Russians see the influence they used to have and had accepted as their birthright gone and that doesn't go over well. Russia may well land contracts to redevelop the Iranian infrastructure and even a greater amount of influence over Iranian production. Russia wouldn't mind altogether having the Iranians knocked down a bit though given their traditional desire to be surrounded by vassal buffer states (and the potential for an insufficiently cowed and dependent Iran to make trouble in the Muslim territories). And hey, if some of those new misslies they sold Iran knock down a few American planes that'd be a heckuva ad for Russian arms exports.

China: The story of China's foreign policy the last few years has been the scramble to secure resources. China has been offering no questions asked deals with rogue states that possess oil and minerals and has been pushing hard for pipeline deals to lessen their dependence on sea lanes for oil. As a fairly energy inefficient producer of exports this could hurt them both with an increase in costs and a drop in demand. China has to maintain growth to keep the populace reasonably happy. No doubt they will sell lots of new toys to the Iranians to replace the ones broken by the Americans but that seems a small consolation.

Mexico: They are heavily dependent on oil wealth for government spending and face declining production. So this could delay a day of reckoning for the Mexican government.

Much of the third world loses. They have been priced out of the oil market already and increases in price which would be painful for the west could be catastrophic to countries on the edge.

The United States: The best likely outcome is Iran being forced to accept international inspectors and back off its nuclear program after a short engagement with relatively light costs to the U.S. Even with this scenario, Oil will spike in price and probably set off another round of inflation which of course will require the good doctor Bernanke to administer another round of tough love to the economy a few months later . Higher prices (especially higher energy prices) will cut disposable income. Couple that with Interest hikes and ARMs resetting and you have a lot of marginal homeowners who just became ex-homeowners. So housing takes another hit. Domestic automakers are hit with the economy slowing down in general and energy prices incompatible with their product mix, perhaps even incompatible with life. Hope the Republicans don't need Indiana, Ohio, or Michigan to win the Presidency in 08.

In the Worst case Iran emerges bloodied but unbowed. Probably the nuclear program is delayed a year or three due to damage to the facilities themselves and to the Iranian economy but the country is determined as a point of national pride to follow the path to the bitter end. The U.S. suffers massive casualties in Iraq and in retaliation attacks elsewhere (probably leading to more punitive strikes on Iran and more long term reductions in Iranian oil production). The Straits are closed for a period of time and some oil facilities in nearby countries are damaged by missiles or terrorists. Mix in a hurricane or two that forces a shutdown, even a brief one, of the Gulf of Mexico and oil is at triple digit levels. The big 2.5 are in chapter 11, if not chapter 7. The country is in a deep recession and the bears are murmuring about a depression. Republicans endure many a "thumpin" and minority status for the next decade. Worst of all, many, many American troops aren't coming home....ever.

assimilation....or not

The American Scene:His Fordship

Second, while Ford's politics were odious in many respects, his belief (and the belief of his fellow industrialists) in the importance of teaching immigrants "American ways" and "the English language" was crucial to early-twentieth century America's ability to assimilate a huge influx of foreign-born laborers. One of the problems facing contemporary America is that the transition from an industrial to a service economy has changed, to some degree at least, the incentives for employers who hire immigrants. When you run a huge automotive plant, you need a workforce that speaks the same language and sticks around long enough to be trained to handle dangerous, complex machinery, and you need to be willing to pay them high(ish) wages to keep them there. Whereas when you're hiring people to dig gardens or mow lawns or clean offices, the benefits of having an unskilled, somewhat unreliable non-English speaking employee base (namely, that you don't need to pay them as much) often outweigh the costs. So where the old business lobby wanted assimilation, the new business lobby wants "temporary guest workers" - which makes Henry Ford look, well, maybe not so bad after all.

Free trade, like most other major policy shifts, has had a whole raft of unintended consequences. A big part of the Democratic Party surge in the "Rust Belt" has been the persistent negative economic effects of international competition on highly paid blue collar workers. The nation as a whole has suffered as well. Union factories were means for those in the underclass to move to a middle class life which in turn allowed them to invest in their children who could go to college and move up the ladder. Still the assumption is out there that Hispanics will be like other waves of immigration and migration and generationally will advance solidly into the middle class. Often you here this from the folks who sing free trade's praises and decry Unions as parasites on society. The conditions on the ground have changed. Hispanics are no worse or better than Southern Blacks that headed to Northern Cities or the European immigrants who came to America for opportunity. The thing that has changed is the economy (and thus the incentives on the actors).

There are good things about the changes (higher quality goods and lower prices) but the costs are still being tallied.

The good hands are wearing boxing gloves

CNN:Insurers play hardball in minor crash cases

If you are injured in a minor car crash, chances are good that you will be in the fight of your life to get the insurance company to pay all the medical costs you incur -- even if the accident was no fault of your own.

That's what CNN discovered in an 18-month investigation into minor-impact soft-tissue injury crashes around the country. Those are accidents in which there is little damage to the vehicle and the injuries to people are not easy to see by the naked eye or conventional medical tools like X-rays.

Since the mid-1990s, most of the major insurance companies -- led by the two largest, Allstate and State Farm -- have adopted a tough take-it-or-leave-it strategy when dealing with such cases.

The result has been billions in profits for insurance companies and little, if anything, for the public, according to University of Nevada insurance law professor Jeff Stempel.

"We can see that policyholders individually are getting hurt by being dragged through the court on fender-bender claims, and yet we don't see any collateral benefit in the form of reduced premiums even for the other policyholders," Stempel said.

"So I think now we can say to continue this kind of program is in my view institutionalized bad faith."

If you have never heard of the strategy, it's because insurance companies don't want you to know that they are paying out less and less for minor crashes even while their profits soar and your premiums continue to rise.

But after a review of more than 6,000 company documents and court records, interviews with a dozen people nationwide, including former company insiders, and conversations with accident victims, the picture is clear: If you challenge the offer by some insurance companies you will be left with no option but to go to court, where you will be dragged through the wringer.

In an affidavit in a New Mexico case where Allstate is being sued, one of the company's former attorneys said the strategy is to make fighting the company "so expensive and so time-consuming that lawyers would start refusing to help clients."

.....The cases, CNN found, illustrate a carefully developed strategy to make the victims look like they are trying to defraud the insurers.

But documents CNN obtained indicate profit, not fraud, is the reason companies decided to play hardball in small accidents.

For Allstate and State Farm, according to documents obtained by CNN, the strategy was developed in the mid-1990s with the assistance of consulting giant McKinsey & Co.

Looking for a way to boost profits, McKinsey focused on soft-tissue injuries incurred in minor crashes.

While the McKinsey documents -- numbered in the thousands -- are under seal in courts around the country, CNN saw several of them during a court hearing in Lexington, Kentucky.

Playing off Allstate's signature slogan, one document recommends the insurer put boxing gloves on its "good hands" for those who insist on going to court.

The strategy, according to former Allstate and State Farm employee Jim Mathis, relies on the three D's -- denying a claim, delaying settlement of the claim and defending against the claim in court.

"The profits are good, and as long as the community, the public allows this to occur, the insurance companies will get richer and people ... will not get a fair and reasonable settlement," Mathis said.

So the insurance companies are making more money by offloading their obligations onto the public. Meanwhile, premiums keep rising. Insurance companies are no longer satisfied with the spread between the premiums and the risk, now they are refusing to pay the full cost of the risk. Whether we're talking about health, homeowners, or auto insurance the pattern is the same: constantly increasing premiums and even more denied claims. This is what today's "free market" looks like, institutional fraud on a massive scale.

Because we, like, don't need to know anything about Hurricanes..

Jeff Masters' wunderblog:Hurricane research flights grounded

For the first time since NOAA began flying research aircraft into hurricane in the 1950's, there is no money to fund airborne hurricane research for an upcoming hurricane season. NOAA's state-of-the-art flying weather research laboratories, the two P-3 Orion hurricane hunter aircraft, may sit idle this hurricane season due to a lack of funding. NOAA's Hurricane Research Division (HRD) usually receives several million dollars each year to perform hurricane research using the P-3's. However, funding for HRD has steadily declined over the past decade, forcing HRD to reduce staff and cut back on hurricane research. Now, this key form of hurricane research has been zeroed out by NOAA.

Not only is this dumb as a policy decision, it's dumb as a political decision.

Guiliani and the future of the Republican party

John Podhoretz weighs in on Guiliani as a candidate:

So I don't think he can win the nomination without making some peace with social conservatives. The question then is what responsibility social conservatives — or, more precisely, those who lead social-conservative organizations — will do then. Because here is the profound problem facing us in 2008: If social conservatives decide to run a third-party candidate out of disgust with Rudy (or even John McCain, who could cause the same sort of schism on, say, immigration), they will ensure the election of Hillary or Barack or John Edwards.

No one should surrender their deepest beliefs on the altar of political expediency. But American politics is most often a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. That's the real choice social conservatives may have to make in 2008 — between a principled stand that leads to a terrible result or a more pragmatic stand that requires some real bending.

L.A. Times:State aims for Feb. 5 primary to boost clout

With Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's backing, state lawmakers from both parties are moving rapidly to make California a player in choosing the nation's next president by holding the state's primary four months earlier.

A bipartisan group of state senators introduced legislation Friday to change the 2008 presidential primary from June 3 to Feb. 5. Another bill was introduced by an Assembly Republican on Thursday, the day after Schwarzenegger declared that moving up the primary date would make California "relevant" nationally and was "something to shoot for."

The February date — the earliest the state can choose under national party rules — would place California at the beginning of the election season, right after four states that have secured the most privileged spots in January for their Democratic caucuses or primaries: Iowa (Jan. 14), Nevada (Jan. 19), New Hampshire (Jan. 22) and South Carolina (Jan. 29). The Republican calendar has Iowa and New Hampshire first, with the rest of the schedule in flux.

......Republican moderates such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who might face opposition in Southern states for their liberal views on social issues, could benefit from the change.

The train wreck I see coming here is "values" voters being faced with nothing but unpalatable choices in a Giuliani candidacy. They could walk away from the Republican party and try to build something new from scratch (which probably will go nowhere and then they will be going back hat in hand). They could take one for the team and pull the lever for the lesser of two evils. Of course once the GOP gets away with a pro abortion president are they ever going to willingly go back to nominating pro-life presidential candidates (we'd probably get a veep or some other consolation prize)? Or, they can stay home in 08 to teach the Party a lesson and let the Democrats have the keys to the "anti-Terrorism" Leviathan Bush built (which if Clinton the First's term is any guide will probably be targeted against "domestic terrorism"). On the other hand, one lesson the party brass might take from this would is the Christians are not to be trusted, leading to even more unpalatable candidates as the GOP tries to forge a new consensus not overly reliant on values voters.

The Democrats would cheer any of these outcomes for the immediate partisan boost. But I'm not sure convincing a decent sized swath of the populace they that the federal government is an unrestrainable bad actor is a good thing for the future of progressive values, or for that matter of the nation. The Anti-D.C. strain of political thought is strong enough without adding fuel to the fire.

Buh-bye John

Chicago Tribune: Edwards to keep bloggers

John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate, is keeping his hired bloggers who, after what must’ve been a very sober talk with him, have promised they’ll be more temperate in their language than they were before they joined his campaign.

Here’s the statement issued by Edwards' campaign:

The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwan's posts personally offended me. It's not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word. We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

For anyone who hasn’t been following this story, the Edwards campaign has caught flack from conservatives after past anti-pope and anti-conservative personal blog postings by Marcotte and McEwan gained wide circulation through outraged right-of-center bloggers and talk radio.

Marcotte once wrote:

“The Pope's gotta tell women who give birth to stillborns that their babies are cast into Satan's maw. . . . The Catholic Church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics."

McEwan called social conservatives “wingnut Christofascist base.”

These are the ones safe for publication. Other charming statements "not intended to malign anyone's faith" are swimming around the net. Of course anyone who points out the statements these two have made is to blame for the controversy.

Anyone who hire bigots to run their campaign's communications, and sticks with them after their bigotry is exposed, deserves to lose. Even more brilliant is hiring a vocal bigot who targets one of the swing constituencies Edwards would need for a general election run (Catholics). Catholics may not agree with the church on social policy, but I don't think they are anxious to sign on with someone who attacks their faith. Just like members of any group they will complain, but that doesn't mean they will accept attacks from outside.

I liked Edwards' emphasis on poverty, but there are places you do not go.

The diffeence between a boy and a man

....is taking responsibility

The Chicago Tribune-Mike Downey:Bears coulda, shoulda

Grossman was dejected to see this game and this chance to quiet his critics slip away.

"It was slippery," he said of the wet football. "When the ball was snapped up from center, it would just kind of slide off of my hands."

The defense's leader, Brian Urlacher, also saw a Super Bowl ring slip through his fingers.

"We just couldn't make the plays we needed to make and we didn't do a good job of tackling," Urlacher said. "The defense and I just didn't make plays. All season long we have prided ourselves on our defense and on making plays, and we did not come out and do that."

The Surge....Super Sized!

TPM Muckracker:"Surge" Far Larger Than 20,000 Troops

A analysis released today by the Congressional Budget Office shows that the administration, in its public comments, has vastly underestimated the actual number of extra troops that will be deployed to Iraq under the president's "surge" plan.

The administration's estimate of approximately 21,000 extra troops only counts combat units, according to the analysis, and because combat units require support forces, the actual number of additional troops who will be in Iraq will likely exceed 35,000......

Also, it turns out it's going to cost 2-3x the amount the administration claimed. What a shock.

Jackasses

Sports Illustrated:NFL won't let church show game

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- The NFL has nixed a church's plans to use a wall projector to show the Colts-Bears Super Bowl game, saying it would violate copyright laws.

NFL officials spotted a promotion of Fall Creek Baptist Church's "Super Bowl Bash" on the church Web site last week and overnighted a letter to the pastor demanding the party be canceled, the church said.

Initially, the league objected to the church's plan to charge a fee to attend and that the church used the license-protected words "Super Bowl" in its promotions.

Pastor John D. Newland said he told the NFL his church would not charge anyone and that it would drop the use of the forbidden words.

But the NFL objected to the church's plans to use a projector to show the game, saying the law limits it to one TV no bigger than 55 inches.

The church will likely abandon its plans to host a Super Bowl party.

"We want to be supportive of our local team," Newland said. "For us to have all our congregation huddled around a TV that is big enough only for 10 or 12 people to watch just makes little sense."

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league's long-standing policy is to ban "mass out-of-home viewing" of the Super Bowl. An exception is made for sports bars and other businesses that show televised sports as a part of their everyday operations.

"We have contracts with our (TV) networks to provide free over-the-air television for people at home," Aiello said. "The network economics are based on television ratings and at-home viewing. Out-of-home viewing is not measured by Nielsen."

So it's OK to publicly show the Super Bowl in a business that derives economic benefit from it but not in a non-profit that does not. I guess it's OK that the "Nielson" doesn't count all the folks in bars across the country, but Goodell forbid that the folks of the Fall Creek Baptist church might not be watching at home (just how many members in the church are Nielson participants?)

Two Bulls in a China Shop

AP:US-Iranian tensions could trigger war

As the rhetoric grows more strident, a U.S. military official in the Gulf likened the U.S.-Iran standoff to the buildup in hostility in Europe before World War I, when the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne triggered a tragic war that engulfed a continent.

"A mistake could be made and you could end up in something that neither side ever really wanted, and suddenly it's August 1914 all over again," the U.S. officer said on condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the issue. "I really believe neither side wants a fight."

Wouldn't that be exciting....

Without a clue

Chicago Tribune:Bush in Illinois to tout Policies

EAST PEORIA, Ill. -- President Bush plugged his economic policies Tuesday, telling an audience at Caterpillar Inc.'s manufacturing plant that his administration's actions played a role in helping Caterpillar achieve its three-year string of record earnings.

....."In this company," Bush told a crowd of about 400 Caterpillar employees and local officials, "you've shown how to compete in a global economy."

Caterpillar has long been known for its organizational and logistical prowess in support of its far-flung operations. However, it was not always as lean and efficient as it has become over the past decade. In the early 1990s Caterpillar endured a series of lengthy and bitter strikes by the United Auto Workers union, as it sought to rein in wages and benefits.

The company eventually prevailed, and for more than a decade has experienced labor peace with the UAW. The Peoria-based company employs about 17,000 people in the local area, but its production workforce is smaller than it once was, thanks in part to the company's expansion of production in Asia and Europe. A residue of bitterness over those strikes still lingers among former workers for the town's leading employer.

......Caterpillar is a major exporter, and it also produces products in foreign markets for sale in those regions. But it was apparent when Bush spoke that the rank-and-file workers remain unconvinced on the issue.

When Bush told the crowd, "We don't need more taxes," he drew a big round of applause. But the group failed to respond with similar warmth when he told the workers that "the temptation is to say: `Let's protect ourselves. Let's isolate ourselves.'"

Gee, I wonder why they're skeptical. After Cat's egregious Union busting in the nineties followed up by job, wage and benefit cuts it's not much of a surprise they aren't cheering the company's record profits. That Bush thought that this was the crowd to get footage of workers clapping in response to his free trade gospel is a sign of how completely disconnected from real life he is.

More fun in International relations

StrategyPade:Coping With The Starving Masses

January 26, 2007: While China is shipping the same amount of oil to North Korea, in 2006, as it did in 2005, food exports are down by about half (some 210,000 tons less). A lot less food is getting into North Korea, and because last years crops were below average, the population is expected to come through this Winter in very bad shape. Planners in South Korea now fear a flood of three million starving refugees (headed into China and South Korea), if the North Korean government collapses in the near future. Plans are being made on how to deal with such large numbers of malnourished refugees.
January 22, 2007: In response to U.S. accusations, the UN has halted transfers of hard currency to North Korea, and begun an audit of how UN aid money is spent in North Korea........
January 21, 2007: South Korean and American commanders are beginning to make plans for the possible collapse of the North Korean government. There is increasing Chinese diplomatic and political activity inside North Korea, and many rumors that officers from the North Korean security forces, backed by China, are plotting to overthrow the government. Interestingly, even with all these stories going around, there have been no arrests in the north. There is, however, a growing unease on the streets, among the North Korean people......

Even in North Korea implodes relatively peacefully, dealing with refugee flows (not to mention trying to make sure bad stuff doesn't leave the country) is going to be a massive undertaking. If Kim goes for broke and attacks South Korea or if the country falls into Civil war then it will be a foreign policy and military crisis. The South Koreans and the Forces in Theater can probably stop the Norks but there isn't much of calvary to ride over the horizon. Dealing with a counter-insurgency does not prepare troops or their leaders for more conventional warfare as Israel learned to its detriment in Lebanon.

Things that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside

Tribune-Star:County has one of state’s highest hazardous material concentrations

Organizer Gordon Pleus said, “The county of Vigo and the City of Terre Haute have many hazardous-material facilities. If they had the worst incident that could happen, we’d have a kill zone of miles.”

Vigo County has one of Indiana’s highest concentrations of hazardous materials, Pleus added.

As Terre Haute is a transportation hub for both rail and roadway, Pleus says emergency responders need to be prepared.

“There’s some really nasty stuff coming through the city, and we need to be prepared for it,” Pleus said. “It’s very important for [HazMat responders] to know how to protect themselves, because if they can’t protect themselves, they can’t take care of members of the public.”

"A kill zone of miles", it's one of the many special things about living in the armpit of the nation.

Brownback zigs where the others zag

TNR's Plank:What is Brownback up to?

Probably the most interesting surge-related development on the right comes courtesy of Sam Brownback. Brownback, you'll recall, is the evangelical-cum-Catholic angling to become the conservative alternative to John McCain. Up until the last few months, he was a pretty reliable supporter of the war in Iraq. But he's since concluded that the war has taken a disastrous turn, and he's become more and more willing to call the administration on it. This all culminated with this week's statement that, "I do not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer. ... Iraq requires a political rather than a military solution."
.......
More interestingly, the move turns out to be pretty welcome among Brownback's desired base of social conservatives. While 52 percent of Republicans support the surge according to a just-released AP/Ipsos poll, some 60 percent of white evangelicals oppose it, as do 56 percent of self-described conservatives. So we're actually talking about a twofer here: shore up your base while positioning yourself to poach votes from the other guys. (Actually, a three-fer, since this has the added merit of being the substantively sane position.) Not bad for a day's work.

If the surge works out poorly Brownback may move up in the rankings. The only thing is this helps Brownback with his natural base, but hurts him a little with the rest of the party. Best thing that could happen to energize his base would be a Supreme Court retirement.

A half hearted pursuit of a half-witted goal

Washington Times: In limbo on Iraq

The president's argument fails to convince me that the effort required to secure Baghdad, which comes down to American troops quashing sectarian street violence, is worth the price. It's hard to imagine that an increased American presence, which is necessarily temporary, will win more than a pause in the violence, which goes back centuries. But I'm also unconvinced that the mission itself is of strategic value to the United States. My great concern, as I have written before, is that it's very possible that renewed American fighting in Baghdad, if successful -- which, as Americans, we must hope it to be -- will not only stabilize the chaotic capital of Iraq, but will also entrench its Shi'ite-led, pro-Hezbollah, anti-Western government. This suggests that victory in Iraq may deliver not a new brother for the anti-terror coalition, but rather a perfect ally for Iran. And what kind of American victory is that?
.........For example, if, as al Qaeda claims, there are some 12,000 al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, it is obviously a mission of strategic value to the United States to eliminate them, and to do so with as little loss of American life as possible.
This would likely require U.S. air attacks and such attacks would likely entail Iraqi civilian casualties. Just the thought of such casualties seems to render such a mission unthinkable to both Bush opponents and the Bush team, which now presides, for example, over a recurring battle for Baghdad's Haifa Street, where enemy fighters keep returning to fire at American and Iraqi troops from positions in high-rise buildings. Is it just me, or does anyone ever wonder why, if pacifying Baghdad is so darn vital, those buildings are still standing?
It is the great irony of our time that even as our stone-age enemies seek to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, we in the postmodern West seek to inflict none. Which is extremely nice, but what is it they say about nice guys? And how nice, really, is it? Citizens of the 21st century, we pat ourselves on the back for an elevated morality even as we expect our brave volunteers to risk life and limb to protect both ourselves and, in effect, our enemies also. This does nothing but prolong the state of war and the suffering that goes with it, which is surely neither nice, nor morally uplifting. Maybe such a mindset is relatively new to the American identity, but the limbo of unresolved conflict it consigns us to promises to be with us for a long time.

That Crazy Duck!

CNN:Plucky Duck Survives Another Brush With Death

Perky is one tough bird.

The ring-neck duck survived being shot and spending two days in a hunter's refrigerator -- and now she's had a close brush with death on a veterinarian's operating table.

The one-pound female duck stopped breathing Saturday during surgery to repair gunshot damage to one wing, said Noni Beck of the Goose Creek Wildlife Sanctuary.

Veterinarian David Hale revived the bird after several tense moments by performing CPR.

"I started crying, 'She's alive!"' Beck said.

Perky entered the headlines last week after a hunter's wife opened her refrigerator door and the should've-been-dead duck lifted its head and looked at her. The bird had been in the fridge for two days since being shot and presumed killed January 15.

But was the hunter's name Elmer?

Eating the Seed Corn

Fleet Owner:GM Considers selling Allison

General Motors (GM) yesterday announced it is considering selling its lucrative Allison Transmission business. The divesture would dispose of an operation “not central to GM’s mission of designing, manufacturing and selling cars and light trucks globally,” said the OEM.

Allison is considered a dominant player in the transmissions market for heavy- and medium-duty trucks, according to investment banking firm Bear Stearns. Allison should be an attractive asset for bidders, Bear Stearns said.

Headquartered in Indianapolis, Allison employs 3,400 persons and has seven plants. It sells automatic and powershift transmissions and provides product parts and support through a worldwide distribution network and offices in North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

An Allison acquisition would have some strategic potential for ZF, Eaton or Volvo, Bear Stearns said. But it considers International the “best likely fit” considering that OEM’s core offerings and competencies.

GM keeps selling its profitable assets to prop up its unprofitable car business. That seems short sighted to me. The car business, even if they do everything right (which is a Texas sized "if") is going to shrink as more competitors enter the market and GM abandons segments they are losing money in. The car business is always going to cyclical as well. Having a solid revenue and profit flow over the long haul seems like a good thing to me, probably a better thing than a few hundred million more to throw at the car business today.

Interpreting the Times

Mark Shea explains why he is skeptical of the triumph of Islam in Europe

Beyond this however, I have to say that in a certain sense, I'm not particularly addressing America's relationship with the Islamic world at all. That's because, as I said, I don't think the Story is about America (or Islam for that matter). I think it's about Christ and the Church. For me, things matter as they are related to that central drama. One of the patterns I note in the biblical revelation of Christ's Church is the pattern I described yesterday: that the Assyrian is ultimately a rod in the hand of God. He may think he's calling the shots, but actually it's God. So I think the wise approach is to "seek first His Kingdon and His righteousness" rather than spend the bulk of our energy looking for ways to hold on to our sin while still cleverly manipulating politics, science, technology, etc. in order to stave off the consequences of our rejection of God. It seems obvious to me that the post-Christian West is deeply engaged in the latter process and that the result will simply be to make our final self-inflicted judgement (all such dooms are self-inflicted) more complicated and terrible.

However, I also believe that God is rich in mercy and that repentence is possible at any time. I have no particular crystal ball that allows me to see the future with respect to Islam and the West. But we do have a bit of revelation concerning the Church and it gives me hope. I am not as confident as some of my readers that the world is doomed to an Islamic future in saecula saeculorum. That is not to say it is not a source of great evil. It is simply to say that I'm not ready to simply throw in the sponge and say the power of the Christ who conquers death is helpless against the onslaught of Islam. Part of my reason for thinking this is theological: Islam does not seem to me to fit the bill for the final apostasy and the nature of Antichrist. We are, to be sure, absolutely guaranteed that the Church faces a "final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh." (CCC 675).

The question I find myself asking, in light of biblical revelation, is this: which side of the conflict between the post-Christian West and the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatic Islamosphere is far more likely to give us "the lawless one ... the one doomed to perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). Say what you will about Islam, but I don't see it producing that figure in a million years, whereas the West is ripe to give birth to him right now.

That's not to say I *prefer* the Foaming Bronze Age Thugs to win. It's to say that, in my heart, I cannot believe that they will. I think Scripture is true and that the coming of Christ will take place in a world that is apostate and (mark this) seriously ready to deify man, not in a world that never heard the gospel and which regards the deification of man with horror. That description fits the decadent West a lot better than than the Islamic East, so I retain a confidence, if you can call it that, that the winners of this particular "civilizational struggle" will be the post-Christian West, whose cultural and technological masters are laboring even now to create fresh sins that cry out to heaven and terrors that will dwarf Islam's crimes as continue on our post-Christian path toward "the supreme religious deception ... of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh."

When that will come, we don't know. *That* it will come is guaranteed by the word of God. And for my money, it seems much more like to come from a Decadent West triumphant over Islam than from Radical Islam triumphant over the West.

There is a lot to like in this passage. The flaw I see with that reasoning is that it assumes that the return of Christ will happen in the near future and so attempts to predict the near term future events based on that framework. I don't know how many Hal Lindsey books I read in the 80's that had all manner of predictions of what the awful Soviets would do. Then I remember reading a book from the 1920's claiming Jews were in the midst of procuring the components for the temple. And who can forget 88 reasons? Today we have Tim LaHaye and his imitators, all of whom try to adapt a particular eschatology to the World of Today and come up with a line from here to there.

Part of this is the belief that these momentous events must be happening in our Generation. This has gone into overdrive since the creation (re-creation?) of the State of Israel.

For all we know, Europe may well be overcome by a demographic tide and be Muslim dominated for a century, or even a millenium, before being won back. Maybe by the the Christians of the developing world (hey, the meek will inherit the Earth after all). Maybe Ralph Peters is right and Islam in Europe will be the target of a horrific purge. I don't know.

A lot of the passages that are quoted so confidently in setting timelines and predicting events are not only separted from us by language, time, and culture, and in a difficult genre (prophecy) but are written to some extent in code. John was trying not to sell out his fellow believers and make it past the Roman censors (he was on a Roman Prison island) in the Book of Revelation. Daniel was in the service of pagan, if God fearing king, and surrounded by palace intrigue. Both were writing Truth, but confidently interpreting the "real meaning for today" can get you in trouble. It's sort of like going to an Opera with your Berlitz dictionary and trying to write a detailed explanation of what happened, you're going to look stupid.

Shea is absolutely not even close to the extremes on this (He has plenty of caveats), but I just get nervous when we try to make predictions or guesses about the future. Of course on the other extreme, you could say "“Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” The purpose of eschatology is to focus the mind of the Church on her coming Lord, not to give her a leg up on CNN.

The Danger of Being Self-Educated

J.M. Cotzee reviews Norman Mailer's The Castle in the Forest and reviews Hitler's intellectual life as a young adult:

Hitler may not have been much of an artist (he always had trouble with the human figure—a telling weakness), but there is no denying that, at least in his early years, he was an intellectual of sorts. He read incessantly (though only what he liked), he was interested in ideas (though only in ideas that fitted his preconceptions) and believed in their power, he involved himself in the arts (though his tastes were unshakably provincial and prematurely conservative).

From the wealth of new ideas to which he was exposed, he made a selection which he cobbled together to compose the philosophy of National Socialism. The pseudo-anthropology of Guido von List made a deep impression on him. List divided mankind into an Aryan master race, originating in the northernmost fastnesses of Europe, and a race of slaves with whom the Aryans had regrettably miscegenated over the centuries. He urged the recovery of the pure Aryan blood-line by strict sexual segregation from the slave race, via the creation of a state comprising Aryan masters and non-Aryan slaves ruled over by a Führer who would be above the law.

Another of the charlatans under whose influence Hitler fell was Lanz von Liebenfels, founder of the Order of the New Templars and publisher of the magazine Ostara, of which he was an avid reader. Liebenfels was an extreme misogynist who saw women as lower beings attracted by their nature to "primitive-sensual dark men of inferior races." What Hitler knew of racial science and eugenics, and later imported into National Socialist policy, came not from scientific reading but filtered through popularizers and vulgarizers like Liebenfels.

All in all, the adventures of Adolf Hitler in the realm of ideas provide a cautionary tale against letting an impressionable young person loose to pursue his or her education in a state of total freedom. For seven years Hitler lived in a great European city in a time of ferment from which emerged some of the most exciting, most revolutionary thought of the new century. With an unerring eye he picked out not the best but the worst of the ideas around him. Because he was never a student, with lectures to attend and reading lists to follow and fellow students to argue with and assignments to complete and examinations to sit, the half-baked ideas he made his own were never properly challenged. The people he associated with were as ill-educated, volatile, and undisciplined as himself. No one in his circle had the intellectual command to put his chosen authorities in their place as what they were: disreputable and even comical mountebanks.

Today we have information everywhere. Much of it conveniently sorted by Ideological bent. It is easy to find scholarly (or pseudo-scholarly) articles online that will conclusively state the viewpoint you believe....with footnotes! Perhaps this follows from Postmodernism's exaltation of the subjective. Perhaps it is the lowered barriers between the author and print. Now I don't have to have the money to pat for a press run or to be able to convince a skeptical publisher in order to put my ideas out there for all the world to see.

And there are people reading these ideas, many will glom onto the good, some will attach to the bad. Millions of souls ingesting from their own reading list becoming ever more convinced of their side's rightness and everyone else's insanity. Where will they take us?

'bout Time

CNN Political Ticker: Huckabee to file exploratory committee next week

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will form a presidential exploratory committee "early next week, as early as Monday," an initial step in a bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, a Huckabee advisor tells CNN.

Huckabee's my favorite right now on the Republican side, but he faces long odds.

McCain is the "inevitable" candidate on the Republican side right now. McCain has laid the groundwork for several years (I suspect that McCain-Feingold stifling the Colorado Springs contingent was a feature, not a bug), but I just have a hard time imagining him being nominated unless all hope is gone for a Republican victory (see Dole, Bob). He missed his chance in 2000. He would be 72 when he took the oath, 76 if he won a 2nd term, and 80 when he would be campaigning with the follow on Republican candidate. That'd be almost as short sighted as embarking on a nation-building project in the Middle East.

No one has really latched onto the outsider/anti-McCain mantle yet, but there's a lot of dogs in the hunt. All have their issues, but several have been organization building quite some time. With the amounts the frontrunners are going to extort (see the grumbling about Hillary's fundraising) It's going to be a hard slog for an outsider to raise money from the leftovers.

A Poison Pill for your Health!

Mahablog:Health Care and Poison Pills

Awhile back Harold Meyerson wrote a column called “Master of the Poison Pill” in which he outlined the Karl Rove method of taking an issue away from the opposition. For example, in 2002 the Dems were getting traction on their proposal for a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, which the White House opposed. When the Bushies decided to flip-flop and create the DHS, they inserted a union-busting poison pill into the bill. Dems balked, and the Bushies promptly claimed the DHS as their own invention, accusing Dems of being opposed to national security.

Sometimes it’s more than just a pill being used to poison a debate. Wingnuts still equate opposition to the war in Iraq with being “soft” on national security, even though Iraq ain’t doin’ a bleeping thing on behalf of national security except draining resources that could be put to better use elsewhere while causing more people to hate us. The Bushies tried to pull something like this with Bush’s Social Security “reform”; Dems were accused of being unwilling to “fix” Social Security because they didn’t back Bush’s plan. Fortunately the American people realized the “plan” was ridiculous.

I’m already seeing signs that the Right is going to use Bush’s utterly absurd health care proposals to claim that Democrats aren’t serious about health care reform. There are two columns in the Washington Post today that say Dems are poopyheads for not even listening to Bush’s “ideas.”

The President's plan punishes people with good coverage and does nothing for most people without coverage. Mainly it appears to be another play to give away money to the well off (who would benefit from a $15000 non-refundable deduction and could afford a crappy Insurance In Name Only high deductible low premium plan)

The Great Salami predicts:

Ezra Klein comments on the State of the Union Address and adds this bit about the Democratic Response by Freshman Senator Jim Webb from Virginia

Webb's response, in contrast, was strong, clear and just. His voice vibrated with outrage and urgency, and his speech laid out Democratic principles with a confident, spare, eloquence. By far the best SOTU response I've seen. I should note, as an interesting aside, that I spent a few minutes chatting with Webb earlier in the day, and he seemed perfectly at ease. Not a hint of anxiety in the freshman senator about to give a nationally televised response on behalf of his entire party. It struck me as vaguely odd at the time, but perfectly appropriate given the quality of his performance. Webb's appeal, I think, comes from his obvious and genuine conviction. He does have an ideology, and it makes him a far more compelling messenger than the technocrats and establishmentarians Democrats tend to rely on.

If by some miracle McCain does win the Nomination and the Presidency in 2008, I am picking Jim Webb as the Democratic Party Presidential nominee in 2012. If it's not him, it'll be a Southern Governor. You heard it here first. EDIT:Jonathan Alter at Newsweek gushes about Webb as well, though he downplays Webb's White House appeal.

The Evangelical Choice?

Some interesting statistics from Christianity Today

41% White evangelicals who say they are unhappy that the Democrats won the midterm election.
41% White evangelicals who say they are happy that the Democrats won.

Who'd a thunk it? Evangelicals look a lot like the rest of the Country did in 2000 and 2004, split down the middle. So the question is is this a lagging indicator of the political mood of the country or are we seeing a new equilibrium?

More interesting numbers:

50% Black Protestants who say their churches offered election materials.
30% White evangelicals who reported this.

Believe it or not most White Evangelical churches are fairly apolitical (if you think Dobson is hard on politicans, you ought to hear him talk about pastors)

How Big Business Breeds Populists

Bloomberg: Worker Ire Grows, GDP Share Shrinks as Profits Boom via The Big Picture

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Missile assembler Thomas Tanzillo dipped into retirement savings and worked a temporary job to support his family during a 70-day strike at Raytheon Co.'s Tucson, Arizona, plant. He may need years to recover.

His union on Jan. 14 accepted a three-year contract almost identical to the one that sparked the strike: 3 percent annual raises and higher health-care premiums. The deal came after Raytheon posted eight straight quarters of profit growth and awarded missile unit President Louise Francesconi a 19 percent raise to $1.7 million -- including restricted stock -- in 2005.

The Tucson settlement shows how workers are struggling to keep pace with growing U.S. economic wealth. Company profits as a percentage of gross domestic product are at a 40-year high, rising to 12 percent in the third quarter from 7 percent five years ago. Wages and salaries fell to 45 percent from 49 percent, government data show. Workers like Tanzillo are bitter.

``We don't mind making concessions if the company goes through a few lean years, but now that we're back to the boom years, they're not sharing,'' Tanzillo, 56, says.

.........
``This is one of the many battles to come in the war on the middle class,'' Martinez says. ``Companies like Raytheon are focusing on making money at any cost, instead of looking at the common good of a community.''

Almost three-quarters of Americans believe the growing gap between the rich and the poor is a serious concern, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll in December.

The GDP gap is widening even though wage gains began to pick up late last year. It wasn't until September that average hourly wages surpassed the year-end 2001 rate, adjusted for inflation, according to U.S. Labor Department data.

Average hourly earnings rose 1.7 percent in 2006 on an inflation-adjusted basis, the department says.

U.S. workers are only beginning to recover lost ground. After inflation, median family income of $56,643 hasn't grown since 2001, says economist Jared Bernstein of the Washington- based Economic Policy Institute, which is funded by foundations, companies and labor unions.

``The typical family could end this recovery behind where they started,'' Bernstein says. ``That's a hell of an indictment given how much income we've created.''

The U.S. economy is expanding steadily, with GDP forecast to rise 2.5 percent this year, according to a January Bloomberg News survey of economists. Yet that wealth hasn't translated into greater prosperity for many Americans.

Companies such as Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon, drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co., Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and United Parcel Service Inc. have ratcheted up profits while containing wages and benefits like hawks since the recovery began in late 2001.

Unlike earlier expansions, more profit is going to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks than is being earmarked for capital expenditures and wage growth.

...........
S&P 500 companies have reported four consecutive years of profit gains, with operating earnings rising 13 percent in 2005, 24 percent in 2004, and 19 percent in both 2003 and 2002, Silverblatt says.

S&P estimates that operating profits rose 15 percent last year and will come in about 10 percent higher this year.

U.S. managers, taking advantage of new technologies and emerging economies, can better connect low-cost sources of production with buyers in affluent markets. The wage competition -- which Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach calls global labor arbitrage -- keeps many U.S. workers' pay in check, stretches their hours and shifts more benefits costs from companies to employees.

``The advent of the Asian workforce has maybe changed labor economics in the long term,'' United Technologies Corp. Chief Executive Officer George David says.
........
Many employers are increasing productivity at workers' expense, says Eric Kingsley, an Encino, California, labor lawyer who wasn't involved in the UPS lawsuit.

``The 40-hour week has been completely obliterated,'' Kingsley says.
........
Rising health costs also weigh on workers and retirees. The contract requires hourly workers to pay at least 88 percent more for health insurance over three years, including 19 percent in the first year......

Bush is leading the Republican party to a political Dien Bien Phu. Americans have been taking it in the pocketbook for years (including through the last "recovery"). If the economy has a long hard landing, 2008 could be 1932 all over again.

Good to know

How to chill a can of pop in 2 minutes
via Evangelical Outpost: Yak Shaving Razor #76

It's All About Me

Another fine piece from The Evangelical Outpost

Pro-life advocates often claim that we live in a "culture of death." But most of us don't believe it. Not really. We may use the phrase as a rhetorical tool but deep in our hearts we think that our family, friends, and neighbors wouldn't knowingly kill another human being.

We convince ourselves that they simply don't realize what they're doing. If only they could see the pictures. If only we could convince them that the "fetus" is a person. If only they knew it was a human life they were destroying. If they only knew, they wouldn't -- they couldn't -- go through with the abortion.

But they do know. And the abortions continue. Not because we live in a culture of death but because we live in a culture of me.
......
In the fall of 2003, Glamour magazine had an article about a group of abortion clinics called the "November Gang" who encourage women to express their feeling about the procedure by writing them down on a pink, heart-shaped sheet of paper:
......
Notice that all three of these examples mention God. God forgives. The baby is better off with God. But the last one best sums up the attitude behind the Culture of Me: God thought you should be born but I beg to differ.
......
While reading these quotes I was reminded of the words of Josef Pieper. In his book Faith, Hope, Love, the Thomist philosopher examines the various meanings and connections between the concepts we use to describe "love." What, he asks, is the "recurrent identity underlying the countless forms of love?"

"My tentative answer to this question runs as follows: In every conceivable case love signifies much the same as approval. This is first of all to be taken in the literal sense of the word's root: loving someone or something means finding him or its probes, the Latin word for 'good.' It is a way of turning to him or it and saying, "It's good that you exist; it's good that you are in the world!"
The opposite of love, therefore, is the attitude that says "It's good that you not exist; it's good that you are not in the world!" No matter what words they chose to scribble on a pink paper heart, this is the message being spoken to these unborn children. While these women were informed that abortion was a reasonable choice, no one told them they were choosing the negation of love.

Truth.

I'm sick of this crap

Hugh Hewitt posts a piece called Will The GOP Break The Trust? supposedly written by "an active duty office with 26 years in, including combat experience"

Since the 1968 presidential election, the Republicans have held the mantle of national security and they have deserved it. The Democrats have been the party of pacifism and retreat. History simply will not allow the Democrats to run from this label as their forced retreat from Vietnam demonstrated and their softness with regards to the former Soviet Union proves. On EVERY MAJOR NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE the Democrats have been WRONG. At least they are consistent. In opposition for most of my life, the Republicans have stood with America and argued for greater American security at nearly every turn. They argued consistently for a tougher stance against communism both in Eurasia and in South America. They favored programs designed to challenge the Soviets and ultimately produced Ronald Reagan who defeated the Soviets by confronting them and competing with them on every front. It was as he said, “Simple, we win they lose.” Ultimately it broke their backs and not the US bank. But today, Republicans risk something far greater than self-defeat in Iraq; they face demoralizing permanently the armed forces that protect this country.

The morale among America’s armed forces following Vietnam was abysmal. Drug use flourished, ships could not put to sea, and army divisions were divisions in name only. It was the era of the hollow military and it corresponded with the Carter administration and continued Democratic majorities in Congress. Democratic Senator Frank Church systematically dismantled the US intelligence apparatus; a legacy that haunts America today as it still suffers from the loss of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) assets. After Vietnam the US decided that an all-volunteer military was the best avenue towards a professional military capable of meeting all threats along the spectrum of conflict. From low-intensity conflict to global nuclear conflagration, a new armed force was created but still remained undermanned and under-funded. Throughout the bleak times of Democratic leadership, the Republicans consistently fought to keep America’s fighting forces second to none and were willing to gamble political capital to make their case. Ultimately they were successful and the election of President Reagan ushered in better funding and most importantly better morale.

America began to respect the armed forces once again as they time and again demonstrated their professionalism and dedication to the nation whether in the skies over the Gulf of Sidra, taking down the Achille Lauro from terrorists or on Grenada. No longer were soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen ashamed or embarrassed to wear their uniforms. They wore them with pride and their fellow citizens respected them for their service. The point to be made here is that the armed forces were supported consistently and often at great political cost by ONE party, the Republicans and that support was rewarded by fidelity and electoral support. Today, Republicans risk discarding that trust for crass political expediency. Instead of demonstrating leadership “under fire,” political fire, the type of leadership they demand of their armed forces under REAL FIRE, they are now joining the sirens song of cut and run orchestrated by the Democrats and their wholly owned subsidiary, the mainstream media.

The cost of this strategy by Republicans will leave a vacuum for military members. Who among us in uniform will trust ANY politician with her life? Who among our professional VOLUNTEER military class will willingly allow his children to serve knowing that neither party can be trusted to lead? The threat to American society and freedom is that no one will serve because the political class cannot be trusted with our lives and the lives of our children. Today the army and marines are enjoying tremendous re-enlistment rates despite onerous and dangerous deployments? Why is that? It’s really quite simple, leadership, the leadership of the president and his steadfast willingness to put his political life on the line and the leadership of America’s commissioned and non-commissioned officer corps. Most members of the armed forces reflexively expect the Democrats to pay lip service to supporting them while doing all they can to see their mission fail for political gain but they have always expected the Republicans to be resolute and to stand by them. Today it appears the curtain is failing on those times and with that the morale and effectiveness of the all-volunteer force.

If the Republicans continue on this suicidal path, members of the armed forces will leave their services in droves and simply not vote.

Somehow we survived the war of 1812, the abandonment of reconstruction in 1877, Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, and Somalia and countless other half-assed interventions. For that matter the First and Second World wars had somewhat crappy outcomes (the First led to the Second, and the Second left half of Europe as spoils of war to a dictatorship). All of the wars featured criticism (often lots) of the Commander in Chief's decisions. Believe it or not, in spite of all the efforts to the contrary, this country is still a democracy. If this anonymous officer has a problem with that I'd really rather he resigned his commsion, took his pension, and played shuffleboard. This is not Latin America. Active Duty Military officers do not belong in politics (both sides are trying to drag the troops into this debate, both sides are being shortsighted). Oh, and does our anonymous interlocutor remember Sam Nunn?

Baghdad in California

CNN: Deaths of innocents lead to L.A. gang crackdown

Residents are demanding renewed action while trying to stay out of the line of fire.

Esteban Martinez, 41, hears gunshots at night in the San Fernando Valley, where he lives with his wife and four small children.

"Everybody is afraid, but they don't speak (to police) because they are afraid to get into trouble with the gang members," Martinez said. "I'm worried about my family."

Two weeks ago, an officer searching a house in the area for wanted gang members was wounded in the leg when a gang-banger fired through a closed bedroom door.

Nothing has outraged the city more than the gang slayings of children. Last month, 9-year-old Charupha Wongwisetsiri was standing in her family's kitchen when she was struck by a stray round from gang crossfire in Angelino Heights near downtown.

That came just five days after the shooting death of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old black girl, who was talking to friends in the Harbor Gateway area. Two Hispanic gang members, who police said were intent on killing blacks, were arrested.

Seems like another place we could use 50,000 armed guys to occupy and clear.

A rising tide of ambivalence

Indianapolis Star: Colleges hotbeds of ambivalence over war

War traditionally has not been popular with students, going back to the Civil War, when people burned draft cards, and the more famous Vietnam-era protests, said Michael McGinnis, an IU political science professor.

He said the move to a volunteer military has allowed students to distance themselves somewhat from the war in Iraq. Since the draft ended, he said, student activism has declined.

"It doesn't mean that they aren't as interested, but it does takes away the intensity of feeling," he said.

Many students aren't worried about a military draft returning, but it's in the back of their minds.

That's why there has been no massive uprising on the campus a la the 60's. They not more or less noble than the college kids of the 60's, they just don't have skin in the game.

They did it

Colts will face the Bears in the Superbowl

What's old is new again

The American Scene:The North, the South, and God
Was the Civil War a just war? a review of Harry S. Stout's Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War,

.....The religious language of the war, in particular, was nearly always the language of the jeremiad, in which God guarantees victory to the righteous and ruin to their enemies, and battlefield success is linked to piety and failure to apostasy. The preachers of the Civil War era, North and South, were light-years removed from the presumption toward pacifism that dominates contemporary religious discourse, and nearly every pulpit — as Stout demonstrates in often-exhaustive detail — rang with appeals to heaven for victory and with assurances that God smiled on the preservation of the Union or its dissolution, the abolition of slavery or its extension to the Pacific.

Stout calls this the “cultural captivity of the churches,” and it’s one of the major themes of the book, returned to repeatedly as the war — and his account of it, which recapitulates at unnecessary length the work of previous historians — drags on and the North’s jeremiads grow more confident, the South’s more desperate and apocalyptic. A second theme is the brutal reality that these jeremiads ignored, both the specific war crimes — rapine and murder, the inhumane conditions in both Confederate and Union prisons, the criminal stupidity of the commanders who sent men to die at Marye’s Heights and Gettysburg and Cold Harbor — and the general policies that made them possible. In particular, Stout trains his fire on Lincoln’s decision to abandon the old West Point code of military conduct in favor of a more latitudinarian policy, one that countenanced seizing civilian property and destroying civilian homes. This willingness to expand the war beyond the battlefield, he argues, and the Confederate willingness to respond in kind, marked the beginning of the modern concept of total war. The Lincolnian policy stopped short of allowing assaults on civilians themselves, but its logic led in a darker direction, and in the wreckage of Georgia lay the seeds of the twentieth century’s wartime horrors.

.........
It’s not that this analysis is wrong, precisely, but it feels incomplete and at times obtuse. Stout judges the Civil War’s actors, but he doesn’t work hard enough to understand them — and in particular, by deliberately tabling the question of jus ad bello, he fails to grapple with the underlying realities that made once-unthinkable slaughter and savagery seem not only necessary but just. The bloodiness of the conflict, the bellicosity of the preachers, the suffering that the Northern armies eventually wreaked on the crumbling South — none of these is explicable without a consideration of how high the stakes seemed to be on both sides, how firmly each believed that not only their own nation’s survival but civilization itself depended on the outcome.

...........
This paradox extends beyond the battlefields of the Civil War to any conflict that seeks a kind of cosmic justice or takes on the flavor of a crusade. The ends don’t justify the means, but if your ends seem important enough — the end of slavery in the nineteenth century, the defeat of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in the twentieth — well, which leader is prepared to sacrifice jus ad bello for the sake of jus in bello and lose a greater justice for a smaller one? If you’re fighting to “end all wars” or to “end evil” — to borrow one of the more sweeping definitions of our present conflict — then doesn’t every weapon need to be considered, every measure allowed?

These are the questions that American policymakers have been wrestling with for more than a century, from TR and Wilson to LBJ and George W. Bush. The debates over Hiroshima and Dresden are the extreme cases, of course, but the paradox is visible as well in the daily compromises and contradictions of our occupation of Iraq, where our sweeping, idealistic goals have dirtied our hands more than, say, the more cold-blooded First Gulf War ever did. On a case-by-case basis, the abuses on display in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were of course avoidable — but in the aggregate, tactics that violate “the highest principles of Christian civilization” are an almost-inevitable part of any occupation, any counterinsurgency, any serious attempt to reshape a dysfunctional society.

Our occupations of Japan and Germany 50 years earlier were cleaner, but we had done to those countries what Sherman did to Georgia, only more so — destroying not only armies but entire societies, which once flattened were easier to rebuild. It’s this reality that led Max Boot to remark recently that we might have been better off in Iraq had the initial invasion been more brutal. Instead, he noted, “the U.S. was so sparing in its use of force that many Baathists never understood they were beaten. The butcher’s bill we dodged early on is now being paid with compound interest.”

This point of view feels unacceptable and even odious, since accepting its implications would mean abandoning the idea of jus in bello entirely and enthroning in its place a kind of bloody-minded consequentialism. Yet the seeming alternatives — an unblinking realpolitik, a sweeping pacifism, or the kind of purer-than-thou idealism that Stout offers, with its lack of realism about the costs and necessities of war — are hardly more palatable.

A decade after Appomattox, faced with a situation similar to ours in Iraq — a society half-reshaped and restive, a low-level insurgency, a mounting financial cost — the North elected to abandon Reconstruction, return power to the defeated slaveholders, and forsake the people it had fought a war to free. For a long time they were praised for it by pro-Southern historiographers who saw Reconstruction the way the Left sees the Iraqi occupation, as an overzealous attempt to impose a way of life by force on an unwilling culture. Later it was pointed out that Reconstruction was hardly worse than the apartheid that came after and that perhaps the North should have stayed longer and done more to root out the pathologies of the conquered South.

The choice is no easier in hindsight than it was in 1876.

Cry Me a River

Washington Monthly: The new proletariat

In the recent articles “The Revolt of the Fairly Rich” in Fortune, and “A New Class War: The Haves Versus the Have Mores,” we learn that people in the $100,000-500,000 income range now see themselves as underprivileged. This group includes congressmen, upper-level government officials, journalists at major news organizations, and professors at elite universities. This new proletariat is not exactly voiceless.

The new proletariat’s big cause at the moment is something called the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and they’re using their political and journalistic muscle to reform it to their taste. The tax was originally designed to keep the rich from using various loopholes to escape the income tax entirely. However, because of inflation, $100,000 no longer means you’re as well-off as it used to, but now may make you eligible for the AMT. The new proletariat feels threatened. But just how serious is the threat? A story on the front page of The Washington Post sought to raise alarm about the tax. An example used in the accompanying chart illustrating the harm was of a single parent with six children making $75,000 a year who would have to pay $1,112 more because of the AMT. But you don’t have to get rid of the AMT entirely to provide mercy for that fellow and others similarly situated. Besides, how many parents have six children these days? Two children are far more typical. And a couple with two children can make $80,000 without paying any AMT.

In fact, only 20 percent of taxpayers make $80,000 or more. For these people to wallow in self-pity is ridiculous. They should concern themselves with the 80 percent of taxpayers who make less than $80,000. And the major burden for that 80 percent is not the income tax or the AMT, it is the FICA, or Social Security tax. If we want to help them, we reduce that tax first. Congress has hesitated to touch it because they fear being accused of tampering with Social Security. But if they really want to help the working people of this country instead of themselves, it’s FICA, not the AMT, that should be their target.

I'm all for the single mom, but I think the single mom with six kids making 20K a year is in more need of a break than one making 75K.

Fun with numbers

LifeSite News:New York Times Gets Another Story Very Wrong - This Time it’s about Marriage

The New York Times has once again published another 'hit piece' on the institution of marriage, alleging that for “the first time more American women are living without a husband than with one”. However, US census data for 2005 shows that the January 16th front-page story in the New York Times is just another disturbing showcase of the Times’ tolerance for “journalistic malpractice”.

“For what experts say is probably the first time,” writes Sam Roberts on the Times front page, “more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.”

“In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000,” writes Roberts. He adds that now married couples make up a minority of all American households and “the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.”

The plain truth is that Roberts’ findings are at variance with US census reports for 2005, which demonstrate a far different picture from the profiles selected by Roberts of single women “delighting in their new found freedom.”

According to the 2005 report “Marital Status of the Population by Sex and Age”, the United States is not yet a culture that has discarded the institution of marriage, where 60.4% of men and 56.9% of women over 18 years old are married.

However, Roberts creates his own analysis by using the Census Bureau’s “Living Arrangements of Persons 15 Years Old and Over by Selected Characteristics”, by including in his 51% figure of women living without a spouse: unmarried teenage and college girls still living with their parents, women whose husbands work out of town, are institutionalized, or are separated from husbands serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Perhaps most disturbing is how blatantly Roberts’ claims are at variance with US census bureau statistics. Among marriageable women over 18 years old, 56.9% of women are married, with 53% having a spouse present, 1.4% with a spouse absent, 9.9% widowed, and 11.5% divorced. Yet, 67.3% of women 30-34, and 70.5% of women 35-39 are married, a far cry from the profiles of women offered by the Times of women finding fulfillment outside marriage.

.........
Dr. Scott Stanley, co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, said that today’s median marrying age for woman is 26, a fact that radically skew marriage statistics when comparing the data to other eras where men and women married at younger ages. Far from women abandoning marriage, he said “the number of people who want to be married and have it work out well is still extraordinarily high.”

I heard the report about the Roberts story on NPR and had no idea of the distortions. They did bring out that part of the story is the disparity in life expectancies between man and women. It's hard to sort out facts with all the different versions flying back and forth.

Why the future belongs to the developing world

Beliefnet:Mary Walsh:Wanted by the Fertility Police

Last year, I clicked on an MSN.com article about the biggest financial mistakes people make. The venomous words "having too many children" jumped off the screen at me. The article said that one or two children were bad enough; that children are extremely expensive and time-consuming; that the problem with having a third child is that the parents often want to have a fourth; and that four children are just too many. Children, one of the greatest joys of married life, the symbol of love between a husband and wife, were summarily dumped into the bin of financial mistakes.

That is the story of the Boomer reign. We have not invested in the future of our nation and so things are slowly coming apart. Whether you think peak oil is in five years or fifty years it is absurd not to be busting butt on future alternatives. Our political and economic decisions over the past few decades have been focused on maximizing short term gain and putting costs off on future generations. The Boomers aborted their children so the party could keep on going and now have no one to pay the bill for social security or wipe their butts. Eating your seed corn might feel good at the time but it is the antithesis of a long term strategy.