Liberal College Kid

Back in December, I published a post about William Kristol and his then-recent appointment as a contributor to the New York Times’ Op-Ed page. Since then, I have often wanted to follow up on the original post and attack the kind of intellectually dishonest rhetoric that I predicted he would produce and which he has gladly delivered. But I held my tongue, knowing that readers of this site are capable of sifting through his nonsense on their own.

Today, however, I read his piece titled “Democrats Should Read Kipling,” and couldn’t believe the level to which his manipulative proselytizing had risen. In this column piece, Kristol is attempting to justify the Bush warrant-less eavesdropping program, chastise the House for failing to immediately pass the bill legalizing it, and scare the general public into sacrificing their Fourth Amendment rights for the sake of security; all with the help of… George Orwell? For those of you who see the glaring contradiction in this strategy and are confused by the fact that Kristol and Orwell make extremely strange bedfellows, you are not alone.

Kristol, while apparently perusing a used bookstore in the Milwaukee airport, stumbled upon a volume of Orwell’s essays. One of these, written in 1942, dealt with Rudyard Kipling, the Indian-born British author and poet. Kristol says:

 […] Kipling “identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition.”

“In a gifted writer,” Orwell remarks, “this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality.” Kipling “at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like.” For, Orwell explains, “The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.” Furthermore, “where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly.”

If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell’s argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

This is very typical of Kristol. He has found a few passages in a five and a half thousand-word essay that he sees can be easily construed to fit in line with his warped world view, and ignored the portions that cannot. It could be acceptable, albeit embarrassing for Kristol, to omit certain ideas contained in this essay, if, because of its length and his tight schedule, he had not read the entire piece. But even if he hasn’t read it all, it seems impossible to have missed these two lines, the first of which comes directly before the portions Kristol quotes (above), the second coming immediately afterwards:

One reason for Kipling’s power as a good bad poet I have already suggested–his sense of responsibility, which made it possible for him to have a world-view, even though it happened to be a false one. Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists.

And:

Kipling sold out to the British governing class, not financially but emotionally. This warped his political judgement, for the British ruling class were not what he imagined, and it led him into abysses of folly and snobbery […]

Again, all of these statements are in the same paragraph, which happens to be the last of the essay. Strangely, Kristol has not chosen to include these in his article, because they are not flattering to conservatives in the first instance, and tarnish the one dimensional image of Kipling that he is trying to convey in the second. Instead, he hopes that he can quote the sixty-six year old essay selectively, and because of its age and relative obscurity, no one reading the NYT will know the difference. This is the picture of academic and journalistic deceit.

Kristol’s aim in  writing this piece is to portray the Republican Party, which he considers to be the real “governing” party, as the bearers of an immense burden, that of being forced to make important, complicated decisions. “Many Democrats, on the other hand, no longer even try to imagine what action and responsibility are like,” he announces. This is the worst kind of self-pitying mixed with self-glorification; he means to insinuate that he and his buddies in the GOP are the only ones that truly understand the weight they carry in protecting the country from Evil. He points out that over the last forty years, Republicans have controlled the White House for a total of twenty-eight. That statistic, though it does show that, in general, Republican have had a larger share of power, hardly renders the Democratic Party and all of its members a “permanent and pensioned opposition.” I really, honestly, wonder whether Kristol even knows what the word “pensioned” means in this context, because if he did, he would immediately see the idiocy of this argument. Obviously, the Democrats are not pensioned or resigned to a position of permanent and inferior opposition against the Republicans: they took control of both Houses of Congress, and are in serious contention for the presidency. Kristol is very right when he mentions, at the beginning of the article, that the works of George Orwell are often applicable to modern American politics, but not in this particular instance, and not in the way that he seems to think they do.

After dismissing the Democratic Party as irrelevant and unable to imagine What It Takes To Lead, he applies these assumptions to the members of the House, who, rightly, declined to unquestioningly pass legislation giving law-breaking corporations immunity for past actions. As already mentioned, the bill in question, if passed, would give the president and telecommunications companies the power to eavesdrop on American phone calls, emails, and other types of communication, without a warrant, and in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. Kristol believes that our right against unreasonable searches and seizures should be considered trivial in the face of the threat of terror. He says that:

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of national intelligence, the retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, and the attorney general, the former federal judge Michael Mukasey, are highly respected and nonpolitical officials with little in the way of partisanship or ideology in their backgrounds. They have all testified, under oath, that in their judgments, certain legal arrangements regarding surveillance abilities are important to our national security.

Not all Democrats have refused to listen. In the Senate, Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, took seriously the job of updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in light of technological changes and court decisions. His committee produced an impressive report, and, by a vote of 13 to 2, sent legislation to the floor that would have preserved the government’s ability to listen to foreign phone calls and read foreign e-mail that passed through switching points in the United States.

Even assuming the questionable characterization of these men as being “nonpartisan” is true, this is still an example of how Kristol and his cronies are trying to downplay the implications of the revised FISA bill. The phrase “that passed through switching points in the United States” completely miscontrues what the bill does. Rather than allowing the government to spy on foreign-to-foreign communications only, it allows them to spy on any call or email between any normal American and anyone overseas, whether it be a terrorist in the mountains of Pakistan or your cousin in London. The real danger is the precedent it sets, namely, that warrants are a inconvenient waste of time. This is the most important issue. The government would be free to eavesdrop all they wanted, if they would bother to get a warrant. But they cannot do that, because then they would need a good reason to spy on you. With this bill, they do not. The next step is listening in on every communication, regardless of its destination or origination, even if it is from Cleveland to Columbus. Similarly, he uses the words “certain legal arrangement” to describe the legalization of obviously illegal actions that have been taken by the government. There is a term generally used for this kind of PR strategy: Orwellian.

And herein lies the greatest irony of this article. Kristol attempts to employ the words of George Orwell, the original, most respected, and most articulate critic of the modern police state, in defending legislation that all but establishes one. Orwell wrote 1984 and countless essays warning us of the dangers of allowing the government to monopolize too much power and of surrendering our privacy to them, especially when it is being coerced away from us with fear tactics, threatening us with annihilation at the hands of Goldstein Bin Laden. He is the last person Kristol should be looking to for a justification to trample on the constitution.

Let’s pretend for a minute, as Kristol would like us to do, that the analogy between Kipling and the Republicans is a valid one. I wonder how Kristol would feel when his beloved party was compared with Orwell’s view of Kipling in this passage, also from the same essay:

It is no use claiming, for instance, that when Kipling describes a British soldier beating a ‘nigger’ with a cleaning rod in order to get money out of him, he is acting merely as a reporter and does not necessarily approve what he describes. There is not the slightest sign anywhere in Kipling’s work that he disapproves of that kind of conduct–on the contrary, there is a definite strain of sadism in him, over and above the brutality which a writer of that type has to have.

• Leave a comment... (12)

Steven E. Landsburg, a columnist for the New York Times, thinks that the two Republican front runners, McCain and Romney, are too liberal. At least in one case.

In the last few days, there has been a lot of talk from McCain and Romney about how to deal with jobs disappearing due to globalization and outsourcing. Because they were campaigning in Michigan, the issue was particularly relevant, a state where the automobile industry was once an enormous employment provider. Now, however, the migration of factories overseas has resulted in an unemployment rate in Michigan that is the highest in the country. McCain and Romney, despite having different outlooks on the future of the automobile industry in that state, are both proposing government programs that would be available to downsized employees that would retrain them for new work opportunities.

In an attempt to show how ridiculous these programs would be, Landsburg applies cold economic reasoning to the plight of these unemployed workers. First, he gives us the standard free trade zealot response, namely, that Americans as a group benefit so much from cheap, foreign labor that it more than makes up for the loss of a few, insignificant American jobs. Now, as ugly as this fact is, there is some truth to it. The goods that we consume so vigorously do, in many cases, owe their low prices to outsourcing and foreign labor. Obviously, this is a touchy subject. There are many valid arguments on both sides of this issue, and the answer is not completely clear.

But what is clear, to even the Republican presidential candidates, is that the situation that middle class workers are put into when their factories or offices are moved to another, more profitable country, is dangerous to their livelihood, and that there should be some measure of safety from complete financial collapse for them. This view is pretty standard on the left, but with the rising number of instances in which this occurs, even pro-business, free trade conservatives have been forced to face this fact. However, Landsburg disagrees: he believes that we owe nothing to workers who are downsized and find themselves without an income to support them and their families. These, according to him, are the necessary casualties of economic progress:

All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices. In other words, the winners can more than afford to compensate the losers. Does that mean they ought to? Does it create a moral mandate for the taxpayer-subsidized retraining programs proposed by Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney?

Um, no. Even if you’ve just lost your job, there’s something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that’s elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born.

Here Landsburg insinuates what has become an increasingly common idea within the discipline of ecomonics, both inside and out of the academy: that economists know everything. They have, through their in depth studies, found a higher awareness and a more lucid insight into the workings of the world. In the game of global economics, the losers deserve nothing from those who have profited greatly from their loss, except a casual, “sorry, man, that’s the way the world works. You should be grateful for what you’ve gotten this far.” In this case, we are not even talking about the foreign “losers” in this game. He is not referring to citizens of the third world, who work in slave-like conditions and are compensated with poverty level wages. They do not even factor into his analysis in this piece. The losers he is referring to are our fellow Americans. Even they, according to Landsburg’s worldview, matter little. It’s dog-eat-dog, baby.

If Landsburg would just come out and admit that in his mind, some must suffer for the benefit of others, and that he really doesn’t care about what happens to the losers of economic progress, it would be, however reprehensible, a technically valid viewpoint. Instead, he tries to justify this phenomenon with, at best, skewed logic:

One way to think about that is to ask what your moral instincts tell you in analogous situations. Suppose, after years of buying shampoo at your local pharmacy, you discover you can order the same shampoo for less money on the Web. Do you have an obligation to compensate your pharmacist? If you move to a cheaper apartment, should you compensate your landlord? When you eat at McDonald’s, should you compensate the owners of the diner next door? Public policy should not be designed to advance moral instincts that we all reject every day of our lives.

Landsburg would like to think that these situations are analogous to the ones downsized workers face, but they simply are not. If you stop buying shampoo from your neighborhood pharmacy, how much of an impact is that really going to have on the success and profits of the store as a whole? Maybe they lose four dollars of business, maybe once a month. Even if every single person that used to buy shampoo at this establishment suddenly decides that they will switch to the internet for their hair product needs, its a safe assumption that this pharmacy will not go bankrupt. In the same way, most landlords own multiple properties, so if you decide to move to a cheaper apartment or house, they will most likely still have other places to collect rent from. And, if they do only own one property, I think its fair to assume that this is not their only source of income. Plus, in most areas (this is definitely true for my college town), landlords have no problems renting out properties once they are uninhabited. Landsburg’s final “analogy” is to the restaurant business. The same problems prevent it from being an accurate representation of what happens to laid off workers. Even if you do eat at McDonalds, instead of a diner nearby, not everyone is going to choose the fast food, and you yourself will probably not eat at McDonalds every time you dine out. There really are no meaningful comparisons in Landsburg’s analysis.

When a worker is downsized, their job moved to a foreign land or replaced by cheaper labor, they are completely cut off from all income, all at one time. Even if the situations that Landsburg posits do, eventually, lead to the pharmacy closing, the landlord losing all their tenants, or the restaurant failing, it would happen gradually, allowing the owner in question the time and some amount of income to invest in educating themselves and attempting to find a new career opportunity. This is not the case with people who just lose their jobs. It is fundamentally different when you own your own business and the prospect of losing all your income at the very worst can be seen coming through various signals (less and less shampoo sold over time, might want to think about getting out of the pharmacy business). Of course, in Landsburg’s calculating, free market economics-trained mind, there is no disctinction between these vastly different situations.

When someone is downsized, they immediately face a very serious crisis. They may have worked at the same factory for thirty years, in which time they have become highly specialized at a distinct skill that is not always transferable to another career. They may have spent years working up to the wages they now enjoy, and because of this, many of them have mortgages, car payments, and insurances premiums out for themselves and their families that are in line with the income they are now getting. If they lose this job and have no other skills with which to find a similar paying career, they have to start at the bottom. They can kiss their home, car and health insurance out the window. Despite whatever Landsburg may think, it IS society’s moral obligation to make sure that those who have spent years of their life working hard for an employer who has now made a profit-based decision to leave them jobless can still provide food, shelter and health care for themselves and their children. Or, if not all that, we should at least give them some education and training in order to make their transition from one job to another easier (you would think that someone who disdains government hand-outs would support a program that helps people get off unemployment). This is not just an indictment of businesses that decide to outsource: it is their right to do so, and as Landsburg keenly points out, it may be for the better of this country in some circumstances. But this does not mean that we have to forsake our own citizens in the process.

Something is often lacking in the recent wave of economists’ attempts to apply their discipline to all aspects of society (Landsburg himself released a book called More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics). They seem to feel less than content applying their methods to finances and want to branch out into other realms, from dating to parenthood. Why should we listen to them? What gives them the authority to comment on everything under the sun? Certainly not their degree in microeconomics. The real world has endless layers and subtleties that do not always fit into formulas and economists’ “rational” thinking. Sometimes, people would rather behave humanely (that is, like humans) rather than as machines engaged rational, cold decision making.

***

Update: A little while after I published this post, I went to Slate.com. What do I find? This piece, which is an excerpt from Tim Harford’s book, The Logic of Life. The specific section they have published here is titled “The Economics of Marriage.” Read it for yourself and let me know what you think of this new-found love for applying economics to everything.

There is also a BBC documentary called The Trap (by Adam Curtis) that deals, in part, with game theory (originally championed by John Nash, of A Beautiful Mind), its origins and application to economics, and since then, to many aspects of social life.

• Leave a comment... (5)

OK, so I didn’t get it right last time… But that’s water under the bridge. Let’s talk NH.

New Hampshire is a very different state than Iowa with 65% listed as Independents. This means that they can vote in either primary, but not both. The two big candidates with Independents are McCain and Obama which, I think, has a lot to do with why they’re polling ahead of the pack.  Why New Hampshire should matter?  The fact that Independents have a choice in which party to cast their vote means that it may be a good predictor about which way Independents will vote nationally come November.  See, early primaries do matter!!  On to business:

Democrats:

1. Obama
2. Clinton
3. Edwards
4. Richardson
5. Kucinich

Its hard not to take Obama in this race. He polls well with Independent voters, he represents change, he looks strong coming out of Iowa, and to be honest the other campaigns just aren’t doing it for me. The Clinton campaign is struggling, slipping now to 29% in the last Reuter’s poll. Edwards also is not doing as well in New Hampshire as he would have liked, remaining in third place in the polling even after narrowly defeating Clinton in Iowa. Obama will take New Hampshire and the Clinton campaign will just have to hope that they can make some serious gains come Super Tuesday as the rest of the early primaries will more than likely go Barack’s way as well.

Republicans:

1. McCain
2. Romney
3. Huckabee
4. Paul
5. Thompson
6.Giuliani

McCain will take New Hampshire because voters are still convinced, no matter how many times McCain has supported everything Bush has done, that he is an Independent. A “maverick” as FAUX News has called him. McCain took New Hampshire in 2000 and he still has a strong presence there. He has also spent far more time and money in NH than he did in Iowa where he did better than expected. He has also now become somewhat of an underdog in the national race, which I believe will bring people out to vote for him. Romney beats Huckabee here only because New Hampshire doesn’t have the Evangelical vote that Iowa has. Don’t count Huckabee out of the nomination though. Right wing wackos who think the world is only 2000 years old have found their candidate and while Huck’s likely to finish third in NH he will likely rebound quite well in South Carolina.

As for the other candidates I think what happened to Kucinich is simply wrong.  Shame on ABC for excluding him from their debate.  This is not FOX, this is ABC and the fact that Dennis was left off the list of debaters tells me that ABC is endorsing candidates, not representing good journalistic view points and biasing the election.  I, for one, will not be watching any ABC news for a long time.

Paul will be interesting to watch in this race for New Hampshire.  This dark horse is likely to run on a Libertarian ticket once he’s out of the Republican race and that will cause some major headaches for Republicans, especially in Western states where much of Paul’s support lies.

Be sure and check back after the New Hampshire results for LCK’s analysis.  I know my predictions are a little on the safe side, it might be exciting to be wrong once again.

• Leave a comment... (0)

On Friday the Washington Post published its biweekly column by Michael Gerson, this time titled “Democrats in Denial.” Before we discuss the basis of the article and the claims made within it, a little about Michael Gerson himself.

Gerson is a former senior policy adviser to the Heritage Foundation, an important and influential conservative think tank. He left that position in 1999 at the bidding of Karl Rove who thought that Gerson would be a nice addition to the presidential campaign for George W. Bush. After Bush was elected, Gerson became one of his speech writers and eventually became the head of the White House speech writing group. If anyone were to doubt the effect that his work has had on the rhetoric and political language of the current time, they would only need reminded that, according to Gerson himself, he was the originator of the “smoking gun - mushroom cloud” image, the term “axis of evil” and that he was one of the most prolific speech writers for Bush (it should be mentioned that other White House speech writers have accused Gerson of exaggerating his contributions, although the point is that even if he did not come up with all of the memorable lines of this administration, he desires to have people believe that he did - which may be even more revealing). In 2006 Gerson left the White House, wrote for a time at Newsweek, and ultimately was given a column at the Washington Post.

Now that we are familiar with Gerson’s past and his obvious interests in defending the actions of the administration, policies that he himself helped persuade the American public to accept, let’s look at some of the claims made in his latest piece.

The mood of this article strongly suggests that it is a reaction to the events in Iowa last night; specifically, that such an overwhelming amount of independents and even Republicans came out to participate in the Democratic caucuses. Gerson seems angry about this, and would like to convince us that most of the platforms of the Democratic candidates are no better - in fact, much worse - than those of the Bush administration. First he takes on the Iraq war. Again, let’s keep in mind the “smoking gun - mushroom cloud” metaphor that convinced the world that the war was justified in the first place, a metaphor that proved to be meaningless.

Gerson says:

“In Iraq, coalition casualties are down significantly, along with Iraqi civilian casualties, roadside bombings and suicide attacks. Large sections of Baghdad have been pacified, and the military rolls toward Mosul. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is in reeling retreat. And, most impressive, we have seen the first example of a large-scale Sunni Arab uprising against Islamic extremism. By one estimate, 30,000 former insurgents and tribal leaders are now fighting the enemy in Iraq, adding their surge to our own.

This progress is reversible, especially while Moqtada al-Sadr’s militias maintain the capability to mount their own mini-Tet Offensive. But Gen. David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy has succeeded with disorienting speed. Its combination of vision and competence will fill chapters in military textbooks.”

If the statistics Gerson is referring to are assumed to be accurate (this administration has been less than competent in compiling accurate numbers, especially in respect to the war where they have bet so much of their credibility. A key phrase here is “by one estimate” - almost certainly the highest estimate), then they do reflect that the surge may be working. And this is, at the risk of stepping out of the holy party line, a very good thing. We can debate the merits of the war as a whole, whether or not it should have happened in the first place, but if the surge is working, and therefore fewer Americans and innocent Iraqi’s are losing their lives, it should be congratulated. In this case, partisanship is not only irrelevant, it’s irresponsible. However, Gerson’s characterization of the surge as having worked with “disorienting speed” is an obvious exaggeration meant to insinuate that Petraeus completely blew everyone’s expectations out of the water. I also highly doubt that it will appear in future military textbooks. He wants us to believe that this has been one of the most impressive military undertakings in history, a claim that is almost laughable.

Next, Gerson says:

“In spite of these gains, Democratic presidential candidates still insist on reckless timetables for withdrawal — the surest way to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory.”

One wonders how closely Gerson has actually listened to the Democratic Candidates. Now that the race has effectively been reduced to Obama and Clinton, with moderate hopes left for Edwards, only one of the candidates has pledged to pull out all combat forces by 2013 (Edwards). Surely, both Obama and Clinton would like the war to be over, and they would definitely take whatever measures necessary to achieve these goals. But no matter how politically advantageous it is for any of them to claim they will end the war immediately (which they really have not anyway), they all know that a complete, and in Gerson’s words, reckless immediate withdrawal would indeed probably be a bad idea, and none of them would actually do it.

So far, the column is nothing too spectacular, embodying what most people on the right and definitely everyone inside the White House already thinks. But then he turns his attention to education and the Orwellian No Child Left Behind.

“Democratic rhetoric on education is also an assault on reality. Attacking No Child Left Behind is a reliable campaign applause line — Hillary Clinton promises to “end” the law, because it is “just not working.” Actually, the imposition of educational standards and testing has improved math and reading scores and begun narrowing the gap between disadvantaged and affluent students.”

While Gerson is very correct that attacking the law is a great platform for a campaign, he reveals in this statement more than he means to. Why is it, I would like to ask him, that so many people feel so passionately against No Child Left Behind? Gerson condescends to the nearly the entire American public in his assertion that he knows more about what is or is not working in their own school districts than they do. People are angry about NCLB because they see what it is really doing. It is taking the focus off of real education, the kind that molds students into free thinkers and better members of society and instead concentrating solely on arbitrary test results. If a school fails to meet up to these pointless standards, then they do not get sufficient funding. There is a GLARING logical problem here. Shouldn’t those schools that are not meeting the cut actually receive more funding so that they have a chance of improving their programs? Instead, in the twisted mind of Bush administration members like Gerson, schools that are already disadvantaged and poor (a subject that requires an entire look of its own) are punished and their students are, well, there’s no other term for it other than “left behind,” hence the Orwellian, call it exactly what it is not, sense of the program. In addition, it would be nice if Gerson would provide us with some of the data that he interprets as showing that the gap between rich and poor (sorry, “disadvantaged and affluent”) students is closing. Surely, these incredible findings should be on the front page of every major newspaper, since they directly contradict what any respectable social scientist has found lately.

“There is an angry backlash against NCLB among some Democratic interest groups. Suburban districts resent being labeled as failures just because some minority and disabled children aren’t making progress. But that is the whole purpose of the law — to prevent districts from hiding the poor performance of minorities behind the success of other students. Such districts should feel less resentment and more shame.”

I kid you not, I gasped when I read these sentences. This, above anything else Gerson posits in this piece, is shocking. He doesn’t even make an attempt to conceal his racism. Disabled children?! School districts should be ASHAMED that their disabled students are not meeting up to George Bush’s standards?! No, Mr. Gerson, YOU are the one who should feel shame.

Whether it is intentional or not (and I would bet that at some level, it is), the real result of education policies like No Child Left Behind is to form students into the kind of intellectually numb, power yielding adults that fit so well into the corporate world, where idiotic targets and goals are now the norm as well. And those schools who do not mold enough of their students into this picture will simply have to fend for themselves. It has resulted in many schools being forced to abandon many of their usual and time tested curricula and only teach “to the test” in order to ensure that they don’t fall short. A shocking number of students entering college are entirely unprepared for the sort of real challenges that await them, because they will be required to actually think once in a while.

Gerson accuses the Democratic presidential candidates of being out of touch with reality. But obviously it is he who has become so indoctrinated with the Bush-world view, having spent many years shoving it down the American public’s throat, that he can no longer see reality. The policies that he helped articulate for the president are, in his mind, beyond scrutiny, even as their blatant failures are becoming obvious throughout the country and the world. Now that there is good evidence that the Democratic party is stronger than it has been in a very long time, Gerson and others like him will scramble to find reasons why they are not to be trusted and are incompetent liars. But the public is sick of the nonsense that is constantly spewed by the administration, and many of them can feel at a visceral level and see at a intellectual one that there is in fact substance to what the Democrats are saying. They are finding a vision that has been completely absent in the current administration. And when one of them is elected as president, Gerson is going to have to finally pull himself out of his own denial and myopia and see that it was partly his own fault, with his glaring lies and misconceptions, that the Democrats are back in power.

• Leave a comment... (1)

I hear it over and over again, from political rallies to neighborhood bbq’s, “I just can’t support Hillary Clinton.”  This is customarily followed up by someone who is now instantly supporting her who makes the case for, “What’s not to like?  She was for universal health care in ‘94?”   And thus the divide is created and the several liberals convened have something to debate.  This is troubling to me, and I’m worried the Democrats aren’t worried enough about what’s happening in the party.

<! Kind of looks like a Fight Night poster!>

I want to first put in my own thoughts about Hillary.  First the positives, she has a long history of supporting progressive measures; most notably, her support for universal health care in the 90’s.  Since this time she has continued to support gay rights, a woman’s right to choose, stem cell research, combatting global warming, universal pre-K education, and a whole host of other domestic issues close to the hearts of Democrats.  In short, there is a reason she has been elected as Senator from New York twice, and it’s not just on name recognition.  I have jokingly said of Hillary that while she may not have the right stance now, once the majority of the party views things a certain way she will adapt her position to reflect that of the party.  The more I think about this statement, however, the more I think I’m being absolutly serious.

Hillary’s support for the war is one that is personally troubling for me.  That said, I honestly feel as though she has no choice in the matter and had to respond the way she did.  Here’s why:  Hillary is a woman playing in a man’s game.  She needs to everything in her power to not come off as weak or feminine, and there’s nothing more nurturing or motherly than not wanting Americans to die in a phony war, right?  Regardless of where she was personally on the matter, she had to vote the way she did on the war because of the political reality in this country facing women.  Namely, in order to play with the boys, Hillary had to support the boy’s war.  She is also responding to the fact that the Democrats are perceived as being more lax on terrorism than the Republicans, something I truly don’t understand.  Having a city attacked while someone was mayor does not make them an expert on terror.  Especially when more lives were lost to rescue workers working in horrendous conditions at ground zero then were lost in the actual attacks from the planes.  Oh, and the fact that Giuliani spent more time at Yankee stadium in September 2001 after 9/11 then he did at ground zero.  I’ll buy that he’s a Yankee expert, no question.

However,  the media and it’s right wing message paint Giuliani, Bush, and the Republican idiots running this country as if they were the foremost experts on terror.  Even though the average 20 year old history major could tell you more about the Middle East than the Decider could, this is the reality we live in.  Because of this, Hillary must come out as strong against terror to the point that she’s a downright hawk! As unfortunate as this is, it truly may be what is best for her campaign, only time will tell.

Many Democrats also feel as though the race is over, that Hillary is already going to get the nomination and that the other candidates are just wasting their time.  This brings me to my only fear about a Hillary canidacy: she’s worth voting against.  The religious right in this country, especially the evangelicals don’t have a clear candidate.  To be frank, no one on the Republican side comes close to the crazy required of him to get real support from evangelical voters.  You have to say stuff like, “God wants me to be President.”  However, if there’s one thing the religious right hates more than Roe v Wade its the Clinton’s and their adulterous liberal ways.  All jokes aside, I do think the Republicans could mobilize to the point that they aren’t voting for someone, as much as they are voting against Hillary.  In this regard, I think she’s the only candidate for the Dems that this is the case.  Is this enough to not give her the nomination?  I don’t know.

We often forget just how progressive Hillary is, because she tries not to show it.  She also comes off as not having a guiding philosophy.  By this I mean something like Hope from Barack Obama, Peace from Dennis Kucinich, the transformative power of the American Dream from Edwards.  However, I will make the case that Hillary does have a guiding philosophy that she can’t talk about because of the political consequences.  That philosophy is this:  what should she do as a woman?  Hillary has taken a progressive stance on nearly every social issue, why?  Because she has a deep ceded belief in human rights, civil rights, and the ability for government to make the lives of the people it represents better.  She is a politician to her core, but I do see a universal theme to her, something I didn’t see from Kerry in 2004 and something Gore kept hidden (Global Warming) in 2000.  There’s more to Hillary than many of us think, and more toughness than I think any of us will ever know.  And so my fellow liberal America bashers (wink at Bill O), take a long hard look at the issues and then decide just how anti-Hillary you are.  I think most will find, as I have, that she may just be the right person for the job, and the time has long passed that our nation’s highest office should be run by a woman.

• Leave a comment... (2)

Celebrate my liberal friends!! Bush’s brain is leaving the White House!

< I Quit!!!

The Washington Post said:

“Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush’s two national campaigns and his most prominent adviser through 6-1/2 tumultuous years in the White House, announced today that he will resign at the end of the month.”

Mr. Rove’s role in the White House is one that has perhaps redefined the way we view the President’s advisers who do not have to be approved through the confirmation process. Just to refresh anyone’s memory here’s a small highlight reel of Rove’s accomplishments:

Rove was involved in the CIA leak case, narrowly skirting indictment there as he and other Bush staffers let Scooter Libby take the fall and then ultimately not go to jail. He has been called out by Democrats in Congress for his role in the US Attorney scandal. You know, the whole ‘give my former aide one of these positions since he’ll be sure to only go after Democrats.’ He claims executive privilege to refuse subpoenas and he would not show up for a congressional hearing on the improper use of Republican National Committee e-mail accounts by White House folks. A real winner huh?

Another of my favorite Rove stories was his fight with Sheryl Crow, featuring the dialog:

(from the Huffington Post) Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, “Don’t touch me.” How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, “You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us.” Karl then quipped, “I don’t work for you, I work for the American people.” To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, “We are the American people.”

Then, of course, there was MC Rove:

But seriously, what is Rove’s legacy? He has been, without question the most powerful man in our country who was never been elected or appointed to any governmental office as outlined in the constitution. Rove’s position falls into Article II Section 2 where it says “but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.” Is Rove’s really an “inferior office?

The fact that he was able to claim executive privledge signifies that his office is far from inferior, which makes me think we may need to take another look at who the President surrounds themselves with. Rove led the fight to trample the constitution with such measures as the PATRIOT Act, helped out a CIA official, helped fire US Attorney’s for not being partisan enough, and generally broke the law along with the rest of the Bush administration.  He will be remembered as a very bright man, but one who helped usher in one of the darkest chapters in our country’s history.

Perhaps Senator Leahy summed Rove up best when he said,

“The list of senior White House and Justice Department officials who have resigned during the course of these congressional investigations continues to grow, and today, Mr. Rove added his name to that list. There is a cloud over this White House, and a gathering storm. A similar cloud envelopes Mr. Rove, even as he leaves the White House.”

• Leave a comment... (2)

After seeing poll after poll saying Rudy Giuliani leads the Republicans I’ve finally decided to weigh in on the matter here at LCK. As a young child growing up we were taught that the President commanded respect and represented America to the world. We learned that the President is our Chief Executive, Commander in Chief and Head of State and that that person should be held to the highest of standards. I’m not in elementary school anymore, but I don’t think we should throw out all of those lofty goals.

I still want a President who represents me and everyone else, not who represents the 51% of the country who voted for them. I still want a President who truly commands respect, and if it’s not too much to ask I’d like them to be the absolute best person our country can muster. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask for. I don’t want a President I’d like to have a beer with, I want a President who is the smartest, most well-spoken, and most charismatic that we can find. That goes for both sides of the aisle, but there is one person I just can’t help but pick on… Rudy Giuliani.

Clinton messed up, sure, but compared to Giuliani a blow-job in the oval office hardly compares. Rudy married his childhood sweet-heart. Sounds all well and fine, until you read that she was his second cousin! Then there’s the whole dressing in drag thing. The National Review even wrote about it, and they’re a conservative publication!

<The best the Republicans can come up with…

The time has passed when Presidents could be seen as infallable and almost other worldly.  We’re living in the information age where there is more access and more media then ever before.  Because of this, no President will be able to protect secrets the way they used to.  By this I’m talking about how many people didn’t know FDR was in a wheel chair when he was President.  Because of this fact, though, do our standards need to change?

Some people argue that we need to change the way we look at politicians.  Rather than making the election about who they are, it should be about what they are going to do.  Wouldn’t it be refreshing to not hear about people’s families, their lives outside of politics and just talk about where they stand on the issues?

I suppose it’s all just part of our psyche these days when Lindsay Lohan is on the front page of all the celebrity magazines.  We are obsessed with celebrity and that’s exactly what national politics have become: a spectacle of celebrity.  I’m sick of politics being about elections and not about things that matter.  It’s not about getting elected, it’s governance and the sooner the rest of the country reaches that conclusion the better.

If Giuliani truly is the best the right can muster though… 2008 will be a great year to be a Democrat!

• Leave a comment... (8)

President Bush today called a press conference to address the horrible event that happened yesterday in Minneapolis, MN where a bridge on I-35 collapsed into the Mississippi River. < The decider deciding apologies are over rated

Apparently he then forgot where he was and what he was talking about and shifted the discussion to spending bills. Of the 737 words the Decider said, 228 were actually words of sympathy relevant to the collapsed bridge in Minnesota. The rest of the speech consisted of the President demanding Democrats in congress pass the 12 spending bills that are required before the end of September. Here was his segway:

“We also talked about — in the Cabinet meeting talked about the status of important pieces of legislation before the Congress. We spent a fair amount of time talking about the fact that how disappointed we are that Congress hasn’t sent any spending bills to my desk.”

Hang on, people are dead and injured there are more than 50 cars at the bottom of the Mississippi River, some of them potentially with bodies in them. There is an entire state that is in complete shock. This is a national disaster Mr. President and you are “disappointed” with congress not getting you a spending bill! This was supposed to be a moment when our nation’s leader reached out to the people of Minneapolis to express real sympathy.  Not to mention the fact that this segment of his speech could be used in elementary schools for fifth graders to fix the President’s poor grammar.

Further compounding this whole thing, the President said “I told them (Governor Pawlenty and Mayor Rybak) we would help with rescue efforts, but I also told them how much we are in prayer for those who suffered.” Prayers are not the issue here Mr. President. Your war has cost more than $450 billion and is not slowing down any time soon. The culture of this Right Wing revolution has created politicians like Pawlenty who run on campaigns where they promise no new taxes. You know what, taxes are a necessary thing! That bridge was known to be structurally flawed, and the Democratic led state legislature in Minnesota passed a bill to raise gas prices 5 cents per gallon to fund highway and road construction projects. The Republican governor vetoed the bill.

No matter what anyone on either side of the aisle says, this is a political issue. We are spending money on the wrong things in this country and we have gotten to the point that legislators are having to choose what to fund. And to top it all of we have a President that can’t even issue a real apology to the people suffering in Minnesota.

Prayer and positive thinking are all well and fine but they don’t solve the problem.  And actually, rescue efforts won’t solve the problem either.  The issue at hand is not one faulty bridge, it’s the deteriorating condition of our roads and bridges everywhere in this country as we see more and more traffic and heavier loads traveling on our highways than ever before.  This needs to be a national effort and Congress and the President need to take real steps to make sure that tragedies like this don’t befall any more American cities.

Liberal College Kid would like to offer their sympathy for those affected by this tragedy.

• Leave a comment... (1)

Greetings all, and first and foremost: SORRY!!

I spent the last two weeks plus traveling in Greece, Ukraine, and Turkey. I returned with many post ideas, so please know that our huge decrease in posts is not a permanent phenomenon.

That said, the night before I left I made a comment on a small blog written by a man named Gary Foust on a post he had written about liberal college campuses. Of course, I left the country and wasn’t able to participate in the dialog that took place there after, but you can read the comments here.

Following that a woman named Susan Baldwin picked up on the post from Gary’s site and responded with her own responses which she has titled the Liberal College Kid trilogy where she thinks being liberal is naive. You can read that post here. I’m actually really bummed I wasn’t around to mix it up with some of our conservative readers, but I’m sure the chance will spring up again.

Here is my response to Gary’s initial post:

First, it is not un-American to protest the government. In fact, that’s how a democracy is supposed to work. For centuries universities and colleges have served as places where democracy can be truly seen as people from all sides of every issue are able to participate in the market place of ideas. The fact that there are groups who are anti-American is in and of itself what is so great about living in a society that protects freedom of speech.

Next, as far as liberal professors go; you should know being on a college campus that there is a direct correlation between education and tolerance as well as education and liberal leanings. It seems, the more people know the more they care about other people, thus making them more liberal. That being said, the idea that we should question professors is a fine and noble idea. However, these people have the academic background that qualifies them to instruct in a collegiate setting, thus they should in fact be trusted and their opinions do carry an added amount of validity. It is very possible to learn from people who are from a different political party. Otherwise, someone like me could never have taken economics.

I have not met a single person who has entered a classroom a conservative and left a liberal or vice versa. That’s not where political ideologies are formed, its where they are discussed and the sooner the radical right realizes this we can move on from this war on progressive professors and start talking about things that matter: like healthcare and Iraq.

Thanks for your continued reading and I promise to not have another dry spell like this again. Later today I’ll post my first reaction piece: What the Ukraine Really Thinks about the Soviet Union.

• Leave a comment... (2)

I’m not going to go into the whole “Mann Coulter” or “Look at her Adam’s apple” thing. For me, that kind of speech has its place in conversations amongst friends but not in a public forum. I don’t really care what any pundits or authors look like. What I do take issue with, however, is the fact that Ann Coulter uses ugly hateful language in her pursuit to discredit those on the left. I’m all for political dialog and disagreement. That’s part of the fun of talking about politics. However, with Coulter things just get ugly. Rather than defending her positions or talking about real issues she says things like:

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I’m - so, kind of at an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards, so I think I’ll just conclude here and take your questions,”

The fact that that speech ended in applause is perhaps even more disturbing. I’m not really sure what one should expect from the Conservative Political Action Conference, but to applaud someone for calling a presidential candidate the most derogatory term for gay man just seems over the top. This is a perfect example of intolerance promoted by conservatives.

We can’t stop there, though, because there’s more. In 2003 Coulter said of Edwards:

“If you want points for not using your son’s death politically, don’t you have to take down all those “Ask me about my son’s death in a horrific car accident” bumper stickers?”

What does that have to do with the issues? Attack someone for being pro-gay rights, or pro-choice, or favoring higher taxes to pay for socialized medicine but don’t mock someone’s dead son! This is exactly the kind of thing Elizabeth Edwards was talking about when she called into Hardball this last week.

Here was a woman, struggling with cancer, who politely asked Ann Coulter to stop verbally attacking the Edwards’ and their dead son. What does Coulter do? She tries to defend herself by saying she wrote something years ago. I suppose time heals all wounds, but just the day before Hardball she said on Good Morning America:

“If I’m gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.”

Who is this woman? In my mind, she is the perfect example of the American media’s goals for their programming. If they have someone on the air that is going to say something grossly unprofessional and inappropriate it will break up the manotany of talking heads babbling on about the events of the day. It’s entertaining and makes people want to watch but how does that make it alright? Does the media not have a responsibility to try and promote truth? To show the populace what is happening in their world so that they can make informed decisions at the ballot box?

Or does it simply exist to give hateful people a vehicle to spread their hate? Ann Coulter is certainly an argument for the latter here, and it seems as time passes and our media deteriorates even more, we can most definitely expect to see more like her in the years to come.

• Leave a comment... (8)