good blog post...

From Brian Leiter on the Democratic convention...

I guess this is a case study in the decadence of empires in decline. For the first time, I'm living somewhere that has basic cable TV, so have been watching, for amusement, bits and pieces of the Prudent Wing of the Republocrat Party's annual convention in Denver on C-SPAN. It really is an amazingly substance-free zone, in which people are packaged by advertising pros like new automobiles, and talentless speaker follows talentless speaker. Last night featured former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who has the dubious distinction of sounding even more like a total fake than Senator Clinton. Meanwhile, Senator Clinton was celebrated as a great feminist trailblazer without any mention of the most relevant fact about why she's a Senator, let alone a national candidate, namely, her husband. (There are some actual feminist trailblazers in the Prudent Wing of the Republocrat Party, one can only imagine what they were thinking watching this spin job.) I am told that the speech of the Iowa Republican Jim Leach, who is pro-Obama, is already being marketed by sleep disorder specialists for those suffering chronic insomnia. The one bright spot was the funny, and unpolished, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who delivered a few good populist punches that were otherwise sorely missing. But overall, the whole thing was so bland and dreary that one almost wishes they'd retain George Galloway to deliver a thirty-minute address to say something substantive about the war criminals in Washington, D.C., and their annointed successor, Senator McCain.

go read the whole thing... very nice, very nice.


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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

How far the Republicans have strayed

One of my topics of interest/talking points is how far the Republican Party has strayed from what made it respectable. I might not have always agreed but I could concede some legitimacy. With the conservative take-over of the Republican Party... that respect is gone and quite frankly no longer deserving.

Bob Herbert today with another example of why McCain--and in far too many cases Obama as well--is talking the talk... but not the walk...

August 19, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
A World of Difference
By BOB HERBERT

Presidential elections always have their share of foolishness, hypocrisy and, let's say, elasticity when it comes to facts.

This is what comes to mind whenever I hear John McCain and other Republicans reverentially invoking the name of Theodore Roosevelt. Senator McCain will tell you outright: "I am a Teddy Roosevelt Republican."

That's about as elastic as the facts can get. In June, Mr. McCain ("We're gonna drill here! We're gonna drill now!") got a big boost in donations from oil industry executives after he reversed course and came out strongly in favor of offshore drilling. A Washington Post headline pointedly said: "Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling."

To put it mildly, that was not very Rooseveltian. Around the same time that the McCain campaign was pocketing its oil industry windfall, the historian Douglas Brinkley was poring over letters in which Roosevelt, running for his first full term as president in 1904, was indignantly ordering his campaign to return a $100,000 contribution from the Standard Oil Company.

In a letter to his campaign manager, dated Oct. 26, 1904, Roosevelt said: "I must ask you to direct that the money be returned to them forthwith." As Roosevelt saw it: "We cannot under any circumstances afford to take a contribution which can be even improperly construed as putting us under an improper obligation."

That kind of thinking is long gone, from both parties. Barack Obama, as well as Senator McCain, has taken contributions from oil industry executives. But what is telling about this particular difference between Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain is that it is so illustrative of what Roosevelt was really about, and how fundamentally different that was from what Senator McCain and the latter-day Republican Party is about.

"The truth of the matter is that Roosevelt today would be on the left," said Mr. Brinkley, who is writing a biography of the former president titled "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt's and the Crusade for America."
Roosevelt believed passionately in regulating industry and curbing the excesses of the great corporations. He favored the imposition of an inheritance tax and fought his party's increasing tendency to cater to the very wealthy. And, of course, he was a ferocious protector of the environment.

Roosevelt was known as the "trust-buster," but it was in the area of environmental conservation that he really made his mark. Mr. Brinkley, in a draft preface to the biography, tells how a number of bird species in the U.S. were headed for extinction as the 20th century approached, in large part because of the popularity of feathered hats for women.

By 1886, when the Audubon Society was founded, more than five million birds a year were being slaughtered to satisfy the millinery trade. The feather boom was especially big in Florida. Egrets, herons — just piles and piles of birds were being destroyed, many of them by men with semiautomatic weapons.

Roosevelt was outraged that what he termed "the despoilers" were threatening to ruin the bird populations along the Florida coasts. Having already championed the preservation of what became Yellowstone National Park, Roosevelt designated Pelican Island, which had a once-thriving bird population off the east central coast of Florida, as the nation's first federal bird reservation.

The move was a tremendous success. Pelican Island became the first unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "By 2003," Mr. Brinkley wrote, "when Pelican Island celebrated its centennial, the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System comprised over 540 wildlife refuges on more than 95 million acres."

We're now in a ridiculous period in which politicians are concerned about appearing too well-spoken and too intellectual — elitist — as if mangling the language while downing a shot and slurping from a mug of beer were sure signs of fitness for high office. So it might come as a surprise to some that Senator McCain's macho hero happened to have been among the first naturalists at Harvard, an inveterate bird-watcher, and a prolific and sensitive writer.

According to Mr. Brinkley: "When writing or lecturing about American birds, Roosevelt often turned downright lyrical, sometimes achieving the level of song."
The kicker to the story about the contribution from Standard Oil is that despite Roosevelt's repeated orders, it may not have been returned. Roosevelt went to his grave believing that it had been, but Mr. Brinkley said a later investigation of the campaign's finances left open the possibility that Roosevelt's orders may not have been followed.

Roosevelt was a complicated fellow. Progressive in much of his politics and intensely concerned about the long-term welfare of the country and its people, he was also a social Darwinian and a conflict-loving imperialist.
What is not in question is that he was a far, far cry from John McCain and today's G.O.P.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

to the question of changing ones mind, political expediency, and other question we like to talk about politically...

McCain's performance was less consistent than Obama's. This fact cannot be disputed in the critical, unbiased mind. I wonder at the primary cause for McCain's change in performance from "maverick critic of the Bush administration" to supporting Bush-policy 95%. Is this action a simple change of mind, an indication of political ambition, or a combination of the two scenarios? My inquiry is of a strictly personal nature, and not of true political concern; as it relates to neither your motivation for this post nor my final decision come this November. What are your thoughts to my question?

I avoid mind-reading... (thats a response that I stole from economist dean baker and philosopher David Pacini). Baker criticizes news articles when they discuss politics from the question of personal beliefs and personal political philosophy.

These are things these leaders and decision makers may or may not hold but there is no way to verify. How can we trust a journalist who is only seeing certain aspects of candidates and elected officials? Plus they only interact in certain way and politicos are aware they are interacting with a reporter--there is no such thing as off the record.

I flip the question around as something that might be interesting in an abstract way. But I tend to focus those kinds of discussions to philosophers, artists, and other cultural animals. Politics should be serious discussions since it is serious life or death issues at stake. I don't like the cult of personality that the media and voters fixate on.

I always respond by pointing to this negative tendency within out political culture.

They can't read minds can they? No, they can report on the facts, the policies, the positions, contributors, x...y...z...

We can't read minds can we? Its not meant to be condescending to the question since I do think its interesting. But I'm up to my ears in serious politics and most of my interactions with voters have to do with petty issues that are of no importance. Its a very sad state of affairs... and it explains how we've ended up with the corruption and apathy that we now have. We reap what we sow... no?

they can't read minds. I think this is part of my issue with individualizing candidates. I don't comprehend at all the "I vote for the best person." "I like him as a person"

This individualization and personification... has nothing to do with political policy or leadership. Conservatives are often passionate--Liberals can do so as well--about personal politics.

Hell I know the name of Clinton's cat--socks...

why in the world do I need to know that...

we want people discussing political differences. When the news media and political junkies talk about someones political philosophy as the instigator or certain decisions we confuse what we are talking about... as well as what we are capable of knowing.

I'd be intrigued to have philosophical discussions with these people. But that's neither here nor there when it comes to leadership and policy decisions.

I get--whats a good word--frustrated when we talk about candidates doing things for philosophical or political expediency. Talk about the context of verifiable facts; people will infer what they will. But its like the race question... Obama has no need to respond to it. He's a sucker cause he keeps responding which is what McCain wants.

I don't think this speaks to the voters as people who only care about petty stuff. I just think they know there is no point in caring about the important stuff... its driven into them by the media, the two major political parties--who need each other to play the devil, and core gropus who enjoy the status quo while they bemoan the apathy and corruption. When one profits and enjoys the perks of the status quo... one will do and say anything to make it stay the way it is.

The only solution... organize, participate, and never give in...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

tough love for kids with no health insurance but not for the stockholders

Last year when the children's health insurance program came up. There was a core group who opposed the $30 billion over five years or $6 billion per year ($20 per person per year) because it was "too expensive". The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this money would be enough to insure another 4 million children.

Forget the long-term costs that increase health care costs for everyone when children aren't getting routine doctors visits or appropriate treatment. Or the fact that they are children who have no control the economic/social situations they are born into.

As someone who has no health insurance and consistently pays over $1000 a month on health care costs I would gladly pay $20 a year to get 4 million kids lacking health insurance the ability to go see a doctor. This, we can't afford? I can't find health insurance for $20 a year and for what I could pay they would get me on the pre-exiting conditions...

I have to question the policy priorities of my elected officials; Lynn Westmoreland and George Bush don't have to worry about paying for medications. But because the US ranks 37th in the world for health care millions of Americans do (and many can't because of it--which we all pay for in the end via rising health care costs and emergency treatments that would be avoided in other industrialized nations that have universal health care)



now move on to the bailout of freddie mac and fannie mae. While this was a necessary move there was no reason to include perks to stockholders who made bad investments. Kids don't get perks but stockholders do? Democrat and Republican leadership know that kids and poor people don't vote... but stockholders do... I'll outsource this to economist dean baker

Why Is the Government Guaranteeing Fannie and Freddie's Stock Price?

Is there some reason why reporters are not asking this question? There is a clear rationale for making good on Fannie and Freddie's bonds. If the government allowed these bonds to default, not honoring the implicit guarantee, then investors would recognize that these bonds are far more risky than they had believed. This would raise mortgage interest rates for many years to come. It is understandable that we would not want to see this happen, especially in the middle of the housing meltdown.
But what interest does the public have in protecting the share prices of Fannie and Freddie stock? Don't stockholders understand they take a risk when they buy stock? In this case, the stockholders made a bad investment. They are supposed to lose their money (possibly all of it), right?

I have yet to hear any explanation from anyone as to why the government is supporting the share price. (In an NPR interview this morning, Senator Chris Dodd gave an incoherent answer that implied that supporting the share price was somehow tied to backing up the bonds. It isn't.)

In a country that can't fight a few billion dollars to provide funding for child care or children's health care, this multi-billion dollar affirmative action plan for dumb stockholders deserves a little questioning.

(NPR's "Power Breakfast" did an unbelievably awful segment in which it commented that some conservatives oppose bailing out shareholders as "socialism." What? Huh? Is this Planet Earth? Socialism is about giving tax dollars to shareholders? In which volume of Das Kapital does this appear? Conservatives may oppose the bailout for whatever reason, but handing tax dollars to shareholders does not correspond to any definition of socialism I've ever seen.)

--Dean Baker

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com