Election Reflection

At 8:25pm last night (Central time,) ABC News projected that Obama would win Ohio's electoral votes. It was at that moment that I knew he would be our next president. As George Stephanopoulos remarked, the McCain camp didn't have a road map to victory that didn't include Ohio. Since they had called Pennsylvania for Obama early in the night, I knew that McCain was sunk.

As the night wore on, I watched with the world as the electoral map shifted. Here is what it looked like after the 2004 election:



Wow, that's a mighty sea of red, isn't it?

Once Ohio flipped to blue, the cards started falling. All told, nine stated shifted. (I'm giving Obama North Carolina, even though it may not be "official" yet.) These are the states Obama won that were Bush states in '04:



The final map looks like this:



Notice how the blue wave has spread out from the northeast and from the west coast. Another pattern of interest is that in several of the red states that remained red, the margin of victory for McCain was considerably smaller than that of Bush in 2004. For example, in Montana, Bush won by a margin of 21%, but McCain scraped by with 3.5%. In North Dakota, Bush enjoyed a 27.8% victory; McCain managed just under 9%. Back in June, I predicted (incorrectly) that Texas would flip over to blue in this election. That was wishful thinking, I guess. I still think it will, though, as the demographic shifts and the population becomes more urban (which is an overall trend that does not bode well for the republican party.) Bush won Texas by 23% back in 2004; Obama closed that gap to just under 12%.

Back then, my electoral map looked like this:



I was wrong on a few states, but I was only off by 10 electoral votes, giving Obama 354, so that's pretty good, I think. (If I do say so myself.)

So ultimately, does this election represent a fundamental shift in the voting pattern of America, or is it simply a reaction to Bush fatigue? It's difficult to say, but I have a feeling it's more of the former than the latter. The talk has already started about what the GOP needs to do to start winning national elections again. My advice to conservatives would be to use this opportunity to realign the party with its conservative roots, abandoning the radical neocon influence that has permeated it in recent years.

But then, I'm a liberal, so what do I know?

McCain And Torture, Part Two

This is the second post in what hopefully will not become a series on John McCain and the politics of torture. You can read the first post here, if you like.

SEC. 327. LIMITATION ON INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES.
(a) LIMITATION.—No individual in the custody or under the
effective control of an element of the intelligence community or
instrumentality thereof, regardless of nationality or physical location,
shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation
not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Human
Intelligence Collector Operations.

That's the section of HR-2082 that John McCain had an issue with. It's one clause in a military appropriations bill, but it was enough to cause McCain to vote against it. The bill passed, but was vetoed by The Decider. The vote to override the veto fell short--there are simply too many torture-loving Republicans in the House.

Of course, there could be any number of reasons that McCain voted against the bill. He is marketed as a fiscal conservative, after all. Maybe he wanted to reduce the budget for the military. Yeah, right. McCain was actually crystal clear on his reasons for voting against this bill. His statement on the floor of the Senate starts with this:

Mr. President, I oppose passage of the intelligence authorization conference report in its current form.

During conference proceedings, conferees voted by a narrow margin to include a provision that would apply the Army Field Manual to the interrogation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency.

And in fact, his entire statement is about how the Army field manual is insufficient for non-military intelligence agencies, specifically the CIA. The problem with the Army field manual is that it makes clear and plentiful references to the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war. For example, in section 5-73, the manual quotes Article 17:

No physical or mental torture or any other form of coercion may be inflicted on EPWs to secure from them information of any kind whatever. PWs who refuse to answer may not be threatened,insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

The field manual not only makes extensive reference to the Geneva Conventions, it also explains why we want to adhere to them. However, this flies directly in the face of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), which states:

GENEVA CONVENTIONS NOT ESTABLISHING SOURCE OF RIGHTS.
—No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.

§ 948c. Persons subject to military commissions
Any alien unlawful enemy combatant is subject to trial by military commission under this chapter.

The MCA also states that information obtained through the use of torture (or "in which the degree of coercion is disputed") may be admissible in a tribunal so long as a military judge determines:

(1) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable and possessing sufficient probative value;
(2) the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence; and
(3) the interrogation methods used to obtain the statement do not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment prohibited by section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

Wow. That's a grey area big enough to drive a truck through. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which McCain holds up as an example of the laws that protect Illegal Enemy Combatants, states:

No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

The DTA subsequently gets its definition of "creul, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" from the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984. That document states:

the United States considers itself bound by the obligation under Article 16 to prevent "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," only insofar as the term "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" means the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Wouldn't it fall to the Supreme Court, then, to determine the legality of various interrogation methods, since they are the final arbiter of what is or isn't constitutional? I don't believe that the SC has declared waterboarding to be unconstitutional. In fact, according to the Washington Post:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin M. Scalia echoed the administration's view when he said in a BBC Radio interview yesterday that some physical interrogation techniques could be used on a suspect in the event of an imminent threat, such as a hidden bomb about to blow up. "It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that," Scalia said. "And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game: How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?"

So with the Bush administration, the Bush Justice Department, and at least one Supreme Court Justice lining up on the side of torture, the only way to protect anyone from the eager ghouls in the CIA is through the type of legislation that John McCain voted against--because he is in favor of torture.

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McCain Appears Presidential

John McCain has been on tour this week, first through the Middle East, and then on to England. The point of his trip, of course, is to provide many photo-ops of him with various leaders to shore up his claims of having foreign policy experience. He wants, in short, to appear presidential. I'd say he has succeeded.

Unfortunately, the president he resembles is George W Bush.

We all had a chuckle on Tuesday when McCain asserted more than once that Iran is training Al Queda operatives and then sending them back to Iraq. His response was that everyone makes mistakes and we should move on. (The one difference with McCain being that Bush would never acknowledge making a mistake. History would have to judge that.)

In England, McCain met with their Prime Minister for more glad-handing. According to The Telegraph, in a piece that got all wet and sloppy with how awesome Saint McCain is and how he would never have screwed up Iraq as much as W, McCain said:

"The problem with Iraq ... is because it was mishandled after the initial success. That caused great sacrifice, frustration and sorrow."

While that statement may be true to a degree, in that the occupation was indeed mismanaged and has certainly caused a great deal of "sacrifice, frustration and sorrow," that is not the problem with Iraq.

The problem with Iraq is that we should never have invaded in the first place. The problem with Iraq is that the cause for war was fabricated. The problem with Iraq is that the invasion was illegal, immoral, unjust and unnecessary. Of course, I wouldn't expect McCain to do anything but stand behind the decision to go to war in Iraq. Why would he let facts get in the way of his ideology? In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, when asked about the NIE that stated Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program, he said:

I was critical of the NIE at the time. The director says now he wouldn't do that again, but I think the damage that was done by weakening the resolve of our European allies was serious.

This latest round of sanctions that was passed at the UN is remarkable in its weakness. I don't even know how you call them sanctions. So I believe the NIE was damaging, but I do have some optimism particularly where [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy is concerned. I'm glad the [German] chancellor is here in Israel.

Over time we may be able to gather more European support as the evidence becomes clear, as it will, that Iran is progressing on the path towards construction and acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The intelligence estimate states that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program. Since that's counter to McCain's ideology, he has decided to not believe it, replacing actual intelligence with made-up "facts" that will support his agenda.

So we got to see McCain acting presidential this week, showing us a little bit of what we can expect if Saint McCain prevails in the coming election.

I don't think our country, or the world, can survive four more years of Bush policies, Bush agenda and Bush wars, which is exactly what McCain promises.

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McCain's High Road Leads Over Cliff

Last Thursday night, Senator John McCain cast a vote in favor of a bill that would have halted the practice of earmarks for one year. According to CNN, the measure failed by a vote of 29 to 71. McCain took the opportunity to speak on the one issue that he has been consistent on over his career, and to harp on the Senate for not following the will of the people, who he claims are opposed to earmarks.

"There's only one place left in America that they don't get it," McCain told a town hall gathering outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, referring to Washington. "Pork-barrel spending is out of control and Americans want it stopped."

He said the result "is an interesting commentary on how the Congress and the Senate [are] disconnected from the American people."

The suggestion, of course, being that McCain is the true man of the people and that the two Democratic candidates are not, even though they both voted in support of the 1-year suspension of earmarks.

The problem with McCain's argument is that it opens him up to an evaluation of his other positions under the same microscope.

According to CNN:

A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture. ... Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

So on the issue of torture, McCain is obviously, as he puts it, "disconnected from the American people."

According to USA Today:

Which would be better for the United States?
Keep a significant number of troops in Iraq until the situation there gets better: 35%
Set a timetable for removing troops and stick to it regardless of what is going on in Iraq: 60%

Obviously, McCain is out of touch with America when he says, on his campaign website:

A greater military commitment now is necessary if we are to achieve long-term success in Iraq. John McCain agrees with retired Army General Jack Keane that there are simply not enough American forces in Iraq. More troops are necessary...

So 60% of Americans want to set a timetable for withdrawal and McCain wants to send more troops. Who's disconnected?

One of McCain's strategies is to run as an outsider. People in Washington just don't get it, he says, conveniently ignoring the fact that he is one of the people in Washington. Americans are disappointed with Congress, which doesn't listen to them, and doesn't get anything worthwhile accomplished. Meanwhile, McCain--who is a member of Congress--has totally ignored his duties as a Senator. According to that first CNN story:

McCain returned to the Senate for the first time in a month to cast his ballot for an issue that is one of his central themes on the campaign trail.

McCain's only interest in his job as a Senator is making himself look better for the presidential election this fall. Maybe we should have a poll to find out how many Americans approve of that.

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Clinton's Message: It's All About Me

In yesterday's primaries, Hillary Clinton won Ohio and Texas (and Rhode Island). The two larger states were seen as must-wins for her campaign if she was to have any hope of winning the Democratic nomination. Her victories in those two states, and her reaction to them, reveal that her candidacy at this point represents a real defeat for the Democratic party.

According to ABC News:

In talking points circulated late last night, the Clinton campaign acknowledges that it can never overtake Obama with pledged delegates, and asserts that it intends to overtake him with the support of superdelegates.

Clinton's strategy has shifted from actually winning the nomination through the votes cast in primaries and caucuses to being selected by the party insiders and elected officials who make up the super delegates.

Disregarding for the moment whether or not the super delegates would even give the nomination to the candidate who received fewer votes from the masses, the fact is that Clinton wants them to do just that. She has apparently decided that her own ambition matters more than the will of the people. She is clearly putting herself above her party.

As soon as the Clinton camp realized that their candidate had no chance to surpass Obama's pledged delegate total, Hillary Clinton should have dropped out of the race. If she receives the nomination through the (imo) underhanded super delegate system, it could have devastating consequences. Who can predict how many of Obama's supporters will decide not to vote, or to vote for McCain? Does Clinton believe that she would get their support just because she would be the Democrat on the ballot and arguably the lesser of two evils?

At this point, Hillary Clinton's campaign is serving no one but her. She doesn't care about the voters. She doesn't care about the democratic process. All she cares about is getting her chance, even if it means alienating her party -- and almost certainly handing Bush III (aka McCain) the presidency -- once she gets it.

McCain: Talk, Shmalk, Let's Have Some Action!

John McCain is pinning his electoral hopes on people's perception that he will make a good commander in chief. He is a war veteran, of course, and for some reason that is supposed to automatically qualify him for the job. The major question is how he would prosecute the Iraq war.

This morning, McCain stated:

My friends, the war will be over soon. The war for all intents and purposes [will be over], although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years, but it'll be handled by the Iraqis not by us...

How does McCain envision the war ending? How will the US hand the problem over to the Iraqis? I would have imagined by getting the various parties to come together and work out their disagreements. Later in his town hall meeting, McCain said:

I think one of the most overrated aspects of diplomacy is talks

So... He plans on handling the war in Iraq by... not talking to the Iraqis? I'm beginning to see why he predicted that the US will be in Iraq for another hundred years.

With McCain running the show, we'll continue Bush's failed policy of shooting first and not asking questions later. If we had listened to McCain last summer, we'd be at war with Iran right now, over a non-existent nuclear program. Serving in the military doesn't automatically make someone a good leader. It's time Americans took the stars out of their eyes and looked at the man behind the uniform.

Obamarama Rolls On

Last night, Obama won the Wisconsin primary and the Hawaii caucus. Neither contest was even close. He took Wisconsin by a margin of 17%, and Hawaii by 52%. At this point in the race, those numbers spell almost certain doom for the Clinton campaign. The real dagger last night was that Obama cut into Hillary's core voters. Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics.com sums it up nicely.

Clinton suffered significant loses across many of her core constituencies. White women, Democrats, union workers, downscale voters, and white Catholics all drifted to Obama last night - some so much that Obama actually won them.

What this shows is that the Clinton Campaign strategy of going negative in recent weeks didn't help her, and in fact may have backfired.

It's 13 days now until Hillary's D-Day. She has to pull out strong victories in both Texas and Ohio in order to even have a sliver of a chance of getting the nomination. Right now, according to CNN, Obama is ahead in the pledged delegate count by 143. While Clinton leads in the polls in Ohio, a Monday CNN poll shows Texas as a dead heat.

Can Hillary stage a comeback? Negative tactics don't seem to work against Obama's message of hope and change. The real question is whether the Clinton campaign has any new tricks up its sleeve, because the old ones aren't getting the job done.

McCain Was Against Bush Tax Cuts Before He Was For Them

Senator John McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. At the time, he said:

There's a theory, I think, that's prevalent--it was true in the 2001 tax cuts--that if you give it to the wealthy people, then they will then, you know, create jobs, etc. The interesting thing to me is that most economists will tell you that it's the middle-income Americans that have been keeping the economy afloat buying cars, buying houses, consumer goods, not the wealthiest of America.

Tax cuts for rich people do not help the economy. That's what McCain said. For some reason, though, he has changed his position.

[McCain] could "see an argument, if our economy continues to deteriorate, for lower interest rates, lower tax rates, and certainly decreasing corporate tax rates," as well as giving people the ability to write off depreciation and eliminating the alternative minimum tax.

McCain was defending his support for an extension of tax cuts sought by President Bush, which McCain voted against.

I guess the one positive aspect of this is that if McCain were to become president, nobody would be able to say that they are surprised when he turns out to be another Bush. He's been steadily laying the groundwork for just that. And just to make sure we get the point:

"No new taxes," the likely GOP presidential nominee said during a taped interview broadcast Sunday.

Read his lips.

As McCain's Star Rises, His Integrity Approaches Zero

John McCain is a straight shooter. He tells it like it is and if you don't like it, that's too bad. He compromises when he has to, he works across the aisle, he buckles down and gets things done --all in the name of America. At least that's his shtick. And because people buy into it, they believe he has integrity. The interesting thing is that McCain has shed pretty much all of his "independence" and "maverick" style over the past couple of years. Now, he is little more than a morally bankrupt Bush clone.

CBS News reported yesterday that Bush has promised to veto the Intelligence authorization bill that just passed the Senate, because it limits CIA interrogators to techniques outlined in the US Army Field Manual. No big surprise there. The surprising (well, not surprising. More disturbing, really) part was this:

Sen. John McCain, who has previously spoken out against torture (having been tortured himself while held captive during the Vietnam War), voted against the bill, but said his vote was not inconsistent with his previous calls for a ban.

The disturbing part is that McCain knows that torture doesn't work. Newsmax, Limbaugh and some other right-wing hacks have taken some of McCain's quotes out of context to argue that he claimed that torture worked on him during the Vietnam war. Media Matters has an article that refutes that claim. They quote a passage from a Newsweek article in which McCain states:

Obviously, to defeat our enemies we need intelligence, but intelligence that is reliable. We should not torture or treat inhumanely terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort. In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear -- whether it is true or false -- if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse. It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers that are perhaps less provably false than that which I once offered. [Media Matters' emphasis]

So John McCain knows that torture is not a reliable way to get useful information out of a detainee. He knows because he has been subjected to torture (which I think gives him a unique perspective on the matter among his fellow Senators) and when he reached his breaking point he gave up false information because he knew that as long as the interrogators got that much, they would stop torturing him. But now he's flip-flopped on the issue. Why? What could he possibly gain from it?

Oh yeah, he's going to be the Republican nominee for president. Got to look tough if you want to do that. Can't let little things like reason or logic or a basic respect for human rights get in the way.

McCain has a reputation (justifiably or not) as someone who will compromise to get the job done. The job this time is getting the nomination for president. The compromise? His ideals, apparently.

GOP Strategy: Cheat Early, Cheat Often

Given the recent history of voting "anomalies," and "fraud, malfeasance, or incompetence" in our presidential elections, I would have thought that the Republican party would make every effort to at least create the appearance that the election process has not been completely compromised.

Apparently I was wrong.

As reported in the Brad Blog, John McCain won Saturday's Republican caucus. Luke Esser, the chair of the Washington state Republican party, was so certain of a McCain victory, that he didn't even need to see all of the votes. With 87% of the votes counted and Mike Huckabee only 242 votes behind, Esser stopped the count and declared a winner.

Sound familiar?

After the 2000 and 2004 elections, I think an argument can be made that we need to have some sort of monitoring of our national elections, perhaps by the UN. It may seem like a slap in the face to suggest that the world's greatest democracy doesn't have its shit together, but come on. I haven't trusted Republicans to run a fair election against the Democrats since November of 2000. Now it would appear that they can't be trusted to run one within their own party. How long do we have to watch these people destroy our country before we say, ENOUGH!

Please note: I am not suggesting that all Republicans don't care about representative government. We just need to watch the ones who are running the elections.

Speaking Of The Politics Of Failure...

The NY Times, reporting on director of national intelligence Mike McConnell's appearance before the Senate:

The testimony, in an annual assessment of the threats facing the United States, was the latest indication that Al Qaeda appears to have significantly rebuilt a network battered by the American invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It follows a National Intelligence Estimate last summer that described a resurgent Al Qaeda, and could add fuel to criticisms from Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates that the White House focus on Iraq since 2002 has diverted attention and resources from the battle against the Qaeda organization’s core.

Contrast this to what Bush stated in his State of the Union address:

Since 9/11, we have taken the fight to these terrorists and extremists. We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure, and we will deliver justice to our enemies.

And a few moments later:

Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists there is no doubt. Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated.

So now that Bush has focused 150,000 US troops and hundreds of billions of dollars on defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq (Where they, by the way, did not exist before Bush's war / occupation,) the terrorist organization is, according to McConnell:

gaining in strength from its refuge in Pakistan and is steadily improving its ability to recruit, train and position operatives capable of carrying out attacks inside the United States.

So while Bush is desperately trying to keep Iraq from completely disintegrating, Al Qaeda has set up shop down the street, in a country that has nuclear weapons. The sad truth is that Bush has no idea how to wage a "war on terror." Worse is the fact that none of the incompetent people he has surrounded himself with seem to have a clue, either.

The Politics Of Spoilage

Mike Huckabee is a spoiler. Ask any Republican who either supports Mitt Romney, or simply opposes John McCain, and they will tell you. In fact, Romney himself fanned the flames of derision by "calling on Mike Huckabee to drop out of the race..." and "expressed concern that Huckabee will peel off enough conservatives to deprive him of victory over McCain in Super Tuesday's Republican nomination contests..."

Huckabee, of course, went and won five states on Super Tuesday to Romney's seven, which perhaps will serve to reduce the cries of spoiler! coming from the Romney camp. As the likelihood of McCain getting the nomination comes closer, the spoiler tag may become permanently affixed to Huckabee, as it has to Ralph Nader.

The tagging of a candidate as a spoiler, and using the term in a derogatory manner, has no place in our political system and is born out of anger and ignorance. I should know; I readily applied that tag to Nader after he (in my eyes) stole enough of Al Gore's votes in Florida in 2000 to swing the state in Bush's favor. I had feared that he would do just that when I saw that he was on the ballot. Any support that he got was obviously going to detract from Gore's. He had no right to ruin the election just to serve his own massive ego.

Sometimes I'm astounded by my own ignorance.

The concept of a "spoiler" in politics is flawed in several ways. First, in the case of Florida, the assumption that if Nader hadn't been in the race, all of his votes would have gone to Gore is presumptuous. Who's to say how many of his supporters would have simply stayed home if their only options were Gore or Bush? Who knows how many would have written in someone, or voted for one of the other candidates. Plus, nobody knows how many contingency plans the Bush team had ready, to assure their candidate "victory."

More troubling, though, is the very notion that the votes that went to Nader (or any votes, for that matter) belonged to Gore. Somehow, he was entitled to all of the "liberal" votes. So how dare anyone take them away from him? Please. The point of a representative government is that the people get to decide for themselves who they want representing them. The idea that one person deserves the votes of a certain demographic is ludicrous. Nobody deserves our votes; they are supposed to earn them.

The other problem with the spoiler is the mainstream parties' response to them. Rather than finding out what is causing people to leave them and lend their support to third party candidates, the two major parties instead try to make the process more difficult for anyone not endorsed by either the DNC or the RNC. The same goes for inter-party fights, such as between Huckabee and Romney. Perhaps instead of calling for Huckabee to quit, Romney should have tried to figure out what it is about his campaign that is causing Republicans to support Huckabee instead (or McCain, for that matter.)

The only spoiler in politics is failed leadership.

Republicans Filibuster Stimulus Plan

The Senate Democrats have crafted a stimulus package of their own, ignoring for the moment the bill passed by the House. Their bill, which passed out of committee yesterday, has an additional $30 Billion in spending over 2 years. The Senate Republicans reacted in the only way they know how. They filibustered it.

According to the New York Times:

Senate Democratic leaders said on Thursday that they were short of the 60 votes needed to advance a $161 billion economic stimulus package toward approval in the Senate.

Why do they need 60 votes?

Sixty votes are needed under Senate rules to shut off debate on a measure and move to consideration of the measure itself, a step known as cloture. Without cloture, opponents of a Senate bill would be able to prolong the debate indefinitely.

So the Republicans have decided that they don't want to vote on the bill, probably because they know it would pass, and they can't have that. How would it look for the Democrats to be able to gloat that they were able to pass a bill to help Americans in this time of crisis? (I'm not arguing that it would help, that's just what the Dems would claim.) And in an election year, at that.

Plus, the Republicans see this as an opportunity to gain ground in a completely unrelated fight --Bush's illegal wiretapping.

They also said that they had yet to reach agreement on extending the Bush administration’s terrorism surveillance program, which Republican leaders have set as a condition for allowing the stimulus bill to move ahead.

Why won't the Republicans stop with the partisan politics long enough to work with the Democrats in giving the economy a much-needed boost? Why must they constantly put party concerns above all else? Why won't they allow the stimulus bill to receive an up-or-down vote, like they were crying about over and over the one time the Dems blocked a judicial appoinment (or maybe it was two times)?

Huckabee Admits He Hates America

One of the principle tenets of the United States is that we do not have an official religion. The right to freedom of religion (and by extension, freedom from religion) is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Mike Huckabee doesn't like that. Doesn't like that at all. He feels that what America needs to be, rather than a democratic republic, is a theocracy. Specifically, a Christian theocracy. He wants to change the Constitution, which doesn't mention God anywhere, "so it's in God's standards." (See Raw Story article here.)

So Huckabee has finally admitted what I think we've all known for a while. He is hostile to the Constitution and wants to override it to conform to his religious views. Hopefully enough of the American public understands what a threat he is to our liberties that his candidacy fades away shortly after Super Tuesday.

The Not-So-Fair Tax

When Mike Huckabee won the Republican Caucus in Iowa last week, a cheer went up from one particular fringe group: the Americans For Fair Taxation. They proclaimed that "The Fair Tax Wins In Iowa!" I've heard Huckabee mention the "Fair" Tax before, so I decided to investigate.

The "Fair" Tax would eliminate the payroll taxes that most Americans have deducted from their checks. Personal income tax and social security taxes would no longer be withheld. More interestingly, the "Fair" Tax would eliminate taxes such as the estate tax, gift tax, capital gains tax and all commercial real-estate transaction taxes. My assumption going in was that the "Fair" Tax was a scheme to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class and poor, and it appears that the primary goal is to create a system where wealthy people can accumulate wealth without paying taxes on it, and then pass it along to their heirs without them having to pay taxes on it.

I wanted to do a thorough evaluation of the "Fair" Tax, but there is so much to it that I'd have to dedicate all of my time to deciphering the reports that the Americans For Fair Taxation have paid to have produced. Instead, I chose one claim that struck me as particularly dubious and decided to look into it.

One of the things mentioned over and over in the literature is that the "Fair" Tax is progressive. They claim that they have worked in a way to make it less of a burden on poor people, as opposed to a standard flat tax, which would disproportionately target the lower income brackets. The way they fix it is to send everyone a check once a month, equal to the 1/12th of the "Fair" Tax payments on purchases up to the poverty level. A single person, for example, would get a check for about $196 per month. That way, nobody is paying taxes on life's necessities, or so they claim.

I wondered how it could be that a sales tax that would produce a 30% increase in the cost of all goods and services that people buy (excluding "used" items) could possibly be a larger burden on the wealthy. So I checked out one of the reports that the "Fair" Tax people paid for, titled "A Distributional Analysis of Adopting the FairTax." What I found was not very surprising at all.

"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of people know that." -Homer Simpson

From page 4 of the report:

We argue that current expenditure is a better measure of an individual’s well-being than current income. This is because current expenditure is more closely related to lifetime income than is current income and is less subject to temporary shocks. Current expenditure is also a better measure of wealth, since people may live off their savings while undergoing a temporary drop in income. Therefore, we conclude that the FairTax, with the prebate, is more progressive than the current tax law.

There, in a nutshell, is how the "Fair" Tax crowd can claim their plan is progressive. If you spend more money, your "well being" is greater than if you spend less money. (Would anyone other than the rich come up with that?) By their logic, if you take two people who each earn $50,000 per year, the one whose expenditures are $70,000 per year is twice as well off as the one whose expenditures are $35,000 per year. Magical conservathink. Spend yourself into debt to be better off.

On page 19 of the report, in section IV. Distribution on a per Capita Basis, there is an interesting finding:

As noted before, even people in the poorest income per capita deciles have relatively high levels of expenditure per capita. The introduction of the FairTax would not favor these people; they would gain little from the abolition of taxes on income (because their incomes are low), but would pay the FairTax (because their expenditures are substantial), as shown in column (M). This effect is attenuated when the dynamic expenditure-expanding effects of the FairTax are taken into account, but the poorest half of the population (as measured by income per capita) would be worse off due to the FairTax. A similar conclusion emerges from an examination of the pattern of income per capita, shown in columns (Q) through (V) in Table 9. [Emphasis Added.]

So the group's own report states flat out that when you look at the numbers on the basis of income rather than expenditures, the "Fair" Tax actually hurts the poorest half of the population. How is that progressive, again?

And then, to perhaps water down the bitter taste from the report's conclusion, they add:

Note the very low average income of those in the poorest income per capita decile – just $1,243 in 2001 – which is surely a poor measure of the well-being of this group of the population.

Because really, how could you judge someone's well-being by the fact that they live in abject poverty? As long as they're spending lots, then they're A-OK.

If A Caucus Voter Fell In The Woods...

What if you threw a party and nobody showed up?

Wyoming, in an effort to become relevant, decided to move their Republican caucus up ahead of everyone else (thus becoming the new Iowa, perhaps.) Unfortunately, they didn't count on Iowa's determination to remain Iowa, or New Hampshire's determination to remain New Hampshire. Both of those states moved their primaries up to compensate, leaving Wyoming sandwiched in between.

So what happens when you're a nobody who tries to sneak a seat at the popular kids' table? You tend to get ignored.

According to an AP story, "Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul have passed through [Wyoming] since September. Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain have not."

It's a bad sign when only one of the viable candidates passes through your state. In fact, the candidates seem to have headed to New Hampshire after last night's results were known and speeches were made. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that Wyoming simply isn't ready for Prime Time, no matter how early their caucus is held.

Romney's Message To Atheists: Go To Hell

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. ... Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

So there you have it. According to Mitt Romney, if you do not believe in the God of the Bible, then you are leading the US on a path to destruction. I'm not sure which is more annoying: Romney's pandering to the evangelicals in a last-ditch effort to win in Iowa, or his utter ignorance of the religious beliefs of our nation's founders.

We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.

Putting the words "In God We Trust" on our money had nothing to do with the Founders. According to the US Treasury, "The motto IN GOD WE TRUST was placed on United States coins largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil War." And, "IN GOD WE TRUST first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin."

As for the pledge, religioustolerance.org says, "In 1954, during the McCarthy era and communism scare, Congress passed a bill, which was signed into law, to add the words 'under God.'" I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Founders had nothing to do with that, either.

Of course, Romney's view of religion is predictably Christ-centric. He said, "I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God." So either he hasn't encountered that many faiths, or he feels that all religions have the same god.

It seems to me that Romney's view on religion is rather single-minded. Tolerance of religion means tolerance of his religion. Freedom to worship means freedom to worship the god of the Bible. Our rights come from his god. Our laws come from his god. Our nation exists only because of his god. If you're a person of faith, you're obviously worshiping his god. If you're not a person of faith, then you're what's wrong with this country.

So, Romney's message to all Atheists: Go to hell. America doesn't need you.

(All quotes from Romney's speech were grabbed from WCVB in Boston.)

For Some Reason, I Don't Believe Him

President Bush vetoed the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008. In the statement that he sent to the House, he said that the bill simply spends too much money. Specifically, $10 Billion more than he wanted.

So all of a sudden, George W. Bush is a fiscal conservative. Stop laughing, he really is! Here's what he said:

Americans sent us to Washington to achieve results and be good stewards of their hard-earned tax dollars.

Bush said that on the same day that he signed the appropriations bill for the Department of Defense FY 2008 budget, which increased defense spending by $40 Billion.

The reason that I mention the defense budget is not to harp on the fact that the US spends waaaaayyyyyy too much on defense, but rather to point out the hypocrisy of Bush's statement about being a good steward of our tax dollars. For example, by the Pentagon's own admission, they have "lost" several trillion dollars over the years. If Bush wants to cut spending, maybe he should have vetoed the Defense Department budget and forced them to become a little more responsible with their money before giving them more of it. Who knows, if they're able to clean up their act, maybe they'll be able to afford Bush's Iraq Occupation.

Reality Is Overrated

President Bush is isolated form the world. That in itself is not unusual. Bush has admitted that he doesn't read much and relies on his advisers to provide what he thinks is an objective report on world events. In the current issue of Time magazine, John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN answers ten questions and provides a glimpse into the sort of insulation that our president has wrapped himself in.

Here's a particularly telling bit:

Q: What do you think is the root cause of the anti-American sentiment sweeping the nations of the world? -BEN WONG CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND

A: I don't think there's anti-American sentiment sweeping the world.

The only question is whether he actually believes that. Judging from the inability for anyone in the Bush administration to admit they ever did anything wrong, I suspect he does.

Another chilling exchange:

Q: How should Iranians feel about the unfriendly threats of war issued by the U.S.? -ALI FARROKHIAN, TEHRAN

A: Our concern is not with the Iranian people, and I think we've gone out of our way to make it clear. If it ever did come to the use of military force, we need to make it clear to the people of Iran that this is not aimed against them.

Isn't that what this administration told the people of Iraq before unleashing "Shock And Awe" on them?

Of course, Bolton was simply one of dozens, or even hundreds, of ideologues in the Bush administration who have been openly hostile toward the organization they were supposed to head / oversee / work with.