Cutest Kid in the Galaxy

The plot of Star Wars, according to a precocious 3-year old:

(Click below to play video)

McCain Hates Children

That's according to the Children's Defense Fund (CDF).

Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing and sensationalizing a bit. But not by all that much.

The CDF recently published their Congressional Scorecard for 2007. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton scored moderately well, with ratings of 60% and 70%, respectively.

John McCain, however, received only a 10% rating, which puts him dead last among senators.

But maybe 2007 was just a bad year. Let's check some previous years. If you average their ratings for the last 3 years, Clinton and Obama both get 87%. McCain scores a pathetic 14%.

Well, at least you can say that John McCain is consistent in his hatred of children.

Bush Hates Children Too

You may recall that last year, President Bush twice vetoed bills from Congress that would have increased funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $35 billion over five years.

Apparently, that wasn't mean enough.

Yesterday, the governors of three states testified before Congress that the Bush administration has done everything it can to prevent them from using non-federal funds to supplement their own states' SCHIP and Medicaid programs.

The Associated Press has the full story here.

History Repeats Itself

For almost 15 years after World War I, the British army occupied the country we now call Iraq — at that time the British called it Mesopotamia. Their main interest was protecting the oil fields and refineries in southern Iraq owned by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (which changed its name in 1954 to British Petroleum and then again in 2000 to simply BP). They exerted military control over the country by means of the large bases they built outside the cities of Basra and Baghdad.

Iraqis grew increasingly resentful of the foreign presence and in the summer of 1920 full-scale revolt broke out. The “Grand Mujtahid of Karbala,” Imam Shirazi, issued a fatwa decreeing jihad against the foreign infidels. Insurgents staged increasingly effective guerilla attacks on British military patrols. The British retaliated against the pro-insurgent town of Fallujah by leveling it with a month-long artillery bombardment. Then Shiites and Sunnis began turning on each other, with many civilian massacres. The entire country plunged into chaos and war, which lasted until the British finally left in 1932.

In 1920, a London Times editorial asked, “How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavour to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want?”

The Daily Express published the following political cartoon in 1922:

According to exchange rate and inflation data available here and here, the £50 million per year Britons complained about in 1922 would be equivalent to $2.8 billion per year now. Our current annual expenditures in Iraq are at least 50 times that.

McCain's Money Woes

Hans von Spakovsky was one of Alberto Gonzales' cronies in the Justice Department who is now implicated in the Attorney Dismissal Scandal. In 2006, President Bush made Von Spakovsky a member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by using a controversial recess appointment.

His term on the FEC has now expired and President Bush wants to reappoint him. But Senate Democrats refuse to consider him. They went to the extreme of conducting pro forma sessions over this past Christmas vacation to prevent another recess appointment. Bush refuses to retract Von Spakovsky's nomination. The net result of this impasse is that the FEC currently has only two out of the normal six commissioners and cannot make any rulings because that would require four votes. The FEC has effectively been shut down.

In August 2007, before all this FEC nonsense began, John McCain's presidential campaign ran out of money. He applied to the FEC for public financing and was accepted. Federal financing laws promised to supply him with almost $6 million in public money but limited him to spending no more than $54 million total for the entire primary season. In December, he leveraged that promise of future public financing to secure a $1 million loan, which kept his campaign afloat for a couple of months.

In case you haven't heard, John McCain's political prospects improved considerably in January 2008. He's now the presumptive Republican nominee. He won't receive the public funds until March, but he's already spent all of his allotted $54 million. And he'd definitely like to spend more before the Republican convention in September. Since he has lots of donors now, financing is no longer a problem. So he very much wants to opt out of the public financing system, just as Dick Gephardt did in 2004.

But he can't. Not legally, anyway.

He's filed all the required paperwork with the FEC to opt out. Normally, the decision to allow him to do so would be quick and routine. But, as I said before, the FEC can't currently make any decisions because it doesn't have a quorum of four commissioners. Catch-22.

The Republican Chairman of the FEC, David Mason, recently wrote McCain a letter saying, "the Commission will consider your request at such time as it has a quorum." He went on to say that McCain can't legally withdraw from public financing until the FEC gives him written permission to do so. If his campaign spends any more money before September, it will risk being in violation of federal campaign financing laws and John McCain could be subject to fines and up to five years in prison.

The McCain campaign has announced that they're going to continue spending money anyway. They say that in the meantime they'll seek a judgment on the matter in federal court. But it's uncertain if the courts have the authority to order the FEC to make a decision without a quorum. And, in any event, there's no guarantee that either the courts or the FEC will rule in McCain's favor.

Oh, by the way, the law that John McCain may now be willfully violating is called the McCain-Feingold Act.

There are some other twists and turns to this story, which Josh Marshall covers in the following video:

(Click below to play video)

McCain on Contraception

Is John McCain a moderate?

Consider the following exchange between McCain and a reporter in March 2007, as reported by Adam Nagourney:

["Weaver" is John Weaver, McCain's senior advisor, "Brian" is Brian Jones, his press secretary, "Dr. Coburn" is Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D.]

Reporter: “Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?”

McCain: “Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote – that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, then he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”

Reporter: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Reporter: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Reporter: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk Express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it in the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Reporter: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases? Would you say, ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

So apparently, McCain will be following the advice of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn in these matters. And where does Coburn lie on the political spectrum? In 2004, he said, "I favor the death penalty for abortionists."

Still think McCain is a moderate?

Bert the Turtle

The Homeland Security Advisory System is the five-color terrorist threat scale which was introduced in March 2002. From lowest to highest danger, the colors are: green, blue, yellow, orange, and red.

Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that future charts will not contain the colors green or blue, since they have never been used and it is inconceivable that they ever will be.

(Okay, you caught me. They made no such announcement. But it is a fact that green and blue have never been used in the six years since March 2002.)

The DHS also released today a new instructional video explaining how to deal with terrorist threats:

(Click below to play video)

(Okay, you caught me again.)

The Pet Goat

You're probably not familiar with the children's book Reading Mastery: Level 2, Storybook 1 by Engelmann and Bruner. But you've almost certainly heard about one of the stories in it: "The Pet Goat."

Here's what one of the reviewers at amazon.com had to say about the book:

Riveting, this book had me rivited to my chair!

I really like this book a lot. Once I was reading this book with some short friends of mine. (These friends are people, and they're not as tall as me.) I'm sorry to say, though, my friend Andy came into the room while I was reading this VERY VERY GOOD book and he interrupted me, which was really sort of rude of him. (I said very very good like that because that will impress my friend Laura -- who is a girl and also my wife, because I got married to her like I did because I am not gay and neither is she, and the constitution says I can marry a girl -- because she is a librarian, which means, mostly, that she really really likes books a LOT, even more than me, I mean.)

Well, after my friend Andy came in and interrupted me, I still kept reading this book because one, I know when I have a good book in my hands (and this is a stupendous book, something pretty good, I mean) and then there's the second reason I kept reading -- I did not want to alarm my short friends (they were children, meaning that they aren't adult people yet, they're pre-adults, I like to say) by putting the book down and going to play a video game or whatever it was Andy wanted me to do. Then I saw my friend Condi in the doorway (Condi is also a girl, but not my wife) and she waved at me, and I thought, Condi looks good in blue. She looks very, you know, patriotic.

But then finally I had to go, and I never got back to the book, but after I retire from my job, or when I go on vacation in a couple days (it's always only a couple days away until I go on vacation, sort of), well then I will finally sit down and read this book from START to FINISH. (To be honest, I don't always, always read things from start to finish. Condi will tell you about that.)

Cups and Balls

Classic sleight of hand by Penn and Teller.

"You never tell an audience how a trick is done.
I'm going to tell you exactly how this trick is being done."

(Click below to play video)

Lynching Party

Bill O'Reilly spent all three hours of his February 19th radio broadcast talking about Michelle Obama's "first time I've been proud" comment. O'Reilly said:

I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts that say this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels — that America is a bad nation or a flawed country, whatever — then that's legit.

It's reassuring to know that Bill adheres to strict ethical guidelines on when it is and isn't "legit" to carry out a lynching. Or maybe this was just Bill's clever way of demonstrating how public figures sometimes choose the wrong words and end up saying things they don't really mean.

Nah. There are a lot of adjectives you can apply to Bill O'Reilly. "Clever" is not one of them.

But "racist" is. This is the same guy, after all, who just a few months ago, after dining in the Harlem restaurant Sylvia's, commented on how normal it was, "even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." He elucidated:

There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea." You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all.

If Don Imus' infamous racist comment warranted a temporary suspension from the air waves, then it seems only fair that Bill O'Reilly should now be permanently exiled to another planet. Preferably in another solar system.

Here's some commentary by Keith Olbermann and Eugene Robinson:

(Click below to play video)

Liberal Manifesto

From Daniel Kurtzman's book How to Win a Fight with a Conservative:

Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages, body armor for our troops, government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Liberals believe in reading actual books, going to war as a last resort, separating church and hate, and doing what Jesus would actually do, instead of lobbying for upper-class tax cuts and fantasizing about the apocalypse.

Liberals believe in civil rights, the right to privacy, and that evolution and global warming aren’t just theories but incontrovertible scientific facts.

Liberals believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment that (1) prohibits another Bush from ever occupying the White House, and (2) prevents George W. Bush from ever becoming baseball commissioner before he does to our national pastime what he did for America.

Liberals believe in rescuing people from flooded streets and rooftops, even if they’re too poor to vote Republican.

Liberals believe that supporting our troops means treating our wounded vets like the heroes they are, and not leaving them to languish in rat-infested military hospitals under the outsourced management of incompetent cronies who think they’re running a Taco Bell franchise.

Liberals believe in pheromones, sex ed, solar panels, voting paper trails, the common good, and that, no matter how fascinating a story it may be, a president should never sit around in a state of total paralysis reading My Pet Goat while America is under attack.

And above all, liberals believe that it’s time to come together as a country and put a collective boot in the ass of shameless conservative fearmongers, hate merchants, and scapegoaters who are sucking the freedom out of all our souls.

Ready On Day One?

In an essay posted today on The Huffington Post, Paul Loeb considers the increasingly common reports of mismanagement and incompetence in the Clinton campaign. He speculates on what this might imply about Hillary's readiness to be president. Some excerpts:

I wonder whether she specifically surrounds herself with people who are so intimidated they can't even stand up and disagree with her, or tell her bad news. Personal loyalty is fine, but we've had plenty of that in the current administration, with disastrous results. ... [Recent events] suggest either that Clinton's built a team that is sharply lacking in basic skills, like high school math, or that she has a character that makes people afraid to challenge her. ...

Hillary has a consistent pattern of refusing to admit mistakes. Had she flat out admitted her Iraq war vote was wrong, she might well now be the presumptive nominee, but she chose instead to evade its implications through an endless succession of rationalizations and technicalities. She did the same thing with her vote on a regressive bankruptcy bill, which she now claims didn't matter since the bill ended up not passing. And she's doing the same thing with NAFTA. Bill Clinton staked much of his political capital in making it the centerpiece of his first term achievements, in the process creating so much anger and backlash among labor and environmental activists that many stayed home and helped the Gingrich Republicans sweep to their 1994 upset victory. Now, Hillary is saying, she'd always privately argued against it, so bears no responsibility for its hollowing out of America's industrial base.

So I worry that if she does get in, we're going to end up with one more president who lives in an insular bubble of yes-men — whatever their gender. I worry about the competence question — raised first by Clinton's squandering of her massive lead, and underscored just today by a report that her quintessentially professional campaign failed to file enough delegates in the critical state of Pennsylvania to actually take full advantage of the votes they could gain. Successful campaigns don't always correlate with successful presidencies, but if you're running on the basis of experience, yet end up in such perpetual melt-down, it's not a good sign.

Posthumous Anti-Endorsement

Molly Ivins was one of the great populist political commentators of our time. Her down-home, unpretentious writing style, full of humorous Texas-isms, made her scathing criticisms of faux-Texan George W. Bush — for whom she coined the nickname "Shrub" — all the more credible in books like Bushwhacked.

Unfortunately, Molly died about a year ago after battling cancer for almost eight years. People now sometimes forget that before the Dubya years, Ivins also had some very funny and scathing criticisms of the Clinton administration, in books like You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You.

In January 2006, Molly Ivins published an essay entitled "I Will Not Support Hillary Clinton" in the Columbus Free Press. With the Ohio primaries coming up soon, they today republished that essay. Some excerpts:

I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Senator Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges. ...

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls? ...

Oh come on, people — get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war — from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. ... If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Separation Anxiety

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan said, "God, the source of all knowledge, should never have been expelled from our children's classrooms."

In 1985, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said, "The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."

In 1987, Vice President George H.W. Bush said, "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."

In 2002, President George W. Bush said, "We need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench."

In June 2006, Barack Obama delivered the keynote address for the Call to Renewal conference of liberal and moderate Christian groups. His speech provides some of the best rationale I've seen for why Christians should strongly support church-state separation. Some excerpts:

[Conservative leaders] need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities. It was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forebears of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religion, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst — if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America — whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's? Or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount — a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? ...

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible.

At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

Frozen Grand Central

The "prank collective" group Improv Everywhere has been at it again.

"On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the main concourse of Grand Central Station."

(Click below to play video)

john.he.is

On January 8th, Barack Obama narrowly lost the New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton. He had been leading in all the polls just before the vote — in some by as much as 10% — so the outcome was a big disappointment for his supporters. Ironically, his concession speech that night was one of the most uplifting orations he's ever delivered. It's now known as the "Yes We Can" speech.

You've probably already seen the music video inspired by that speech, created by will.i.am and Jesse Dylan. If not, here it is:

(Click below to play video)

I have to admit it, I feel like a real dupe. I'm so embarrassed.

I've been going around telling my friends, "You have to see this 'Yes We Can' video. It's so cool!" Blah blah blah. Jeez... I can't believe how naive and gullible I am.

I just discovered the truth about that video. Now I have egg on my face. Of course, it's been there for a while now, I just didn't know it. Why didn't one of you stop me from making such a fool of myself?

Okay, I'll try to make amends for being such an idiot. That whole will.i.am "Yes We Can" thing is just a blatant, cheap ripoff of this earlier and much more inspiring video, created by john.he.is:

(Click below to play video)

Just to rub salt into my wounds, here are the lyrics/text of "Yes We Can":

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long. But always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A. We will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea....

Yes. We. Can.

Super Wednesday

The votes aren't quite all counted and delegate apportionment is still very much up in the air, but the dust has settled enough now that we can begin to see the landscape of yesterday's battlefield.

There were about 14.8 million Democratic votes yesterday (versus 8.8 million Republican) and Clinton garnered about 67,000 more than Obama, which is less than 0.5% of the total.

[Update: According to realclearpolitics.com, it was 14.6 million Democrats, 9 million Republicans, and Clinton won by 70,415 (which is still less than 0.5%)]

A lot of the polls were obviously way off, especially John Zogby's, which had predicted Obama winning by 6% in California. For future reference, SurveyUSA (often called "SUSA" by polling geeks) seems to have done the best overall, and in California they were exactly right: 52%-42% for Clinton.

Currently, it looks like Obama may actually end up winning more delegates. One estimate is 845 for him, 836 for her. The Obama campaign touted those figures in a press release today, while the Clinton campaign responded with something to the effect of, "We're not sure that's correct." Which sounds to me like an affirmation that it probably is correct. But due to the extremely byzantine rules for computing these things, which differ from state to state, it will take at least a couple of days to know for sure.

The Clinton campaign raised about $13 million in January, while Obama raised $32 million. Clinton is apparently out of cash: her top-level staffers have agreed to work without pay for the next month and she has loaned the campaign $5 million of her personal money.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has raised $5.3 million in the (approximately) 24 hours since the polls have closed. They even have a snarky little graphic showing the current total.   [Looks like they've stopped updating it at $7,596,326]   It was revealed today that Mark Penn, Hillary's "chief strategist," has been paid $4.3 million so far. Josh Marshall suggested that the Obama campaign can now afford to hire him.

There are still 22 states to go. On Saturday we'll see voting in Louisiana, Nebraska, and Washington. On Sunday it's Maine's turn. Next Tuesday it will be Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC. And on and on it will go. We won't be entirely finished until Puerto Rico votes on June 7th.

It's probable, however, that there won't be a clear winner even going into the convention in August. There are about 1,400 pledged delegates still up for grabs. Unless one of the candidates can somehow, miraculously, win 1,100 (79%) of them, we're going to see a brokered convention. In which case, the real politics will commence — lots of negotiating and horse trading amongst the superdelegates in smoke-filled back rooms. There will almost certainly be a floor vote during the first day of the convention on whether to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida. Whoever wins that vote will probably go on to win the nomination.

Or maybe it won't be settled even then. Maybe they'll still be completely deadlocked and the only resolution will be to nominate Al Gore as a dark horse candidate. It's highly unlikely, but not impossible. Anything seems possible at the moment, including not needing to hold the convention because all the Republicans have been raptured away to heaven by Jesus (all Republicans except Dick Cheney, of course, since he's the Antichrist).

Speaking of Republicans... McCain is obviously going to win his party's nomination. It's not that Republicans particularly like him. It's just that they can't decide whether they like him less than Romney or whether they like him less than Huckabee. McCain will now spend the next few weeks consolidating his victory, trying to patch things up with conservatives, and starting to move towards the center in preparation for the general election. Although, when you think about it, how will he simultaneously woo both conservatives and the center? It will be interesting to watch him try.

I always thought "Republican" and "conservative" were synonyms. But CNN had a poll last night showing that 27% of Republicans identify themselves as "moderate" and 10% as "liberal." What exactly is a liberal Republican? Someone who believes that rich people should have access to abortions? Or maybe it's a Republican who's married to a Kennedy. I dunno.

Are you tired of politics yet? Hang on, the fun is just beginning.

Predicting the Future

For Democrats trying to decide who to vote for in the primaries, there are lots of questions to ask but none is more important than this: Which candidate would make better foreign policy decisions as president, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?

They say the past is usually the best predictor of the future.

As you may recall, in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of March 2003, there were numerous public protests and rallies opposing the Bush policy. Literally millions of people in the U.S. participated — and perhaps tens of millions worldwide. But among those who currently hold office as U.S. Senators, there are only two who joined in those protests: Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama. Here you can find a transcript of the speech Obama delivered in October 2002 at a rally in Chicago. If you haven't read it already, please take a moment to do so now. I think you'll have to agree, his assessment of complex issues was spot-on and his prediction of how things would turn out was prescient.

Just 9 days after that speech by Obama, Hillary Clinton voted in the Senate in favor of the Iraq War Resolution (its actual title is the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002").

Hillary has said all along that she only supported the resolution in order to give President Bush some diplomatic leverage and bargaining power with the U.N. Security Council. However, there's one fact which doesn't quite square with that explanation: She also voted against the Levin Amendment, which would have restricted Bush to carrying out exactly the policy she claimed was her motivation. When all was said and done, the only amendment she supported was one that merely required Bush to report back to Congress in a year.

You may also recall that there was tremendous political pressure back then on anyone who didn't absolutely toe the Bush-Cheney line. Those were the darkest days of our nation's We The Sheeple fear and conformity following 9/11. Politicians who showed the least hesitation to kick some Iraqi ass received scathing public scorn and were in danger of quick ends to their careers. So some have suggested that the real reason Hillary didn't join 23 other Senators in opposition to the bill had more to do with political expediency than complex foreign policy considerations.

(The list of those opposing the resolution includes Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy, Paul Wellstone, Lincoln Chafee; the full list is here.)

Of course, the war in Iraq hasn't turned out nearly as well as those who sold it to us promised it would. By December 2006, both John Kerry and John Edwards had publicly apologized for their 2002 votes authorizing the war. But Hillary steadfastly said that she had no regrets about her votes and would cast them again even with the benefit of hindsight.

Then in May 2007, after declaring herself a candidate for president and under increasing pressure from Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, and MoveOn.org, Hillary revised her version of history. She still stubbornly refused to use the word "mistake" but began saying that if she had known then what she knew now, she would have voted differently. Apparently, it was all Bush's fault for having tricked her. Never mind that there were 23 senators who weren't tricked, who realized that the Bush-Cheney sales pitch was a scam. In Hillary Clinton's version of reality, she was a hapless victim. This is the explanation she still holds to.

If this were all there were to the story — a naive junior senator being tricked by the brood of vipers running the Bush White House, followed by her reluctance to admit the embarrassing truth — I wouldn't hold it against her. I would assume she'd learned her lesson and give her my support. But, unfortunately, Hillary Clinton's foreign policy misjudgments didn't end with the Iraq War Resolution in 2002.

Fast forward to September 2007. Just five months ago. Five years have passed since her embarrassing Iraq War vote. She now essentially concedes that it was a mistake, even if she can't quite bring herself to actually say the word. But, surely, Hillary has now learned her lesson and "won't get fooled again." Right?

Wrong.

You may recall that September 2007 was when the neo-con war drums for an attack on Iran were beating the loudest. Bush-Cheney and the rightwing talk show lunatics were working overtime to redeem their failed foreign policy by starting a new war.

At the peak of all this saber rattling came the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which was a first step in authorizing the use of military force against Iran. Senator Jim Webb called it, "Cheney's fondest pipe dream," and said:

It could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate. ... This isn't our present policy of keeping the military option on the table. It is, for all practical purposes, mandating the military option.

Senator Chris Dodd said:

[It] could give this president a green light to act recklessly and endanger U.S. national security. We learned in the run up to the Iraq war that seemingly nonbinding language passed by this Senate can have profound consequences.

Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, Chuck Hagel, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Patrick Leahy, Jim Webb, and several other senators, mostly Democrats, opposed it. But not Hillary. On September 26, 2007, the bill passed with 76 votes, one of them being Hillary Clinton's.

An op-ed piece in the New York Times offered the following explanation for her vote:

[S]he has already shifted from primary mode, when she needs to guard against critics from the left, to general election mode, when she must guard against critics from the right. That means she is trying to shore up her national security credentials versus Republican candidates like Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney, and is trying to reassure voters that she would be a tough-minded commander in chief. By supporting the bill ... Mrs. Clinton is also solidifying crucial support from the pro-Israel lobby.

Immediately thereafter, the Bush administration began revving up the military for a full-scale Iranian assault. We were headed for another war. It was only a matter of when.

Then in November, out of the blue, the famous NIE report surfaced. It became apparent that Bush-Cheney had once again been cooking the books. Public support for an attack dwindled and the war machine rapidly revved down. It now remains to be seen whether Bush and his cronies can find some other justification for a war with Iran.

Here's an analysis in two parts on why Kyl-Lieberman was so horrible and why Hillary's justifications for her vote just don't add up: Part 1 and Part 2. Also, the Real News Network has produced a video covering these issues.

So, bottom line... I find myself unable to avoid one of the following two conclusions:
1. Hillary lacks integrity, often adopting policies for purely cynical political reasons; or
2. Hillary often has poor judgment about the consequences of her decisions.
Or, now that I think about it, maybe both of those are true.

Whichever it is, should she be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party?

I think not. We have a better choice. Even if Hillary can justifiably claim she has more years of experience, there is someone whose past record suggests he has an advantage over her in both integrity and judgment, and consequently would make better decisions as president.

Forget the detailed minutiae of their mostly-identical health care proposals, this is the most important substantive difference between the two candidates. It is the main reason I'll be voting for Barack Obama on Tuesday.

Followup (2/4/2008): Gary Hart, in an essay published today in The Huffington Post, analyzes this same issue and draws similar conclusions:

Great decisions ... can reveal how future great decisions might be made. No decision since the so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution in Vietnam is more important than the vote on the 2002 war resolution on Iraq. ...

Senator Clinton still seems to cling to the argument that Bush mismanaged the whole project, that it was worth doing but it was done badly. Thus, she seems to accept unilateral invasion as a first resort, even when intelligence, as it was in this case, is less than clear. She seems to be willing to follow policy makers, in this case neocons, who had a publicly announced imperial agenda in the Middle East. And she permits the impression to grow that "triangulation," in matters of war, requires placing protection of political career over protection of the national interest. ...

This nation needs a president who will question the conventional wisdom, who will exercise skepticism concerning foreign entanglements, who will have the courage to resist pressure from the narrow-minded bellicose right, who will admit to error when major mistakes are made, and who can look farther over the horizon than most of us. Most of all, we need a president who can restore America's honor, respect, and moral authority in the world.

That president is not Senator Clinton. That president is Barack Obama.

Followup (2/6/2008): Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Stanford Law School and one of the founders of Creative Commons. He supports Obama and agrees that the decisive factors are the issues of character and integrity. He's posted a powerpoint-like slideshow video explaining why he prefers Obama over Clinton.

Followup (2/7/2008): Here's another data point in the estimate of Hillary's foreign policy: On September 6, 2006, the Senate voted on Amendment 4882, which would have banned the use of cluster bombs in heavily populated civilian areas. It was sponsored by Dianne Feinstein. Obama voted in favor of the ban, Clinton against it. Did her vote reflect what she believes is ethically right? Or was she cynically triangulating her right-wing opponents to look tough on national security? I can only speculate, of course, but I strongly suspect it was the latter.

Followup (2/9/2008): Stephen Zunes, a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and a leading critic of the Iraq war, wrote an essay comparing the foreign policy advisors currently in the Clinton and Obama campaigns. He found that Clinton's key advisors overwhelmingly supported the invasion of Iraq, while Obama's opposed it. Some excerpts:

Clinton's advisors are ... confident in the ability of the United States to impose its will through force. This is reflected to this day in the strong support for President Bush's troop surge among such Clinton advisors (and original invasion advocates) as Jack Keane, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon.

Clinton's top foreign policy advisor — and her likely pick for Secretary of State — Richard Holbrooke, insisted that Iraq remained "a clear and present danger at all times." He rejected the broad international legal consensus against such offensive wars and insisted European governments and anti-war demonstrators who opposed a U.S. invasion of Iraq "undoubtedly encouraged" Saddam Hussein.

By contrast, during the lead-up to the war, Obama's advisors recognized as highly suspect the Bush administration's claims regarding Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and offensive delivery systems capable of threatening U.S. national security.

Now advising Obama, former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example, argued that public support for war "should not be generated by fear-mongering or demagogy." Brzezinski seems to have learned from mistakes like arming the Mujahideen. He warned that invading a country that was no threat to the United States would threaten America's global leadership because most of the international community would see it as an illegitimate act of aggression.

Another key Obama advisor, the Carnegie Endowment's Joseph Cirincione, argued that the goal of containing the potential threat from Iraq had been achieved as a result of sanctions, the return of inspectors, and a multinational force stationed in the region serving as a deterrent. Meanwhile, other future Obama advisors — such as Susan Rice, Larry Korb and Samantha Power — raised concerns about the human and material costs of invading and occupying a large Middle Eastern country and the risks of American forces becoming embroiled in post-invasion chaos and a lengthy counter-insurgency war.

These differences in the key circles of foreign policy specialists surrounding these two candidates are consistent with their diametrically opposing views in the lead-up to the war, with Clinton voting to let President Bush invade that oil-rich country at the time and circumstances of his choosing, while Obama was speaking out to oppose a U.S. invasion.

Taken together, they support the likelihood that a Hillary Clinton administration, like Bush's, would be more likely to embrace exaggerated and alarmist reports regarding potential national security threats, to ignore international law and the advice of allies, and to launch offensive wars.

Google Maps

"Two young men take a turn down the wrong street view."

(Click below to play video)

Congressional Oversight

One of the constitutionally-mandated duties of Congress is to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse in other branches of the federal government. But for most of the Bush-Cheney era there was little or no such oversight from the Republican-led Congress. That all changed in 2007 after the Democrats regained power in both the House and Senate.

Yesterday's broadcast of Bill Moyers Journal looked back at the last years-worth of hearings held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman.

The video is available online in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.

The Cost of War

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has published a chart showing the costs of U.S. wars. The data is adjusted to 2007 dollars and is obtained from the Congressional Research Service and Office of Management and Budget.

World War II	$3.2 trillion
Iraq & Afghanistan (to date)	$695.7 billion
Vietnam War	$670 billion
World War I	$364 billion
Korean War	$295 billion
Persian Gulf War	$94 billion
Civil War (both Union & Confederate)	$81 billion
Spanish-American War	$7 billion
American Revolution	$4 billion
Mexican War	$2 billion
War of 1812	$1 billion