Why special elections are not much better

You know, I'm starting to have a geriatric crush on Ed Rendell. The Governor of Pennsylvania just knows politics like the back of his hand and is able to tell it like it is.

In the wake of the human circuses that have been the appointments of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's Senate seats, Sen. Russ Feingold (another personal fav) has proposed legislation that would mandate special elections to fill replacement Senate seats, not gubernatorial appointments. Seems like SUCH a great idea right? Let the PEOPLE decide!

Wrong, says Gov. Rendell. He explained on MSNBC that, in actuality, the political parties would be choosing the replacement. There would not be time for open primaries in these cases, so the state GOP would choose one candidate, and the state Democratic party would choose one candidate. In a state like New York, that is all but assuring the Democratic party is choosing your next Senator. And does that sound much better to you?

More on the "Bush kept us safe" meme.

I just needed to share this blurb from The Brad Blog, commenting on the current assertion that "Bush kept us safe". I was doing the math in my head the other day, and I couldn't figure out how someone who was responsible for so much war death could be seen as "keeping us safe".

Counting only the dead (and only the American dead, in this case, since estimates of violent Iraqi civilian fatalities during the war are currently estimated to be anywhere from a conservative 150,000 to more than 1,000,000) that totals 4,245 Americans killed by terrorists, or in optional conflicts with terrorists, since 9/11.

"Bush kept us safe"?

You can read the full text here. Brad has some other figures that put the whole argument into stark perspective.

A human horror that should not be ignored: rape in Congo

This story is so difficult to listen to, but chalk this up to something we should all face periodically: the systematic rape of women and children as a form or warfare.

This story on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday had my husband and I dumbfounded, quiet, and profoundly sad this weekend. In it, Scott Simon interviews the playwright Eve Ensler and Dr. Denis Mukwege, "the founder of a hospital in Congo that's helping victims of rape and mutilation":

Mukwege, a gynecologist, founded the Panzi hospital in the Congo — a place where victims can find treatment and counseling. He's been honored by the United Nations for his humanitarian work there.

Honored may be the most mild way one should regard Dr. Mukwege. The things he describes are tragic and outraging and remind us all that we can and should - we MUST - do more.

GOP: the party of Failure and "Can't"

You'd think rank-and-file Republicans would be jumping ship like rats at this point. I'm struck by the severity of the GOP's ideological bankruptcy. Party leaders an Conservative thinkers appear, in the last few weeks, to be embracing an identity as the party of Failure and the party of "Can't".

First, there is the notion that the GOP's solution to the drumming they received in the last election is to wait for the Dems to fail. As George Will plainly said on ABC's This Week, they wait for failure on the part of the other party. In order to... What, exactly? Get back some votes? When the youth vote broke by 30 or more votes for Barack Obama, that hardly seems like the path to a bright future. So your plan for resurgence is "wait for the other guy to fail"? That's really all they've got?

Next, the "Can't Do" party. Apparently, all Repubs can say to any proposed changes in this country is "No We Can't". I am waiting to hear a good reason why we "can't" put GitMo prisoners in to American supermax prisons. (I'm talking to you, Sen, Kit Bond, R-MO.) If its good enough for Sirhan Sirhan, it's sure as hell good enough for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, no? Also, we "can't" stop using torture, "can't" build the economy in any way other than tax-breaks-to-corporations and -the-wealthy, and "can't" come up with an alternative to free-market health care.

I know I'm not the only person in this country sick to death of "can't". How is this a path to the future for the GOP? Don't get me wrong. I'm totally happy to watch the party pursue this road to nowhere. As happy as I am to let them pick Sarah Palin as their candidate for 2012. Be my guest, GOP!

Don't Repubs at least pretend to think that positive ideology and plans for the future of this country matter to people? Or have they resigned themselves to be the party of the curmudgeonly and hateful (see Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and the musical preferences of Chip Saltsman)?

Who's been attacked in the last 7 years?

Ugh. If I have to hear one more person try to stick up for the legacy of the Bush Administration with this tired argument one more time, I may explode: "But you HAVE to admit, we haven't been attacked in the last seven years!"

As my sainted grandmother used to say, BULL. Attacked in the last seven years:

• Our civil liberties
• The Genenva Conventions
• Reproductive rights
• Stem-cell research
• The public school system
  
• Science
• The United Nations
• The environment
• Freedom of Information
• Government accountability
• Truth
• The English language

What did I miss?

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

Oh what a night.

courtesy bob_weaver @ DemocraticUnderground.com

Obama, by Sorkin

If you thought that the Obama campaign occasionally sounded like it was scripted by Aaron Sorkin, this is for you:

Do you want a middle-class tax cut?

If you know me (and I don't flatter myself: you probably only read this blog if you know me), then you are middle class, or even "working class" (read: the verbotten words "lower class").

Do you want a tax cut?

See, here's the thing: I would take a tax cut, but I don't need a tax cut. If the nation is in such dire financial straights, I'll give up my tax cut to ease the deficit and still spend money. After all, we have a steady income: I can still shop. And the tax cut wouldn't represent enough money for me to buy a new car or anything. It would amount to - what? - $100 a month? What are we talking about here?

The tax cut aspect of the Obama Administration's proposed economic stimulus package is pretty fuzzy - as all tax cut plans seem to be - and is steeped in politics from both sides of the aisle. Personally, I'm more interested in seeing significant infrastructure spending. I've been bitching about that forever. But Professor Krugman makes a good arguement in yesterday's Times:

...there’s a problem with a public-investment-only stimulus plan, namely timing. We need stimulus fast, and there’s a limited supply of “shovel-ready” projects that can be started soon enough to deliver an economic boost any time soon. You can bulk up stimulus through other forms of spending, mainly aid to Americans in distress — unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc.. And you can also provide aid to state and local governments so that they don’t have to cut spending — avoiding anti-stimulus is a fast way to achieve net stimulus. But everything I’ve heard says that even with all these things it’s hard to come up with enough spending to provide all the aid the economy needs in 2009.

What this says is that there’s a reasonable economic case for including a significant amount of tax cuts in the package, mainly in year one.

I don't know about that. Because we need as much economic stimulus as we can get, you think a middle class tax cut that will not be spent, but saved, is something we HAVE to do? I'm not convinced.

By the way, you are still OBLIGED to read Krugman as long as this financial crisis persists. If you haven't, DO IT.

As the situation in Gaza deteriorates further...

I suspect that, in the years to come, Americans' understanding of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians will become even murkier. The fact of the matter is that most Americans do not understand the roots of the conflict now, and more and more Americans fail to cower when they're called anti-Semitic for questioning Israel's actions against Hamas and Fatah. That dog doesn't hunt anymore.

Most Americans 40 years of age or younger do not see Jewishness as a negative. Like our parents' generation, we don't see the old prejudices and they are not the motivation for our political/social/global perspective. Think of this: in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, curmudgeonly Mr. Potter sneers at George Bailey's efforts to help "a lot of garlic eaters". Do you know what that means? If you're my age (mid-30s), you'd have to know something about turn-of-the-century immigration statistics, geography, and frankly cooking to understand that comment. Certainly if my parents understood it they did not subscribe to it. And the comment drifts completely by my own generation.

So here we are, the new generation of middle America, who doesn't quite understand why we are supposed to support Israel without question or discussion. That isn't going to go away. I don't think its very difficult to present an argument to my generation about why Israel needs our support. I just don't think we're going to continue to offer Israel our unqualified support.

That said, Glenn Greenwald today talks about the ground situation in Gaza, points out that Israel is still unconstitutionally barring journalists from entering Gaza, and shares his experience having a rational discussion about the conflict with an irrational commentator.

Claiborne Pell, father of the Pell Grant, dies

As someone who's funded a college education without, and then with, the Pell Grant, I can say this man did a very wonderful thing. From Salon.com:

Former Rhode Island Sen. Claiborne Pell died Thursday. Pell, who retired in 1997 after more than 30 years in the Senate, was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1994. He was 90.

A liberal Democrat who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Pell was, among his other accomplishments, also the Senate's chief sponsor of the legislation that created the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. But he's best known for the college financial aid program that bears his name, the Pell Grants. The Associated Press notes in its obituary that the Senator always said the grants were his greatest achievement.

In a statement, Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who served with Pell, said, "Chairman Pell was a mentor to me and one of our nation's most important voices in foreign policy for over 30 years. He was a leader in the effort to reduce the size of the world's nuclear arsenal and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Few Senators have done more to expand opportunity in America. Because of Senator Pell and the Pell Grant, the doors of college have been opened to millions of Americans -- and will continue to be opened to millions more. That is a legacy that will live on for generations to come."

― Alex Koppelman