SC Sen. Jim DeMint has joined the illustrious company of fellow SC Sens. John C. Calhoun and Strom Thurmond in advocating for Nullification. Calhoun wanted to keep Slavery alive, Thurman wanted "Segregation forever," and DeMint wants to keep our broken health care system. What is wrong with South Carolina senators?

Shurtleff is shameless

So if you are a politician, and you took money from and appeared to give favorable treatment to a ponzi schemer like Utah outgoing AG Mark Shurtleff, one would think that you wouldn't criticize your opponent for his choice of contributors, lest people be reminded of said lax prosecution of ponzi schemer (although to be fair, Rick Koerber had friends in the legislature too) But if you are Shurtleff, such naked displays of hypocrisy are not troubling.

Shurtleff's campaign, in a news release, said that Bennett's top five donors received $178 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds.

The attorney general is "using TARP to demagogue without understanding the issue," said Jim Bennett, the Senator's son and campaign spokesman. He referred additional questions to Utah Bankers Association President Howard Headlee.

The American Bankers Association was Bennett's fifth-highest donor, Shurtleff's campaign said, although the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics lists the association as Bennett's ninth-biggest contributor.

Headlee said those donations came well before TARP.

"Unfortunately we find ourselves in the middle of a fierce campaign," Headlee said, "and we're concerned about any attempt by any candidate to tie our financial support to specific issues."

So Shurtleff is going to pitch his campaign tent with TARP (sorry, couldn't resist a pun)...let's look at their contributors in detail:

Shurtleff received much of his money through huge donations (much larger than allowed by federal law in Senate races) from corporations, which by law cannot give directly to federal candidates. The cash usually came from local groups interested in his local work as attorney general, ranging from local law firms to payday lenders.

Bennett, meanwhile, received the lion's share of his donations from national political action committees interested in national issues, with donations coming in the smaller amounts authorized by federal law.
...
EnergySolutions. Its PAC gave Bennett $6,000, and the corporation gave Shurtleff $10,000.

CitiGroup (banking and securities). Its PAC gave Bennett $5,000 and gave Shurtleff $1,000.

JP Morgan Chase (banking and securities). Its PAC gave Bennett $2,000 and gave Shurtleff $1,000.

Reagan Outdoor Advertising. The company gave Shurtleff $5,000. Corporations cannot directly give to federal candidates. But the company's principals, William and Julia Reagan, individually gave Bennett a combined $4,800.

Union Pacific Railroad. Its PAC gave Bennett $2,300, and the corporation gave Shurtleff $5,000.

Frank Madsen (former top aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch) gave Bennett $500 and gave Shurtleff $400.

Former U.S. Rep. Howard Nielsen gave $2,000 to Bennett and $100 to Shurtleff.

Hy Saunders (a developer) gave $2,300 to Bennett and $100 to Shurtleff.

So Shurtleff attacks Bennett for taking money from TARP recipients like CitiGroup and JP Morgan Chase...which also gave money for Shertleff. I guess he is mad that they gave him less money than they gave Bennett?

Next time, I hope a reporter doesn't just copy and paste a press release, then go on to opensecrets.org, and then call the other side and call it a day. I pieced this together with google in a manner of minutes.

And they wonder why journalism is not as respected as it once was.

What to focus on during the health care "debate"

The August break, which could be the make-or-break period for health care, is almost half over. And while it is fun to watch the crazies turn out and get in Congresscritters' faces, it is all a big distraction. My sense is that the behavior of these "grassroots protesters" may be great theater for the press to cover, but all it is doing is annoying the members of Congress that are holding town halls. It isn't changing minds of the members of Congress whom they are protesting. Congresscritters are more scared of the TV ads being run in their states/districts.

Rather than go over plowed ground, let's talk about what people that care about health care should be focusing on.

1. What does the House bill look like?
Right now, there are three house bills that made it out of committee that make up the health care reform bill. It will be up to those committee chairs, the Rules Committee, and the Speaker and other Democratic House leaders to merge the bill. This bill will not tell us what the final bill will look like, but it will be a sense of what the most liberal version of the bill possible will likely be.


2. When does the Senate Finance Committee's "Gang of Six" finish its bill?
If it is before October, there will be enough time to merge that bill with the HELP Committee bill and vote on it in the Senate. If it continues to dither, who knows what will happen.


3. Who sits on the Conference Committee?
That is, will strong liberal policy makers, like Sen. Kennedy and Rep. Waxman, be named to that merge the differences between the House and Senate bill (and create a new bill all together)? Or will a milquetoast "bipartisan" Democrat be named like Sen. Baucus? How many "gang members" will be on the committee?

These pieces of information will tell us what health care reform will actually look like, and whether it stands a chance of happening this year. Personally, I think something will get passed. It might not be like the Clinton or Edwards plans, or really like the Obama plan during the primaries, but it will be a hell of a lot better than the do-nothing plan.

Here's an NYT chart that explains it all:
Here are the possible areas of compromise, according to that article:

Orange Herbert

Remind me again why Jim Matheson passed on taking on the not-quite-yet Governor Herbert?

[A] new Deseret News/KSL-TV poll...found [that] only 39 percent would vote for Herbert if he's the GOP nominee in next year's special gubernatorial election.

Even more respondents, 42 percent, said whether they'd vote for Herbert would depend on who else was running or that they didn't know yet how they'd vote.

The statewide poll of 402 residents was conducted Aug. 3-5 by Dan Jones & Associates. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.

Call me crazy, but 39 percent sounds eminently beatable. Of course, if you are a Democrat thinking of running, that's also a problem. Because maybe another candidate will emerge from the GOP convention/primary.

33 percent said the governor should be moderate. Only 12 percent of respondents described Herbert as moderate but 34 percent said they didn't know what his political ideology and philosophy is.

Those 33 percent are called "Democratic Voters" So is Carroon going to take the plunge? Will Matheson do an about face? Will anyone step up to the plate if it appears Herbert will be pushed out by someone really crazy?

Jim Matheson seems to attract terrible GOP candidates to challenge him. Then again, Carroon had his share too. I say let the games begin.

In 2006, Democrats told Americans to put them back in control of Congress so that they could pass legislation, like ending the war. But very little happened. The excuse during the 2007-08 period was essentially "Well, you can't do anything without 60 votes." After Specter switched parties avoid losing in the GOP primary and Coleman threw in the towel this spring, the Democratic Caucus had 60 votes. Now there excuse is this: Kennedy & Bryd are sick so it is really only 58.

The American people voted to give you control of the Congress and the White House because they wanted change, not because they wished Congress critters would get along.

Grow a pair and get some bills passed. No more excuses.

how to keep TEA baggers from crashing your town hall meetings

Jim Matheson, one of the handful of Democrats who voted against health care reform has the solution to the problem of hecklers at Congressional Democrats' town hall meetings.

At least Matheson won't have any organized state GOP opposition on the matter, says Republican Party state chairman Dave Hansen.

Across the nation, some local Republican Party leaders are organizing supporters to attend Democratic incumbents' town hall meetings during the August congressional break to voice opposition to the majority party's health-care reforms.

Hansen says the Utah GOP is staying out for now because "Utahns are pretty ginned up" in opposition to parts of national Democrats' plans.

"They will be going to town hall meetings anyway."

...

But here's the kicker: Matheson, Utah's only congressional Democrat, won't be holding any town hall meetings. He gave them up a year or so ago and now only uses high-tech telephone conference call meetings. And he only does those when he's back in Washington, D.C., while Congress is in session

Way to do your research!

And one more trouble for the state Republican party in getting anti-reform folks to show up:

It's also because the state GOP Web site is down, and GOP leaders so can't communicate with lots of people.

Here's where I laugh, say something about Twitter, and point out that local ISP XMission's owner/founder, Pete Ashdown, is a Democrat. Maybe Hansen should give Ashdown a call so he can unclog the intertubes.

Matheson is being "targeted" by the national Republican party, but the local guys didn't get the memo:

"It is a light (advertising) buy on a few local stations," said Hansen, who heard the first ad Tuesday morning.

I am sure Jim is shaking in his boots while all of the big guns are busy running for the open Governor's race and challenging Bennett to a game of who can out conservative the other.

Matheson is seen by all sides of the health care reform debate as an important vote on the House floor apparently:

The liberal group MoveOn.org has started running some pro-Obama health-care ads in Utah, as well, representing the opposing view.

Heyrend said one national group, Conservatives For Patients' Rights, is running a cable TV ad against Matheson.

Another national group, Tea Party Patriots, has started e-mail campaigns against Democrats nationally, including giving out dates, locations and times of town hall meetings along with talking points, she said. And a third group, FreedomWorks, is e-mailing out talking points and scripts to challenge Democratic congressmen and Obama at their public meetings, said Heyrend.

Deep Thought

In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a leading prez candidate to be. Back then many GOPers wanted to change the constitution for him so the Austrian-born steriod-using-weightlifter-turned-action-movie-actor could run for president. In 2009, a majority of Republicans are birthers.

Utah Dems Carrooned on a Deseret Island

Jim Matheson, Utah's lone Democrat in Congress, decided he would rather stay put in the House. This bums me out, because this was his best shot at the Governor's Mansion. And the Senate could have been a good shot too if Bennett lost. Heck, Jim outraised Bob Bennett thus far. But I guess Jim is having too much fun giving Henry Waxman a hard time being courted by President Obama to take a risk and lose his plum committee assignment. So now Utah Demcocrats have shifted their gaze to Sal Lake Co. Mayor Peter Carroon. Carroon actually represents more people than Jim Matheson. I wouldhave to see who got more raw votes last time. Anyway, Carroon has been positioning himself for a while now, with that loud tax fight woth the County Council. Plus he gets to keep his job and his cousin Howard Dean can raise big bucks for him out of state.
Still, Peter is definately Plan B. Let's just hope he steps up to the plate and gives still LG Herbert (or whomever else the GOP electorate chooses) a good run. As a friend and semi-retired Dem operative said to me today: "I'm tired of losing."

taking his ball and going home

What is Sen. Hatch doing these days? He announced (no real surprise) that he is voting against Judge Sotomoyor for SCOTUS, even though he voted for her--twice when appointed by Pres. H.W. Bush as for the S. District of NY and by Pres. Clinton for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. And then there is the other powerful committee he is on--the one that is addressing our health care crisis, albeit frustratingly slowly, the Senate Finance Committee.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch pulled out of a bipartisan group seeking compromise on health reform [last] Wednesday, saying they were going in a direction he just couldn't support.

His decision is a blow to what has been called the "gang of seven" in the Senate Finance Committee, the last group of lawmakers attempting to craft a proposal that would have some level of Republican support.

"It is a matter of honor that I don't want to pretend that I am helping them with something I just don't agree with," Hatch said. "What I don't want to do is mislead my colleagues."

I don't know if it was a "blow" to the "gang" and I guess I respect him for being honest, unlike Sen. Conrad (D-ND) who seems content to blow up health care reform by going on Sunday talk shows and being a member of this "gang" wherein his fellow Senate Democrats, who hold 60 votes, are being shut out. The gang, in fact, is now three Dems (Chairman Baucus Sens. Bingman and Conrad) and three GOPers (Sens. Grassley, Snowe and Enzi). But fine, Utahns keep sending Hatch back to the Senate so that our state will have clout. What better way than to involve yourself in an important piece of legislation?

The Utah Republican has a long list of concerns with how the bill is coming together, including the requirement that businesses either offer insurance or pay a fee to the government that would be used for health subsidizes for the poor, known as the employer mandate.

"I really believe that is going to cost a lot of low-income people's jobs," he said.

Sen. Hatch, do you know any low income people who have health care via their employer? It is pretty rare. Without an employer mandate, employers will just dump their employees from their health care plan and force Uncle Sam (and John Q. Taxpayer) to foot the bill. Don't believe me? Go into a Walmart some time. That's what they do. In fact, Maryland had a pass a bill a couple years back to prevent Walmart from adding to the state's medicaid bill by doing this trick. The only other way to ensure that everyone gets covered (therefore the health care costs are more fairly spread and shared) is to do an individual mandate, but I suppose Hatch is against that too.

Hatch also dislikes the idea of expanding the number of people in Medicaid and a plan for a government controlled insurance option saying: "I know that it is just a constant push to get us all to a single-payer system."

I suppose offering subsidies so that these same low-income people can get health insurance something that Hatch was previously so concern about (150-200 percent of the federal poverty limit are the cutoff points I have heard discussed) is a horrible thing. And a public option, which would effectively set minimum standards of coverage and force private insurance companies to compete for insureds would also be terrible somehow.

I say "compete" because in many if not most markets, a single HMO holds a dominating share, sometimes even a monopoly. For instance, Blue Cross/Blue Shield controls 83% of the market in Alabama. No wonder Alabama's senators are opposed to the public option.

"Sooner or later I think the president is going to have to realize that they are trying to build a bridge too far here, without the appropriate materials," he said. "They are going to have to sit down and realize that we have to do the art of the doable, not an expansion of health care we can't afford."

I'll tell you what we can't afford, Senator, it is the status quo. Nationally, health insurance premiums have doubled in the past ten years. Doctors are drowning in private insurance companies' red tape. Patients are literally dying because private companies are denying coverage for "experimental" procedures. Maybe you can afford to wait, or do half measures Sen. Hatch. That's because you have a choice of health insurance options provided and paid for by the US taxpayers. Why can't I have your health care? Why are you against that?

Sen. Bennett for $9,000, Alex

It seems that $9,000 from a literally radioactive local company can get you favorable treatment from a embattled and still sitting U.S. Senator.

A Utah-based nuclear waste disposal firm fighting to allow the continued importation of foreign radioactive waste for disposal here has chosen who it is backing in the state's crowded Republican field for a U.S. Senate seat.

EnergySolutions Inc.'s political action committee has donated $9,000 to Sen. Bob Bennett's re-election campaign this year, snubbing fellow Republican Mark Shurtleff, who received a $10,000 donation from the company last year on his way to winning his third term as the state's attorney general.

Bennett is seeking his fourth term.

"EnergySolutions' PAC is funded by EnergySolutions employees and we are a very strong supporter of Sen. Bennett," said company spokeswoman Jill Sigal. "The EnergySolutions PAC supports pro-nuclear members of Congress and pro-nuclear candidates."

Would those employees also include management? What percentage of that money comes from management versus the lowest-paid employees, 90%?

So while Rep. Jim Matheson, who father developed cancer and died because of nuclear testing in Nevada, attempts to ban foreign nuclear waste from coming into Utah, Sen. Bennett is non-committal. Must be waiting for a few more checks to clear.

Bennett has not signed on as a co-sponsor to [Sen. Lamar] Alexander's bill [the Senate companion bill to the Matheson-Bart Gordon bill in the House].

In a one-sentence statement to The Associated Press, Bennett didn't say whether he supports a federal ban on importing radioactive waste. Instead, he said he would review a court decision saying whether a regional compact system Utah is a part of can ban foreign waste at a private dump.

In May, U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart ruled that the compact doesn't have authority over EnergySolutions' Utah facility.

Utah has filed notice saying it will appeal the case to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

"I will carefully review the court's decision after the arguments have been made and the parties present their evidence," Bennett said.

What about the Democratic candidate for Senate, Sam Granato? Not much better.

"(Granato) is concerned that EnergySolutions is a business that is here in Utah that employs a lot of people in the Tooele area, and he doesn't want to turn them into the boogeyman like a lot of candidates have for political posturing," [Granato Campaign Manager Rob] Miller said.

Does that mean that Granato is doing a preemptive strike against Matheson? Is he worried Jim will get into the Senate race last minute after all? Why else would you make a not-so-subtle attack on Jim Matheson, the state's leading Democrat?

Personally, I think it is only fair that those who use nuclear to power their communities store it themselves near themselves and not outsource it to poor and/or rural areas. If you don't want it in your backyard, why should a private company get to trampse it through ours?

This stuff has a LONG half-life, longer than humans have been around and longer than we will probably be around. It isn't "political posturing" to be concerned about how this stuff can be safely transported through Utah (and other states) and safely stored for millienia. A private company interests are not aligned with these long-term needs. Rather, they want to make a buck and keep shareholders happy, which are extremely short-term interests.


Winning a Senate primary (and ultimately a general election) is only a slightly longer time horizon.

Reports show that unless we adopt something like the health care bill(s) in the US, thousands of Utahns will lose their health care next year. Yet I don't think anyone doubts that Reps. Bishop and Chafetz will vote against it.
Rep. Matheson has a number of issues with the bill, and since he sits on a key committee considering the bill, Pres. Obama invited Jim and his fellow Blue Dogs on key committee to the White House for a charm offensive.
Why is it so hard to convince our delegation (I am sure Hatch won't support it, Bennett might vote for some useful amendments) not to harm its constituents? Everyone living out in the real world knows that our health care system is broken. Insurance companies are doing harm and making life miserable for doctors, patients, and hospital staff in exchange for no real benefit. Coverage is illusionary and prohibitively expensive. Please stop standing in the way.

The end of a McEra

Robert Strange McNamara died today at 93 years of age. Every piece of news on the matter I have seen or heard first describes his role as the architect of the Vietnam war (he was Kennedy's and then Johnson's Secretary of Defense). And then describes his actions, and/or the war in general, as a mistake. That to me isn't news. What is news is that for the past 10 years, McNamara has been attempting to make amends for his past deeds by trying to learn why and how he and the rest of Washington sent hundreds of thousands of young American men to their deaths and millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians. By writing books on the subject, sitting down for interviews, by attending conferences with his counter parts at the time of the war.

In 1995, he took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir that it was “wrong, terribly wrong.” In return, he faced a firestorm of scorn.

“Mr. McNamara must not escape the lasting moral condemnation of his countrymen,” The New York Times said in a widely discussed editorial, written by the page’s editor at the time, Howell Raines. “Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late.”

By then he wore the expression of a haunted man. He could be seen in the streets of Washington — stooped, his shirttail flapping in the wind — walking to and from his office a few blocks from the White House, wearing frayed running shoes and a thousand-yard stare.

He had spent decades thinking through the lessons of the war. The greatest of these was to know one’s enemy — and to “empathize with him,” as Mr. McNamara explained in Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary, “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.”

“We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes,” he said. The American failure in Vietnam, he said, was seeing the enemy through the prism of the cold war, as a domino that would topple the nations of Asia if it fell.

That wasn't the only war he which admitted to wrongdoing even.

In the film, Mr. McNamara described the American firebombing of Japan’s cities in World War II. He had played a supporting role in those attacks, running statistical analysis for Gen. Curtis E. LeMay of the Army’s Air Forces.

“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children,” Mr. McNamara recalled; some 900,000 Japanese civilians died in all. “LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals.”

“What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” he asked. He found the question impossible to answer.

To my knowledge, no one ever accused the former president of Ford Motor Company of incompetency.

Chester L. Cooper, a senior official at the State Department when McNamara was at Defense, wrote in "The Lost Crusade" that McNamara's brilliant staff and his "unique ability to grasp and synthesize a vast mass and variety of information made him the best informed official in Washington." But McNamara's insistence on dealing with Vietnam in the same way he dealt with other issues led him into miscalculations, Cooper said. Cooper summarized McNamara's approach in a memorable portrait:

"His typical trip involved leaving Washington in the evening and, after a 24-hour journey and a 13-hour time change, arriving at Saigon at eight in the morning. The Secretary would emerge from the plane and suggest graciously that his fellow-travelers take a half-hour or so to wash up and then join him at a 9 o'clock briefing at MACV [Military Assistance Command Vietnam] headquarters. There, for the next three hours, they were expected not merely to add up figures but to absorb a rapid-fire series of complicated military briefings. . . . . While we less adaptable beings desperately attempted to make sense out of the mass of information, McNamara queried every apparent inconsistency and was usually well ahead of the briefers."

He and his "whiz kids" were supposed to use their knowledge from running big complex companies and all of the modern management tools of statistical and systems analysis. In the end, all of his brains and skills didn't help him from dragging the U.S. deeper and deeper into an unnecessary war that had nothing to do with communism or the balance of power.

But the fact that a man who has been characterized as a monster chose to face many of his mistakes head on and in public is a very admirable thing that his family should be proud of and that Americans should reward in their their public servants.

Sure it took him 30 years to admit to some, but not all of his mistakes, even though at the time he was coming to realize the folly of the war.

When Mr. McNamara held a rare private briefing for reporters in Honolulu in February 1966, he no longer possessed the radiant confidence he had always displayed in public. Mr. McNamara said with conviction, “No amount of bombing can end the war.”
...
On Sept. 19, 1966, Mr. McNamara telephoned Johnson.

“I myself am more and more convinced that we ought definitely to plan on termination of bombing in the North,” Mr. McNamara said, according to White House tapes.

He also suggested establishing a ceiling on the number of troops to be sent to Vietnam. “I don’t think we ought to just look ahead to the future and say we’re going to go higher and higher and higher and higher — 600,000; 700,00; whatever it takes.”

The president’s only response was an unintelligible grunt.

Yet the path towards making amends wasn't a smooth one:

An incident that reflected the temper of those tense, bitter years occurred in November 1966, when McNamara traveled to Harvard for an informal discussion with undergraduates. He was mobbed by about 800 jeering students, who blocked his car and cried "Murderer!"

The secretary, never apologetic, climbed atop his car, in shirt sleeves despite the New England chill, and told the crowd: "I spent four of the happiest years of my life on the Berkeley campus, doing some of the things you do today. But I was tougher than you, and I'm tougher than you are now. I was more courteous then, and I hope I'm more courteous today."

He also tried to do the right thing as head of the World Bank.

As he had done at the Pentagon and Ford, Mr. McNamara sought to remake the bank. When he arrived on April 1, 1968, the bank was lending about $1 billion a year. That figure grew until it stood at $12 billion when he left in 1981. By that time the bank oversaw some 1,600 projects valued at $100 billion in 100 nations, including hydroelectric dams, superhighways and steel factories.

The ecological effects of these developments, however, had not been taken into account. In some cases, corruption in the governments that the bank sought to help undid its good intentions. Many poor nations, overwhelmed by their debts to the bank, were not able to repay loans.

The costs of Mr. McNamara’s work thus sometimes outweighed the benefits, and that led to a concerted political attack on the bank itself during the 1980s.

He did more than get dams built as president of the World Bank.

He spent a year, for example, thinking about what to say in a 1982 speech at the University of the Witwatersrand, in apartheid South Africa. Then he told his audience that America's "century of delay in moving to end our shameful discrimination toward black Americans . . . was without question the most serious mistake in our entire history, and the hard truth is that all Americans will continue to [pay] a heavy price for it for decades to come." He urged South Africa not to make the same mistake.

I read his last book, Argument without End and attended a Q & A when he came to speak at my college (because Prof. James Blight was the co-author). He came across as a brilliant man seeking repentance and trying to tell the world how to avoid another Vietnam. Yet he did not speak out against the Iraq War in 2002 or 2003. The closest he got was this:

“We are the strongest nation in the world today,” Mr. McNamara said in “The Fog of War,” released at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better re-examine our reasoning.”

“War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend,” he concluded. “Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.”

The real question to ponder today is not McNamara's legacy, whether he was a great man or an arrogant one, but whether, in 30 years or less, Donald Rumsfeld will be making the rounds apologizing for his immoral actions and incompetence. McNamara was still a young man when LBJ kicked him upstairs to the World Bank; he still had 42 years left to live after leaving the Pentagon. In contrast, Rumsfeld is 77 years old. If he is so lucky to live as long as McNamara, he only has 20 years to confess to his crimes against humanity. His memoir, slated to come out next year, sounds like a defense of his actions, not catharsis. Will anyone within the Bush inner circle have a McNamara-style change of heart and desire to come to terms with that they did? Sadly, I doubt it.

nothing to fear but lack of fearmongering itself

Today is the day when we celebrate the birth of America, even though the Declaration was actually passed by the Continental Congress a few days before that.

Yesterday, we watched a spectacle too oft repeated these days: the self-implosion of a GOP presidential hopeful. First Bobby Jindal, then Mark Sanford, and now Sarah Palin. But someone else wants to grab our attention desperately and no matter what your politics in the U.S., you can agree with me that this guy is crazy.

North Korea fired a barrage of short-range missiles off its east coast Thursday, a possible prelude to the launch of a long-range missile toward Hawaii over the July Fourth holiday.

The AP tries to scare us. Long range missiles? Aimed at President Obama's home state on America's birthday weekend? But wait, did you catch the key word, "toward"? How long is "long range"? Let's ask the Posrt:

Military officials told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that they appeared to be Scud-type missiles and described them as more dangerous than the short-range weapons fired Thursday.

Government sources in Japan and South Korea told reporters that the missiles may have been Nodongs, a mid-range Scud.

North Korea has more than 200 of these missiles, which are capable of striking nearly all of Japan. They are regarded by the Japanese government as a serious threat, and it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years buying two U.S.-made anti-missile defense systems.

Scuds, the legendarily inaccurate missiles Saddam used during the first Gulf War. This one too is extremely crude for 2009.

A Nodog has a range of 500 to 1300 kilometers depending on whether it is a Nodog-1 or -2. And remember it is about 3800 kilometers from Tokyo to Honolulu, and from North Korea you have to add another couple hundred kilometers. Which explains this paragraph of the AP story:

The head of the U.S. Northern Command, Gen. Victor E. "Gene" Renuart, said in an interview with the Washington Times this week that U.S. missile defenses are prepared to knock down any incoming North Korean missile.

Now to be fair the Taepodong-2 missile could hit Sarah Palin's house in Wasilla (making her a foreign policy expert). But the other reason Northern Command is prepared to knock down any long-range missile from North Korea is this:

In 2006, North Korea launched its most advanced Taepodong 2 missile while the U.S. celebrated Independence Day, though the rocket fizzled shortly after takeoff and fell into the ocean.
...
The April 5 [2009] launch of a Taepodong-2 required 12 days of preparation on the launch pad, which was fully observable to U.S. satellites. Short and medium-range missiles, however, can be launched with little notice.

So they can try to hit a major city in Japan and risk not only pissing off but hitting U.S. military forces stationed on the archipelago, or they can try to hit the U.S. directly, but it takes so long for those missiles to warm up, we can blow them on the launch pad with ease if we felt like it. No need for "Star Wars" here. The Axis of Evil, in short, is no excuse for the so-called National Missile Defense.

This is all a long way of saying the AP article, which was picked up by the Tribune, among others is all about scaring us despite the fact that the only think North Korea is capable of is starving its own people while building crappy weapons.

the imaginary middle

I have grown tired of those who claim to represent the ideological center but in actuality only represent their need to be the center of attention and action. Yesterday, I had lunch with one of my Conservative Republican friends who agrees with me on this point, as well as who the phony centrists are.

So, to name names and get particular, by phony centrists, we mean Sens. John McCain, Kent Conrad, Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, and SCOTUS Justice Kennedy. These people continuously create imaginary divisions and problems so that they can be the solvers of said problem and the beltway media can fawn over them about how statesmanlike, bipartisan, centrist, important and powerful they are.

There are countless examples, but here are a few. Thanks to a prior vote earlier this year, Democrats can pass health care reform within the budget process, which means they only need 50 votes and their can't be a filibuster. Moreover, the budget framework already passed (which created 50 votes only possibility) set aside $634 billion as a "down payment" on health care reform. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the Senate Health Education Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee bill to cost $611 billion. Using my amazing math skills, this means that if this bill is passed as is, there is $24 billion of wiggle room when you merge the Senate Finance Committee bill into the HELP bill and only 50 votes are needed to pass the HELP bill. Yet Sen. conrad wants there to be some sort of fake compromise to axe the public option, claiming the health care reform legislation is in a "60 vote environment." Sens. Snowe, Specter, and the other Maine Senator who just does whatever Snowe does changed the Stimulus Bill to cap it at some arbitrary number so that they could be "fiscally responsible."

Justice Kennedy's need to be in the middle often results in unreadable and incomprehensible opinions that cause confusion for lower courts and attorneys. Other times, the opinions just make no sense and are internally inconsistent.

The problem is not just bad policy is the result of their pomposity but the fact that these folks are only representing themselves and there is not a silent majority of folks in the middle that agree with them. They oppose or alter widely popular things just so they can have their fingerprints on them and get written up in the big papers. Enough already.

What a crazy week of news: a governor that skipped out on his state, staff, and family to go see his lover in Argentina; the US getting to its first FIFA finals and only losing by one goal to Brazil; the sudden, odd death of Michael Jackson; and now Billy "shouting about made for TV products" Mays found dead in his home. The only "normal" pieces of news were continuing protests in Iran and the House passing a watered-down cap-and-trade bill. I wonder what next week will bring.

question

Is it wrong to that I have SNL's Andy Sandberg's "I ran" music video stuck in my head ever since the protests started on June 12?

I wrote that this morning before we learned of Stanford's year long affair with an Argentine.

Stanford's whereabouts are answered...sort of. A reporter for SC's big paper, the State, cornered him getting off a plane from Argentina. So either he lied to his staff, or they lied to us about the whole hiking in the Appalachians thing. I think the former is worse.

When asked what the hell he was doing in Argentina for 5 days without telling his staff, the LG (or transferring power), let alone his wife and kids, Stanford said he walked along the coast. Only where he went (Buenos Aries) is along a river, not the ocean.

The story of where's Mark Sanford got stranger. The governor's staff settled on the story that we was "hiking on the Appalachian Trail," which is sure to become an internet euphemism. The story seems wrapped up. Except for that nagging tid bit about Sanford's cell phone's last whereabouts was in Atlanta, which is 80 miles from the trail.

The word surfaced that the SC star car Stanford took was at the Atlanta airport and a federal agent saw him boarding a plane there too. Where was he going?

Meanwhile, when asked if she had heard from her husband, Jenny Stanford said she was "busy being a mom" and no. Sounds like someone is pissed.

This story just get stranger all the time with more questions than answers. Stay tuned for the startling conclusion. I know I will.

priorities

Since last Thursday, South Carolina Governor (and Presidential aspirant) Mark Sanford has not been seen in public. That's odd, but odder still was this:

First lady Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press today her husband has been gone for several days and she doesn't know where he is.
...
Jenny Sanford said she was not concerned.

She said the governor said he needed time away from their children to write something.

Remember this weekend was Father's Day, an odd time to want to be away from your children.

So what did he write about while on sabbatical from his family and his job? From his Twitter account comes the following:

# SC's government structure fundamentally flawed http://www.postandcourier.c... #sctweets #gopabout 13 hours ago from web

#
stimulus discussion shows need for restructuring in SC - http://tinyurl.com/nr53wx #sctweets #tcot5:48 AM Jun 21st from web

What is he talking about?

Well the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Gov. Sanford had to stop posturing about the Stimulus Bill and take the money that the Legislature approved of taking (overriding Sanford's veto). Yes, the structure of South Carolina's government, with its popularly elected legislature overruling its popularly elected governor and having the appointed judiciary interpret the South Carolina Constitution and statutes, just like every other state in the country, is completely out of wack and needs restructuring.

Or maybe the Governor needs a vacation from his vacation. Maybe running away from your staff, security detail, your wife and children on Father's Day weekend and not telling anyone where you are so you can go off and tweet about how bummed you are that the other branches of state government think you are out to lunch isn't a great idea.


But hey, I am not a leading candidate for the GOP nomination for president in 2012, what do I know.