Month: November 2003

“I’m not saying that this bill won’t generate some energy. It will certainly fuel the coffers of big oil and gas corporations. It will propel the wealthy special interests. And it will boost the deficit into the stratosphere. Indeed, this legislation can be fairly called the Leave no Lobbyist Behind Act of 2003.
There are also four proposals known as ‘green bonds’ for construction of commercial buildings that will cost taxpayers $227 million to finance approximately $2 billion in private bonds. One of my favorite green bond proposals is a $150 million riverfront area in Shreveport, Louisiana. This river walk has about 50 stores, a movie theater and a bowling alley. One of the new tenants in this Louisiana Riverwalk is a Hooters restaurant. Yes my friends. Here we have an energy bill subsidizing both hooters and polluters.” – Senator John McCain, on the monstrosity otherwise known as the Energy Bill. How any principled, small-government, free-market Republican could vote for this vast waste of public money is beyond me. But we’re beginning to realize that GOP has nothing to do with small government or fiscal sobriety. It’s a vehicle for massive debt and catering to the worst forms of corporate welfare. Thank God for McCain. Bush should veto this bill, until it is de-porked. He won’t, of course. He has yet to veto a single big-spending bill. He doesn’t seem to give a damn about what is happening to the fiscal health of this country. If Dean is at all smart, he will make this a center-piece of his election strategy, and tempt fiscal conservatives like me to support him.

ON THE OTHER HAND: Dean makes it impossible for believers in the free market to support him by backing a return to the failed regulatory policies of the past. So we have to pick between a budget-busting, free-spending, entitlement-expanding Republican and a Democrat opposed to many critical aspects of a free and dynamic economy. We’re stuck between a reckless liberal and a regulatory liberal. It’s the 1970s all over again – and too depressing for words.

ON THE OTHER OTHER HAND: Perhaps Dean will woo yours truly and other hawks with a Sister Souljah moment against the anti-war left. After he wins the nomination, of course. Noam Scheiber elaborates.

Finally, some sanity on the subject.

Even the BBC concedes real progress in the Iraqi north.

GOOD NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN: 83 percent of a large polling sample say they are better off than three years ago. And they are confident that things will be even better in the future. There is still much work to do in that country. But liberation has worked there. It can still work in Iraq.

Why is Frank Rich treating Tony Kushner’s fantasy as the equivalent of a docu-drama? A fisking is in order.

BLAME BUSH: “I cannot figure out why you don’t put the blame for any confusion or ambiguity concerning the question of Saddam-al qaeda connections squarely on President George W. Bush. Last time I checked, all these events occurred while he was President of the United States and while the Director of Central Intelligence and the Attorney General both worked directly for him. It’s really not the fault of “liberal media types” that Mr. Bush cannot decide whether he should be seen as incompetent for not following up on information about a Saddam-Osama connection or as a liar for falsely stating that such a connection existed. There are lots of “non-liberal media types” out there who are perfectly able to communicate the truth about the matter, whatever that may be, and they don’t seem to have their story out either.
There has been a weird tendency among Bush supporters to credit Bush personally with actions indicating strength, honesty and decisiveness, while blaming “bureaucrats”, “State Department types” and the like for actions indicating weakness, prevarication or vacillation. I really can’t figure out why. There’s only one President and he’s equally responsible for the good and bad done by his Administration.” – More feedback on the Letters Page.

One under-reported aspect of the issue of equal marriage rights is how divided conservatives are. A number of more moderate and libertarian types – the likes of Jon Rauch, Steve Chapman, Nick Gillespie, Jim Pinkerton, Virginia Postrel, Glenn Reynolds – are not having the conniptions of the fundamentalist right. Rauch will soon unveil a book on the subject, and I know few right-of-center writers who commands as much respect as Jonathan in Washington. Even conservatives with qualms about equal marriage rights, like George Will, nonetheless disdain the idea of a fundamentalist amendment to the constitution. A great deal of the more libertarian blogosphere agrees, especially the younger generation. Here’s Tony Adragna, Left Coast Conservative and Bill Quick. Ditto the growing band of gay conservatives. I’ve noticed in my many visits to college campuses that the young generation tends to find anti-gay screeds dated and discomforting. The arguments for and against should, of course, be judged on their merits. But it is simply untrue that non-lefties and non-liberals all oppose this reform. The religious right may have taken over the institutional Republican Party. They may control the editorial voice of magazines like the Weekly Standard and National Review. But their shrill and deepening hostility to gay citizens and their adamant refusal to extend equal rights to them is not the only conservative voice out there. The president and vice-president have equally not engaged in the demonization of gay people that is becoming the core principle of far right groups like the Family Research Council. There is diversity here – and a rigid attempt to enforce a constitutional amendment will split conservatives just as surely as it will unite liberals. Is that something that’s really in the interests of this administration?

ARREST THE OFFICIALS: Here’s a novel approach to stopping a state deciding to extend marriage rights to all its citizens: arrest the officials that grant the licenses:

Instead of directly forbidding same-sex partners to marry, a federal marriage privilege protection measure would make it a criminal offense for state or local officials acting “under color of law” to issue a marriage license to persons of the same sex. Constitutional authority to pass this measure comes from the Fourteenth Amendment, buttressed by the Republican Guarantee clause (S. 4 of Art. IV) and the Necessary and Proper clause (par. 18, S. 8 of Art. I).

Is he kidding? I fear not.

“The fiction which is interdependency has a prolocutor in the congregation of Moloch. His name is George Soros. No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of Globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock.- He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice.” – paleocon, James Hall, whose piece first appeared on the conservative GOPUSA website. It’s important to realize that old far-right anti-semitism has not been replaced by the new far left variety – just supplemented. A case in point. (Hat tips: Conason, Marshall, Atrios.)

The U.S. government may have lied about the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta at a critical time in the 9/11 plot and during a period when Atta might well have met with an Iraqi agent in Prague. Why? Don’t miss Edward Epstein’s report in Slate today. I’m growing increasingly concerned that real links between Saddam, al Qaeda and even 9/11 are being obscured by government bureaucrats with asses to cover. And they’re being aided and abetted by liberal media types who don’t want to give any credence for an extra justification for the Iraq war.

Check out the cover design of Paul Krugman’s book in the UK. If this isn’t pure hate, what is?

CORRECTION: The radio show, “Marketplace,” is produced by Public Radio International, not National Public Radio. It functions as public radio in many places but it is distinct from NPR. It appears it is even more left-wing than NPR.

See if you can distinguish between statements made thirty years ago against inter-racial marriage and those today against same-sex marriage. The arguments are identical rhetorically and substantively. And, of course, they were made by many of the same people.

Jack Shafer is no wing-nut. He doesn’t have a big dog in this fight (maybe a feisty little Jack Russell terrier); so when he asks a simple question, it might have a little more clout than when voiced by a gung-ho war supporter like yours truly. He wants to know why the big media won’t touch the Weekly Standard story on alleged Osama-Saddam connections:

Many a reporter has hitched a ride onto Page One with the leak of intelligence much rawer than the stuff in Feith’s memo. You can bet the farm that if a mainstream publication had gotten the Feith memo first, it would have used it immediately-perhaps as a hook to re-examine the ongoing war between the Pentagon and CIA about how to interpret intelligence. Likewise, you’d be wise to bet your wife’s farm that had a similar memo arguing no Saddam-Osama connection been leaked to the press, it would have generated 100 times the news interest as the Hayes story.

I’ve been told off the record that some of this intelligence is very iffy. So let’s discover which bits are iffier than others. Isn’t that what the press is supposed to be about? On an issue that’s obviously extremely important?