It seems obvious that Patrick Fitzgerald should be retained as U.S. attorney in Chicago and allowed to handle [the Blagojevich] case to its conclusion. But that’s not enough. Is there a prosecutor in the federal system who has done more to win the respect and admiration of the public than Patrick Fitzgerald? Eric Holder and Barack Obama should consider putting him in charge of the operations of the Department as Deputy Attorney General. It would send a simple, necessary message to the country: the days of politics in the administration of justice are over. The theme of the day will be professional integrity.
By Patrick Appel "[The automakers] could save some $$ by eliminating benefits to partners of same-sex couple. [sic] Anyone discussing that??," - Right Michigan. Ed Brayton fisks the post.
...the Levin-run Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse is now out (pdf exec summary). And it deserves some press attention. It confirms that senior administration officials authorized torture. Specifically, they authorized the "SERE" techniques -- which had been originally used decades ago to train American troops to withstand Communist torture -- to be used on detainees. In other words, they used illegal medieval methods designed to obtain false confessions, and made them the centerpiece of our intelligence-gathering. In this respect, Abu Ghraib was the sick poisoned fruit of a very rotten tree.
By Patrick Appel P.J. O'Rourke asks for a journalism bailout:
...rescuing print journalism is a twofer. Not only will America's principal source of Sudoku puzzles and Doonesbury be preserved but so will an endangered species: the hard-bitten, cynical, heavy-drinking newshound with a press card in his hatband, a cigarette stub dangling from his lip, and free ringside prize-fight tickets tucked into his vest pocket. These guys don't reproduce in captivity. And there are hardly any of them left in the wild. I checked the bar.
Opiate painkilling drugs are in critically short supply across the developing world. So why doesn't the USA just buy the Afghan poppy harvest, process it into painkilling meds, and distribute them to poor countries?
By Patrick Appel David Plouffe explains why Obama won:
We had three things that helped us run a very good campaign, and I think this wasn't the case for Clinton or McCain. One, we had a consistent message. What was our slogan the entire primary? "Change we can believe in." We adjusted slightly for the general—"Change we need." That didn't change. That was boring to the press, but that consistency, I think, wore well with voters. And we didn't have meetings every day about how to change our message.
by Chris Bodenner Ben Smith, reporting from the campaign itself, confirms:
John McCain's top pollster, Bill McInturff, said this evening that
attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright
would not have helped McCain's campaign and could have destroyed his
presidency, had he been elected.
Some Republicans were angry during the campaign that McCain had --
reportedly for reasons of principle, and out of concern that he'd be
viewed as racist -- refused to air ads with Wright's inflammatory
sermons.... "I said 'Look, if we do win we’ll win with about 273 electoral
votes and we’ll lose the popular vote by 3 million,'" recalled
McInturff of the internal discussions about cutting attack ads with
Wright. "If [McCain] had used that issue that way, you’d already be
delegitimized as a president. You couldn’t function as government."
by Chris Bodenner Thomas Frank, lone liberal of the WSJ op-ed page, writes:
[Surrogate motherhood for pay] is a class-and-gender minefield. ... It threatens to commodify not only babies, but women as
well, putting their biological functions up for sale like so many Jimmy
Choos. If surrogacy ever becomes a widely practiced market transaction,
it will probably make pregnancy into just another dirty task for the
working class, with wages driven down and wealthy couples hiring the
work out because it's such a hassle to be pregnant.
He then proceeds to pummel Alex Kuczynski, the NYT writer/billionaire socialite who featured herself in the controversial cover story about her paid surrogacy. Frank's cynicism toward her and a future she represents (an economy of careerists and breeders) is cutting and entertaining.
But his above paragraph intrigued me more because it brought into focus an interesting irony regarding liberals and women's choice. According to pro-life conservatives, women should not have control over their bodies once pregnancy begins. For pro-choice liberals, they should. But for liberals such as Frank, women shouldn't
have full control over their bodies when it comes to surrogacy. Even if two
grown women agree, under no coercion, to enter into a surrogate contract,
many pro-choicers would seek to restrict that choice.
by Chris Bodenner Ta-Nehisi on the Kindle: "The thing just doesn't give the same sense of accomplishment and
closure [as a book]. It's like running a marathon--but on a treadmill." My analogy: guest-blogging on The Dish. Or, perhaps, a cat running up a slide:
... the U.S. military must not become the enemy of Afghan farmers whose livelihood depends on opium-poppy cultivation. True, some of the funds from the drug trade will find their way into the coffers of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. That is an inevitable side effect of a global prohibitionist policy that creates such an enormous profit from illegal drugs. But alienating pro-Western Afghan factions in an effort to disrupt the flow of revenue to the Islamic radicals is too high a price to pay. General Jones should reconsider his views.
"...as a simple observer, I really don't see what's stopping [Obama] from becoming the next president. The overwhelming first impression that you get - from the exhausted but vibrant stump speech, the diverse nature of the crowd, the swell of the various applause lines - is that this is the candidate for real change. He has what Reagan had in 1980 and Clinton had in 1992: the wind at his back. Sometimes, elections really do come down to a simple choice: change or more of the same?
Look at the polls and forget ideology for a moment. What do Americans really want right now? Change. Who best offers them a chance to turn the page cleanly on an era most want to forget? It isn't Clinton, God help us. Edwards is so 2004. McCain is a throwback. Romney makes plastic look real. Rudy does offer something new for Republicans - the abortion-friendly, cross-dressing Jack Bauer. But no one captures the sheer, pent-up desire for a new start more effectively than Obama," Andrew Sullivan, May 24, 2007.
by Chris Bodenner Responding a scandal in NC where a Jewish mother's complaint about the Christ-like overtones of "Rudolf The Red-Nose Reindeer" got the song pulled from the kindergarten show, our resident Talmudic scholar reveals:
Of course, the song...was written by a Jewish-American songwriter, Johnny Marks. He also wrote "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." Also written by Jews: "I'll be Home for Christmas," "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)," and of course, the mother of all Jewish-written Christmas songs, "White Christmas," by Irving Berlin. Why, you could almost say there's a conspiracy by Jews to dominate the Christmas-jingle-writing industry!
...the first step toward resolving the war in Afghanistan is to lay down the law in both Islamabad and Kabul. The message should be the same in both cases: The unsupervised splurge of American aid is over. The Pakistanis will have to stop giving tacit support and protection to terrorists, especially the Afghan Taliban. The Karzai government will have to end its corruption and close down the drug trade. There are plenty of other reforms necessary — the international humanitarian effort is a shabby, self-righteous mess; some of our NATO allies aren't carrying their share of the military burden — but the war will remain a bloody stalemate at best as long as jihadis come across the border from Pakistan and the drug trade flourishes.
To sum up: tell Pakistan to stop supporting terrorists; tell Afghanistan to stop growing opium; win war.
How do you stop the drug trade in Afghanistan without destroying its economy? Opium accounts for half of the country's licit GDP. And why are we likely to be any more successful in curtailing drug trafficking in Afghanistan than we have been in Latin America? The WaPo reported in September that: "Across the Andean region, the size of the coca crop has increased 18 percent in the past five years, a period during which the United States has spent $4 billion on anti-drug programs." We don't have the same sort of military presence in Bolivia that we have in Afghanistan, but I'm unconvinced that we can stop enough drug growing in Afghanistan to hinder terrorism. And even if we were able to destroy every opium plant in Afghanistan, that would likely mean more poverty and therefore more instability.
As for Pakistan, I'm all for cracking down on terrorist elements, but Pakistan is dangerously unstable and nearly bankrupted as a nation; the instability brought about by rooting out malfeasance could very well push it over the brink.
by Chris Bodenner A censorship scandal at a Westchester high school taught me a new word:
Pages from the middle of the book [Girl, Interrupted] have been torn out by the school
district after having been deemed "inappropriate" by school officials
due to sexual content and strong language. ... "[But] since the book has other redeeming
features, we took the liberty of bowdlerizing," [said the English Dept. chair].
"Bowdlerizing is a particularly disturbing form of censorship since it
not only suppresses specific content deemed 'objectionable,' but also
does violence to the work by removing material that the author thought
integral," said Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National
Coalition Against Censorship. "It is a kind of literary fraud
perpetrated on an unsuspecting audience."
A three-month-old giant panda plays in its pen at the Bifengxia base of China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center on December 11, 2008 in Yaan of Sichuan Province, China.Thirteen panda cubs have been born at the Bifengxia base since the May 12 earthquake hit the province of Sichuan, which destroyed many critical panda habitats. By China Photos/Getty.
by Chris Bodenner Xeni Jardin reports on the impact Obama's victory had on a remote, mountainous village in Guatemala:
That sudden jolt of aspiration felt around the world? It struck here. Hard. ... It meant a renewed belief in change, for a people who have survived natural disasters, racism, and 36 years of civil war that many describe as the Mayan genocide. If a black man can enter the Casa Blanca, they are saying, maybe a Mayan person can one day become president of Guatemala.
Don Victoriano, the local leader of an international nonprofit, wrote:
Finally, there's Chu's enthusiastic support for a new energy research
concept called [Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)] – he might have even invented it. The wonky
sounding agency was meant to be an unclassified version of DARPA, the
Pentagon's risk-taking, blue-sky research arm. The Gathering Storm
report, of which Chu was one of the authors, called for the creation of
the agency, which would pursue risky energy research with big payoffs.
(Chu later was ARPA-E's advocate in congressional testimony and public
appearances.) Congress passed a law creating the program within DOE
last year, but DOE hasn't appointed a director or tried to fund it. Chu
would reverse that policy immediately if Obama lets him, but the
president-elect has yet to take a position on ARPA-E.
Please don't condescend to us who don't call ourselves artists, as if we have a somehow lower, degraded aesthetic sense.
Obviously, people who aren't artists can appreciate this film. But when I watch the video, as someone who formerly thought he would be a painter, it reminds me of the thousands of hours I've spent in the studio. I can almost smell the paint. Re-reading that line, I see how it comes off as pretentious, but it was meant more as an apology for being self-indulgent.
by Chris Bodenner In contrast to the Dee Dee Myers tirade against Obama's young scribe, the women at Broadsheet were eminently more reasonable:
Sarah Hepola:
I found it hard to drum up outrage. Maybe because I'm so inured to
frat-boy shenanigans that this seems utterly tame; maybe it's because
there is a frighteningly similar picture of me groping Dr. Spock at a
college party.
Amy Benfer:
I think Hillary's spokesperson's response was classy, funny and exactly right.
Jeanne Carstensen:
It was hard for me to get too
outraged over this sort of party pranking. The stupidity speaks for
itself. Yet the dude with his hand cupping Hillary's cardboard breast
is Obama's senior speechwriter. Obama is facing the worse national
crisis in over a generation, and this guy is crafting his speeches?
Talk about cognitive dissonance.
by Chris Bodenner Tracy Clark-Flory has been following the "sexting" meme, most recently posting stats showing how prevalent the practice is among teens: 20% have sent/posted nude photos of themselves, while 39% have texted sexy messages. But she isn't getting worked up about the widespread use:
As someone who came of age during the Internet boom ... these findings are utterly
predictable. For young adults, technology can offer a means of intimacy
or performance, or both. ... Of course, when teens start sharing pornographic photos of themselves,
some legitimate dangers are introduced.... [But] the majority of teens are "sexting" their boyfriend or girlfriend --
not (at least intentionally) their entire school. This seems less an
issue of young people being made into amateur porn stars by our
sexed-up culture, than it is that virtually every aspect of their lives
has gone digital.
By Patrick Appel From Michael Crowley's article on Afghanistan:
For the left in the Bush era, America's two wars have long been divided into the good and the bad. Iraq was the moral and strategic catastrophe, while Afghanistan--home base for the September 11 attacks--was a righteous fight.
An obscure satellite pay channel no one had heard of screens what sounds like quite an interesting (in a grim kind of way) documentary about an 'assisted suicide' which happens to show the 'moment of death' - and all hell breaks loose. Some object that this glamorises euthanasia, and there might be something in that (though, without the row, no one would have seen the film), but that doesn't really [explain] the heat being generated.
by Chris Bodenner Videogum digs up an old TV commercial for a simple, but rather effective, fishing tool. Blogger Gabe comments:
Granted, I know that when you were sitting around the Invention Corp.
conference room trying to come up with a name for "a long hard rod that
you insert deep into the mouth" that it was almost irresistible. And
shouldn't it actually be called THE WUNDER DE-BONER? Oh well, Wunder
Boner it is.
by Chris Bodenner "I don't know what Caroline Kennedy's qualifications are. Except that she has name recognition, but so does J.Lo," - NY state Rep. Gary Ackerman (D), apparently taking his rhetorical cues from the McCain campaign.
By Patrick Appel David Nygren on the future of book publishing:
For now, for most people, print is to read, and electronic is to search and browse and discover. But this will soon change. E-book reader technology is at the point where it would be acceptable to most people. All that is necessary is for the price of readers to come down (or perhaps they could be provided for free in return for an annual subscription to content) and for their use to permeate the culture (see my Amazon Kindle idea).
by Chris Bodenner In a come-from-behind effort to capitalize on the unregulated use of melatonin to cure jet lag, the pharmaceutical industry is developing drugs to mimic its effects:
[Melatonin] is a hormone that regulates the biological clock. It is made in
the brain [when] darkness sets in
after sunset. Light is the most potent cue for keeping the biological
clock in synch with solar time. The clock then tells the brain when to
go to sleep. The theory of those who use melatonin is that an external
dose of it can reset the clock, and thus cause the "go to sleep" signal
to be sent at a more convenient moment.
By Patrick Appel Law-blogger Rick Hills wonders when it is it illegal for a politician to sell government jobs:
Does the indictment against Blagojevich rest on the theory that rewarding fund-raisers with plum jobs constitutes an instance of mail fraud -- that is, depriving the people of Illinois of their intangible right to honest services? Or does the case rest entirely on the allegations that Blagojevich demanded money for his personal use? If the former is the case, then the indictment is an extraordinary power grab by a U.S. Attorney. If the latter, then there is nothing in the tape revealed so far that could form the slightest basis for a prosecution of Jesse Jackson, Jr. for offering a bribe in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1346.
By Patrick Appel Saletan makes the pro-life case for Planned Parenthood:
The campaign to defund Planned Parenthood is really about abortions. [The Family Research Council] would like to see fewer of them. So would I. And that's the crux of the idiocy: The single best thing you can spend money on to reduce the number of abortions, not just in this country but around the world, is Planned Parenthood.
Facial hair is showing up on more former corporate types. It's one of
those tiny luxuries unleashed by unemployment, a time when people are
briefly released from workaday habits and may wish to take stock of
their lives before setting out anew. ... [A stylist] says her bewhiskered clients often associate facial hair
with power and rugged masculinity. "They joke with me about it -- 'I
feel like a real man.'"
By Patrick Appel Virginia Postrel gets an e-mail from author Sam Macdonald:
I just wrote a book (released November 25) about my own experience with starvation. Long story short, I was really fat and really broke after college, so I decided to live on 800 calories a day. I ended up losing 160 poounds and, eventually, digging myself out of debt.
Okay, so it’s obvious we don’t want Rod Blagojevich choosing a replacement to fill Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat. But is it obvious we want any governor to have that power?
Of all the things a governor has the authority to do, this is the one that reeks most of King George III.
By Patrick Appel Alex Morris's article on women allegedly drinking more because of Second Wave feminism earns her the ire of Kerry Howley:
First and most obviously, the entire piece treats the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) as some kind of objective brain trust, filled with people thinking new and Important Thoughts on the relative merits of those substances called “drugs.” But CASA is a prohibitionist organizaton.
By Patrick Appel Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D) is calling for Obama to "keep the country's current national intelligence director and CIA chief in place" and says that "some parts of the CIA's controversial alternative interrogation program should be allowed to continue." Greenwald responds:
...as I've been arguing for several weeks, it is unrealistic in the extreme to think that these Bush policies are going to magically vanish without a major fight now simply because Democrats are in control. There are many factions in Washington working hard to ensure that these policies remain largely in place, and many of those factions are found at the highest levels of the Democratic Congressional leadership.
By Patrick Appel David Kurtz feels for Jesse Jackson Jr.:
It's looking increasingly like Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., was truly uninvolved in Rod Blagojevich's alleged Senate-seat-for-sale scheme, other than expressing the usual interest in getting the appointment. Most telling was the report from Jackson's lawyer today that the feds called Jackson as Blagojevich was being arrested to give him a heads up that the arrest was happening and that Jackson might see his name in the news. If this all bears out and Jackson turns out to be a victim here, too, it's hard not to feel pretty bad for the guy.
We often hear that "soon" oil prices will hit a bottom, and start shooting back up again. I am less and less certain that this will be the case. Instead, I am concerned that we may on a relentless path to a point far below the point where energy companies can expect to have any chance of making money. We may be on a path toward more and more bankruptcies and defaults of all types--energy companies, owners of commercial real estate, homeowners, financial institutions, auto makers, airlines, and many more. If this is the case, there will be a huge strain on governments, and some may find it necessary to default on their debt.
...it's encouraging to me that the Obama team is at least trying to find someone who is free of taint from the Bush administration. Ultimately, though, I think the person Obama selects to head up the Justice Department (Eric Holder) and the Office of Legal Counsel (not yet announced) will be much more important in steering the country away from the policies of the last eight years. The intelligence agencies will always want to do as much as they are legally permitted to do. The key is having someone at the OLC who respects the law and the Constitution and is willing to draw the lines where they should be.
By Patrick Appel Marc reports on how Obama's team sees the economic situation and the possible foreign policy consequences. It's a scary read:
It's quite unsettling to talk to members of Barack Obama's transition teams these days, especially those who are helping with the economics portfolio. Without going into details, the sense I get from them is that they are very worried that the economy will get a lot worse before it gets better. Not just worse... a lot worse.
The perception that GM and Ford and Chrysler build crappy cars is just another obstacle to recovery. And of course it's a perception that, even if out of date, is predicated upon the bitter memories of the crap cars they really did build. Turns out it takes a while for that perception to fade.
December 7, 2008 - December 13, 2008
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