Politics: A Step Too Far

In counter-point to my own post, I'd like to say that while going for the jugular is good, being a racist homophobic idiot doesn't help.

Welcome to the culture wars of the 13th Congressional District, where Republican Vernon Robinson is trying to unseat Miller, a two-term incumbent from Raleigh.

In a year when Republican congressmen across the country are on the defensive, Robinson promises to turn the tables and make Miller's record and background a focus of the campaign.

...

Robinson thinks he has a powerful issue which he can ride to Congress -- growing concern about the wave of illegal immigration coming into the state. He wants stiff fines against those who hire illegal immigrants and English made the official language in the U.S.

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Robinson has already run a radio ad that features mariachi band music playing in the background. "If Miller had his way," says the announcer, "America would be nothing but one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals."

First, this was an idiotic move. If you're going to say something inflammatory, do it in direct mail. That way, you can control exactly who receives your message. Second, when you're going to make an outrageous claim, try not to be goofy. A party for illegal aliens and homosexuals? That's just makes voters laugh. As an aside, I think I'd like to go to that party. The dancing must be awesome.

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Politics: Direct Mail and You

Brainstorms has posted some of the direct mail pieces that are floating around the CA-50 race to replace disgraced Congressman Duke Cunningham..







This is actually a pretty bad piece of direct mail. Not because its over the top, but because it fails to go far enough.

First, the front-page eye grabber failed to include drug paraphernalia, preferably a crack pipe and heroine needles. You have to look at the overturned car in the background for a few seconds to realize what it is - I would have moved up the text box, make the teenagers heads slightly smaller, and make the car red, and on fire. The teenager in front has a scary look about him, but he would have been better if his hair was dyed a bright color, and if he had several piercings in a variety of places. Since this is a Republican mail piece in an overwhelmingly white district, the teenager in back should be black, preferably with his teeth bared. Subtle race baiting is how Republicans win.

The second page really sucks. I have no idea what's going on in the black and white picture where you see the person's upturned hand. Get rid of it, and move the "Francine Busby's Record" envelope to the left. Make the text of the paragraphs larger, and limit them their size. Shocking headline, supporting sentence, small text italicized news reference. You're not going to convince anyone of anything with 3 sentences, you're just trying to convey a message, "My opponent is dangerous" in powerful emotional terms. Lead with "Praises Child Pornographers" and not the more quixotic "Irresponsible Spending" bit.

The third page is pretty good. But the sentence should be "Who is more dangerous? Teenagers or Francine Busby?" There's a famous anecdote that when Lyndon Johnson was running for Congress he spread a rumor that his opponent was a pig f#@*er. Johnson's campaign manager said, "Lyndon, you know he doesn't do that!" Johnson replied, "I know. I just want to make him deny it."

Now, I would never do anything like this. As a Democrat, I would feature an attractive blonde thirty-something sitting and crying behind prison bars. "This rape victim is in prison because she needs an abortion." Second page headline: "Bob Blackheart would rape victims to prison." Over an unflattering, black and white photo of Republican Bob Blackheart. To the right, a large quote by Bob "I am against abortions in all cases... including rape, incest, and molestation," with the proper newspaper attribution beneath it. The "..." part is usually a thoughtful discussion as to why he opposes abortion in all cases. If you have space, then on the back you can reprint a favorable article trashing Bob's abortion views, as Democrats tend to care slightly more about that stuff.

Republicans are running this country because they've been doing exactly what I describe. They play dirty, and they play for keeps. Democrats reflexively seek the high ground, and try to explain to voters why they are better on the issues. Republican activists believe that we are an abomination unto God that should be cleansed from the earth. Guess who wins?

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The DaVinci Code

Upon closer inspection, I now see what all the fuss is about (Click on picture for larger image).


Stolen and slightly modified from Dueling Analogs.

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Distraction: Because I want to give you nightmares.

Japanese American Idol on LSD.

Stolen from Max.

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Demotivational Friday: Irony

Many thanks to Sneezy D for taking this week's picture and sending it to me, and to Qui Gonn Jesse for coming up with the caption. Sneezy also had the sad but true observation that they could call it Black Rancid Death and people would still eat it.

An additional irony that's layered into the picture that people may not notice is that these advertisements for access to Food Stamps and McDonald's are hung on the side of ANOTHER RESTAURANT.

"Gee Max, how should we advertise our business, and convince people to eat here."

"Maybe we should display an ad for our competitors. Or we could display an ad for how people can get food for free, but not at any restaurant. That'll work."

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Statistics: Crime in America

1 in 136 Americans is currently in prison or jail. That's a lot of people.

At midyear 2005 the Nation’s prisons and jails incarcerated 2,186,230 persons. Prisoners in the custody of the 50 States and the Federal system accounted for two-thirds of the incarcerated population (1,438,701) inmates). The other third were held in local jails (747,529), not including persons in community-based programs.

So says a new report by the Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. The report can be found here, with an abstract, spreadsheets, press release, ASCII file, here.

I'm always a bit torn by debates over criminal justice. The most effective thing a community can do to reduce crime is put more cops on the street and more criminals in jail, usually through harsher laws and law enforcement. This is literally a life and death matter to people. If we can do something to promote safety and prevent death, we should.

On the other hand, we're pretty much condemning anyone you put in jail to a lifetime of poverty and incarceration, due to the problems of recidivism. With a criminal background, few marketable skills, and an unexplainable gap in their resume, criminals almost always repeat their crimes once released from prison. Putting someone into jail for even a year is essentially the same as making them a criminal for life.

But it is undeniable that having such a large incarcerated population speaks to a failure of our society. Education, jobs, mental health care, civil rights, culture - take your pick - there are so many things that just scream out for change that you end up being deafened. And so we are left with the products of our failures, and quibble over whether there should be more prisons or expedited execution procedures.

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On War

Amidst the debate and acrimony concerning the war, I think that everyone is missing a simple truth: Bush sold the war based on some pretty reasonable arguments. A large majority of Americans bought his arguments. Now he continues to recycle many of them in order to keep support for his administration. But whether or not those arguments are correct are pretty immaterial to our current situation.

The administration did an excellent job of defeating the pathetic Iraqi army and capturing Saddam. And the President's approval was in the stratosphere. Now the President is doing a lousy job on security and nation building, and the President is deeply unpopular.

Some have made excellent, principled arguments for the administration and the war. Others have made equally excellent and principled arguments against them. But the fact of the matter is that Americans care about results. The most common argument I heard before the war from people outside the Beltway was simply "He hates us, we hate him. If we can take him out, why shouldn't we?" If Bush hadn't of screwed up the post-war, 65% of the country wouldn't care if Bush said Saddam had (or probably had, or would soon build) WMD. They wouldn't care about the lies, the deception, the Downing Street memo, the huge cost overruns, the corruption, or the general mismanagement. But Bush did screw up the post-war, and isn't doing such a good job on the domestic front either (Katrina, Medicare, the deficit, your choice of social issues), and now people across the political spectrum are finding reasons to hate him.

If Bush wants to be popular again, he must alter events for the better. I hope he does, because as much as I hate him, I love America and want all of us to succeed. If Bush fails to do that, Iraq will continue to be a debacle and he will go down as a failed President. As my brother the combat medic told me on his return from Fallujah, "I supported it - I volunteered - I just didn't realize they were going to screw it up so badly. I hope they find a way to fix it, but I don't see how they can."

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Distraction: The Evolution of Dance

Thanks to Chublogga for the link.



Gives whole new meaning to the phrase "dance like nobody's watching."

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Demotivational Friday: Competition

Don't bother praying to Jesus for help on this sorta thing. Seriously, he doesn't care.

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Crazy ideas I get when I can't sleep

Long story short, I wound up with awful sunburn that, as it healed, itched like mad. Because I had to be up early the next day for work, I couldn't take my usual half-dose of Tylenol PM (to stop the itching and to put me to sleep), and so I was up for most of the night itching my legs off. And so my mind wandered and I got to thinking about the Celestial Bureaucracy… Now, some back-story…

L’homme loves video games, and I love to watch him play them. He was playing this one game that talks about the Chinese “Celestial Bureaucracy”… basically, it’s the idea of the Chinese pantheon of gods, and how they fit into the order of rank and whatnot. The idea doesn’t translate well into English, and so you get the translation of Celestial Bureaucracy… which makes me think of the heavenly typing pool, or the god who is in charge of the heavenly office supply cabinet that won't let you have that box of small paper clips because he gave you a box of the large ones yesterday, and you can't get him to understand that the large ones are too big sometimes and you just like the small ones better but he's all "you already have a box of paper clips so you don't need another box yet"…

And so I can’t sleep, my legs are itching like mad, and I’m thinking about work and this game and the bureaucracy… and then I get this crazy idea. Heaven is supposed to be this place where, like, you can do anything you want and you can get anything you want. So, if you want a Jell-o filled swimming pool with 1,000 lesbians cavorting, you can get it. Now, I’m an event planner – so when I think of the ability to get anything you want, I also think about the logistics behind it: how could you make this work? What would you need to do to get this together? So, I’m thinking you’ve got the people in the kitchen mixing the Jell-o and making little Jell-o cubes, you’ve got the equivalent of “central casting” where you’ve got agents calling up their hot lesbian clients to get them to the pool… you’ve got to hire catering to prepare poolside snacks and a bartender to mix the drinks… then, you’ve got to have the clean-up staff to not only clean up after the party, but I bet getting Jell-o out of the pool drain is a bitch! And you’ve got to get all that Jell-o out of there, because tomorrow Jim from Cloud 17 wants to run laps with former Olympic swimmers…

And so, what if that’s a form of Hell? I mean, what do you do with people who are just not nice people in life – they don’t deserve to roast over the eternal fiery pits of Hell, but at the same time they don’t deserve the Jell-o filled lesbian pool… so maybe, their eternal punishment is that they have to clean all the lime Jell-o out of the pool drain - like, they have to help plan and execute other people’s eternal fantasies. And they have to spend eternity serving out other people’s fantasies and cleaning up after them, and can never take part in the fun themselves… So, that’s my idea.

Because I really hate my co-worker, who is a raving bee-yotch. And I don’t want to think that she gets to be so bossy and bitchy in life without some sort of divine retribution. But at the same time, she doesn’t deserve to be hanging out with Hitler for eternity (although, that would be some serious punishment for Hitler!). I’d like to think that she’s the lackey that cleans up my sick after I’ve had too many strawberry daiquiris when I was lounging poolside, watching Brad Pitt in tight swim trunks doing crunches all day while Monica Bellucci applied my sun tan lotion as L’homme watched.

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Government: The Fence

Prof. Bainbridge, a conservative law professor I usually disagree with but often read because of his intellectual rigor, has an excellent post on the fence that some conservatives are proposing we build between the United States and Mexico...

Building a 700 mile fence will just funnel migrants into more dangerous regions, with serious humantirian consequences. Building a 2000 mile fence will simply encourage building of tunnels and smuggling through ports (probably using shipping containers). Building a fence thus may be a small component of a comprehensive immigration reform package, but it is mainly a vastly expensive sop to the masses.

On this matter, the Prof. is correct. (Though I think building any fence would be a massively useless boondoggle).

The Great Wall of China took vast resources and decades of time to build. So many people died in its construction that it took on the nickname “the longest cemetery on Earth.” The net effect of the Wall was that Mongols and other nomadic tribes had to bribe Chinese guards before they walked through the gates, or simply march to a portion of the Wall that was unmanned and then gave someone climb over and open a gate. It has accomplished virtually nothing in history, other then being an amazing tourist attraction and acting as border demarcations (which are now irrelevant). Chinese military strategy followed the familiar pattern of fortifying and defending the cities themselves. For the purpose it was built, the Wall is and was useless.

Let’s not make the same mistake. America shouldn’t build the second longest cemetery on Earth. Instead of spending billions of dollars a year to build and man a fence that immigrants will cut down, sail around, fly over, tunnel under, or simply ignore by hiding in legal cross border traffic, let’s figure out a comprehensive solution of economic reform for Mexico and stricter law enforcement in America that will work. I’m not endorsing or refuting what the President has proposed. But a fence is clearly wrong. We need solutions, not monolithic symbols of division.

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Government: A Test of Good Policy

I am a news hound. I read the news for 1-3 hours each day, and sometimes more. I'm helped by the fact that part of my job entails knowing what's going on in the political world, but mostly its just a favorite hobby.

I've found that its useful to triangulate my news intake. I read an admittedly liberal source, an admittedly conservative news source, and a corporate news source. After I read all three, I get a pretty good take on what people think is happening in the world. (It doesn't actually tell you what happens. Having been on the other side of the reporter's notebook on a few occasions, I can tell you that reality doesn't always make it into print).

From this practice, I've learned a key method of testing political policy.

1) If your favorite hero had proposed it, would you support it?
2) If your worst enemy had proposed it, would you support it?
3) If a major corporation with a hidden agenda proposed it, would you support it?

If the answer to all three is yes, its probably a sound policy. If its not, you're probably supporting it for personal or politcal gain. Paul over at Wizbang agrees:

It isn't too often I find myself in such complete disagreement with Mark Steyn. He's one of those guys that if I do disagree with him, I read him again because I must have missed something the first time. But on the NSA collecting data on MY phone calls, he's just wrong.

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Anyone on the right who thinks this is a good idea should be disabused of that notion by 3 simple words. "President Hillary Clinton." Ask yourself... Do you really trust the Clinton's with this data. -- That's the problem with bad policy. Even if you trust George Bush and his administration today and you really believe it is only being used to catch terrorists, bad policy has a way of sticking with government forever. And only getting worse with time.

Bush has redefined the powers of the President of the United States. Some people support what he's done, other people oppose it. But elections have a habit of changing things. Keep that in mind when making decisions.

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Demotivational Friday: Consequences

While I'm usually a very supportive person, I sometimes get yelled at for being a bucket of cold water. Apparently, there's some sort of mystical rule that when someone tells you they want to do something, you should just nod and be happy for them, not point out the flaws in their plans.

OK, I've accepted it. Nothing I say will really change someone's opinion once they have their heart set on something, no matter how polite or logical I am. Helpful Critical Guy Syndrome is a disease I suffer from, not a gift I should share with the world. I get that.

But having said that, I'd like the world to consider, just for a moment, that your idea isn't going to work, and that you should plan accordingly.

Not all dreams are created equal.

Just saying.

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Government: How to Hand out Illegal Contracts in Five Easy Steps

Recently, there has been a lot of commotion over HUD Secretary Jackson's comment...

"Then he said something. . . . He said, 'I have a problem with your president.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush. ' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.' "He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

I've got news for everyone outside the Beltway. Jackson was saying something that who works in government already knows. He's just the first high level Republican official to say it out loud.

There is a long, convoluted selection process which would take me hours to explain. The complexity of the process works for them, as it gives them many opportunities to bend the rules their way. It works differently for grants and contracts, but here are the basics:

1) Companies hire former Republican political appointees. Their main job is to get new work. There is a "cooling off period" in which former appointees are not supposed to do this, but it is generally ignored. You can simply put the person in an advisory role, or not have them officially work with their former government office, even if that's all they do.

2) Before a funding opportunity is announced, current political appointees give an informal heads-up to their Republican friends and former co-workers. This gives them a few extra days, weeks, or even months to prepare for an announcement before the rest of the public. The application period is generally kept as short as possible, usually 30 days. So unless you have a team of professional application writers or were tipped off beforehand, you'll fail. This marginalizes small and medium sized organizations without political connections.

3) Applications are then scored. The panels that score applications and the chair people who run the process can be anyone with "relevant experience." While 80% of such panels tend to be civil servants and people with a lot of spare time in the summer (teachers, grad students) large, important, or otherwise cherry contracts are almost always scored by panelists with strong Republican ties.

4) A political appointee can choose who gets funded from any of the top scoring applications. Whenever possible, he chooses a company that hired former Republican officials and has donated to the Republican Party.

5) That political appointee retires after 2-4 years, going to work as a consultant for a company with business before the government. The process repeats itself.

This has gone on to some degree in every administration. The current administration has turned it into an art form, using even routine contracts for technocratic or maintenance work as an opportunity for political pork. They have also rapidly increased the rate of government outsourcing, to remove power from civil servants and create as many payback opportunities as possible. The end result is that crucial government services are often given to incompetent but well connected hacks. (See: Orleans, New). Civil servants who complain are marginalized and sometimes transferred, public interest groups are ignored.

It's disgusting and illegal. But there are few smoking guns, and even fewer chances to blow a whistle. They own both teams, referee the game, sell all the concessions, run security, own the ballpark, and gave themselves a tax subsidy to build it. We are merely spectators, or at best, bat boys.

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Books: Identity and Violence

This is an excellent book written by Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen, one of our generation's most gifted scholars, whom I spent years studying in college. You can read an email exchange between Sen and Robert Kagan discussing the book here.

The thesis is simple but profound: It is wrong to characterize our era as a "clash of civilizations" between Western/Democratic and Eastern/Islamic cultures. Instead, people have bundles of different identities. "The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician," and so on. Separating the world out into opposing camps is erroneous and dangerous.

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Article: Hillary + Fox News?

Found this interesting tidbit on Americablog:

Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul whose New York Post tabloid savaged Hillary Clinton's initial aspirations to become a US senator for New York, has agreed to host a political fundraiser for her re-election campaign.

The decision underlines an incongruous thawing of relations between Mr Murdoch and Mrs Clinton, who in 1998 coined the phrase "vast rightwing conspiracy" to denounce critics of her husband, such as Fox News, the conservative cable channel owned by Mr Murdoch's News Corporation.

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One media lobbyist said: "Murdoch will be for the Republicans but he is also smart enough to know that the Republicans might not win. At some level, whether nationally or in New York, Hillary is the future and what savvy businessman would not want to put a line of interest in someone who will be the future?"

This is either the smartest or the dumbest political move possible.

As everyone knows, Hillary Clinton is running for President in 2008. It's not a matter of if she runs for President. She's running. She's hired staff, is raising money, has started to line up political support, etc.

I assume that Clinton is offering political access and maybe further media deregulation (ie, giving Murdoch/News Corp ever more money), in exchange for campaign cash and a slightly blunted Fox news. But its a very dangerous liason.

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Distraction: Ask a Ninja

This is a funny website with some great interviews.

"What's it like being a ninja?"

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"It's really hard to explain to somebody who's not a ninja. It's like the Jews, you know. They can't explain to anybody what it is to be a Jew. We're not a race, its not a job, we're not an entertainment company, we're lots of things. So, you know, its like being a very deadly Jew.

"It's kind of like trying to explain Final Fantasy XIII to a lemon."

This website proves that if there is a God, he has a sense of humor, and he's probably a ninja.

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Demotivational Friday: Foresight

I choose burritos. The picture, as you may have guessed, is from the nationwide event, "A Day Without Immigrants." The quote, as you may know, is from Emperor Marcus Aurelius. While reading the news, I also came across this photo:



The caption reads:

U.S. soldiers prepare to swim at a pool run by the Australian military at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq, April 9, 2006. Top U.S. and coalition commanders and their staffs now enjoy an array of modern conveniences and amenities across the command center.

Considering my distaste of all guns, I have no idea why I find this picture so hot. But I do. So here it is.

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Article: The next 3 years in Iraq

From Josh, I found this article in the New Yorker about the Iraq War. The most poignant line:

As a strategy, this amounts to muddling through the rest of the Bush Presidency, without being forced to admit defeat, until January of 2009, when the war will become a new President’s problem.

I agree. As far as I can see, these are our current alternatives for dealing with Iraq...

1) The Powell Doctrine: Use massive, overwhelming force with a clear exit strategy. My brother, who recently returned from the outskirts of Fallujah, has told me that we need roughly three times as many troops in Iraq. This jibes pretty well with what General Shinseki and other brass said before the war. Instead, we invaded with our forces organized around the Rumsfeld Doctrine, and the country fell into chaos. This would require roughly 400,000 troops, up from the current troop strength of about 132,000. We would need to extend tours of duty from 9-12 months to about 2 years, and we would need to call up most of our reserves. It would also require an additional $200 billion per year to rebuild the infrastructure and train a new Iraq army. Once this is accomplished, we should be able to leave in about 2-4 years when Iraq would be relatively stable.

2) The Murtha Plan: This plan, embraced by many Democrats, calls for removing our troops from Iraq. The first step would be to redeploy most of our forces outside of hot zones, and switch to a quick reaction, "over the horizon" strategy. This is based on the premise that our armed forces create more violence then they prevent by acting as police within Iraq. The second step would be a structured pull out from Iraq to Kuwait. If there is a coup attempt, we re-invade, but otherwise we try and stay out of things as much as possible. The final step would be to bring our troops home. Murtha has estimated that the process would take about 2 years, but that we could start bringing home our troops in stages within months.

3) Stay the Course: The status quo. We slowly bleed to death in Iraq as public support bottoms out at home. This somehow theoretically leads to a safe, democratic Iraq. But it ignores all of the facts about what is actually going on. Eventually, another president will have to come in and deal with the problem. Yet the longer we wait, the more risky our choices become. No one will have the political will to re-invade Iraq in 2009. And the Murtha Plan will quickly devolve into a Nixon style "peace with honor" pull out, where friendly forces collapse as we leave.

My prediction, sadly, is number three.

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Article: Welfare Cuts

There's an excellent article in the Village Voice (and yes, I read the Village Voice) about upcoming changes in welfare law:

While flashy items like marriage promotion programs and pitched battles over child care funding got all the ink, the provision of the new law that could have the greatest impact could be an obscure construct called the "participation rate." In theory, the 1996 law required states to maintain a rate of 50 percent, meaning half of all families receiving public assistance must be in 30 hours a week of either paid jobs, unpaid "workfare," job search, education and training, or other approved activities. However, the Gingrich Congress left a loophole: To encourage states to trim the rolls, they were allowed "caseload reduction credits" based on how many families had moved off welfare since the law was put into place. Thanks to Rudy Giuliani's caseload purges, New York State's effective required rate for years has been near zero—meaning that if the city had wanted to assign everyone to play Skee-Ball all day, the feds wouldn't have batted an eye.

Under the new law, though, states will be credited for caseload cuts only since 2005, and that has many poverty experts worried. "The practical effect is that unless states generate caseload decline after 2005, they face a 50 percent participation rate this fall and every year thereafter," says Mark Greenberg, executive director of the Center for American Progress' Task Force on Poverty. "So the law creates once again a tremendous incentive to simply cut welfare caseloads, whether or not people are getting jobs and whether or not they still need assistance—because the easiest way to meet the new requirements is by restricting assistance to needy families."

New York's compliance rate currently stands at 39 percent, which leaves it better off than some states. (Pennsylvania scores a mere 8 percent.) Still, after a decade of shifting everyone possible into work programs or off welfare, coming up with another 11 percent is going to be a tough nut. "You're left with the kids, and the elderly, and the temporarily or permanently disabled," says Jennifer Werdell, a board member and former co-director of Project FAIR. Of these, tens of thousands of families are already "sanctioned" by the city every year, their benefits reduced or cut off for violating program rules. Usually, says Werdell, it's because they missed an appointment—often because they couldn't find child care, or even had a private job interview and couldn't find anyone at HRA to reschedule their city appointment.

I'll have a long, ranty addition to this later. Short version: Republicans hate poor people.

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Distraction: Personality Test

Fun personality test that I found a link to on Death Quaker's blog. It's essentially an enneagram test. I enjoy personality tests, even if I know how every question is going to show up in the results, thus ruining part of the fun.

Here's how I did:

Advocating Leader

Each of the colors represents an aspect of personality - though the "mouse over" function doesn't seem to work in blogger. But you get the point, and if you take the test you can compare.

Without going into a discussion on Jungian psychology, these things tend to be mostly accurate, but with a long list of caveats. They work best if you think of a particular role in your life (professional, romantic, family, friends, etc.) and answer all of the questions based on how you act in that role. Some people are the same or similar in every role, but most people act differently under different circumstances. If you don't have the time to take such a test more then once (I didn't, it takes about 10 minutes) you should take it while thinking about the role which is most important to you in your life.

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