I was reading Congessional Anecdotes by Paul Boller last night and I caught this bit that does a good job of articulating my problem with many of the arguments made by conservatives :

One of South Carolina Senator Earnest F. Hollings’ favorite stories was about the veteran who returned from Korea and went to college on the GI Bill; then he bought his house with an FHA loan; saw his kids born in a VA hospital; started a business with an SBA; got electricity from TVA and, then, water from a project funded by the EPA. His children participated in the school-lunch program and made it through college, with the help of government-guaranteed student loans. His parents retired to a farm on their Social Security checks, getting electricity from the REA and the soil tested by the USDA. When the father became ill, his life was saved with a drug developed through NIH and his family saved from financial ruin by Medicare. The veteran drove to work on the interstate, moored his boat in a channel dredged by army engineers, and, when floods hit, took an Amtrak to Washington to apply for disaster relief. He also spent some of his time there enjoying the exhibits in the Smithsonian museums. Then one day he wrote his Congressman and angry letter complaining about high taxes and heavy government spending. The government, he said, echoing President Reagan, “should get off his back.”

South Knox Bubba recently posted this letter from God which really cracked me up. (via LeanLeft)

I appreciate the gesture, but you need my help a lot more than I need yours. See, I’m doing OK for the most part. And I don’t need any more self-proclaimed spokesmen running around making up any more proclamations or other writings claiming to speak for me. Furthermore, you don’t need a representative to talk to me. If you really need something, just ask me directly, OK? I thought we’d already been over this, like thousands of years ago?

As for your feeble attempts to organize some sort of “government” to manage your so-called “society”, don’t drag me into it. Have you not noticed what happens every time you do? If you don’t believe me, just ask my pal Allah.

And perhaps you will recall that really smart fellow, that Thomas Jefferson, I sent down there to help you with your IPO. Maybe you weren’t paying attention when he said:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”

Pay attention to that guy. He said that stuff for a reason. It’s one of the few smart things you people have done in a while. See, this whole deal works a lot better if we keep it on a one-on-one basis, just between you and me so to speak. Don’t screw it up, OK? Besides, the way your churches have been operating lately, I cannot fathom why you’d want them involved in important stuff like securing the peace and domestic tranquility, fixing potholes, and educating your children.

And why would you want to embarrass yourselves and your community with this kind of nonsense anyway? If you really want to please me, instead of thumping on that Bible so much maybe you ought to open it up every now and then and read some of it. To yourself. Quietly.

Michelle Goldberg of Salon was recently invited to the Restoration Weekend conservative retreat that was attended by many prominent Republican politicians and pundits. While there she found out that they don’t really believe their own bullshit :

Meanwhile, the right’s intellectuals and activists had largely scrapped talk of democracy. Some suggested that the Iraqis themselves are our enemy, that we owe them nothing. Pipes referenced “The Mouse That Roared,” the 1959 film in which a poor country declares war on America, hoping to lose and be rebuilt like Germany and Japan. The implication seemed to be that Iraq is both lucky and greedy.

Meanwhile, those troubled by Bush’s decision to cut and run blamed it on Democrats and the liberal media, who through their unfair scrutiny of irrelevancies like Bush’s uranium claim and the Valerie Plame affair were sapping the national will.
. . .
In a column this week, conservative writer and talk-show host Armstrong Williams wrote: “The administration’s decision to depose Saddam Hussein represents the first meaningful step in 50 years of attacking the basic problem of hopelessness, tyranny and poverty in that region. This historic step will make senate reform possible.”

Williams chose his words carefully, because while he may believe in senate reform, he’s dismissive of the idea that democracy itself can work in Iraq. Sitting on a panel called “The Media and the War,” Williams spoke of Muslims’ knack for being wrong about everything. “I can’t think of one time when we’ve had a Muslim on the air, when we asked deep, penetrating questions, where they’re on the right side,” he said. “You find me a Muslim who, if you ask the right question, they’ll come out on the right side of the issue. You can’t find them.”

After the panel I asked Williams how this Muslim failing bodes for democracy in Iraq. He snorted. “That’s a pipe dream,” he said, laughing. “Democracy in Iraq?” he repeated, as if he’d never heard anything so preposterous. Noting that the country had never been senate before, he asked, “What makes you think it’s going to work now?”

So lemme get this straight :

I’ve been listening to (some would say enduring) the pledge drive on my local NPR station and throughout the day they’ve been telling listeners that the free T-shirt that comes with their pledge will help them attract members of the opposite sex. People have called in and talked about how they met someone because “he noticed my KPCC shirt” and so on. It’s really weird. There’s plenty of good reasons why you should contribute to public radio, but “our shirts are gonna get you laid!” is not one of them.

Okay, they just announced that Edie McClurg is going to match any donations over the next half hour dollar-for-dollar. That’s weird. Who knew Mr. Rooney’s secretary was so cool?

Some thoughts on The Beatles’ “Let It Be…Naked” :

Does this mean we can start comparing Bush to Hitler again?

The U.S. military’s code name for a crackdown on resistance in Iraq was also used by the Nazis for an aborted operation to damage the Soviet power grid during World War II.

“Operation Iron Hammer” this week launched the 1st Armored Division’s 3rd Brigade into the roughest parts of Baghdad to ferret out the attackers who have killed scores of U.S. troops since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was ousted in April.

A Pentagon official said the name was chosen because of the “Old Ironsides” nickname of the 1st Armored Division. He was unaware of any connection to any Nazi operation.
. . .
The original name, Operation Infinite Justice, was jettisoned amid fears that the Muslim world, already leery of U.S. intentions, would object on the basis of Koranic teachings that only God can provide infinite justice.

…so they settled on a name that would piss off the Jews instead?!

I’m sure it was all just a big misunderstanding. When they say “iron hammer“, they mean it in the nicest way possible. Really. Maybe this will prompt them to change the name to something that does a better job describing the purpose of the mission. Something like “Operation Bomb Your Civilians Until You Tell Us Where Saddam Is”.

I can understand why many Europeans and Americans on the far-left are against “frankenfood”, but if they stopped being so reflexively anti-GM everything, they could probably do a lot of good. For a good example of what I’m talking about, check out this article (link from Bob Harris)

“It’s agricultural asbestos!” That ripe phrase is how one British farmer described the menu of genetically modified (GM) crops being offered by Monsanto, a food biotechnology company in the United Kingdom. It became a rallying cry for farmers and environmentalists across Britain seeking to keep GM seeds out of English soil. For its part, Monsanto, and the Blair government, dismissed such charges as the ravings of Luddites. But now, a three-year study by British scientists, commissioned by Blair’s own environment minister, Michael Meacher, reveals that the environmental risks of GM crops may be even greater than previously believed.

The Farm-Scale Evaluation study, conducted by the Royal Society, is the first large-scale field test of GM crops. It compared the biodiversity in fields planted with three GM crops — corn, sugar beet and oilseed rape — with the crop of similar non-GM crops in adjacent fields. The study found that the super-charged pesticides required to grow GM crops dealt a severe blow to local farmland wildlife species, killing bees, butterflies, insects, wildflowers and birds. The GM version of RoundUp is so potent that it kills almost every non-GM plant in its path, including non-GM versions of the crops themselves.
. . .
Monsanto, clearly on the run, says it’s abandoning Europe for now. Following Bill Clinton’s lead, Blair stocked his cabinet with Monsanto flacks and fought off attempts by the European Union to ban GM crops. The lone holdout in the Blair camp was Meacher, the environment minister, who vowed last year that the government would ban the crops if the studies produced negative results. But Blair sacked him last year, after Meacher publicly savaged Blair’s support of the Monsanto machine.
. . .
If there’s any hope for the company, it probably lies here in the United States rather than Europe. Americans don’t like the idea of eating GM food, but, thanks to an indifferent press, they also know next to nothing about it. A case in point: A recent survey by the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers University found that 75 percent of Americans believe that their palette has never been contaminated by GM foods. Yet, almost everyone in the United States has eaten lots of GM foods. It’s part of our daily diet. More 80 percent of processed foods contain some GM crops. “Americans have no idea that foods with genetically modified ingredients are already for sale in the U.S.,” says William Hallman, author of the Rutgers study. “But the bottom line is: If you eat processed foods, you’re probably eating GM ingredients.”

It’s not just a matter of processed foods. A recent report from the Department of Agriculture shows that GM crops are rapidly monopolizing the fields of the farm belt. More than 80 percent of U.S. soybean fields are planted with GM seeds. Similarly, GM seeds account for nearly 75 percent of cotton and 40 percent of corn grown in the United States. One reason so many Americans remain ignorant about the prevalence of GM foods in the U.S. diet is that Monsanto and other biotech companies, with the help of the Clinton and Bush administrations, have fended off calls to label GM foods.

Now I’m strongly in favor of labeling GM foods. I think the idea of essentially tricking people into eating something they don’t want to is borderline criminal. That said, I still think the possibilities of GM food are endless.

The environmental concerns that have been raised about GM crops are valid, but the big complaint in the article above says “the GM version of RoundUp”. So it’s not the crops themselves that are the problem, but rather the pesticide. In a broader sense though, there are some problems with the crops themselves, as this study points out (also via Bob Harris) :

Today eight scientific papers containing the results of the farm-scale evaluation of spring-sown crops (maize, beet and spring oilseed rape) have been published in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Biological Sciences). The publication of these papers, following full peer-review, provides independent endorsement of the SSC’s view that the farm scale evaluations were designed and executed to a high standard. The SSC is content that these eight papers collectively have adequately addressed the null hypothesis under test: that, for each crop, the effect on the abundance and diversity of wildlife of the management of the GM crop does not differ from the effect of the management of the conventional equivalent. The null hypothesis was rejected in each case.

Growing conventional beet and spring rape was better for many groups of wildlife than growing GM herbicide-tolerant (GMHT) beet and spring rape. Some insect groups, such as bees (in beet crops) and butterflies (in beet and spring rape) , were recorded more frequently in and around the conventional crops because there were more weeds to provide food and cover. There were also more weed seeds in conventional beet and spring rape crops than in their GM counterparts. Such seeds are important in the diets of some animals, particularly some birds. However some groups of soil insects were found in greater numbers in GMHT beet and spring rape crops.

In contrast, growing GMHT maize was better for many groups of wildlife than conventional maize. There were more weeds in and around the GMHT maize crops, more butterflies and bees around at certain times of the year, and more weed seeds.

The environmental concern here wasn’t that the environment was being poisoned, it was that the GM crops and herbicide worked too well and killed so many weeds that it negatively affected the surrounding ecosystem. What’s also worth noting is that the GM corn was actually better than its conventional counterpart.

I think we’re at a crossroads here as far as GM food is concerned. Personally, I think the potential for GM products to solve the world’s famine problems is too great to be ignored. If impoverished areas like Ethiopia were provided with some GM vegetable seeds that could grow in sand with little water, it would do a hell of a lot more to help those people out than “We Are The World” ever did.

But as repeated testing (as well as government and corporate foot-dragging) has shown, we can’t reliably say whether or not many GM food products are safe. If I had my way, I would ensure that an international standard (perhaps enforced by the U.N. or WTO?) for testing and implementing GM crops was in place that followed these guidelines :

Uggghhh….well, Arnold is taking the oath of office. It’s official now. I’m sure the first thing he’s going to do is drive his Hummer over to the capital so he can get rid of the car tax and “terminate” the deficit without raising taxes or cutting education. So, which one of his campaign promises will he break first?

It looks like the Republicans are having so much fun being bullies that they’ve decided to extend the senate session even longer. Reuter’s story about the extension includes this interesting analysis :

James Thurber of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies said he believes both sides hurt themselves as well as the senate with the debate, explaining the public sees “them all as too partisan.”

Thurber said he believes the public sides more with Democrats on at least one point — that time spent on the debate could have been better used on such matters as health care, education and the economy.

Democrats have joined Republicans in confirming 168 of Bush’s other judicial nominees, dropping the bench’s vacancy rate to below 5 percent, its lowest level in more than a decade.

Sheldon Goldman, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said Republicans have been “extremely successful” in confirming Bush’s nominees. “But what Republicans would love Democrats to do is to roll over and play dead so they can confirm all of them.”

So the only real complaint the the GOP has is that the Democrats haven’t accepted all of their judicial candidates? What assholes….

The 30-hour senate session is still underway. On one hand, the Republicans have a point :

“We hold this extraordinary session for truly extraordinary reasons,” said senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican. He accused Democrats of unprecedented obstructionism in confirming judicial nominees.

senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, described the debate as “a colossal waste of time.”

Daschle argued that the 30 hours could be better spent discussing the estimated 3 million Americans who have lost their jobs since Bush took office nearly three years ago.

The senate debate was not expected to change the status of any stalled nominee unless Democrats fell asleep and failed to oppose possible procedural bids to confirm without objection.

Daschle promised that would not happen, saying he would have at least two members of his party on the floor at all times.

Frist argued that never before have judicial nominees backed by a majority been blocked with a procedural hurdle known as a filibuster, and wants a rule change to stop it.

Y’see, Frist is technically correct when he talks about the unprecedented nature of the senate filibusters. But the real reason isn’t because the Republicans have been playing nice all along. It’s because they spent the last ten years using a different procedural trick to block judges.

The “blue slip” trick was described at length a few weeks ago by Kevin Drum :

This was the default “Senatorial courtesy” tradition followed by both parties regardless of who was president. If both senators from the judge’s home state “blue slipped” a nominee, he was out.

As Kevin pointed out in his timeline, this is the way it worked until 1994, when Republicans took control of Congress. At that point, the rule was changed so that only one “blue slip” was needed to block a nomination. Once the Republicans stole regained the White House, the rule was changed back to two slips. (”We can’t let Democrats take advantage of the same trick we’ve been using!”) When Sen. Jim Jeffords defected the GOP and the Democrats were controlling the senate, they changed the rule back to one slip. And then, after the Republicans took back the senate by questioning the patriotism of anyone who doesn’t believe the President’s bullshit, the rule was again changed to two slips.

In short, the Republicans have been going back and forth changing an obscure procedural rule to make it harder for Democrats to block ultra-conservative judges, but using it when they wanted to block liberal judges. And based on their track record (from the article quoted above), they’ve been pretty successful at it :

“They (Democrats) are treating a president in a ridiculous, unconstitutional fashion,” said senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican.

Democrats disagree, saying they are exercising their right under the U.S. Constitution’s “advise and consent” clause, and noted they had helped confirm 168 of Bush’s judicial nominees.

They also pointed out that Republicans blocked 63 of former senate President Bill Clinton’s nominees, denying many of them even a confirmation hearing while in the majority.

“The bottom line is very simple,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat. He said when the American public looks at these figures, “They will say, ‘Gee, you are right.”‘

senate staffers added to what Democrats called the carnival-like atmosphere, printing up shirts that read: “We confirmed 98 percent of Bush’s judges, and all we got were these lousy T-shirts.”

Jesus. I don’t know what’s worse, Orrin Hatch’s understanding of the constitution (Seriously, dude. You need to look up the word “unconstitutional” before you go throwing it around) or the sense of humor of the senate senate staffers. “…and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”??? C’mon guys. We’ll never regain control of Congress with shitty jokes like that.