Oh yeah, that’s why I’m a Democrat. Amid all this losing, I’d almost forgotten. Thanks for the excellent reminder, Oliver.

In the interest of equal time, here’s my suggestion for the Republicans :



Now that’s what I call a big tent.

For all of you out there who embrace “traditional values”, here’s some good news for you. It’s been exactly one year since the Massachusetts Supreme Court struck down the ban on gay marriage. Why is that good news?

The rates of divorce, incest, rape, and abortion haven’t gone up as a result of the ruling.

It’s still illegal to have sex with a dog.

You won the goddamn election.

The rivers aren’t flowing with the blood of sinners. (or is that bad news?)

It’s still legal to read the Bible, go to church, and love Jesus with all your heart.

And you guys thought gay marriage would harm society…

So let’s put all this gay marriage amendment malarkey behind us so we can concentrate on some real issues, okay? Besides, if Jesus comes back tomorrow, do you really want want to leave him with the impression you’ve got nothing better to do than try to keep people from loving each other??

Question of the day : Do you trust any politician that says they want to simplify our tax code? It wouldn’t be so complicated in the first place if it weren’t for….you guessed it, politicians. This isn’t a liberal/conservative issue, it’s about the way our political process is designed to keep our representatives obliged to give their campaign contributors “a seat at the table”.

Let’s say for a moment that Bush and his allies were actually able to junk the tax code completely and replace it with a flat tax and a national sales tax. How long do you think that would last before the first tax deductions start showing up? Within months, you’d see favored industries get around the sales tax as a way to “create jobs” or a tax credit for those with higher-incomes to “invest” in some sort of shady education or medical account. With the floodgates open, we’d be on the slipperly slope the the same complicated system that they’re decrying now.

Then again, that’s probably the reason they’d give for backing off their plans for a complete overhaul of the tax code to something more gradual (via Kevin Drum) :

The Bush administration is eyeing an overhaul of the tax code that would drastically cut, if not eliminate, taxes on savings and investment, but it is unlikely to try to replace the existing tax code with a single flat income tax rate or a national sales tax, according to several sources familiar with ongoing tax deliberations.

During his reelection campaign, President Bush piqued interest among conservatives and liberals alike when he said replacing the income tax with a national sales tax was “an interesting idea.” Just after the election he signaled that tax policy would be a centerpiece of his domestic agenda, reiterating his pledge to name a bipartisan panel to draft a fundamental tax reform proposal. That sent conservatives scurrying into either the flat tax or sales tax camp to muster political momentum.

But before the tax panel is even named, administration officials have begun dialing back expectations that they will move to scrap the current graduated income tax for another system.

Instead the administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment and take other steps intended to simplify the system and encourage economic growth, according to several people who are advising the White House or are familiar with the deliberations.

The changes are meant to be revenue-neutral. To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.

“Revenue-neutral”…well, that’s one way to put it. I think a more accure description would be “Robin Hood-in-reverse”, since that’s what we’re really looking at here. I doubt you’d find many in the middle class who would see this as a revenue-neutral proposal after the tax hikes and potential loss of heathcare make it much harder for them to make ends meet.

How long will it take for us to find a leader who will embrace fiscal policies that respect work over wealth?

Self-appointed spokesperson for God, Franklin Graham, is in Los Angeles with his father for a four day revival meeting. In a radio interview with local station KPCC, he had this to say about Islam (it’s about 20 min into the clip) :

“Muslims can not practice true Islam in the United States. Our Constitution won’t allow them to practice true Islam here. You can’t have multiple wives, you can’t beat your wife…”

Perhaps someone should ask Mr. Graham if he agrees with the Bible that the adequate punishment for rape is 50 shekels or silver and forced marriage to the victim?

So here’s the rundown :

The Republicans in the House are changing the rules so their leaders can stay in power after being indicted for a crime.

The Russians are following Bush’s lead by announcing their plans to build new nuclear weapons.

John Kerry’s campaign has ended with an extra $15 million in the bank.

The Bush Administration is floating a proposal to end the tax deduction for companies that provide health insurance.

And on top of all that, I’ve got the fucking flu. I’m gonna take some NyQuil now….wake me up if they develop a political corruption vaccine.

Shorter Andrew Sullivan :

Since the left doesn’t openly express outrage about the same topics that I do, I can only assume that they’re hypocrites who approve of murder.

Along the same lines, just because I haven’t written about this story doesn’t mean I’m not heartbroken over the death of a wonderful woman, nor does it mean that I have any doubt in my mind about the evil of those who are responsible for her murder. Just because people don’t spend their time stating the obvious, doesn’t mean they deny the obvious.

Here’s what David Frum has to say about Condoleezza Rice’s upcoming promotion :

By shifting Condoleezza Rice to State, the president is gaining a loyalist and an appealing public face for US advocacy in the world. He is also shifting Rice to a job more suited to her talents. The NSC adviser is a policy coordinator and enforcer ? a job at which Rice has obviously not succeeded.

Now I have no doubt that Rice would be more loyal to the President, or that loyalty would be the most important job qualification when it comes to serving in this administration, but is the Secretary of State really a job that is “more suited to her talents”?

To give Ms. Rice some credit, she’s got an impressive resume. She’s written a few books on foreign policy, where her expertise is in Soviet and Eastern European affairs. She’s been affiliated with a few prominent think-tanks such as the Center for International Security and Arms Control, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Hoover Institution. She’s held advisory roles in various positions of the last four Presidents and she’s been teaching at Stanford since 1981. So, when it comes to foreign policy, Condi knows her shit.

So, wouldn’t that make her perfectly suited to be the President’s top advisor on national security issues? Well, to quote a Slate article about her 9/11 Commission testimony, she’s got some management problems :

The problem, she argued, was cultural (a senate aversion to domestic intelligence gathering) and structural (the bureaucratic schisms between the FBI and the CIA, among others). But this is the analysis of a political scientist, not a policymaker. Culture and bureaucracies form the backdrop against which officials perceive threats, devise options, and make choices. It is good that Rice, a political scientist by training, recognized that this backdrop can place blinders and constraints on decision-makers. But her job as a high-ranking decision-maker is to strip away the blinders and maneuver around the constraints. This is especially so given that she is the one decision-maker who is supposed to coordinate the views of the various agencies and present them as a coherent picture to the president of the United States. Her testimony today provides disturbing evidence that she failed at this task?failed even to understand that it was part of her job description.

So here’s the question I’d like to see pop up during the confirmation hearings : If the reason that Condi is a bad national security advisor is that she’s unable to get people to put aside their differences and talk to each other, why the hell would she be a good pick for our nation’s top diplomat?? Especially when her resume shows that she doesn’t seem to have any diplomatic background at all.

Residents of my home state can finally sleep easy tonight, after holding their collective breath over the outcome of tense lawsuit :

No cockfighting in Oklahoma, the Supreme Court says.

The justices turned down an appeal Monday from cockfighting supporters, who have lost at the ballot box and in courts.

Oklahoma voters in 2002 approved a ban on the blood sport, in which knives or cutting barbs are attached to roosters, which usually fight to the death.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld voters’ decision earlier this year, prompting the appeal to the Supreme Court. Justices rejected it without comment.

For some background on this issue, check out this CNN transcript from a couple years ago. (As an exercise in self-examination, keep your eye out for the title they give to the cockfighting proponent in the transcript and ask yourself if your reaction to that is similar to how conservatives may feel about a similar label on the left.)

CROWLEY: Yes, cockfighting is legal in Oklahoma. Has been since the 60′s, when a court ruled that animal cruelty laws do not apply to chickens because chickens are not animals.

Animal rights activisits have been crying foul ever since.

Enough with the puns. This is serious stuff to Janet Halliburton, animal rights’ activists, lawyer.

JANET HALLIBURTON, ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISIT: These cockfighters involve their children in the cockfights. And so the children see these animals being slashed to death for gambling purposes. And this desensitization makes it more likely that there’s going to be human violence involved at some other stage..

CROWLEY: Six eighty-seven would make cockfighting and raising cockfighters illegal. It is a big bucks battle.

COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCER: Knives strapped to bird’s legs. Placed in a pit to fight to the death. They call this sport?

CROWLEY: Oklahoma City, with its faux river walk, trendy restaurants and yes, coffee shops, may seem an unlikely spot for a divise debate over cockfighting. But the truth is you don’t have to leave city limits to find a view and views that are very different.

Devin Smith, husband, father, radio ad salesman, game foul breeder, cockfighter.

DEVIN SMITH, FREEDOM OF CHOICE ADVOCATE: Well, I enjoy the competition of it, just to be honest with you. There’s a competition — maybe it’s a man thing.

CROWLEY: Smith sees 687 as an overwritten first step by out of state liberals to take away his freedom and change Oklahoma culture.

There are fewer bucks on this side but enough to make the point.

COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCER: The long-term goal is to outlaw fishing, hunting, rodeos, all animal sports. They say these sports are cruel and inhumane. Sportsmen, it’s time to wake up. These California radicals are here.

As Brad Carson recently said in The New Republic, “The culture war is real, and it is a conflict not merely about some particular policy or legislative item, but about modernity itself.” Apparently some of our fellow culture warriors are still struggling with modernity a little harder than others.

Let me start by saying that I’ve been very hesitant to dive into all this voter fraud stuff for a few reasons :

These sorts of allegations are gonna come off as sour grapes. Because we’re on the losing side, there’s a pretty high bar for us to reach when it comes to proving electoral malfeasance. If there are reasonable explanations for whatever inconsistencies exist, you don’t want to be accused of crying wolf.

A lot of people are being paranoid conspiracy theorists about this whole thing. Even with fishy evidence in hand, it’s a huge leap to imply that a few thousand soiled votes in Bumblefuck County is proof that Karl Rove hacked the Windows server that’s counting the votes.

One-off sob stories always set off my bullshit alarm. I’ve heard a few “smoking gun” tales now about so-and-so seeing whatever the hell happen and my immediate thought is that these sorts of stories will always pop up. In Florida 2000, the problem wasn’t that voters at one polling location reported being intimidated by the cops, but that this was being reported in multiple locations. If a pattern emerges, then it’s time to worry.

Vis-a-vis that last point, if you believe something strongly enough, you’ll always be able to find evidence to back it up. For a good example of what I’m talking about, take a look at what some people claim the bible says about gay marriage or abortion.

Instead of jumping around the issue, however, let me just address the question at hand directly : Was the election “stolen”? I’m not comfortable jumping to that conclusion, but the preponderance of the evidence that’s piling up certainly leans in that direction. For me, the most compelling evidence is the unexplained discrepancy between the exit polls and the final results, especially as pointed out in this table from a paper by Steven Freeman :

The issue isn’t just that the polls were off, but that the final results consistently favored one candidate over another. The likelihood of this happening is, to paraphrase Bob Harris, the same as flipping a coin eleven times and always getting heads. As far as the non-swing states, the polls were much more consistent.

Caveats aside, the data appear to be good. In general, we have every reason to believe that exit polls are accurate survey instruments. Exit polls are surveys taken of representative respondents from the overall voting population. Although exit polls have not been academically studied, both the logic behind them and experience suggest that we can use these surveys to predict overall results with very high degrees of certainty. It’s easy to get a statistically valid representative sample; and there is no problem with figuring out who is going to actually vote — or how they will vote.
. . .
Predictions in this year’s contests were quite accurate. In the Utah presidential election, for example, they predicted Bush 70.8%, Kerry 26.5%. The actual was Bush 71.1%, Kerry 26.4%.

This level of accuracy shouldn’t be that surprising. Unlike pre-election polling, which can be tarnished by likely voter models, breaking news, and the respondents inability to make up his/her mind, exit polls have near-perfect samples. Because the polls consists of someone standing outside a polling place with a clipboard asking the simplest of questions (Who did you vote for? How are you registered? Are you a male or female?), exit polls are able to get accurate data and a large number or respondents.

But take a look again at the chart above. In every swing state, the difference between the exit polls and the results skewed in the President’s direction. Does this mean the election was “stolen”? No, but it does mean there are some serious questions that need to be addressed before the legitimacy of the election can be ensured.

On the exit polling side, the pollsters should make public their raw data so that third parties can try to find an explanation for the difference between the predicted and “actual” outcomes. If this can be written off as a statistical fluke of some sort, then it should be examined not only to put aside questioning of the current results, but also help ensure that future exit polling will be more accurate.

On the electoral side, questions such as these that arise when comparing predicted and “actual” results need to be addressable :

The results are shocking. Overall, Bush received 2% fewer votes in counties with electronic touch-screen voting than expected. In counties with optical scanning, he received 16% more. This 16% would not be strange if it were spread across counties more or less evenly. It is not. In 11 different counties, the ?actual’ Bush vote was at least twice higher than the expected vote. 13 counties had Bush vote tallies 50–100% higher than expected. In one county where 88% of voters are registered Democrats, Bush got nearly two thirds of the vote–three times more than predicted by my model.

It’s not that the burden of proof for explaining exit poll accuracy lies on the shoulders of the election officials, but that the system in place needs to be able to address questions of legitimacy. This not only means an audit trail for touch-screen machines, but answers to simple questions such as “How do you know the vote tabulators weren’t hacked?”

So, as much as people on both sides of the aisle may want to whine about the conspiracy theorists who are jumping to the conclusion that the election was stolen, the pile of questions that’s growing ever larger at some point turns the question around. In the face of mounting uncertainty, how can we be sure that there wasn’t some tampering with either the exit polls or election results themselves?

If any of you have a time machine, I’ve got a mission for you : Travel about a year or two into the future and get the scoop on Colin Powell’s autobigraphical bestseller about his clashes with the Bush Administration and/or candid 60 Minutes interview in which he reveals some really unsavory/embarassing details about the President. Next, take this stuff and go back in time to about mid-October or so, giving the American people enough time to digest this information and realize that the election isn’t quite the choice between two moderates that it seems.

Once that’s done, I’m gonna need you to go back to the late thirties. I’ll be providing you with a list of comic book titles shortly….

I rarely discuss my personal life on here, but considering that I have close friends spread out all over the country and that I’m horrible about staying in touch with people, I’ve got an announcement to make : I’m getting married! If you’re one of those in the aforementioned group, please send your conact info to this email address and I’ll fill you in on all the details.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed by George and Tony’s press conference yesterday. In the wake of Arafat’s death, I’d half-expected at least one of them (guess which one) to pump his fist and say “good riddance”. Though I still think that’s what he probably felt in private, his public sensitivity on this subject will go a long way towards ensuring that the Palestinians don’t go into the polls with a burning American flag in hand. I just hope Sharon was paying attention.

…and with CNN reporting that Dick Cheney was just rushed to the hospital, I hope the rest of you are paying attention too.

As someone who loved The Incredibles and has been known to spend way too much time analyzing pop culture (and comic books in particular), I gotta say this whole line of criticism is completely absurd :

But it?s hard not to be suspicious of the winners. Any winners, for that matter, and that includes The Incredibles. While The Incredibles? battle against conformity and mediocrity screams anti-oppression to some, it?s obviously Randian to others.
. . .
The message of The Incredibles?reported everywhere!?was that the chosen few should have the right to exercise their powers over a wide, bland majority of fans and mediocrity-worshippers, and save the world from a bitter, deadly evil.

It?s very much in the eye of the beholder, but at the moment, to the butt-kicked, discouraged liberal team, the Pixar-built shiny, muscle-bound cartoon characters seem to come very much from the other team.

“And what is The Incredibles?” said Richard Goldstein, author of The Attack Queers: Liberal Society and the Gay Right. “It?s really a movie about people sort of bursting out of this model of decency and concern for others, and all of those values that now get labeled politically correct, and bursting forth with their true strength and power, like an animated Hobbes. I guess the bet is that the rest of the world, looking at this spectacle, will actually just say, ?Holy cow?we?d better do what they say!? And this Hobbesian idea will be proven correct.”

“It?s kind of ironic that superheroes now have these fascist, right-wing connotations,” said Ted Rall, the editorial cartoonist for United Press Syndicate and author of Wake Up, You?re Liberal! How We Can Take America Back From the Right. “The right has stolen the flag and our superheroes, too.”
. . .
The Incredibles? storyline, not unlike most current superhero storylines, will warm the hearts of the Republican elite, and also the scared, ordinary moviegoing folks emboldened by America?s long-time military prowess. Mr. Incredible could be Dick Cheney himself, or Donald Rumsfeld, big-bellied and in mothballs during the Clinton years, watching the world go to hell while nobody needed them, tortured and beat up by the little people and the bureaucrats all around them.

I honestly don’t see how these weak-ass complaints about The Incredibles wouldn’t apply to the entire superhero archetype itself. The cynical view that superheroes are simply powerful individuals who use their power to try to make the world fit their vision may seem like a right-wing value now, but five years ago (when this movie was written) it was seen as a liberal value. Should I bother trying to dredge up one of Bush’s “nation-building” quotes?

If you really want to over-think The Incredibles, the movie is a satirical look at the superhero genre sprinkled with little lessons about being true to yourself, the importance of family, etc. Pretty non-controversial stuff if you ask me. Apparently though, somebody still reeling from last week’s election results and unfamiliar with how long it takes to make animated movies decided that The Incredibles is a right-wing fantasy about neoconservative supremacy.

Despite the giant chip on the shoulder of the writers, which pretty much ruins the article, there is a great examination of my favorite superhero courtesy of the always-great Chip Kidd :

What is a liberal superhero? The last time anyone looked, superheroes were serving the weak and the helpless, not themselves.

According to Chip Kidd, the co-author of The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days, Superman?created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1938, during the Great Depression?was a liberal hero in his original incarnation, shy about his abilities and eager to do social good during the New Deal, when the general ethic sought a strong man willing to protect the weak, not so much to show off his powers as to serve the general welfare.

“The charming thing about the basic superhero myth, as it was conceived during the Depression, was if you?re an omni-powerful being or something like it, your responsibility is to serve the world, not to rule it,” said Mr. Kidd. “The United States, as Bush runs it?he probably thinks he?s doing that, but he?s not. He is trying to rule it, in a way. And that?s where it differs from what I would call a superhero ideal.”

Mr. Kidd may be partisan, but he?s not wrong in the sense that it?s almost impossible to image Superman as a Republican in the 1930?s or 1940?s. Superman was definitely a Roosevelt man. Batman may have been more up for grabs; it?s possible Commissioner Gordon was in close contact with gangbusting D.A. Tom Dewey.

Even then, though, I think it’s a mistake to let partisan politics get too wrapped up into superheroes. Just as it’s wrong for some on the right to lay exclusive claim the the flag, neither side should claim that Superman is the epitome of their political beliefs. Superman may embody ideals that are almost entirely absent from our current President, but that doesn’t mean that he somehow stands against traditional (as opposed to modern) conservatism any more than he’s a liberal everyman. Superman, in my view, stands as a patriotic ideal in much the same way that Uncle Sam does.

Here’s another flashback from the career of our next Attorney General.

The state of Texas executed 150 men and two women during Bush’s six-year tenure as governor?a rate unmatched by any other state in modern U.S. history. As governor, Bush had statutory power to delay executions and the political power to influence the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute them entirely, where there was a procedural error, cause for mercy, or a bona fide claim of innocence. Then-Gov. Bush assigned Gonzales a critical role in the clemency process?asking him to provide a legal memo on the morning of each execution day outlining the key facts and issues of the case at hand. According to Alan Berlow, who obtained Gonzales’ memoranda after a protracted legal fight with the state of Texas and wrote about them in the July/August 2003 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Gonzales’ legal skills fell far short of the mark that one might expect for this serious task:

A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.

On the basis of these memos, Gov. Bush allowed every single execution?save one?to go forward in his state. It’s not clear whether Bush directed Gonzales to provide such superficial and conclusory legal research, or whether Gonzales did so of his own accord. Regardless, the point remains that the White House’s new nominee to head the Justice Department turned in work that would have barely earned a passing grade in law school, let alone satisfy the requirements of a job in which life and death were at stake. Perhaps more important, these early memos from Texas revealed Gonzales’ startling willingness to sacrifice rigorous legal analysis to achieve pre-ordained policy results at the drop of a Stetson.

I wonder if Gonzales also advised Bush to mock a Carla Faye Tucker on the eve of her execution? WWJD?

Seriously though, if we give Bush the benefit of the doubt here, then Gonzales is a shitty lawyer who isn’t willing to do even the bare minimum amount of research in life or death matters. Add to that his torture memos and you’ve got a legal scumbag who makes “ambulance chasers” look like saints. This is the guy who Bush thinks should be our nation’s chief law enforcement officer? Like they say in Texas (I assume), you can really judge a man by the friends he keeps.

Although he only won with 51% of the vote, I think we should let Bush think he has a mandate. It’ll feed his arrogance and ultimately destroy him and his extremist buddies. With the religious conservative wing thinking they’ve been blessed with the opportunity to rebuild America to fit (their twisted interpretation of) God’s plan, they’re just laying the foundation for the marginalization of a moderate base that in the long-run they can’t afford to lose.

Here’s Exhibit A : (via Political Wire)

Evangelical leaders say that among their top priorities are new limits on abortion, a constitutional ban on gay marriage, and the appointment of conservative judges to the federal bench, including the Supreme Court. But their most immediate goal is to block Sen. Arlen Specter from taking the helm of the Judiciary Committee when the 109th Congress convenes in January.

The moderate Pennsylvania Republican — fresh off his own re-election — is a supporter of abortion rights and is seen as a potential roadblock to much of the evangelicals’ agenda.
. . .
Almost immediately after the election, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, a leading figure among evangelical activists, began urging supporters to pressure senate Republicans not to elevate Mr. Specter. Calls from activists across the country are now flooding switchboards on Capitol Hill. “In Dr. Dobson’s view, Arlen Specter is not fit to be the chairman, seniority tradition aside,” Ms. Gordon Earll says.
. . .
Mr. Specter got into hot water with conservatives immediately after the election when many interpreted some of his remarks as a warning to the White House not to nominate judges opposed to abortion. Mr. Specter says his remarks were misread and has been calling other Republican senators to assure them he will help advance the president’s agenda if given the chairmanship. He has asked for a meeting next week with Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to straighten things out, according to other members.

But the senator’s assurances haven’t slowed the controversy, in part because of the importance of the Judiciary Committee to evangelical leaders. Besides screening judges, the committee would steer any proposed constitutional amendments — including a ban on same-sex marriage.

If you’d like any further advice for future targets, I should remind you that Arnold is in favor of killing babies (in California we call them “stem cells”) and Rudy doesn’t think gay people are responsible for 9/11. So, keep up the good work, guys! I hear Jim Jeffords is getting lonely in the (I) column.