Did you know that in Mississippi and Virginia, Martin Luther King Jr. has to share his holiday with Confederate General Robert E. Lee. And they wonder why liberals are such elitists sometimes…

I wonder when they celebrate James Earl Ray Day?

I was just doing some idle Googling of the ridiculous term “specist” and this unintentionally hilarious message board entry was the third result :

Is half-Klingon a specist term?

A disturbing thought ocurred to me today. Ninety nine times out of a hundred T/7 writers (and others) refer to B’Elanna Torres as half-Klingon and a great deal of emphasis is put on her Klingon heritage sometimes to the point where she is regarded as almost entirely Klingon in her responses and cultural idiom.

Fanfic writers often completely disregard the canon view of B’Elanna Torres as highly alienated from her Klingon heritage. She is repeatedly shown on STV as very reluctant to acknowledge that side of herself even to the extent of trying to remove all Klingon genes from her own child. Her knowledge of Klingon language and customs is incomplete at best.

Is this just a fanfic habit or does it reflect a deeper feeling that if Torres is part Klingon then she is not even part human? I’ve never seen her described as half human although sometimes Klingon-human hybrid is used.

Are we unconsciously specist?

I’ll keep this in mind next time I get the urge to refer to Chewbacca as “half-dog”.

To those who use words like “specism” without laughing, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find many actual specists, since every other member of our genus is extinct. Perhaps you could start using the term Anti-Phylumite or something. Then again, you might want to be careful next time you’re eating lunch, lest you get labeled a Kingdomist.

August says what needs to be said :

I have become utterly fed up with using “gate” as a suffix. Every major scandal that happens in this country should not be called “something”-gate. We’re already calling the Williams thing Payolagate. Jesus, that’s stupid. Stop it now. Think of a new word.

It’s strange that thirty years later, we’re still using Watergate as the measuring stick for all scandals. Since the current resident at 1600 Penn has been been on hand for quite a few scandals worse than covering up for some incompetent burglars, I say it’s time for a new suffix.

Since there are few things worse than taking petty revenge against a minor political enemy by deliberately leaking the identity of a CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction while fighting a war based on weapons of mass destruction, I can’t think of a more fitting scandal moniker than -Plame. Here’s a few examples :

Payolaplame (or Plameola) - The White House funneling propaganda money to conservative commentators.

Ratherplame - A rather plain scandal involving CBS using sloppy evidence to support a story that still hasn’t been disproven.

Memoplame - Republican staffers breaking into senate computers and stealing confidential memos for over a year.

Nippleplame - When Janet Jackson’s boobie stole our country’s innocence.

WMDplame - Okay, this one doesn’t really work, but it’s not much worse than WMDgate.

EnronPlame - See above.

And those are just the scandals that got names. Anyone have some naming suggestions for the controversies over lack of armor for our troops, the cooked intelligence that lead us to war, the corporate welfare in the Medicare bill, the lies about who benefits from the President’s tax cuts, the complete lack of interest in terrorism by the Administration prior to 9/11, the Pentagon diverting money provided by congress for Afghanistan to prepare for the Iraq invasion, the constant rhetorical links between Iraq and al Qaeda, “Mission Accomplished”, Bush’s lack of interest in the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden, the secret meetings of Cheney’s energy taskforce, war profiteering by Halliburton…..

Liberal Oasis has some damn good advice for Democrats.

Values are not a mere buzzword to toss around.

They are ?the foundation?. They are what you hold most dear. They ?guide? your policies and actions every day.

So, if rejection of torture really is a value ? a value that distinguishes Democrats from Republicans ? it would dictate your vote on Gonzales.
[. . .]
This is not about whether or not Gonzales becomes Attorney General.

This is about communicating to the public what are the values that guide the Democratic party.

Democrats don?t need to filibuster to accomplish that.

Simply voting ?No? tells the public, ?if we were in charge, we?d never pick a guy like this.?

Whereas voting ?Yes? says, ?we asked some tough questions for show, but in the end, what Bush wants is more important than what we claim to believe in.?

Considering all the fights coming up over the next two years, the best thing the Democrats can do for the future of the party is stand together on this and every other major issue. The confirmation of Bush’s nominees may be a foregone conclusion, but that doesn’t mean it has to happen with our help.

Ryan Lizza over at The New Republic has a great article comparing the current Social Security debate with the Republican takedown of Bill Clinton’s health care plan. The similarities are overwhelming. Both cases concerned a powerless minority party taking on the pet issue of a newly-emboldened President. With the GOP, they turned their opposition into an overwhelming win in the 1994 midterms. If the Dems want to do the same, they’ve got a few lessons to learn. These two struck me as especially apt :

Being in the opposition means opposing. If there is one lesson that leaps off the page when rereading the history of Hillarycare, it is that Clinton’s foes were ruthless and systematic in their opposition to the president’s plan. When Hillary Clinton tried to reach out to senate Republicans in the spring of 1993, she found she could never schedule any meetings. It turned out that aides to Bob Dole had prohibited any Republican senator from sitting down with the first lady. A year later, when Democrats were trying to save the plan, Representative John Dingell reached out to a House Republican but was reportedly told, “John, there’s no way you’re going to get a single vote on this side of the aisle. You will not only not get a vote here, but we’ve been instructed that if we participate in that undertaking at all, those of us who do will lose our seniority and will not be ranking minority members within the Republican Party.”

Many Democrats today argue that their route back to power depends on transforming themselves into a party of reform. Some of these Democrats are scared that mere opposition–and denying Bush’s claim that Social Security faces a “crisis”–hampers their efforts. But Republicans faced the same challenge in the early ’90s and found that the two goals were not mutually exclusive. They didn’t just kill health care reform, they used its corpse as a platform to redefine themselves as a reform movement that swept away the senate majority.

It’s not just about Social Security. The Republicans knew in 1993 that they were not just engaged in a fight over health care but over the future of their own party. In a memo, conservative operative Bill Kristol warned Republicans that they had to “kill” rather than amend Clinton’s proposal. Its success “will re-legitimize middle-class dependence for ’security’ on government spending and regulation,” he wrote. “It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle-class by restraining government.” An almost perfect mirror-image of those sentiments applies to Bush’s proposal and the Democrats’ situation today.

A win on the Social Security issue, no matter how small, will be seen as a validation of the myth that government programs are inherently bloated and inefficient and that the private sector is always better suited to providing for the citizens of this country. If the Democrats ever want to regain control of the government, this sort of radical free market zealotry can never be allowed to pass.

I know this has already made the rounds through the blogosphere, but I was in my semi-hiatus at the time so I’m just now getting around to addressing it. In case you haven’t read it yet, take a moment to read this memo written by Karl Rove’s deputy about strategies for Social Security “reform”. Hidden in the memo is this much-quoted paragraph that says volumes about the true motivations of the SS “reformers” :

For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win — and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country. We have it within our grasp to move away from dependency on government and toward giving greater power and responsibility to individuals.

The intent here should be obvious, but humor me while I parse this a bit.

Notice the choice of words there, especially the reference to “the Social Security battle”. By their own admission, this is part of “the” battle that Republicans have been fighting for a while now. Has “the” battle over Social Security always been about giving people the option of investing a small percentage of their payroll taxes into private accounts? If not, then why aren’t the “reformers” being more honest about their true goals?

Even more telling is the fact that this is a battle that’s they’ve wanted to win for at least “six decades”, which begs this question : What was the nature of the Social Security battle sixty years ago? Is anyone dumb enough to think that FDR’s political opponents were fighting to strengthen Social Security? Here’s a view of the Social Security battle from one of FDR’s earliest fireside chats :

I have pointed out to the Congress that we are seeking to find the way once more to well-known, long-established but to some degree forgotten ideals and values. We seek the security of the men, women and children of the Nation.
[. . .]
And, finally, the third principle is to use the agencies of government to assist in the establishment of means to provide sound and adequate protection against the vicissitudes of modern life — in other words, social insurance.

Later in the year I hope to talk with you more fully about these plans. A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it ” Fascism”, sometimes “Communism”, sometimes “Regimentation”, sometimes “Socialism”. But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.

Which takes us back to the ultimate goal of “reforming” Social Security as summed up by the memo : “to move away from dependency on government”.

But in Roosevelt’s own words, the whole point of Social Security is to “use the agencies of government” to provide a social safety net. If you take the strenght and stability of the American govenrment out of the equation, then you’re undermining the very basis of the program itself. As many others have pointed out, the problem isn’t that Social Security faces a possible shortfall, but that SS is a living example of a liberal government social program that works relatively well. That’s why it’s at the top of the Republican hit list.

Keep this in mind whenever you hear the word “reform” get thrown around. This isn’t about fixing or strengthening anything. It’s about destroying the foundations of Social Security because of a simpleminded aversion to government social programs. Like I said before, this isn’t conservatism, it’s anarchism.

Wow. Did you guys know the President is able to see 5-10 seconds into the future?? (via LO)

THE PRESIDENT: Good, thanks. Well done. (Applause.) Now what about your — introduce your mom.

MS. STONE: I would like to introduce my mom. This is my mother, Rhoda Stone. And she is grandmother of three, and originally from Helsinki, Finland, and has been here over 40 years.

THE PRESIDENT: Fantastic. Same age as my mother.

MS. STONE: Just turned 80.

It may be nitpicky, but Barbara Bush is really 79 years old. The President’s prognostication abilities can’t make up for his inability to remember his own mother’s birthday.

Thanks for making me one of the 156 blogs nominated for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition in this year’s Koufax Awards. Hopefully next year they can find a more reliable nominating method than through weblog comments. I suggest a nominating committee composed of the authors of the top X number of weblogs, randomly selected commenters, and whatever wildcard contributors to good folks at Wampum wish to include.

….I’d buy up about thirty minutes of prime time space on all the major networks the evening of the President’s inauguration. With my thirty minutes, I’d split the screen with the left side containing a compilation of clips of our leaders during the run-up to the Iraq war (incl. the State of the Union, Powell’s U.N. address, Cheney’s interviews, etc.). On the right side of the screen, I’d rerun Nightline’s tribute to our soldiers that have been killed in Iraq. Along the bottom of the screen, I’d scroll the text of this article from the Washington Post (via Kevin) :

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG’s final conclusions and will be published this spring.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.

We were lied to by the Administration, thousands of people have been killed or injured, and the people responsible for it all are rewarded for their deceit with a multi-million dollar celebration. I can only imagine how I’d react to all this if I hadn’t been desensitized by the last four years of corrupt governance.

With all this talk about Abraham Lincoln’s alleged homosexuality, I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the fact that John Stewart found a possible smoking gun a few years ago :

It’s interesting to think that the term “The Party of Lincoln” is now ironic in two separate ways, since the party that takes pride in the gay president who freed the slaves is now the de facto home for the more homophobic and racist segments of our population. The only way the GOP could get further away from Lincoln at this point is to threaten to secede again or grant John Wilkes Booth an posthumous pardon.