The Associated Press has an unintentionally hilarious (to me, anyways) headline to an article about the governent’s possible responses to a North Korean missile test :

U.S. weighs shootdown of N. Korea missile

There’s a slight problem with that plan. After untold billions of dollars poured into the Star Wars program since the 80′s, we still don’t have the ability to shootdown a missile. In fact, as far as I know, even the article’s acknowlegement of this is too kind :

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not say whether the unproven multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile defense system might be used in the event of a North Korean missile launch. That system, which includes a handful of missiles that could be fired from Alaska and California, has had a spotty record in tests.

Spotty? Has missile defense in any of its incarnations ever worked? If I remember correctly, the only successful tests have been rigged to include homing devices or omit decoys that could fool our still-not-ready-for-primetime system. Unless we can convince Kim Jong-il to shoot one of those “training wheels” missles at us, maybe our efforts would be better spent trying to prevent the North Koreans (or anyone, for that matter) from shooting a missle at us in the first place, rather than continuing the charade that we can pluck a missile out of the sky.

Immigration reform is dead for the time being because the Republicans in the House refuse to consider a bill that provides a path to citzenship for illegal immigrants (or even the President’s back of the bus “guest worker program”). Then again, my description of the House Republicans’ stance on the issue is a little misleading, since it implies that they actually give a shit about the issue. If they cared at all, they would have done something about it over the past five years. They haven’t, so now the issue is really just another pointless wedge issue that won’t get addressed at all after the election :

Some officials added that Republicans have begun discussing a pre-election strategy for seizing the political high ground on an issue that so far has served to highlight divisions within the party. Among the possibilities, these officials said, are holding votes in the House or Senate this fall on additional measures to secure the borders, or on legislation that would prevent illegal immigrants from receiving
Social Security payments or other government benefits.

“The discussion is how to put the Democrats in a box without attacking the president,” said one aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

What’s especially funny about this whole thing is that the Bush Administration has worsened the problem they claim to be so concerned about solving :

The Bush administration, which is vowing to crack down on U.S. companies that hire illegal workers, virtually abandoned such employer sanctions before it began pushing to overhaul U.S. immigration laws last year, government statistics show.

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.
. . .
Statistics show that the numbers of fines and convictions dropped sharply after 1999, with fines all but phased out except for occasional small cases. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a 2003 memorandum issued by ICE required field offices to request approval before opening work-site cases not related to protecting “critical infrastructure,” such as nuclear plants. Agents focused on removing unauthorized workers, not punishing employers.

ICE also faced a $500 million budget shortfall, and resources were shifted from traditional enforcement to investigations related to national security. Farms, restaurants and the nation’s food supply chain “did not make the cut,” Reed said. “We were pushed away from doing enforcement.”

You should read the whole article because it describles some of the raids that were conducted in the 90′s and the hypocritical response from members of the House and Senate, concluding :

Members of Congress at first hostile to immigrants embraced “all the same people who were so repugnant to them before,” Reed said, “and they prevailed.” Operation Vanguard — which was designed to expand to four states in four months and nationwide the next year, eventually including the lodging, food and construction industries — was killed.

Congress “came to recognize that these people . . . had become a very important part of their community, churches, schools, sports, barbecues, families — and most importantly the economy,” Reed said. “You’ve got to be careful what you ask for.”

That’s why any real solution to this issue needs to have three prongs :

Tightened border security. Not just the physical borders, but any path through which someone might enter this country (ahem, airports)

Tougher penalties against employers and better tools for law enforcement to track down identity thieves, trace fake Social Security numbers, etc.

Path to citizenship (not “automatic citzenship” or “amnesty”) for immigrants who are already here. The President’s guest worker program (which ships immigrants out of the country after three years) doesn’t cut it.

Anyone who claims to care about immigration, but can’t provide for all three of these needs, is either unserious about the issue or doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

In the corporate world, there’s a tendency among many at the middle management level to be jumpy when it comes to the whims of the CEO. I’ve seen it happen at plenty of companies. The CEO says something in passing and it filters down to the peeon level as an urgent priority. This interruption almost always has the effect of disrupting any progress on existing projects.

This trend is even worse in a cases where the executive in question insists that their pet requests are more important than they really are. This isn’t just because the CEO is interrupting existing work, but because they’re often changing mangagement styles instantly. You can’t switch from a hands-off, delegate-to-your-underlings style of CEO to a classic micromanager without throwing a monkeywrench in your organization’s ability to succeed.

Having said all this, I think it’s important to realize that today’s big news (from Ron Suskind’s upcoming book “The One Percent Doctrine”) is a classic example of why our CEO President is a man who has failed so poorly in his job of leading the nation that he’s endagering our country’s safety :

One example out of many comes in Ron Suskind’s gripping narrative of what the White House has celebrated as one of the war’s major victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. Described as al-Qaeda’s chief of operations even after U.S. and Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3″ — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”
. . .
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. “I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

I’ll bet the President has no idea how disastrous his quest to keep from “losing face” has been. Or maybe he does and just doesn’t give a shit. At least, that’s the impression I get from this excerpt from the same article :

The book’s opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

I can’t help but wonder how much better off our country would be if we’d had a President who took his job seriously for the last six years.

Over the weekend, I went to the San Diego county fair. Alongside the dozens of deep-fried snacks was this all-too-familiar form of transportation :

Oh well, at least they get points for honesty.

There’s a ton of reasons for Connecticut residents to vote against Joe Lieberman in the state’s upcoming Senate primary. He’s a socially conservative hand-wringer who’s shows a willingness to play the “What about the children??” card. He frequently breaks ranks with his own party in order to bolster his reputation as a self-styled “centrist”. He’s one of the few remaining apologists for some the Bush Administration’s most egregious acts. And he’s a total douche.

But if I lived in Connecticut, I’d vote against Joementum because of this retarded campaign ad :



Here’s a little advice, Joe. Stay away from campaign ads that bear any resemblance to a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. They just invite an unflattering comparison :

If we’ve learned anything over the past six years, it’s that we should never assume an idea is “too crazy” for the wingnuts. Case in point, the anti-gay forces who were recently denied in their attempt to tack a homophobic amendment into our constitution have a new plan that’s completely f’n nuts. (via ThinkProgress)

Meeting after the big failure at the offices of the social-conservative Family Research Council, the top leaders of the marriage movement — Catholic, Protestant and Mormon leaders among others — discussed the possibility of an unprecedented Constitutional Convention. Two-thirds (34) of the state legislatures would have to call for such a convention — which could be done only with great difficulty. Even then, no one knows what such a convention would look like or what sort of amendments could result from it. Article 5 of the Constitution is quite vague on the subject.

Looking past that, if such a convention were to pass a marriage amendment, we estimate that 28 states would easily ratify it. Another eight states may do so only after a protracted and bloody political fight (which could span an election cycle). That leaves supporters with two more states to go to reach the threshold of 38 (three-fourths), and only the most difficult ground to fight on — states such as Maine, Rhode Island, Oregon and Nevada are probably not ideal places to win such a fight, although not all would be unwinnable.

On the other hand, we estimate that there are more than 13 states with legislatures willing to block anything too far out on the left that could emerge from the convention. That’s why some conservative leaders are willing to countenance such a risk.

So America has gone from openly persecuting homosexuals (and looking the other way at teen suicides, gay bashing, etc.) to the passing of laws to “defend” marriage to the conservative control of all three branches of government to the passing of anti-gay constitutional amendments (and the repeated failure of a federal amendment). And now we’re at the point where homophobes want to just rewrite the constitution from scratch. You know what’s next, don’t you? I’m guessing a bloody military coup, but what a few dead bodies when we’re talking about protecting a sacred union?

Here’s what our first constitutional convention looked like :

And here’s what our second one will look like.



I love being married. Nothing on Earth can compare to the sheer joy of finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Loving someone so much that you become family makes me so happy that I want everyone to have the opportunity to be as fortunate as I am. Trying to prevent people from sharing your happiness is something that doesn’t make any sense to me, so I guess that means I just don’t understand moral values or something…

Prepare yourselves to be shocked. Are you ready for this? Apparently Parents Television Council, the American Family Association, and their thousands of deputies in the self-appointed moral police are completely full of crap. It’s bad enough that they’ve taken it upon themselves to decide what you and I should and shouldn’t be allowed to watch (and hiding their crusades behind “the children”), but they aren’t even watching the damn shows they’re complaining about :

Virtually none of those who complained to the Federal Communications Commission about the teen drama Without A Trace actually saw the episode in question, CBS affiliates said as they asked the agency to rescind its proposed record indecency fine of $3.3 million.

All of the 4,211 e-mailed complaints came from Web sites operated by the Parents Television Council and the American Family Association, the stations said in a filing on Monday.

In only two of the emails did those complaining say they had watched the program, and those two apparently refer to a “brief, out-of-context segment” of the episode that was posted on the Parents Television Council’s Web site, the affiliates’ filing said.

“There were no true complainants from actual viewers,” the stations said. To be valid, complaints must come from an actual viewer in the service area of the station at issue, the filing said.

“The e-mails were submitted … because advocacy groups hoping to influence television content generally exhorted them to contact the commission,” the CBS stations said.

These lying crybabies, who are apparently too stupid to use their V-chips, are but a very tiny minority compared to the millions who watched the broadcast :

About 8.2 million people saw the Dec. 31, 2004 broadcast, which was a repeat of an earlier airing of the same episode that drew no indecency complaints. E-mails about the episode began arriving at the FCC on Jan. 12, the same day the PTC sent an alert to its members, the CBS stations said.

The FCC in proposing the fines of $32,500 upon each of 103 CBS stations said they had “broadcast material graphically depicting teenage boys and girls participating in a sexual orgy.”

Even if we took the 4211 complaints at face value, that’s still only 0.05% of the viewing audience for a show being responsible for more than $3.3 million dollars in fines. Predictably, PTC president Brent Bozell is wrapping his wrapping his little witchhunt in a patriotic package :

“Every complaint filed comes from a United States citizen who, last I heard, had the constitutional privilege to petition his government,” Bozell said. “Rather than these stupid legal maneuvers, CBS and Viacom should spend time pondering why it’s wrong to broadcast scenes of teen orgies in front of millions of children.”

Ahhh…it’s nice to see a patriot like Bozell defend our democracy by exercising his “constitutional privilege to petition his government”. Inspired by his bravery, perhaps we can use our first amendment right to email Brent and tell him that if he doesn’t like something on television he should change the fucking channel.

I know getting annoyed by a reality television is stupid and juvenile, but let me just say that Lost Comic Standing is complete bullshit. The show is ostensibly a talent competition to find the funniest stand-up comic (an art form that some people actually respect), yet the results of the last two episodes made it pretty clear that the producers were more interested in casting a reality show than actually rewarding the funniest performers with a huge career boost.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the producers fixed the show. At this point in the last full season of the show, celebrity “judges” Drew Carey and Brett Butler stormed off the set when they realized that one-joke hack Ant was getting a spot on the show instead of the much more deserving Dan Naturman. At the time the producers concocted a lame excuse about the choice being made based on multiple performances and that the celebrity judges’ votes were being considered alongside other factors, blah, blah, blah. I guess this year they just found “judges” that didn’t mind being puppets.

I wouldn’t be so annoyed by all of this if two of my favorite comedians hasn’t been screwed by the whole scam. I’ve been seeing Doug Benson and Jackie Kashian perform for years, yet when it came down to picking the winners, they were brushed aside by a bunch of half-funny “personalities” who were chosen because they fit a demographic niche. Don’t get me wrong, there are some funny people who made it, but it’s sad to see such brilliant performers have their big break given to a bunch of comics whose only material is about how they’re fat, horny, old, short, pregnant, etc… Ugghhhh….we get it.

Should I even bother pointing out that when producers were fixing televised competitions in the fifties, there were congressional hearings? Granted, that’s overkill to say the least, but it’s amazing what you can get away with when you hide some fine print in the closing credits. At least shows like American Idol have a few shreds of integrity.

Well, it looks like we’re gonna miss the chance to see Karl Rove dragged out of the White House in handcuffs. Even worse, the speculation that Rove made a deal seems to be wrong as well, but as Jeralyn notes in the comments section of TalkLeft, it all depends on what the definition of “deal” is :

I still think Rove incriminated Cheney and others in the VP’s office — he’s just not getting anything for it officially. That’s a big deal, because if he were, Libby’s lawyers would have to be told of the deal and could use it in cross-examination if Rove testified at trial. Now, Fitz has preserved Rove’s reputation which could make him a star witness.

Perhaps this was Fitz’s intention — to create an unimpeachable witness against Libby and others.
. . .
Rove went in on a high wire, without a 5k or deal or promises and Fitz either decided to believe him or for other reasons, such as to preserve his integrity as a witness against others, not to charge him.

Either way, Luskin has maintained all along he cooperated fully with no guarantees and now has been told Rove will not be charged. So legally, there is no deal. But that doesn’t mean Fitz didn’t decide to reward Rove.

Still speculation, but it does explain a lot more than the Rove-preferred storyline that Fitzgerald interviewed the guy five times and concluded that “Official A” is innocent. I’m sure the Fitzmas carolers are just going to turn their attention to Cheney, but I’ve got better things to do than pin all of my hopes on our justice system punishing a rich and powerful person for crimes they’ve committed.

I know he’s one of the sacred cows of the liberal blogosphere, but lemme just say that I think Jack Cafferty is a dick. Don’t get me wrong, when he’s on he’s on. His “Caffery File” reports are often the only bit of sanity to be found on CNN and he’s got a knack for cutting through the bullshit, like he did a week and a half ago :

JACK CAFFERTY: Guess what Monday is? Monday is the day President Bush will speak about an issue near and dear to his heart and the hearts of many conservatives. It’s also the day before the Senate votes on the very same thing. Is it the war? Deficits? Health insurance? Immigration? Iran? North Korea?

Not even close. No, the president is going to talk about amending the Constitution in order to ban gay marriage. This is something that absolutely, positively has no chance of happening, nada, zippo, none. But that doesn’t matter. Mr. Bush will take time to make a speech. The Senate will take time to talk and vote on it, because it’s something that matters to the Republican base.

This is pure politics. If has nothing to do with whether or not you believe in gay marriage. It’s blatant posturing by Republicans, who are increasingly desperate as the midterm elections approach. There’s not a lot else to get people interested in voting on them, based on their record of the last five years.

But if you can appeal to the hatred, bigotry, or discrimination in some people, you might move them to the polls to vote against that big, bad gay married couple that one day might in down the street.

After a rant that brilliant, you can understand how disappointed I was to see this reactionary segment later the same day :

JACK CAFFERTY : As members of the House and Senate try to reconcile an immigration bill, here’s something they might want to think about. The number of legal immigrants coming into this country will increase by 20 million over the next 10 years if the Senate’s version — that’s the amnesty version of the bill — becomes law. That’s according to a government report.

The report says it will cost taxpayers more than $50 billion for the new guest worker program, plus the cost of welfare, Social Security, and health care payments. These costs would be offset by $66 billion in tax revenue from the guest worker program, along with fees the immigrants would have to pay.

The study fails to take into account the almost one million people who enter the country legally under the current law. That would boost the 10-year total estimate of new immigrants to 30 million the next 10 years. The report leaves out those who would cross the border illegally, and there would be a bunch of them despite new technology meant to stop them.

Remember we did this in 1986, gave amnesty to illegal aliens who were already here. Nobody knows for sure, but according to a study done by Bear Stearns, there are 20 million illegal aliens in this country right now. So obviously amnesty doesn’t work.

Here’s the question: Can the U.S. afford the Senate’s immigration bill, which could increase the population by 20 million legal immigrants in the next decade?

What happened to the guy who was able to cut through conservative spin and call out a wedge issue for what it is? Disappointed, I emailed Cafferty who, to his credit, wrote me back. Here’s our exchange :

Me :

You’ve joined immigrant hawks like Lou Dobbs and the conservative members of the House in incorrectly describing the Senate bill as an “amnesty”, but the Senate bill requires immigrants to pay back taxes and fines before allowing them to try to become citizens. According to Webster’s dictionary, “amnesty” is “the act of an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted to a large group of individuals”, so how is a bill that requires fines and back taxes a pardon? It seems to me that any bill that falls short of sending every Mexican back across the border is going to be called “amnesty”, but the current Senate proposal is much, much harsher than the real amnesty bill you derided from the Eighties. That bill failed because big business and their well-trained government toadies decided that laws against employing illegal immigrants weren’t worth enforcing. If there is an immigration crisis (and from what I’ve seen, the bigger crisis they’re concerned about in Washington is poll numbers), then the crisis is the result of a coordinated effort to look the other way while low-skill and lower-wage jobs were given to immigrants who didn’t have the legal standing to realize they were being exploited. This fight isn’t American vs. immigrant, it’s big business vs. worker. I figured you of all people would recognize that, Jack.

Jack :

They are here illegally. Allowing them to stay and get on a path to citizenship is amnesty. Send them home and tell them to apply to enter the country the legal way.

Me :

A fine is a punishment. If there’s punishment then it can’t, by definition, be an “amnesty”. If you’re contending that the Senate bill isn’t an adequate punishment for sneaking into the country to work, then so be it, but try to make that argument without disingenuous rhetoric.

Besides, sending everyone back would work fine (in theory) if the “long lines” people complain about weren’t an issue. The way things are now, our immigration quotas don’t accurately refleck our country’s needs. We’re still bound by an immigration law passed in the mid-60′s that states no more than 7% of our immigrants can come from a given country.

Jack :

With our population at more than 300 million I’m not convinced we need ANY additional immigrants. Those days are over.

Well, there you go. Suddenly the righteous rage about immigrants being here ILLEGALLY is revealed for what it really is. Seal the borders and keep the foreigners out. “Those days”, however you may define them, “are over”.

Okay, we get it. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. I know this is the only good news the President has had for months, but do we really need to get all Zapruder film on the last few minutes of a dude who we blew up??

Speaking of Zaqawi, lemme just say that the President’s press conference last week was obnoxious. Every once in a while, George is so good at sticking to talking points that it starts to look a bit pathological. See if you can pick up on the phrase that Bush’s handlers wanted to insert into the news cycle :

One of the goals of al Qaeda was to encourage sectarian violence inside the country; it was to pit Sunni against Shia and Shia against Sunni in order to be able to stop democracy. His whole ambition was to stop the advance of democracy in Iraq. And our troops — who performed brilliantly, by the way, in bringing this man to justice — did the Iraqis and the Americans and anybody else who loves freedom a great service by bringing him to justice.
. . .
Well, let me make sure everybody understands, I’m thrilled that Zarqawi was brought to justice. And I am so proud of our troops and intelligence officers who brought him to justice. This man had a lot of blood on his hands. He killed a lot of people. And it’s a big deal to have brought him to justice.

It’s okay to point out that American troops killed him, Mr. President. Next time try to either come up with another euphemism or avoid using the same phrase in every sentence.

The best thing written about al Zarqawi’s death anywhere (via Kottke)

Wow, if there was any doubt about where the contemporary art market is going, they were dispelled this morning at Christie’s Baghdad, where the US Government paid a record-setting $286 billion–plus $240 for framing–for this portrait of the dead Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. [Note: Sale price also does not include KBR's premium of 17.5% on the first $200 billion and 10% thereafter or the 2,485 US soldiers killed as of press time.]

Ummm….I want my money back.

Yeah, I’ve been burnt out on blogging lately, but there’s another reason I haven’t written anything on the death of al Zarqawi. Simply put, it just makes me sad and I can’t think of anything meaningful to write that hasn’t been written elsewhere. Bush could have taken that terrorist asshole out three and a half years ago, but he didn’t. Since then, al Zarqawi has been behind countless deaths. Those deaths could have been prevented if the President had been more concerned about stopping terrorism than building a trumped up case to go to war with Iraq.

What’s even more depressing is the fact that this death isn’t going to do much to quell the violence. Juan Cole explains :

There is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don’t expect the guerrilla war to subside any time soon.

Baqubah is dangerous not because of Zarqawi but because it is a mixed Sunni-Shiite and Kurdish area that had Baath military installations and arms depots, and enough Sunni Arabs from the old regime know about them to work them against rising Shiite and Kurdish dominance.

Even the symbolic victory of Zarqawi’s death is in question when you consider that he was replaced in his role as an Al Qaeda leader and turned in by his own men.

So that’s why I’m bummed out by today’s news. I really want to believe that taking out al Zarqawi will stem the tide of violence, but nothing about Zaqawi’s death is going to change the ethnic strife or the outrage over the American occupation. The killings will continue unabated until we get the hell out of there.

….but I thought The Sopranos has been pretty good this season. Tony’s coma dream episodes and the Vito/Johnnycakes storyline were better than anything from the last couple of seasons (with the exception of Adrianna’s last episode).

The last time our nation listened to conservative moralists enough to enshrine their busybody bullshit into the constitution, we added this a mere fourteen years later :

The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Kinda emabrrasing reminder to have in our nation’s most important document, huh? Even if the anti-gay amendment had a snowball’s chance in hell of being ratified, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the overwhelming momentum in favor of expanding freedom to everyone.

Gay marriage will happen. It probably won’t happen soon and it won’t happen without a fight, but Americans as a whole are growing more tolerant, not less. Eventually the current generation of bigots in charge will die and be replaced by their kids, who aren’t as insecure about other people’s sexuality. The gay marriage controversy is a losing battle, the only question is whether or not the “defenders” of marriage want a permanent document of their bigotry. Regardless of what happens this year or 2008, history won’t look kindly on the gay-baiting conservatives.