Monthly Archives: May 2005

Dump Duhbya

We could not have a worse message at a worse time.

Bush’s Political Capital Spent, Voices in Both Parties Suggest By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei

Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of “political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained.

In the past week alone, the Republican-led House defied his veto threat and passed legislation promoting stem cell research; Senate Democrats blocked confirmation, at least temporarily, of his choice for U.N. ambassador; and a rump group of GOP senators abandoned the president in his battle to win floor votes for all of his judicial nominees. …

The series of setbacks on the domestic front could signal that the president has weakened leverage over his party, a situation that could embolden the opposition, according to analysts and politicians from both sides. …

Through more than four years in the White House, the signature of Bush’s leadership has been that he does not panic in the face of bad poll numbers. Yet many Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the lobbyist corridor of K Street worry about a season of drift and complain that the White House has not listened to their concerns. …

“There is a growing sense of frustration with the president and the White House, quite frankly,” said an influential Republican member of Congress. “The term I hear most often is ‘tin ear,’ ” especially when it comes to pushing Social Security so aggressively at a time when the public is worried more about jobs and gasoline prices. “We could not have a worse message at a worse time.” …

In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, taken last month, 47 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s performance, tying the lowest marks he ever received in that survey, back in mid-2004, when Democrats were airing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of campaign attack ads.

Similarly, just 31 percent approved of his handling of Social Security, an all-time low in the Post-ABC poll, while only 40 percent gave him good marks for his stewardship of the economy and 42 percent for his management of Iraq, both ratings close to the lowest ever recorded in those areas. Other surveys have recorded similar findings, with Bush’s approval rating as low as 43 percent.

Theirs

Memorial Day

The Cincinnati Post – Distorted history demeans our past by James P. Pinkerton, Newsday

what’s new for Memorial Day 2005 is the recasting of America’s past in such a way that “blasphemes” our civil religion of service and sacrifice. …

“It’s an irony,” [Michael Vlahos of Johns Hopkins University] observes, “that a ‘conservative’ administration has launched a radical campaign of reshaping American historical thinking.” The Bush Doctrine, he continues, aims to change the world – but the first step is that America must be diverted from its tradition of governmental prudence and realism in the setting of objectives, at home and abroad. …

For America’s commander in chief to sully our historic achievements is to dishonor past sacrifice, to undo the meaning of Memorial Day – and to discourage service, present and future. Down that disrespectful road lies even further trouble with military recruitment and retention.

Defenders of the administration might answer that the new Bush policy is popular, even necessary. Yet if America’s leaders feel the need to rework history in order to make way for the new desired future, it’s inevitable that other historical markers of memory will be flattened.

Memorial Day is a good time to recall All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, and Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. Peace. mjh

alBAHquerque

NIMBY (I don’t own a cellphone)

ABQjournal: Ruling on Tower Upsets Neighbors By Martin Salazar, Journal Staff Writer

Arroyo Seco residents who waged a legal battle to bring down a 198-foot telecommunications tower near their homes expressed dismay at a state Supreme Court ruling last week that allows the tower to remain. …

The variance was needed because Skyhigh was trying to erect a 198-foot tower when the county code limited the height of structures to 24 feet. The commission voted 2-to-1 in favor of granting the variance.

Several Arroyo Seco residents then took the county to court, and a district judge ruled in 2001 that the commission had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in granting a height variance for the tower.

Skyhigh filed an appeal with the state Court of Appeals, which refused to hear the case. Skyhigh then asked the Supreme Court to take up the matter.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court states that Santa Fe County acted according to its own rules when it approved the variance for the tower. The court also emphasized that Santa Fe County code allows telecommunications facilities anywhere in the county.

loco

Anonymous vs Eponymous by Dr Whatsittuya

I’ve had a few nicknames over the years, most notably Gue, which a few old friends still call me. However, I’ve never represented myself as anyone other than Mark Justice Hinton. That’s probably more driven by pride than ethics.

What’s got me writing is a new anonymous blogger. We’ve all read something written anonymously from time to time. Much loved locally are Pika Brittlebush and Coco, neither of whom I’ve doubted or disliked for hiding something from us all. I used to think Pika was a high school boy having a larf. For all I know, Coco is really John Fleck. Why should I care who they are physically? I know something about their minds.

Perhaps it took one more example to make me fear a trend, but I’m uneasy about Marston Moore who just burst on the scene at Duke City Fix. I’ll admit that I’m jealous of his/her inaugural piece and, especially, the way people are falling all over him/her with praise. Hey, isn’t there enough love to go around? What about those of us who have been writing for you for years? So, maybe I’m not seeing clearly through this green haze, but why write anonymously? What is Marston hiding or who is s/he hiding from? Does mystery enhance his/her/its message?

I’m conflicted over this because I think one of the great things about our virtual relationships is we don’t know much about each other that isn’t revealed as we go. In other words, when we walk into a room full of people, we start categorizing them quickly and easily. It’s harder here in cyberspace. Perhaps we all should be anonymous. Of course, for all you know, I am an old woman, named after my mother, who made up “mjh” one day.

These days a lot of people want you to believe you can’t trust anyone or anything. They say that every word is biased and spun. Of course, some of those same people give the party in power the faith they used to reserve for god — not that there’s any difference anymore. And those with power and money hire people to spin for them and create buzz. It’s not lying — it’s getting your message out there. It’s not tax-funded propaganda, it’s what’s good for the nation. It’s not stifling dissent or pranging the minority, it’s the Constitutional option.

I rather doubt that Marston Moore is Karl “der Grosse” Rove or John Blather Dimdahl. Maybe s/he’s the next Mark Twain or P.D. James. Pseudonyms may be no more a threat to democracy than pseudo-tits. But, if MM decides to come out and take off the mask, I’ll be interested in the truth. Gue

Theirs

Assault On the Media

Assault On the Media By E. J. Dionne Jr.

The war on Newsweek shifted attention away from how the Guantanamo prisoners have been treated, how that treatment has affected the battle against terrorism and what American policies should be. Newsweek-bashing also furthered a long-term and so far successful campaign by the administration and the conservative movement to dismiss all negative reports about their side as the product of some entity they call “the liberal media.” …

I write about it now because of the new reports and because I fear that too many people in traditional journalism are becoming dangerously defensive in the face of a brilliantly conceived conservative attack on the independent media. …

But this particular anti-press campaign is not about Journalism 101. It is about Power 101. It is a sophisticated effort to demolish the idea of a press independent of political parties by way of discouraging scrutiny of conservative politicians in power. By using bad documents, Dan Rather helped Bush, not John Kerry, because Rather gave Bush’s skilled lieutenants the chance to use the CBS mistake to close off an entire line of inquiry about the president. In the case of Guantanamo, the administration, for a while, cast its actions as less important than Newsweek’s. …

We now know that the conservatives’ admiration for a crusading and investigative press carried an expiration date of Jan. 20, 2001.

When the press fails, it should be called on the carpet. But when the press confronts a politically motivated campaign of intimidation, its obligation is to resist — and to keep reporting.

Theirs

GOP Tilting Balance Of Power to the Right

GOP Tilting Balance Of Power to the Right By Jim VandeHei

The campaign to prevent the Senate filibuster of the president’s judicial nominations was simply the latest and most public example of similar transformations in Congress and the executive branch stretching back a decade. The common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle of Republicans and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda.

House Republicans, for instance, discarded the seniority system and limited the independence and prerogatives of committee chairmen. The result is a chamber effectively run by a handful of GOP leaders. At the White House, Bush has tightened the reins on Cabinet members, centralizing the most important decisions among a tight group of West Wing loyalists. With the strong encouragement of Vice President Cheney, he has also moved to expand the amount of executive branch information that can be legally shielded from Congress, the courts and the public.

Now, the White House and Congress are setting their sights on how to make the judiciary more deferential to the conservative cause — as illustrated by the filibuster debate and recent threats by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and others to more vigorously oversee the courts. …

The transformation started in the House in the 1990s and intensified with Bush’s 2000 election. The result has been a stronger president working with a compliant and streamlined Congress to push the country, and the courts, in a more conservative direction, according to historians, government scholars, and current and former federal officials.

Some of the changes, such as a more powerful executive branch, less powerful rank-and-file members of Congress and more pro-Republican courts, are likely to outlast the current president and GOP majority, they say. …

“Every president grabs for more power. What’s different it seems to me is the acquiescence of Congress,” said former representative Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), a government scholar at the Aspen Institute. …

Bush has demanded similar loyalty from GOP lawmakers — and received it. Republicans have voted with the president, on average, about nine out of 10 times. Critics and some scholars charge that the Congress now seldom performs its constitutional duty of providing oversight of the executive branch through tough investigations and hearings.

This has coincided with a dramatic increase in overall government secrecy. In 1995, the government created about 3.6 million secrets. In 2004, there more than 15.5 million, according to the government’s Information Security Oversight Office. The White House attributes the rise in information the public cannot see to the security threats in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.

But experts on government secrecy say it goes beyond protecting sensitive security documents, to creating new classes of information kept private and denying researchers access to documents from past presidents.

“We have never had this kind of control over information,” said Allan J. Lichtman, a professor of history at American University. “It means policy is being made by a small clique without much public scrutiny.”

Now, the Republicans, with the support of the White House, are looking to reshape the courts in their image.

Theirs

Kraphammer Disses the Turncoats

Profiles in Flinching By Charles Krauthammer

The five losses were to be expected. Three were New Englanders: two from Maine (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) and one from Rhode Island (Lincoln Chafee). No surprise here. They are a different kind of Republican, the almost extinct liberal Republican, and they might actually have been acting on principle.

Then there is John McCain, who is a party unto himself. Add to that John Warner, who decided to go against his party for what can only be called constitutional vanity. He sees himself as a lion of the Senate.