More on Iraq's election

For more depth than the cheerleading found on most cable TV news outlets, try here or here at media critic Eric Alterman's site. It includes a contribution from one of our favorite writers, Charles Pierce, who is a regular on the NPR program "Wait, Wait -- Don't Tell Me."
Pierce writes:

You do not own their courage.
The people who stood in line Sunday did not stand in line to make Americans feel good about themselves.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to justify lies about Saddam and al-Qaeda, so you don't own their courage, Stephen Hayes. They did not stand in line to justify lies about weapons of mass destruction, or to justify the artful dodginess of Ahmad Chalabi, so you don't own their courage, Judith Miller. They did not stand in line to provide pretty pictures for vapid suits to fawn over, so you don't own their courage, Howard Fineman, and neither do you, Chris Matthews.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line in order to justify the dereliction of a kept press. They did not stand in line to make right the wrongs born out of laziness, cowardice, and the easy acceptance of casual lying. They did not stand in line for anyone's grand designs. They did not stand in line to play pawns in anyone's great game, so you don't own their courage, you guys in the PNAC gallery.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to provide American dilettantes with easy rhetorical weapons, so you don't own their courage, Glenn Reynolds, with your cornpone McCarran act out of the bowels of a great university that deserves a helluva lot better than your sorry hide. They did not stand in line to be the instruments of tawdry vilification and triumphal hooting from bloghound commandos. They did not stand in line to become useful cudgels for cheap American political thuggery, so you don't own their courage, Freeper Nation.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to justify a thousand mistakes that have led to more than a thousand American bodies. They did not stand in line for the purpose of being a national hypnotic for a nation not even their own. They did not stand in line for being the last casus belli standing. They did not stand in line on behalf of people's book deals, TV spots, honorarium checks, or tinpot celebrity. They did not stand in line to be anyone's talking points.
You do not own their courage.
We all should remember that.

Well said.

Olbermann on the money

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann is going wild over on his blog with SpongeBob-Dobson mania. The host of "Countdown" recounts his experiences ever since being smacked down by Focus on the Family.
Many of the complaints, says Olbermann, are of the nonsensical ranting variety. He writes,

The best of them was not a misspelling but a Freudian slip of biblical proportions. A correspondent, unhappy that I did not simply agree with her fire-and-brimstone forecast for me, wrote “I showed respect even though I disagreed with you and yet you have the audacity to call me intelligent.”
Well, you have me there, Ma’am. My mistake.

And so it goes.

Boss Dobson responds

Religious demagogue James Dobson cries foul for his treatment in the media since the whole SpongeBob and gay-friendly video episode blew up in his face.

In a letter to his supporters, Dobson whines that his remarks have been blown out of context by the nasty media.

This is rich coming from someone who frequently traffics in half-truths and gross distortions. For an example, check out his Oct. 14 comments regarding John Kerry while appearing on Fox News with Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes:

I started to say before the break, Sean, I wanted to give you something to think about in the midnight hours, because I woke up this morning at 4:00 in the morning thinking about this.
Let's suppose that John Kerry squeaks out a victory. And then, he's able to make two to four Supreme Court appointees. And Senator Clinton looks at that situation, and she sees the possibility of eight years of waiting, and she'll be eight years older. And anything could happen in eight years.
And President Kerry then appoints her as chief justice of the Supreme Court. And she would have the opportunity to virtually rewrite the Constitution with the rest of her life. That keeps me up at night.

Cute, huh? Was anyone seriously contemplating Hillary Clinton as a Supreme Court justice? Nope, but Dobson practices in this sort of language that just scares the pants off his followers.

Sen. Clinton seems to be a particular obsession, as evidenced by Focus on the Family "news" story.

For an example closer to home, consider his jihad against "judicial tyranny" surrounding the Roy Moore case.
Ah yes, check out the "tyrants" on the Court of the Judiciary who found that no judge is above the law. These are hardly tyrants. Wonder if their faces shock Dobson out of his slumber?

Smart like a sponge

Is cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants really gay-friendly? Yes, says rightwinger James Dobson. Dobson and his Focus on the Family are attacking SpongeBob's participation in a tolerance video. That's nothing, they also see gay-conspiracy in an anti-bullying campaign.
Do believe people like Dobson and his ilk really hold to this silliness about gay-friendly cartoons? Or does Focus realize that anytime it can get the NY Times and other "elite media types," as they would put it, to make sport of them, it can only help in the fundraising deptartment?
"Look!," their fundraising appeals will say. "The evil, liberal New York Times and other members of radicial leftwing media hate us. We must be doing something right. Please send us more money so we can combat these forces of evil!"

Imagine that

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, in speaking from the floor of the Senate during the Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State confirmation debate, made quite a speech this morning. She supports Rice and in her defense of Rice's role in the mistakes regarding Iraq, Sen. Hutchison said that nobody could have conceived of the type of enemy we would face in postwar Iraq. Who could imagine that these people would blow themselves up?
Crazed fundamentalists strapping explosives to themselves and blowing themselves up. Just imagine that.

Approval (?) ratings

An ABC News/Washington Post poll finds President Bush's polling numbers are weak.
Salon digs deeper than just bad low approval ratings:

The Post, though, offers no historical context. If the paper had, it would have cast Bush's current standing in an even more negative light. The facts are that upon easily winning reelection in 1972, Nixon enjoyed a 59 percent approval rating, according to Gallup. The reason Nixon's rating quickly nose-dived to 51 percent in Gallup's Jan. 12-15 survey was that the poll came on the heels of Nixon's controversial decision to bomb North Vietnamese population centers, such as Hanoi and Haiphong, without pause from Dec. 18 to Dec. 30. Otherwise known as the Christmas Bombing, the raids killed an estimated 1,600 civilians; 70 U.S. airmen were either captured or killed. The bombing was condemned worldwide, and for an American public fed up with nearly a decade of war in Vietnam, it sparked a new round of street protests as well as knocking Nixon's approval ratings down nearly 10 points in one month. Yet even against that stark backdrop, Nixon's rating was just one point below Bush's current standing, despite the fact that Bush -- unlike Nixon -- has made no bold or controversial initiatives since November.

E-mail fictions

A e-mail came over the transom this past weekend that is instructive as to the gulf that divides this nation.
The subject of the e-mail was "The Omission From the New W.W.II Memorial." The e-mail's theme, which is one of a genre that intends to scare the Christian right that it is under attack from within. In this message, we're to believe that FDR's reference to God was scrubbed from the memorial because of zealous censors.
We typically trash this kind of easily debunkable junk, but this time we responded to the sender, who shall remain anonymous. A
link from Snopes.com shot down the message's central claim.
That should have ended this little episode, but no. Our e-mailer had a response,

How can you say that the words were not omitted when they are not present on the wall? The sentence containing those words was omitted; consequently that phrase was omitted. ... We cannot allow the revisionist of history to make such a change.

Of course, the omission is not in doubt. What's in doubt is sequence of Roosevelt's comments.
I responded:

Under your reasoning, they "omitted" a heck of a lot more than four words from the speech. What the snopes story points out is that there are two quotes in the FDR speech that express similar sentiments about absolute victory and total triumph. Only one of those quotes ends with the phrase, "so help us God." It is NOT that quote, however, that is inscribed on the wall. It is the other one. They had room for one short quote. Otherwise, it would have had 200 words. The e-mail you sent out claims that the inscriptions omits the end of the sentence, removing a reference to God. That reference is two large paragraphs away.
The original false story comes from the Washington Times, which is owned by a man, Sun yung Moon, who claims to be the messiah. And that's no urban legend. Read here.

We heard back once more, "I will not argue the omission with you any more; yet I do believe that the phrase should have been a part of the inscription."
Is this what it comes down to? The facts don't matter. The bogus story that is debunked by credible sources doesn't matter. God should have been on that monument and any anecdote, even one based on a faulty remembrance, is OK. Sad.

Columnist payola

Are you now or have you ever been ...
Armstrong Williams is catching flak for taking nearly a quarter-mil to shill for the White House in his columns and talk-radio program.
Over at The American Prospect, they have a nifty idea. Namely, offering an oath for right-wing pundits to take clear their name from this "pay for play" scandal. Here's their suggestion:

I swear that I have never taken money -- neither directly nor indirectly -- from any political campaign or government agency -- whether federal, state, or local -- in exchange for any service performed in my job as a journalist (or commentator, or blogger, or whatever you think I should be called).

The word is that Freedom of Information requests have already been launched by various ambitious Beltway reporters. Time is running short for members of the vast rightwing conspiracy.

Riley's bugged

Gov. Bob Riley, speaking at yesterday's annual PARCA (Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama) luncheon in Birmingham, was dispensing medical truths.
Riley said he had received a flu shot last week, and wanted to report that it worked. "I've got the flu," he deadpanned.

Lost cause in the South?

The LA Times' Ronald Brownstein writes:

Across the 11 states of the old Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, whites constitute a majority of the population in 1,154 counties. Kerry won 90 of them.
By contrast, Bill Clinton won 510 white-majority counties in the South eight years ago.

The Calhoun County Sheriffs Department Web site has local precinct results. Here are a few of note:
Oxford Elementary School
Bush 79.89%
Kerry 19.09%
White Plain High School
Bush 81.78%
Kerry 17.26%
Coosa Valley Saddle Club
Bush 80.09%
Kerry 19.44%
Friendship Community Center
Bush 81.53%
Kerry 17.53%
Anniston -- First Presbyterian
Kerry 51.02%
Bush 47.63%
Alexandria – Civitan Club Center
Bush 76.49%
Kerry 22.89%
Jacksonville -- Westside Baptist
Kerry 58.40%
Bush 40.38%
Hobson City – City Hall
Kerry 92.33%
Bush 7.67%
More county results here. For results from the state click here.
Expanding the circle one more time, the best Web site for national presidential results, including historical votes, is Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.

Moral values and politics: What are yours?

The post-election period has witnessed the rise of “moral values” voters as the symbol for President Bush’s reelection this November.
As Bush prepares for his second term, we’d like to hear first-hand from our readers. What are your moral values? And, more importantly, how do they inform your political preferences?
Let us know in 200 words or less. Remember to include your name, city of residence and phone number. (The phone number won’t be published; it’s for confirmation purposes only.)
Click here to send us your thoughts.

Digitial libraries

Google's plan to put online works from libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, University of Michigan and New York is quite remarkable. We are getting closer to making the Macintosh "1984" commercial a reality. (You know the one where the woman in orange jogging shorts throws the hammer, smashing the totalitarian society.)
Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg puts it this way:

The Google announcement signals that the virtual library has become a reality, even if it will be a while in the making. It will take a decade to digitize 15 million books and documents from the Stanford and University of Michigan libraries, and more time than that before most other research collections are online. And although readers will have full access to books in the public domain, they won't be able to view more than a few pages of books that are still under copyright.

Michael Gorman, dean of library services at California State University, Fresno and president-elect of the American Library Association, isn't so sure this is a good idea:

The books in great libraries are much more than the sum of their parts. They are designed to be read sequentially and cumulatively, so that the reader gains knowledge in the reading. A good scholarly book on, say, prisons in 19th-century France goes well beyond simply supplying facts.

We suggest reading Dan Gillmor's book, "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People," to get a sense of where this is all heading. The book is online.

Democracy in Ukraine

Catching up with more on Ukraine and its Orange Revolution.
The Freedom House's Adrian Karatnycky
writes:

Now people power again is showing its influence in a democratic age that has seen free elections spread to 45 countries in the last 30 years. This infectious trend is why authoritarian rulers in neighboring states, like Russia's Putin and Belarus' Alexander Lukashenko, are clearly worried. Ukraine is now awash with thousands of civic activists from Russia, Belarus and other neighboring countries, and they are eager to learn the lessons of nonviolent mass action.

Michael McFaul, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate professor of political science at Stanford University,

wrote this before Sunday's Ukrainian election:

There was a time when championing state sovereignty was a progressive idea, since the advance of statehood helped destroy empires. But today those who revere the sovereignty of the state above all else often do so to preserve autocracy, while those who champion the sovereignty of the people are the new progressives. In Ukraine, external actors who helped the people be heard were not violating the sovereignty of the Ukrainian people; they were defending it.

Rents and wages

This report the National Low Income Housing Coalition shines light on the serious problem of housing low-income folks. It finds,

Today, the national Housing Wage for a two bedroom unit is $15.37. The median hourly wage in the United States is only about $14.00 and more than a quarter of the population earns less than $10.00 an hour.
There is ample evidence that rents are rising and wages have not kept pace with rising housing costs. Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggest that rents continued to rise faster than incomes in 2004. From October 2003 to October 2004, the Consumer Price Index shows an increase of 2.9% for the rental of primary residences. Hourly wages, however, were up only 2.6% over the past year. Data compiled by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University show that both contract rents and gross rents, which include the cost of utilities, have risen steadily from the mid-1990s, despite a decline in renter incomes after 2001.6 Since 1997, the federal minimum wage has remained at $5.15.

Taking what out of what

We're told that "Christ" is being taken out of Christmas.
It must be the season.
Already this month, we've learned that:
1. "Security" is being taken out of Social Security.
2. And "Armor" has been taken out of the Armed Forces.
3. Then again, there's not a real "championship" to take out of the Bowl Championship Series.

What not to wear

Per our editorial on Tuesday morning, here is some more reading on Andalusia’s Judge Ashley McKathan and the Ten Commandments he had embroidered on his robes:
FindLaw's Marci Hamilton writes:

Are the judge's constitutional rights violated by the requirement that he wear an unadorned robe? Of course not. He can express his message - and worship as he chooses - on his own time, wearing his off-duty clothing. Neither his Free Exercise rights, nor his Free Speech rights are infringed by that distinction. All that is asked is that he refrain from using his public position to foster his personal views. As in the case of the porn-selling police officer, the point is that public office and personal speech and religion should not mix.

Meanwhile, the Andalusia Star-News found general support for Judge McKathan's new wardrobe.

Elizabeth Shine, also of Andalusia, has no problem with the Pleasant Home native's judicial robe, and the fact that it is emblazoned with Old Testament scriptural verses.
"It's his robe," Shine commented. "So, if it's the way he feels, he should have every right to put it on his robe."

Of course, he represents much more than himself when he dons that robe.

Conserving what?

A new column by FindLaw's John Dean (yes, that John Dean) highlights a new study of American conservatism. Dean writes:

In their recent book The Right Nation: Conservative Power In America, John Micklethwait (the U.S. editor of the right-of-center Economist) and Adrian Wooldridge (the Washington correspondent for the Economist) seek to explain conservatism to Europeans (if not Americans). But they conclude that "[c]onservativism has become one of those words that are now as imprecise as they are emotionally charged" -- especially since conservatives insist "their deeply pragmatic creed cannot be ideologically pigeonholed."

We recently posed a similarly-themed question:

As quality of life rankings continue to put Alabama at the end of the line, what exactly are our politicians and other public policy advocates who claim the mantle of “proud Alabama conservative,” actually conserving?

Christmas crisis?

The central theme of Thomas Frank's book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" is the use of stories of conservatives being persecuted to stir up the Republican base. Keep 'em angry about PC trivialities, the theory goes, and they'll never notice how their leaders are working against the economic interests of the little guy. It appears to be working this season.
Instead of focusing on the president's plan to radically alter Social Security, what are the culture warriors fretting about this month? Why Christ being taken out of Christmas, of course.
Anniston Star columnist Jack Brymer did a fine job writing about the topic this Sunday.
The New York Times' Frank Rich joinedthe fun as well on Sunday.

What is this about? How can those in this country's overwhelming religious majority maintain that they are victims in a fiery battle with forces of darkness? It is certainly not about actual victimization. Christmas is as pervasive as it has ever been in America, where it wasn't even declared a federal holiday until after the Civil War. What's really going on here is yet another example of a post-Election-Day winner-takes-all power grab by the "moral values" brigade. As Mr. Gibson shrewdly contrived his own crucifixion all the way to the bank, trumping up nonexistent threats to his movie to hype it, so the creation of imagined enemies and exaggerated threats to Christianity by "moral values" mongers of the right has its own secular purpose. The idea is to intimidate and marginalize anyone who objects to their efforts to impose the most conservative of Christian dogma on public policy. If you're against their views, you don't have a differing opinion — you're anti-Christian (even if you are a Christian).

Two points:
1. All this religious fervor would be more authentic if there were a corresponding outrage against the rampant commercialism of Christmas.
2. We'd be better off if some of this partisan energy were expended to dig deeply into President Bush's risky schemes for Social Security.

Social Security clearance

Catching up -- belatedly -- to this morning's promise to provide more background on this morning's editorial. (I'm out of town and posting from a bookstore deep in the heart of suburban sprawl Texas.)

The Century Foundation's Greg Anrig Jr. writes that Chile is hardly the model of Social Security privatization it's made out to be.

The NyTimes' Paul Krugman comes out of his book-writing exile to write
this and this.

On the other side of the coin is this wealth of information compiled by the Cato Institute.

Unsung heroes update

Our call for local heroes has stirred up some responses as people have sent in suggestions. There's still time for others to respond. Once more, here's our pitch:

Scores of citizens regularly do good deeds in our community. They quietly volunteer their time, money and other resources, and good cheer to worthwhile causes.
We’d like to know about these unsung heroes, and share some of their stories during this holiday season.
If you would like to nominate someone who deserves recognition as local unsung hero, please let us know. Send in a short note telling us why your nominee should be honored. Be sure to include your name and contact information. The deadline for entries is Dec. 14. Send your nominations to: bdavis@annistonstar.com