More On Jindal

There’s a new twist to all the fuss surrounding Bobby Jindal’s rebuttal to Obama’s speech on Tuesday night. There were all kinds of negative responses to Jindal’s speech itself. But this article talks about something much weirder: an exorcism that Jindal claims he participated in during college. Alternet.org reports:

During his years at Brown University, Jindal pursued his Catholic faith with unbridled zeal. Jindal became emotionally involved with a classmate named Susan who had overcome skin cancer and struggled to cope with the suicide of a close friend. Jindal reflected in an article for a Catholic magazine (called "Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare") that "sulfuric" scents hovered over Susan everywhere she went. In the middle of a prayer meeting, Jindal claimed that Susan collapsed and began convulsing on the floor. His prayer partners gathered together on the floor, holding hands and shouting, "Satan, I command you to leave this woman!"

So Jindal thought The Exorcist was actually a documentary?

But Don't Take My Word For it...

This is David Brooks' reaction to Jindal's speech, via TNR:

"We Believe Americans Can Do Anything"

That was the recurring catchphrase from Bobby Jindal's GOP response to Obama's speech. And it didn't get much smarter from there. Jindal's speech felt like it could have been directed towards middle schoolers - the type of audience that Karl Rove believes America is. If anything, it demonstrated the GOP's inability to engage and help solve the current problems plaguing the country.

What's Government Good For?

Leon Weiseltier, literary editor at The New Republic, ventures into the political arena with this article encouraging Obama to, in a word, be more liberal. If you’re someone who appreciates government’s role in society, you’ll love this sentence:

"I want the president to tell the American people that, contrary to what they have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government; that strong government comports well with strong freedom, unless Madison was wrong; that a government based on rights cannot exclude from its concern the adversities of the people who confer upon it its legitimacy, or consign their remediation to the charitable moods of a preferred and decadent few; that Ronald Reagan, when he proclaimed categorically, without exception or complication, that "government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem," was a fool; and that nobody was ever rescued, or enlarged, by being left alone."

Liberalism, at its heart, is about guaranteeing the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number of people. For liberals, government isn’t about suppressing liberty; it’s about ensuring opportunity.

Government will never be perfect, but as Weiseltier writes, “For all its grotesqueness, American government is a beautiful thing.”

Best President Ever

C-Span published a poll of 65 historians ranking our Presidents in order. My first response was: Truman and Kennedy above Jefferson?! WTF?!?!?!

I'll give my own personal Top 5 here:

1. Washington
2. Lincoln
3. FDR
4. Jefferson
5. Teddy Roosevelt
Hon. Mention: George W. Bush. Just kidding.

It's also sad for me that the only US President Dickinson College ever produced is pretty much the consensus "Worst President Ever." I guess that's why you never hear him mentioned in Dickinson's recruiting literature.

Japanese Finance Minister Drunk at G-7

Apparently Hoichi Nakagawa had about 10 too many drinks before taking the stage at the recent G-7 summit. According to the NYTimes, he ended up resigning. But really, can you blame the guy?

The Myth of the Centrist

Ross Douthat doesn't buy the myth of the magical centrist Senator. At best, Douthat thinks that centrist Senators make extremists a tiny bit less extreme:

“In this world, centrist Senators exist to take politics as usual - whether it's tax cuts in Republican eras, or spending splurges in Democratic ones - and make it ever so slightly more fiscally responsible. So if the GOP wants, say, $500 billion in tax cuts, the country clearly needs $400 billion in tax cuts - but not a penny more! And if the Democrats want $900 billion in stimulus, then the best possible policy outcome must be ... $800 billion in stimulus! To read this Arlen Specter op-ed, justifying both the stimulus package and the cuts the "gang of moderates" have attempted to impose, is to encounter a mind incapable of thinking about policy in any terms save these: Take what the party in power wants, subtract as much money as you can without infuriating them, vote yes, and declare victory.”

Centrists: make up your mind!

So you're supposed to PAY your taxes?

Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority leader from South Dakota and Obama's nominee for director of Health and Human Services, pulled out of the running today a week or so after it was revealed that he failed to pay more than $100,000 of taxes over the past several years. So, apparently, ends the nascent second-chance political career.

This in addition to the withdrawl from consideration by Nancy Killefer, White House performance officer, earlier in the day, also for tax reasons. I guess Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary nominee whose tax problems have been well documented over the past several weeks, got lucky because he was the first one we learned about. Things might've been different if Daschle's and Killefer's problems had preceded him.

So Obama's honeymoon officially lasted about a week. Since then, problems with his nominees and the looming fight over the stimulus plan have given him loads of problems. How will he handle it? There's nothing we can do but wait and see.

The Floodgates Have Opened....for now

In this joyful article, the Washington Post recaps Obama's first week in office:

"In his first seven days in office, Obama has banned the use of controversial CIA interrogation tactics, ordered the closure of the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and begun planning for the drawdown of troops in Iraq. He also imposed stringent limits on lobbyists, unveiled an $825 billion stimulus plan, and ordered a halt to any last-minute rules and regulations put in place by his predecessor."

Music to my ears/eyes/senses. Eventually his ambitions will run up against reality, but for now let's enjoy the sensation of an elected official following through on his promises.

Fox News is Scared of Obama

Stewart: "If you don't stick to your values when you're being tested...they're not values! They're hobbies."

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Fox News Fear Imbalance

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Oh Boy...Did I Speak Too Soon?

A list from Eve Fairbanks of 10 Things We All Didn't Know About Kirsten Gillibrand. As you'll see, it's not too comforting for we NYC libs:

"2. She bucked House leadership by voting against both versions of the TARP bailout bill in the fall.

3. A big gun supporter, she's been given a 100% approval rating by the NRA -- she's one of the extremely few Democrats on a federal level to win official NRA endorsement -- and, this fall, she voted in favor of a controversial bill to repeal District of Columbia laws prohibiting the possession of semiautomatics."

From the sound of this my grandfather would love her. As for me...well, at least she's a Democrat, right? Still, it looks like she tacks farther to the right than Hillary did, and it's a shame to have a moderate Democrat come from such a liberal state as New York. She'd fit better in, I don't know, Virginia or New Mexico or something.

I guess it came down to political calculation for Paterson. He wanted votes from upstate NY, where she's from, in his coming re-election battle in 2010, and he wanted support from women. Hopefully for him and for the rest of us Gillibrand doesn't turn into Sarah Palin of the Left. What a scary thought.

And the Next Senator from New York IS:

Kirsten Gillibrand. According to the Times, she was chosen by Gov. Paterson to replace Hillary's seat in the Senate. She'll have to run for reelection in 2010 and 2012. I know nothing about her except the fact that 1) she's a Democrat; and 2) she's a woman.

I'm glad that Paterson chose a woman to replace Hillary. The Senate is one of the last vestiges of Old White Dude political power. There's only one black man in the Senate, and now only 17 women. Now that the presidency can no longer be considered a WASP position, and the House has got its share of minority and female members, it's time to fully integrate the Senate. Good job Paterson!

Well, This Complicates Things...

The New York Times reports that Said Ali al-Shihri, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee that was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007, has become al-Qaeda's head honcho on Yemen. Yikes. Maybe the closing of Gitmo really isn't going to be as simple as most of us want it to be. There are some undeniably bad people down there, people that are our enemies and that should be either put in prison or otherwise neutralized.

So Bush/Cheney was right about one thing - we are being threatened by nasty, potentially unreformable people. But by torturing the detainees and leaving them in legal limbo, Bush/Cheney jeopardized the very thing that they were trying to protect: our safety. As more Guantanamo and other secret prison torture cases come to light and more of them are thrown out of court, like this one, you have the potential that really dangerous guys get put out on the street and end up as al-Qaeda commanders.

Now that Obama wants to close Guantanamo, the thorny question of what to do with these prisoners becomes a real problem. The Bush administration refused to deal with the question, as it refused to deal with all other questions, and was happy to hold the men indefinitely. It's not going to be that easy for Obama. Do you let these guys out on the street and cross your fingers that they don't become terrorists? Do you try them in civilian court and risk losing? What if you "know" that someone is a terrorist but, due to torture or other evidence problems, you can't "prove" it. Then what?

These are tough questions and they make me glad that I'm not in Obama's shoes right now.

Rich People Always Forget to Pay Taxes

I was wrong about Caroline Kennedy. She didn't drop out, according to the New York Times, because she couldn't take the heat. She dropped out due to "problems involving taxes and a household employee." I guess she, like Timothy Geithner, failed to pay enough taxes on her considerable (though still-secret) income. Also like Geithner, it's possible she employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper. In national politics, that's a no-no.

For me, this only confirms that Kennedy was a bad choice for NY Senator. At least Geithner has the job of Chairman of the New York Fed on his resume. His errors probably weren't due to incompetance. Hers...well you can't be sure one way or the other.

Her candidacy has been a joke from the beginning, from her liberal use of the phrase "you know" in an interview to her disastrous response to reporters' queries about her motivations - she angrily asked why the reporters didn't write for a women's magazine. Doesn't sound very feminist to me. Doesn't sound very senatorial, either.

The Bailout needs Bailing Out

Timothy Geithner, PRESIDENT Obama's Treasury Secretary nominee, said today during testimony before a Senate panel that the bailout measures passed late last year needed serious overhauling:

"'Many people believe the program has allowed too much upside for financial institutions, while doing too little for small business owners, families who are struggling to keep their jobs and make ends meet, and innocent homeowners,' Geithner said."

I don't think bailing out big financial institutions was a mistake. After all, look what the collapse of Bear Sterns and Lehman Bro's did to the economy as a whole. But I find it refreshing that a powerful government official is actually concerned about helping individuals. Not out of charity, but out of necessity.

That's something that the Bush administration and the rest of the neocons refuse/d to acknowledge. Helping individuals helps everyone, including the Fat Cats. Only helping the Fat Cats doesn't necessarily help anyone else out. Trickle down doesn't work. It didn't work in the 1930s and it didn't work in the 2000s.

The Inauguration

What else can I say other than it was awesome?

Bush's Ignorance

A recently released study found that ideology affected hiring practices at the Justice Department from 2001 -2007. In particular, the study found that a man named Bradley Schlozman, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, altered the hiring process to weed out candidates with perceived ties to liberal organizations.

I’d be shocked if this came as a big surprise to anyone. The Justice Department’s hiring process caused a scandal a few years ago and led to the resignation of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It was only a matter of time before investigations “proved” what everyone already knew.

If we take away any lessons from the past eight years, it should be that insulating oneself from dissenting opinions is an easy way to screw everything up. Bush, Cheney, and their cronies systematically eliminated dissenting opinions at all levels of government. Their willful ignorance led directly to the disaster in Iraq; to torture; to the failures during Hurricane Katrina, and maybe even to our current economic problems.

The Bush administration is so insulated from dissenting opinion that, even in his last press conference, Bush himself refused to admit that America’s standing in the world had suffered. He’s either lying or completely, blissfully ignorant. I’m not sure which is worse. But I am sure that the way the Bush administration went about governance was disastrous for America and harmful to the world. I hope Obama, and all of our future presidents, can learn from the terrible mistakes.

Hitchens Hates Hillary

Christopher Hitchens at Slate wants the Senate to reject Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. He says:

"Why is Sen. Clinton, the spouse of the great influence-peddler, being nominated in the first place? In exchange for giving the painful impression that our State Department will be an attractive destination for lobbyists and donors, what exactly are we getting? George Marshall? Dean Acheson? Even Madeleine Albright? No, we are getting a notoriously ambitious woman who made a fool of herself over Bosnia, at the time and during the recent campaign, and who otherwise has no command of foreign affairs except what she's picked up second-hand from an impeached ex-president, a disbarred lawyer, and a renter of the Lincoln Bedroom."

The guy has a point. I’ve never been a big fan of H.C., and her ridiculous performance in this election cycle didn’t win me over. That being said, I think Hitchens underestimates Hillary’s abilities and overestimates Bill Clinton’s potential influence on Obama’s administration.

Since when does the Secretary of State dictate foreign policy? Condoleeza Rice is an extreme example of how impotent a Secretary can be. I doubt Hillary will be as toothless, but I can’t imagine her openly defying Obama on questions of importance. He’s the boss, and if she’s openly insubordinate to a successful and popular president, she’s not going to win herself any votes in 2012 or 2016. She’s smart enough to realize that, and so is Obama, and so is Bill.

I don’t think Obama’s team is, as Hitchens puts it, “wide eyed.” They dealt with the bad Bill Clinton during the primary, after all (I’m thinking of the “race card” incident). They know he has uncomfortably close ties with all kinds of shady foreign characters. Obama was adept at handling both Clinton’s during the primaries when he was their rival. What makes Hitchens so sure that he’ll be unable to manage them when he’s the Boss Man?

Goodbye to (hopefully) the last Bush

President Bush held his last press conference yesterday. When asked what he'd be doing in the future, he only said: “When I get out of here, I’m getting off the stage, I’ve had my time in the klieg lights.”

All I can say is thank goodness.

The Israel article made it onto SpliceToday

Once again my friend John at SpliceToday was kind enough to post a reworked Israel article, which I posted on here yesterday, on his website. I'll post the link:

http://splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/end-israeli-hostility

I urge any/all of you who might be reading this to check out SpliceToday. It's a fun website with lots of news, music, and other cultural items that are sure to please.