11.06.2008 | Race over, a question of race

For all the talk of reaching across party lines during the presidential election, I'm sure Democrats in the New York state house didn't have this in mind: four rogue Democratic state senators in Albany are putting Democrats' control of the house in jeopardy by threatening to vote for a Republican majority leader, potentially spoiling the first chance Democrats have had of controlling the state house and governorship since the New Deal (that's about 80 years, give or take a few). So those are the stakes.

Why the mutiny? Three of the four senators are Latino, and the incoming majority leader is African-American. While none of the rebel senators claims to be angling for the majority leader post, in the words of Rubén Díaz (representing the Bronx):

"There’s a concern that we have a black president, a black governor and we have a concern that we have to be sharing power."

Excuse me? I'm all for striving for the ideal of racial balance, but can you honestly say that because there are people in power of one race, the interests of the other won't be represented?

Despite Democrats' best intentions to embrace diversity, this could be one area where the Affirmative Action mentality needs discarding. Especially in an election with this historic scope, people elected Democrats in record numbers to move the country in a different direction. Here four senators are ready to hand power back to the minority party, against the will of the voters, to push a racial agenda.

Why am I talking about a state house in Albany? Because what happens there could happen in Congress. With a woman as Speaker of the House and an African-American in the White House, I'm worried about racial or gender angst hindering the mandate of either of these people, or members of any race in positions of power in the future. (Though I have to admit: compared to where this nation has been, that's a pretty good worry to be having.)

Let's govern a nation of people, not races. There may be a valid argument in business for hiring equally qualified minorities to address lingering economic inequality, but in government everyone is equal before the law.

Obama's victory in traditionally red states is in itself evidence that white voters are moving past race in their voting decisions. So why the hangup among these Latinos? What can one race possibly do in power that the other one wouldn't do? Maybe I need an education here. Help me out.

9.15.2008 | Comic relief

What do you get when you cross one YouTube video hit with a controversial moment in a televised interview about a political figure previously unknown to the national stage?



Room for satire.

But of course, SNL does it best:

Hey, Democrats. Let's talk.

Joe Biden. Really? Joe Biden? I know he's the one that all the analysts were predicting. He's old; he's white; he knows about foreign policy. But look at that Sarah Palin over there, all the cameras on her. That could have been you getting all that attention.

Remember Bill Richardson? No one paid much attention to him in the primaries, but boy would he have been an answer to the GOP talking up Palin's executive experience and energy-cum-national-security cred. So she's been governor of a state for 2 years that has a bunch of oil. Richardson was Secretary of Energy under Clinton and called for an Apollo plan for energy independence before Al Gore got all the attention for it. This is supposed to be your issue.

He's a governor, too. The last pair of Senators to win office on a ticket was half a century ago — JFK and LBJ, 1960. We know them by their initials. What's Biden's middle name?

And oh yeah, he's Hispanic. You had a chance to make history, but instead you repeated it (LBJ was pretty boring too at first). So much for all those voters in New Mexico and Florida that might have been as excited about the Democratic ticket as all those lipstick-wearing pitbull hockey moms are for Palin (did Obama call them pigs?). And you let that Massachusetts guy, Mitt Romney, tell us that the sun will rise in the West against the Eastern elites! Who says regional balance is dead?

Did I mention he was our ambassador to the U.N.? There's your foreign policy experience. Boom, a trifecta: executive, energy, foreign P. Instead we've got old blue eyes over there with a seat on some obscure Senate committee talking about how to divvy up Iraq between the people fighting over there — which is great, except nobody gets it.

You need to jazz him up a bit. Tell his story. What's he been doing in the Senate for 30 years? How will his plan for Iraq mean victory? And didn't he get some bipartisan support for it too?

And Obama, you with the negative ads. What's that about? "Change we can believe in" is suddenly "change we need" — and boy do we need it because we sure can't believe in it anymore, what with the FISA crap and the McCain-bashing. "Vote for me because McCain can't send an e-mail" — there's a message that will get those senior voters in Florida off their walkers.

What you need to do is tell the American people what you can do for them. I know JFK said ask not what you can do, but we weren't heading off an economic cliff in 1960. Tell them how clean energy can get Americans working again, building roads, bridges, schools. How cutting earmarks means cutting jobs, and how 80 percent of Americans will benefit from a hefty Obama tax cut and energy credit to get the economy going again — or at least keep us on our feet. Not to mention all that stuff you did in Illinois.

And you know, the same people who told you to make the safe choice with that white guy are going to tell you to go negative, hit back hard. They love distorting the truth and making the other guy look evil and bad. McCain's got that cartoon character of your face plastered up there next to the slimy messages — why not put your face next to the good stuff about your plans? Images, man. That's how you fight back. People won't read, but they sure do remember those images in the voting booth.

And the thing is you know the negative campaigning doesn't work, that it turns people off politics. It's why we can't sit at a dinner table and have a decent conversation about the country. It's why you won the nomination in a fair fight. Don't let the wonks make you fall for McCain's trap. He's got the positive side of the story. You need to tell yours.

Said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: only a Democrat could lose this election.

5.15.2008 | Everything’s going to be OK … eventually

McCain: Keeping hope alive

As our nation's problems continue to mount, it seems Reagan's "morning in America" has reached full noon.

After a speech today that paints a rosy picture of America's future over the next four years, Senator McCain seems to have joined Barack Obama as pretender to the title of the candidate of hope and optimism for the future (Obama has expressed admiration for Reagan's tone in the past).

So now both leading candidates for the presidential nomination are competing to become the focal point of America's optimistic spirit. Obama has "hope"; McCain foresees strong economic growth and troops out of Iraq in four years — or, as one satirical image put it, whatever your heart desires.

It's interesting to note that McCain made his promises in terms of a four-year window, not eight, perhaps a choice that, consciously or otherwise, gives deference to his age (if Obama can be criticized for being too young, then it's only fair to bring up the opposite about McCain).

But McCain was not alone in his optimism today. His sentiment seemed to be echoed by President Bush, who — in Israel marking the nation's 60th anniversary — predicted that in the next 60 years there will be "free and independent societies” across the region. “Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations, where today’s oppression is a distant memory.” Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas “will be defeated.”

White House spokesman Gordon D. Johndroe defended the comments as being realistic, pointing out that "If you don’t set out a goal for what the region should look like, then what’s the point in anyone sitting down to talk at all?"

We all hope flowers will bloom across the Middle East, but they have to be cultivated first.

McCain had a similar response to a reporter who called his speech a "magic carpet ride," saying "I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy; I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving."

Well yes, have lofty goals. But to predict that they will be reached is getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, isn't it? (Along with Hillary Clinton's "Yes we will," that may be a running theme these days.)

If nothing else, we would hope for a detailed explanation of how to get there. We all hope flowers will bloom across the Middle East, but they have to be cultivated first.

4.27.2008 | McCain speaks out for the poor

Taxes: Who's getting shafted?

And in the same breath he speaks out for the "100 million Americans" — less than one-third — who would be affected by a capital gains tax increase under Barack Obama's economic proposal. So as the Republican nominee McCain is carrying the mantle of supply-side conservatism (or, as Bush put it in 2000, calling the elites "his base"). That's understood.

But what caught my breath was seeing McCain refer to Obama's stance on the gas tax as being "defined by special interests." (For the record, McCain proposed a summer gas tax holiday, while Obama is against.) Now, it seems to me lower gas taxes might mean more gasoline sales for oil companies, which would mean more profits for them. What special interest could possibly stand to gain from lower gas sales figures?

Obviously Sen. Obama does not understand that this would be a nice thing for Americans, and the special interests should not be dictating this policy.

— Sen. John McCain on a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax, currently fixed at 18.4 cents a gallon

The only "special interest" I could find pushing for a higher gas tax was in Minnesota — home of last summer's I-35W bridge collapse — where the state's association of counties wanted more revenue. But with crumbling infrastructure around the country, tight state budgets and mounting national debt, if government itself has become a special interest in McCain's dictionary, we're in for a more topsy-turvy campaign season than I expected.

And if this is what the national debate looks like, God forbid what might happen if anyone were to suggest increasing the tax.

4.15.2008 | McCain's economics lesson

Aptly enough, John McCain chose today, April 15th (tax day), to unveil his economic stimulus package (original speech here) after having been the subject of attack by his two Democratic rivals. Like him, I've never understood economics very well, so my interest is not so much in the substance of his proposals as his style – the way he chose to present them.

Seeking perhaps to reassure us that he understands economics, Sen. McCain had the exceptional insight to point out that "Economic policy is not just some academic exercise, and we in Washington are not just passive spectators. We have a responsibility to act. And if I am elected president, I intend to act quickly and decisively."

Wonderful! So apparently the economy is something the president should do something about. I'm reassured. Do go on.

"In all of this, it will not be enough to simply dust off the economic policies of four, eight, or twenty-eight years ago. We have our own work to do. We have our own challenges to meet."

Now this is interesting, because in one sentence McCain — or his speechwriters — has at once dismissed the approaches of his predecessor (also a Republican), his predecessor's predecessor (President Clinton, the one whose experience the current Senator Clinton is running on), and — here's the kicker — Barack Obama's.

How is Obama's policy one of twenty-eight years ago? Very simply, Obama has been on the campaign trail criticizing the economic policies of Republicans and Democrats over "the last 25, 30 years" — the same policies that he says have made people bitter, and the same policies McCain and Hillary accuse him of being "elitist" and "out of touch" for criticizing.

It's a tantalizing hint as to how McCain will combat Obama's message of "change" as the fall approaches. All he has to do, it seems, is remind voters of who was in office before Reagan. I'm predicting here and now he will try to compare Obama to Jimmy Carter. It will be up to Obama to show how he will be able to do better.

4.12.2008 | A bitter pill to swallow

The latest kerfuffle from the campaign trail involves Obama's use of the word "bitter." Not as in the kind of discourse we've seen between the candidates, and no, not to describe Hillary's attitude toward Obama's lead in pledged delegates racked up in "undemocratic" caucuses (and, to be fair, the attitude Obama's supporters will probably have if superdelegates reverse the results of those caucuses).

No, the bitterness in question here is that of working-class Americans who have seen their wages decline and their jobs shipped overseas over the last couple of decades. Because if that happened to me, I know I would be shouting to the hills for joy. Enough irony, though; here's the substance of what Obama said (the offending word highlighted for our benefit):

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion ... as a way to explain their frustrations."

And Clinton's response:

I saw in the media that its being reported that my opponent said the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are ‘bitter.’ Well, that’s not my experience as I travel around Pennsylvania I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic who are positive who are rolling up their sleeves.

So for once, Hillary takes on the role of the wide-eyed optimist, Obama the pragmatic realist (or, if you would believe his opponents, "elitist").

But the difference is that while Obama inspires optimism about the future and our ability to solve problems, it seems Hillary wants people to feel good about themselves even as economic opportunities disappear around them. We'll see which approach wins at the ballot box in the weeks and months ahead.

4.06.2008 | Civility on the campaign trail

Back in January, President Bill Clinton said that if his wife and Senator John McCain "wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."

"She and John McCain are very close. They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."

— President Bill Clinton, January 2008

The most civilized election in American history. Hillary certainly seems to believe that the primary season has been civil thus far, so we can only imagine what flowers are waiting to bloom between whenever the nomination contest is settled and November should she become the nominee.

But you have to wonder about this civility thing. After Hillary tried to revive the scandal surrounding Barack Obama's ties to Reverend Wright, Obama responded by saying that it was "fair game" to do so.

John McCain, on the other hand, recently said Barack Obama would be "absolutely qualified" to be president, while when given the chance to compare herself to McCain, Hillary left Obama out in the cold.

Two points I want to make here: One, it is a good thing that this election season so far is even allowing us to contemplate who is being the most civil (instead of who is reaching lowest in the bag of political tricks). Two, I'm not sure all the candidates are equally displaying the potential for civility that exists. I'd love to be proven wrong.

4.04.2008 | The cheese stands alone

"The cheese stands alone. The cheese stands alone!" So says loveable loser Carter Doleman in the 2003 flick Scorched, a movie in which a group of small-town bank employees working dead-end jobs individually decide to take action to improve their lives by robbing their employer. Carter, the only one whose idea of success is to land a job at the bank, yells this realization in a moment of self-empowerment before deciding to get dressed up for his interview.

And so we have President Bush staring blankly into the camera, alone, in the midst of world leaders at Thursday's group photo at the NATO summit in Bucharest. The photo waa seized upon by the German publication Der Spiegel to suggest that he looked like "a defiant child with his head against the wall." Certainly it has echoes of Bush's adventure with a locked door in China in 2005, but perhaps he was just more eager than his counterparts to get the thing over with.

All this serves as pretext, then, for a new New York Times/CBS poll, which has asked since the early 1990s whether Americans believe America is "on the right track." For the first time since the poll was taken, 81 percent of us have said "no," including a majority of Republicans. With all the headlines that have greeted us about the falling Dollar, rising oil prices, job losses, etc. this might sound like a reasonable thing.

But not to a talk show host I found on the radio dial this morning, who mocked The New York Times for declaring that "the sky is falling" and said that "wrong track" is "pretty strange language for a poll" (perhaps it was so strange to him he didn't realize "wrong track" doesn't mean "end of the world" — it's the start of a process). He then took his first caller, who happily declared that he wasn't worse off than he was four years ago, and that people should just "go to a restaurant" (assuming people can afford one these days).

Pessimism such as that displayed by The New York Times, the host argued, "becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," and he declared himself proudly to be one of the one in five Americans who believe everything is going just fine and dandy, thank you very much. The caller told us Ronald Reagan showed us optimism is key to addressing our problems. While it helps to face them with a sense of optimism that we can solve them, it certainly doesn't help to pretend everything is going just fine to the point that it prevents us from identifying problems to be solved.

Caller and host agreed on a bumper sticker slogan — "Annoy a liberal — work hard, raise a family and be happy." I prefer to remember the lesson of Voltaire's Candide, in which the eternal optimist Professor Pangloss refused to make any judgments about his own hanging — or in Sondheim's dramatization, praised the design of the rope even as it was being drawn around his neck.

4.03.2008 | Has NATO lost its way?

Uneasy alliance? After today's meeting, NATO's path from West to East seems less certain. To those less in the know, NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (you might be forgiven for not knowing it exists). The image above is based on the organization's flag, a white four-point compass on a blue field.

It's a question that's stayed in my mind — and indeed many others — since the end of the Cold War. With the threat of Soviet domination gone, why do we need a transatlantic military alliance? To many, the answer is obvious, and they are not necessarily wrong in thinking so: the new global, non-state threat of radical Islamic terrorism has replaced the old totalitarian Soviet bloc.

But as today's meeting of the 60-year-old alliance revealed, there is a larger question at stake in the future of NATO. Though its members are generally supportive of combating terrorism (France has committed new troops to Afghanistan, par exemple), they are less certain about expanding the membership of NATO eastward. In his attempt to bring the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine into the fold, President Bush ran into resistance from France and Germany, who wanted to avoid antagonizing Russia.

“Georgia's and Ukraine's membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.”

— Alexander Grushko, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister

While Albania and Croatia were extended formal invitations — the former of which should be eyebrow-raising as Serbia chafes over the recent independence declaration by majority-Albanian Kosovo — Georgia and Ukraine were put on hold for now, (though they have been promised closer relations of some kind). The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was rejected outright after objections from Greece, who chafed at posters recently on display in Macedonia's capital depicting Greeks as Nazis.

Combined with U.S. plans to install a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe (which NATO backed at the meeting), Russia's skittishness about an American military alliance reaching into its sphere of influence should be understood. It may even be just a point of pride, as former Warsaw Pact members (NATO's old Soviet equivalent) fall away from the old Soviet influence and embrace the West (Bush has been particularly keen to reward Eastern European allies for their participation in Iraq). Perhaps not coincidentally, today's meeting was held in the capital of Romania, a former Warsaw Pact member.

“The Cold War is over and Russia is not our enemy.”

— U.S. President George W. Bush

But as NATO invites each new member into the fold, it invites new possibilities for military intervention in the future — each member of the alliance is pledged to defend the other in the event of an attack. I can't help but recall how the world wars showed us how entangled alliances can be troublesome — something that couldn't have been far from France's and Germany's national memories as they raised their objections.

While it is admirable to seek to bridge the gap that was carved between Europe's East and West during the Cold War, Macedonia, Georgia and Albania each have their own simmering disputes and political baggage to carry with them. As NATO seeks to expand, it should tread carefully, and watch out for the Russian bear in the woods.

4.02.2008 | A turn of phrase

Perhaps a sign of the times in which we live, a phrase made popular four years ago seems to be making a comeback. Or "turning a corner," if you will.



Made popular in modern times by President Bush's attempts to describe progress in Iraq, especially on the campaign trail in 2004 (and afterward), the phrase made a surprise appearance more recently when Senator Clinton used it to describe her campaign's fortunes after her (arguably) pyrrhic victories in Texas and Ohio. But since then, I've seen the phrase pop up in a quote from a midwesterner in this BBC article about the world's opinion of America, which told me something must be up.

Maybe it's just me, but I remember more definite turns of phrases, like "light at the end of the tunnel," or "turning things around" (as long as we're going to turn something). But since it's been used to describe American progress in Iraq, however incremental it might be, it can't help but carry a connotation that there's a much longer and involved process afoot. And there are no shortage of problems in America today that might need such an approach for solving them.

And then there are the Yoko Ono lyrics to the song of the same name:

I turned a corner,
It didn't seem that was wrong,
I was just having a laugh.
But suddenly my friends are gone
And I didn't know that life would be so long.

I guess more than a question of how many corners we'll have to turn, it's what's around the corner (or what isn't) when we get there that counts.

2.26.2008 | In their own words

Tonight's debate between Senators Clinton and Obama dived deep into substance, and that's a good thing (18 pages' worth of goodness, if you care to read it, over at NYTimes). But I couldn't help but notice one aspect of Hillary's style that confirmed for me the criticism that she represents the old guard of politics:

MR. RUSSERT: I want to ask both of you this question, then. If we — if this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in total and al Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?

SEN. CLINTON: You know, Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals. And I believe that what's —

MR. RUSSERT: But this is reality.

SEN. CLINTON: No — well, it isn't reality. You're — you're — you're making lots of different hypothetical assessments.

Contrast that with the last time I remember hearing a response like that from someone in power when a journalist asked a pretty reasonable question about the consequences of our actions:

JIM LEHRER: Let's cut to the crunch on this question. If in fact this team does not find any weapons of mass destruction, do you believe that would do serious harm to the credibility of the president and this administration and particularly on the… in the long run and when history looks back on this?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I mean, the intelligence that our country had— has— was over a sustained period of time, it was validated by other intelligence services. I have to believe it was reasonably correct— obviously not perfect. No intelligence is ever perfect. And that as the reports come out, they will find evidence of the kinds of programs that Secretary Powell presented to the United Nations. That's my… yes, I mean that's what I believe.

JIM LEHRER: But if they don't? Is that a problem?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I don't do hypotheticals.

JIM LEHRER: You don't do politics; you don't do hypotheticals.

DONALD RUMSFELD: I don't. I don't. Why? I can't speculate.

One of the necessary qualities of leadership is looking ahead to the possibility that plan A may not work as you thought it would. I don't know about you, but when someone running for president today, knowing what we know now, refuses to engage in hypotheticals, I'm a little bit worried.

But maybe I'm wrong. Can anyone out there on the Internets think of a time where it would be a good thing to avoid hypothetical questions?

Scratch that. I think I found one …

1.03.2008 | Victory of reason (redux)

Sanity prevailed over fear in the midterm elections. This time idealism is king. The come-from-behind victories of the aw-shucks governor from Arkansas and the skinny kid with Kenyan roots (not to mention the second-place finish of the son of a millworker) are signs that the country is ready not only for change, but for humble leadership. For the first time in about seven years, I have hope for the country.

11.16.2007 | GOP Congressmen demand withdrawal

Democrats' report: Inconvenient truths?

— not from Iraq, but of a report issued by the Democratic members of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee seeking to estimate the "hidden costs" of the Iraq war.

The call comes from Senator Sam Brownback and Representative Jim Saxton, the ranking Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee, who claim that the report is "defective" and riddled with "factual errors," though the specific examples they gave have been corrected in the online version of the report.

It's all well and good to demand accuracy, but calling for the report's withdrawal?

While telling us to stand strong in the face of hardship in Iraq and asking our soldiers to continue to shoulder the necessary sacrifices, it seems to me these Republicans have found an enemy more formidable than the terrorists in Afghanistan or the insurgents in Iraq — a differing point of view.

Go ahead and call the report "defective," go ahead and tell us where the Democrats erred — even better, issue your own report in response. That's the beauty of open academic debate. But to tell the opposing side to take back what they said is the intellectual equivalent of cut and run.

Read the report for yourself (PDF, 400KB) and decide whether it makes a rhetorical leap too far.

But as for the Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is opposing any talk of a timetable — for charging Bush administration officials with contempt of Congress.

8.27.2007 | When public isn't private

Craig and Allen: In bad company

It should sound obvious, but I've heard too many stories of politicans getting caught trying to solicit sex (or at least appearing to try to do so) in public restrooms — and yes, two is too many. First it was State Representative Bob Allen of Florida, a co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign, who was caught trying to offer an undercover police officer $20 for oral sex. Now we hear that Idaho's U.S. Senator Larry Craig, also a Republican, was caught playing footsie in an airport bathroom stall, and he had to leave the Romney campaign.

Look, I don't care if politicians look for some fun on the side; that's part of their private life (a big point of contention during the Clinton impeachment proceedings was that pretty much all politicians have had mistresses; it's only recently that the press started caring about it). But please, senators, representatives, (presidents?) if you need somewhere to look for casual sex, don't do it in a public restroom.

But even better, if you're going to get married, why not just keep the oath you took in the first place?

8.25.2007 | Equal distribution of ...

Chavez: Timeless?

Fill in the blank. I'll give you a hint: one word, it's what Venezuela's socialist leader Hugo Chavez is attempting to achieve for his citizens, and it's something we all wish we had more of. Give up?

Sunlight.

You were thinking wealth, right? Well, technically equal wealth is only achieved with a communist system, and even then, as Geroge Orwell pointed out in Animal Farm, some are more equal than others. What a government can do, apparently, is to ensure equal distribution of sunlight among its citizens.


Venezuela standard time?

In moving Venezuela's time zone back 30 minutes, Chavez says he wants "a more fair distribution of the sunrise," which he believes will help poor children go to school as they now wake up before dawn. And, according to the New York Times, it reverses a decision made in the mid-1960s to move Venezuela's time 30 minutes ahead to fall in line with its neighbors.

The decision places Venezuela in a small club of countries that place their time zones in fractional increments away from Greenwich Mean Time. That list, again according to the Times, is Afghanistan, India, Iran, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Nepal.


A little bit of history repeating

The Times article in question casts Chavez's time zone decision, together with his recent attempt to change the country's constitution, in both historical and symbolic lights — symbolic of Chavez's growing reach and influence, historical because it has happened before.

Chavez is close to Fidel Castro today, but at one time Venezuela was ruled by another Castro called Cipriano. From the beginning of his rule in 1899, there are many parallels to the types of changes Chavez is trying to bring to Venezuela key parallels between what Cipriano Castro did then and what Chavez is trying to do now: eliminate term limits, restore the Bolivarian unity between South American republics, and so on. For this pithy quote, the Times called on a professor of Latin American studies at Wesleyan University:

The good news for anti-Chavistas is that Castro stayed in power only until 1908. The bad news is that he was replaced by his vice president, Juan Vicente Gómez, who remained in power until 1935.

The Times also accuses Chavez of lobbying OPEC to cut production, contributing to today's higher oil prices. But as long as we are dependent on oil imports to fuel our cars, Venezuelan-owned Citgo stations remain neighborhood fixtures all over America.

8.15.2007 | Rove’s departure

So Rove left the White House. What does it all mean? One analyst called it "the end of the Bush presidency," but that sounded like a bit much, so I looked to what I had hoped would be a more reliable source: Rove himself. His reason, according to the New York Times:

Mr. Rove cited a desire to 'start thinking about the next chapter in our family’s life.'

— which only served to bring me back to another NYT article from December 2006, in which executives at large companies say they are leaving to "spend more time with family," only to take jobs a few months later with just as many, if not more, responsibilities. Only time will tell what happens in Mr. Rove's case.

8.13.2007 | A trip down memory lane

How many of you remember what you were doing in 1994? For these two Republican political figures, it was saying things that could be used against them later. Consider these:

If we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone … There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq … Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? … It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

— Vice President Dick Cheney explaining why the first President Bush decided not to go on to Baghdad in 1991

That one made it into a YouTube video that went from 100 to over 200 thousand views in the same day. Now this second quote is a bit more interesting because it involves a current presidential candidate. At the time, mayor Rudy Giuliani was talking about getting tough on crime in New York. But now, some are afraid the same philosophy could apply to terrorism and the debate over civil liberties. If you Google freedom and Giuliani, here's what you'll find:

What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

For this latter quote, one creative Digger rephrased that sentiment as "Freedom is slavery," a reference to part of the slogan of the English Socialist Party in George Orwell's 1984. But we don't know if that's a fair interpretation unless we get an answer from Giuliani himself how he feels today. And in Cheney's case, certainly there must have been some kind of evolution in his philosophy that caused him to take a different tack on the Iraq war today.

Hopefully some journalist out there reading this now has an idea of what question he needs to ask when he next sits down for an interview with either of these politicians — assuming he can get a straight answer.

8.11.2007 | In case you missed it ...

Yugoslavia: History, like the car.

… and I know I did, which is unusual for me because I consider myself a follower of world affairs — Yugoslavia no longer exists.

Already worn down by the intense conflict of the 1990s, Yugoslavia had been hanging on to a thread as a federation of two of the country’s former remaining states — Serbia and Montenegro. In 2003, the name “Yugoslavia” was dropped altogether, leaving the country named after its two remaining constituents. Finally, in June 2006 (while I was on vacation, so that’s probably how I missed it), Montenegro declared its independence. Serbia followed suit, and the last union remaining from the former Yugoslavia disappeared off the map.

Sad, because elsewhere in Europe unions are growing stronger under the European Union — or at least they’re supposed to be. An anthropology professor I had for a couple of courses at VCU described the situation as paradoxical and hopeless — an attempt to achieve international integration while disintegration is happening within the member nations’ own countries (see Kosovo, Basque country, Muslim immigration, etc.). The only successful unification in Europe, it seems, was that of East and West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and even the wounds from that haven’t completely healed yet.

So, as Europe loses another of its federations (the last being Czechoslovakia, gone in 1994), and even Scotland may be on the verge of withdrawing from the United Kingdom, I can’t help but wonder how many more times the list of countries in this world will continue to grow in the decades ahead (East Timor comes to mind). And instead of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, we now have the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia (but not Serbia and Montenegro). Did I miss one? If so, that’s just one more reason I miss the old federations.

So, here’s a riddle for you: If even Europe can’t hold its countries together, what makes us think we can keep the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites together in Iraq?

6.02.2007 | Written on the subway wall

In what I can only assume is a PR battle ahead of a scheduled pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, DC, while entering the Metro I found one ad communicating the Palestinian perspective (advertising the rally, of course), as well as two pro-Israel ads seemingly posted in response (pictures below). One, fair enough, says that teaching children to hate will never lead to peace. But the other, more tenuous, says that Palestine, "a society that targets Israel" does so "because Israel shares America's values." This sounds eerily similar to the "they hate our freedom" argument that the Bush acolytes raised in the aftermath of 9/11.

Now I am not delusional; I know that there are Muslim extremists out there that believe it is necessary to kill innocent people to fight for a society where, among other things, women cannot expose any part of their body in public. But to paint the Palestinian people with the same brush seems more than a little suspect. The war there has been going on for so long now, and there are so many grievances, that I don't think either side can claim an absolute footing on moral high ground. Israel needs our support to remain a free state, but I'm not sure how we can keep every last Palestinian from preaching hate as long as they have no hope of achieving the same.

Instead of demonizing the other side, let's look at ways to build bridges of understanding. Instead of looking for the "partner for peace" that may or may not come along, Israel should find ways to engage in diplomatic dialogue with the democratically elected Palestinian government. Impossible, you say? Even the Bush administration has begun dialogue with Iran. Both sides have suffered enough without looking for excuses to continue the cycle of violence that has continued for too long.

5.16.2007 | A republic, if you can keep it

With the revelation yesterday that the president may have intervened directly to keep a domestic surveillance program going despite threats of resignation from two top administration officials – then-Attorney General John Ashcroft of the Justice Department and director Robert Mueller of the FBI – we now have a basis for impeachment, a sentiment echoed by constitutional scholar John Turley in the video below:

It's not just the high officials invovled; it's the fact that the president knew what he was doing when he ordered the program to continue, and that the law involved is so clear.

This isn't the first time that the executive branch has tried to make an end run around the law. We last saw this in the Iran-Contra scandal, when the defense then that allowed Reagan off the hook was ignorance. Supposedly, he had no knowledge of the illegal actions that were taking place, a strategy called "plausible deniability" (a far cry from "The buck stops here"). The testimony offered by the Bush administration's own former deputy attorney general yesterday dashes even that defense to bits.

Unlike other critics of the Bush administration (and some Republicans in the Clinton era), I don't take impeachment lightly, and I don't believe it should be used as a political tool. As much as I disagreed with the president's decision to go to war in Iraq, and as much as his administration bungled the occupation afterwards, I don't believe that being quick on the trigger or the monumental mismanagement of a war alone makes for an impeachable offense.

I do believe, though, that if Congress allows a program that exists outside the law to continue to exist without consequences for the administration and its officials, we have a template for future presidents to follow with impunity. I do not consider this a partisan issue; I consider it a patriotic issue. The rule of law is what distinguishes a democracy from a dictatorship, a republic from the reign of royalty. Our very system of government is at stake.

Benjamin Franklin, when asked what form of government the founders had come up with at the end of the constitutional convention, said, "A republic – if you can keep it." These are trying times, and our republican form of government needs defending now more than ever.