Monday Mashup Part One (6/7/10)

I have some leftover items from last week I couldn’t quite get to until now.

1) To begin, I give you the latest in the slow-motion train wreck that is the NJ gubernatorial administration of Chris Christie (here)…

All seven members of an advisory panel charged with reviewing nominations to New Jersey’s Superior Court resigned Wednesday, with six saying they objected to Gov. Christie’s decision not to renominate Justice John Wallace Jr. to the state Supreme Court.

The members, all appointed by former Gov. Jon S. Corzine, had letters hand-delivered to Christie’s office.

“The panel has understood a judge serving honorably and effectively, with competence and integrity, will achieve tenure in judicial office,” states one letter signed by six of the members. “This understanding is supported by the intent of the framers of our constitution and is firmly grounded in our traditions and history, and has been followed consistently for over 60 years by all governors of both political parties.”

“You have expressed publicly a profoundly different view of the governor’s appointive responsibilities,” the letter continues. “This was exemplified by your actions and remarks in refusing to reappoint Justice John Wallace to the Supreme Court, a jurist who indisputably exemplified all the qualifications for honorable judicial services. It is a view that is inconsistent with an independent judiciary.

“Because of our abiding commitment to the independence of the judiciary, we cannot in good conscience continue to serve on the Judiciary Advisory Panel.”

The six members were retired state Supreme Court justices James H. Coleman and Stewart Pollock, the cochairmen, and Alan B. Handler and Deborah T. Poritz; a lawyer in private practice, Carlos G. Ortiz; and a university professor, Susan Lederman.

The seventh, retired Appellate Division judge Harold B. Wells III, a Republican, sent a brief, separate letter saying he had resigned for “personal reasons.”

This is kind of interesting I suppose, given that Christie, a former U.S. attorney, is assumed to have a respect for the functions of the judiciary over that of partisan politics. Clearly, though, the latter holds sway with him, which should be no surprise I know.

Oh, and did you also know that Christie wants to put the State Commission on Investigation’s budget under the Office of the Comptroller, thereby putting the state’s investigative agency, which should be independent, under Christie’s purview (here)?

Lastly, this Inquirer editorial tells us today that Christie and his State Education Commissioner Bret Schundler brokered a deal with the New Jersey Education Association that addressed key issues – such as merit pay, which the union has long opposed. However, that deal is now off the table because Christie and Schundler apparently weren’t “on the same page,” which could end up costing the state millions of dollars in federal education funds.

I hope all of those Democrats who sat on their hands during the NJ gubernatorial election last year are proud of themselves (to say nothing of Repugs and independents who supported this thug).

2) Also, I tried really, really hard to avoid saying anything over the Gore divorce last week (I mean, it’s not like there isn’t a whole bunch of more important stuff going on), but it just got so thick that I had to weigh in (one pundit somewhere said something like divorce may be a defining “baby boomer” moment, or something…as Atrios says, our discourse is ruled by fools).

And this column by Linda Chavez was the proverbial last straw…

I know it’s wishful thinking to hope that the Gores will reconsider their decision. But they have already survived many ordeals that would challenge even the strongest of marriages — their son’s near-fatal accident, myriad political campaigns, including the 2000 presidential election whose outcome dragged on forever, Tipper’s battle against depression and who knows what private disappointments, slights, and pains.

…

The Gores, like most couples, made a vow when they married to remain together “until death do us part.” Couples make those vows in front of family and friends and with the blessings of religious institutions and the state. They are not private promises; they are public affirmations. So if the Gores decide to break those vows, they’ve hurt all of us, not just each other, and they’ve chipped away at the very institution of marriage. Let’s hope they don’t move from separation to divorce, for all our sakes.

Oh, please…

What is sad here is that Chavez actually makes some good points about the effect of divorce on kids, but for her to claim that the Gore’s divorce “hurts all of us” is pathetic.

Well then, do infidelities of public figures “hurt us” also? What about David Vitter (who, for some reason, always seems to get a pass on this subject even though he’s been “busted” at least twice)? John Ensign? Mark Sanford? Mark Souder (for whom Michael Gerson unctuously asked for “grace” here)? And yes, to be fair, John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer (and of course, Bill Clinton)?

At least the Gores realized that it was time to part, and they have done so. There are a myriad of reasons why couples stay together and a myriad of reasons why they don’t. And as long as moral scolds like Chavez feel like it’s their duty to pass judgment, how about giving the Clintons some credit for enduring all they have and raising a daughter for whom they should be proud?

This is all beyond a joke anyway when you consider that Chavez, as noted by Bob Somerby here, once said that Gore gave a “confusing” speech in 2002 in which “Gore said that a unilateral War on Saddam (Hussein) would hurt the ongoing War on Terror, because it would alienate various nations on whom we must rely for intelligence” (and fellow Beltway hyena Mort Kondracke dutifully echoed Chavez also).

Like almost everything else Al Gore has said, the passage of time has proven these words to be damn prescient as well. And Chavez’s ridicule has “hurt all of us” a lot more than the Gore’s divorce ever could.

3) Finally, I give you the late Irving Kristol’s boy here…

So the one part of government the Obama administration—which is spending unprecedented amounts on every domestic department of government—has decided to squeeze is the military. This is outrageous and pathetic—taking money out of the already inadequate baseline defense budget to pay for a domestic spending spree.

The linked New York Times story from last week tells us the following…

The goal is to force all of the Defense Department agencies and organizations, and all of the armed services, to save enough money in their management, personnel policies and logistics to guarantee 3 percent real growth each year, beyond inflation, in the accounts that pay for combat operations.

Current budget plans project growth of only 1 percent in the Pentagon budget, after inflation, over the next five years.

“Given the nation’s fiscal situation, there is an urgency to doing this, rather than shifting more of the nation’s resources toward national defense,” William J. Lynn III, the deputy defense secretary, said in an interview.

(Defense Secretary Robert) Gates’s spending orders offer a considerable incentive to the armed services. Each dollar in spending cuts found by a military department would be reinvested in the combat force of that branch, and not siphoned away for other purposes.

Senior officials acknowledge that powerful constituencies are expected to line up in opposition to cuts of favorite programs — with criticism anticipated from the defense industry, Congress, military headquarters, Pentagon personnel and retirees.

“We will need to address the reasons things are in the budget in order to be able to reduce overhead,” Mr. Lynn said. “We are going to have to be engaged in dialogue with industry, with Congress, with other agencies, with the White House and inside the Pentagon — all the stakeholders.”

The new directives are aimed at three distinct areas of spending.

The first is management and personnel, overhead, logistics and base operations, and support missions.

The second is the war-fighting accounts themselves. Major targets for the next fiscal year already identified by the Pentagon leadership, and supported by the White House, include canceling a program to buy an alternative engine for the F-35 warplane and ending production of the C-17 cargo aircraft. Officials said a range of lower-priority programs would also be under review.

The third area is Mr. Gates’s own Defense Department staff and agencies.

And in case you were wondering how much this country spends on defense, this tells you that this country’s spending isn’t even close to any other in the world.

There is only one good thing I can say about Kristol Mess’s post, and it is that he uses hyperlinks effectively (would that the Philadelphia Inquirer decided to follow suit one of these days).

Update: And heaven forbid that this falls under the “budget axe” also…

The Return Once More Of “Kristol Mess Monday”

The wanker-emeritus-in-residence of The Weakly Standard lamented the “dithering” of President Obama on Afghanistan today (here), linking once more to a poem called “Homage To A Government” written by Philip Larkin in 1969 (and with all due respect to Mr. Larkin, it should be pointed out that he didn’t serve in combat either).

Well, without trying to denigrate Larkin’s work, I think this is the proper response to Kristol, as closely as I can approximate to his inspiration…

Homage To Propagandists

This year we will leave the right-wing pundits alone
For lack of integrity, and it is all right.
Causes they denigrated, like health care reform
Disappeared in the ‘90s, and others outshone
Like PNAC signatories against Iraq. And this is all right?

It’s easy to say who wanted it to happen,
People like Kristol, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle…on all of their minds
They helped to squander our treasure a long way off, not here
This is not all right, and from what we fear
Our soldiers there didn’t make trouble happen
Though they found it anyway because of “chickenhawks” covering their behinds

Next year we may be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home due to lack of money
Their lives spent and ruined in a game
To try spreading democracy to a region enflamed
While at home with deadly stealth
Those war cheerleaders, while we looked far away, concentrated their wealth
At our expense, as our jobs and health care dwindled
In tribute to the architects of the great swindle
Who our media absolves and our religious leaders seeks prayers
And one day, their statues may adorn tree-muffed squares
Our children will not know it’s a different country
And we will be able to leave them nothing, least of all money

It’s easy to hold Kristol up to the ridicule he deserves, but it should be pointed out not only that he was perhaps the foremost media cheerleader for the Iraq war, but he was also the main saboteur of health care reform during the Clinton years. So just imagine all of the lives he has ended up negatively affecting over the last 15 years or more (when you count those who have died because they could not obtain health care coverage in this country or suffered debilitating illness, to say nothing of those in the Iraq coalition forces killed or wounded, as well as refugees from that country – the total number staggers the imagination).

And there are people who still take Kristol seriously instead of treating him like the unrepentant moral cretin that he is.

More Race Ramblings And Douthat Delusions

I guess it took a well-deserved day off to Paul Krugman for the New York Times to finally allow print column space to its conservative quota hire columnist Ross Douthat (as you may recall, he got the nod when Kristol Mess – both pictured – finally gave up the editorial ghost on the pages of the “Old Gray Lady” last January).

And since it is the habit of individuals of Douthat’s political persuasion to flog “values voter” issues absolutely to death while most of this country focuses on matters of actual substance instead, we are treated today to another rehash of the confirmation hearings last week of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the perceived impact on race relations in this country (and by the way, Frank Rich’s column yesterday, which started off as a review of the hearings but ended up as an indictment of much of the Repug congressional “Class of ’94,” was one of the best columns he’s ever written).

Thus, buried in Douthat’s column, we find the following…

A system designed to ensure the advancement of minorities will tend toward corruption if it persists for generations, even after the minorities have become a majority. If affirmative action exists in the America of 2028, it will be as a spoils system for the already-successful, a patronage machine for politicians — and a source of permanent grievance among America’s shrinking white population.

You can see this landscape taking shape in academia, where the quest for diversity is already as likely to benefit the children of high-achieving recent immigrants as the descendants of slaves. You can see it in the backroom dealing revealed by Ricci v. DeStefano, where the original decision to deny promotions to white firefighters was heavily influenced by a local African-American “kingmaker” with a direct line to New Haven’s mayor. You can hear it in the resentments gathering on the rightward reaches of the talk-radio dial.

“The resentments gathering on the rightward reaches of the talk-radio dial” are indicative of nothing except whites who apparently need to have their feelings assuaged as their world of monotone politicians pandering to yesterday’s talking points, Faux News humanoids concocting real outrage over imaginary slights from an African American president, and unofficially restricted access to swim clubs and other bastions of suburban comfort collapse around them.

More to the point, though, this article in the New Haven Independent tells us of the Rev. Boise Kimber, the “kingmaker” Douthat is referring to in his column (the article tells us the following)…

At issue in Monday’s Supreme Court decision was whether Kimber is Exhibit A for how crude racial politics trumped merit and fairness in the case of the “New Haven 20.”

Kimber clearly made an impression on the court.

Justices Samuel Alito singled out Kimber in a concurring opinion to Ricci v. DeStefano, the case in which a 5-4 majority ruled that New Haven can’t ignore the results of a fire department promotional exam just because no African-Americans scored high enough.

…

Alito, in an opinion also signed by Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, noted that “even the District Court” (the lower court that ruled on behalf of the city in this case) “admitted that ‘a jury could rationally infer that city officials worked behind the scenes to sabotage the promotional examinations because they knew that, were the exams certified, the Mayor would incur the wrath of [Rev. Boise] Kimber and other influential leaders of New Haven’s African-American community.”

The opinion proceeds to present a three-paragraph attack bio of the good reverend, going back decades over terrain familiar to Kimber’s New Haven critics.

…

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who sided with the city in the case, takes on Alito’s Kimber-bashing in a dissenting opinion. She argues that Alito “exaggerates” Kimber’s influence and his role in “engineering” the outcome.

She notes how Alito “recounts at length the alleged machinations of Rev. Boise Kimber (a local political activist), Mayor John DeStefano, and certain members of the mayor’s staff.”

She then points out that neither Kimber nor the mayor’s staff made the call to disregard the exam results. The mayorally appointed Civil Service Board, “an unelected, politically insulated body,” in Ginsburg’s telling, made that decision.

She calls it “striking that Justice Alito’s concurrence says hardly a word about the CSB itself, perhaps because there is scant evidence that its motivation was anything other than to comply with Title VII’s disparate impact provision.”

And, she points out, the firefighters union — another politically influential group — was just as vocal on the opposite side as Kimber.

“The real issue, then, is not whether the mayor and his staff were politically motivated; it is whether their attempt to score political points was legitimate (i.e., non-discriminatory),” Ginsburg writes. “Were they seeking to exclude white firefighters from promotion (unlikely, as a fair test would undoubtedly result in the addition of white firefighters to the officer ranks), or did they realize, at least belatedly, that their tests could be toppled in a disparate-impact suit?”

(Another glorious moment from “Strip Search Sammy,” former “Concerned Alumni of Princeton” member…)

And by the way, I had an issue with Douthat’s column last Monday, but I was not able to follow up on it because I had to close up shop for a few days. However, I can do so now.

Douthat wrote about the third papal encyclical written by Benedict XVI titled “Caritas in Veritate” (translated to “Charity In Truth”) and among other things, tells us the following…

When a pope criticizes legalized abortion, liberal Catholics nod and say that yes, they agree, it’s a terrible tragedy … but of course they can’t impose their religious values on a secular society. When a pope endorses the redistribution of wealth, conservative Catholics stroke their chins and say that yes, they agree, society needs a safety net … but of course they’re duty-bound to oppose the tyranny of big government.

According to Wikipedia, Douthat is affiliated with the Catholic faith, which to me is odd considering that last sentence. I know of no teaching I have ever encountered or experienced in any way that affirms his claim that I am “duty bound to oppose the tyranny of big government.”

This Wikipedia article tells us, among other things, that Catholic social activism was prominent in the early history of labor unions in this country.

Also…

More recent examples of catholic social justice in action is the Campaign for Human Development created in part as an outgrowth of the work of Msgr. Geno Baroni, who founded the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs (NCUEA). NCUEA spawned, funded and trained hundreds of parish, neighborhood and community based organizations, organizers, credit unions, and local programs. Baroni’s Catholic social justice in action included notable proteges, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-OH, currently the longest serving woman in Congress and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-MD. President Barack Obama’s first community organizing project was funded by the Campaign for Human Development.[2]

So, far from opposing “big government,” I would say that Catholicism was very much a part of it, and for the better; also, this tells us of Father Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest who served as a Democratic U.S. Representative from Massachusetts (he was the first member of Congress to introduce a resolution of impeachment against Richard Nixon, not for Watergate, but for Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War – Drinan was forced to step down when Pope John Paul II forbade members of the clergy from serving in public office).

Douthat tells us that “‘Caritas in Veritate’ is an invitation to think anew about alliances and litmus tests” for both liberals and conservatives. That is indeed a worthy goal.

It would be worthier still if the columnist himself practiced a bit of that himself before he compelled others to do so instead.

Stop Hiding The Cost

This Think Progress post tells us that New York Times conservative quota hire Bill Kristol recently had a verbal spat with columnist and author Pete Hamill about whether or not Americans have seen “plenty of coffins” from the Iraq war, with Kristol arguing in a typically nonsensical manner that we have.

Think Progress does a good job of noting that the Bushco ban on the coffin photos was backed by the 108th Republican Congress in June 2004, with John McCain voting against the ban in one of his final moments of genuine maverickyness before he became a bona fide wingnut wannabe.

I’m not going to waste time pointing out the obvious facts that Bill Kristol is a liar and an idiot (and how funny is it that he’s “ambivalent” about staying at the Times, noted here; every day he picks up a paycheck from them, it’s an act of theft). I only wish to request here that the incoming Obama administration rescind the Bushco gag rule on the coffin photos at its earliest opportunity, or if it does not somehow, then the incoming 111th Congress should act to do so themselves.

As His Time Inexorably Runs Out

Three Repug lowlights of sorts…

Well, boys and girls, I should note that His Fraudulency’s time in office has now worn itself down to double digits (98 days and counting), just to let you know.

NY Times quote hire Bill Kristol tells us here today that…

The hope for McCain and Palin is that they still have pretty good favorable ratings from the voters. The American people have by no means turned decisively against them.

This tells us that the favorability rating of “Governor Hottie” stands at -10, and this WaPo column (from here) tells us that…

With just over three weeks until Election Day, the two presidential nominees appear to be on opposite trajectories, with Sen. Barack Obama gaining momentum and Sen. John McCain stalled or losing ground on a range of issues and personal traits, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The numbers are 53-43 in favor of Obama according to the poll; “Kristol Mess” strikes again!

Update: Hat tip to Atrios for this (and the “across the page” reference applies to Krugman, and kudos for this).

This New York Times story about Karl Rove by reporter Mark Leibovich from Saturday managed to describe all of the ways that “Turd Blossom” has kept himself busy and “in demand” among the “smart set” within the D.C. media establishment he so thoroughly loathed not so long ago when plying his dark art for Dubya.

Gee, would it have been too much trouble to report that he has also ignored a subpoena to testify before the House Judiciary Committee concerning the fired U.S. attorneys? Or would that have been too impolite of the Times, thus necessitating another bout of hand-wringing from Public Editor Clark Hoyt, among others?