Speaking Too Much

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

Sometimes, even in innocuous posts, the writers at National Review Online reveal their true nature.  Take for example this seemingly harmless excerpt from a post by Mike Potemra at National Review Online:

Coincidentally, I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it. Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War era – peace, tolerance, due process, progress (as opposed to skepticism about human perfectibility).

Wait, what?

Peace, tolerance, and due process are liberal?

So that means conservative values are what — war, intolerance, and avoiding the law?

Wow.  Just wow.

GOP Hypocrisy Alert

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

The Republican exploitation of the failed terrorist airline bombing attempt continues.  Perhaps none of it is worse than the exploitation by right-wing Congressman and gubernatorial aspirant Peter Hoekstra (R-MI).  He sent out a fund-raising letter today (the text of which can be found here), which says in part:

For almost a decade I have been a leader on National Security and at the forefront of the war on terror. I understand the real and continuing threat radical jihadists pose to our great state of Michigan and our great Nation.

I have pledged that I will do "everything possible" to prevent these terrorists from coming to Michigan.

But I need your help.

If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security please make a most generous contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even $250 to my campaign.

Hoekstra says the U.S. needs to be more forward-leaning in its approach to terrorism and put into place the latest technology for dealing with it, according to the AP.

But what Hoekstra hopes you don't know is that he voted against that very technology he now campaigns on:

… A full 108 Republicans voted against the conference version, including Boehner, Boehner, Hoekstra, Pence, Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa, and Joe Wilson.

The conference bill included more than $4 billion for "screening operations," including $1.1 billion in funding for explosives detection systems, including $778 million for buying and installing the systems.

Why didn't the Associated Press, or his fundraising letter, mention that?

And While The Right Is Quick To Condemn Obama For The Almost Terrorist Attack…

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

…perhaps they should read this:

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents.

Hmmmm.  Refresh my recollection someone.  Who was President in November 2007?

You see, the right wing wants to condemn Obama for trying terrorist suspects in civilian court.  But these two guys?  They were released in 2007 from Gitmo into the hands of Saudi Arabia on the condition that they undergo — no, I am not making this up — art therapy.  Who knew that Dick Cheney was such a patron of the arts?

Right Wing Exploits The Northwest Airlines Terrorism Episode

Ken AshfordObama Opposition, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

The Village Voice wrote my post for me.  Some excerpts:

Napolitano has not been too sharp in her response to the incident, but her statements that the TSA performed well in the aftermath of the incident ("once this incident occurred, everything happened that should have"), and that there is at present "no indication" of a wider plot behind the crotch-bombing, seem like unremarkable bureaucratic attempts to calm fears after a widely-publicized attempted terrorist attack.

Rightbloggers, for obvious reasons, are less interested in calming fears than in exacerbating them, and proclaim, as is their wont, that the Obama Presidency has failed and that America will only be safe when it has come to an end.

Some merely blocked out Napolitano's repeated distinction that the system worked well after the incident, and read it to mean that letting Abdulmutallab on board with his crotch-bomb was part of the plan.

"WTF?" cried Be John Galt. "The system is SUPPOSED to seat terrorists wearing explosive clothing right next to the fuel tanks???" "What system worked?" said Weasel Zippers. "The only thing that stopped him was the fuse on the bomb malfunctioned…" "If the 'system' had 'worked,'" said Michelle Malkin, "Abdulmutallab would have been barred from the U.S…" "Maybe she's not talking about OUR system at all," said deadenders. Etc.

Debbie Schlussel claimed that Napolitano was "already declaring that Abdulmutallab wasn't involved in any larger terrorist plot," which is a great stretch from Napolitano's "Right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger, but obviously the investigation continues" — to which Schlussel actually linked her charge — but Schlussel isn't running Homeland Security, thank God, and thus had no need to be careful about her wording.

Robert Stacy McCain went further, claiming that Napolitano's cautious statements meant the Administration was planning to play a "Lone Nut Card" to absolve its friends in Al Qaeda. "So far, I've seen no evidence of the 'victim card' being played on behalf of Abdulmutallab," he admitted, "but this Associated Press biographical profile of the suspect portrays him as having had a 'saintly aura' as a student in England. Give the media time, though. Their best spinmeisters are still on holiday."

***

During all this the President remained on his Hawaii vacation, and even played golf, which predictably enraged rightbloggers who, despite their contempt for him, decided that Obama intervention was desperately needed.

"When Muslim terrorists attack, Muslim Presidents play golf," said Bare Naked Islam. "NEROBAMA HAS GOLFED MORE HIS FIRST YEAR THAN BUSH IN 8 YEARS," claimed Reliapundit. "AND HE'S IN HAWAII PLAYING GOLF – WITH NO TIME FOR CHURCH ON CHRISTMAS EVE." "In retrospect," said National Review's Jim Geraghty, looking for a pattern of Democratic malfeasance, "it's rather amazing that President Clinton never visited the Twin Towers after the 1993 bombing…"

Some returned to the "My Pet Goat" gag they used after the Fort Hood incident. "No mention as to whether or not he was reading 'My Pet Goat' between holes," said Say Anything. "Who knows, maybe he was reading My Pet Goat," said For His Glory.

"Actually," said Cassy Fiano, "this is far worse than 'My Pet Goat,'" because Bush "immediately gave a press conference addressing the attack at the school" after his children's-book reading, while Obama was "sitting around in a mansion with his family… Instead of addressing the scared country, he went to the gym and then played golf," which led to the widespread national panic we are now experiencing.

It's a good thing we have right wing bloggers to lend their perspective and make this episode stand for what it should stand for (in their eyes): an indictment of everything Obama-related.

Blogosphere aside, it should be that Republicans are pointing fingers at the Transportation Security Administration for the near-success of this attack.  That is their wont, but I should also add that there is no head of the TSA, because South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize. 

Furthermore, Republicans have cast votes against the key TSA funding measure that the 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security contained.  In the June 24 vote in the House, leading Republicans including John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan voted against the bill, amid a procedural dispute over the appropriations process.  A full 108 Republicans voted against the conference version, including Boehner, Hoekstra, Pence, Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa and Joe Wilson.

The conference bill included more than $4 billion for "screening operations," including $1.1 billion in funding for explosives detection systems, with $778 million for buying and installing the systems.

But it's Obama's fault, right?

They Would Have Died That Day, But Instead….

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

…. they found each other.  Awwwwww:

While waiting in La Guardia airport for his flight back home to Charlotte, North Carolina, on January 15, 2009, Ben Bostic happened to notice Laura Zych, a chic, pretty brunette. She ended up on the same plane, but not the same row. “I would have totally forgotten about it,” he said later, “if it weren’t for the things that happened.”

What happened, of course, was that Ben and Laura’s flight, US Airways 1549, collided with a flock of geese shortly after taking off and suffered engine failure. Forced to make quick decisions, Captain Chesley Sullenberger steered the rapidly descending plane onto the Hudson River. He made a spectacular, flawless landing. Within minutes, the passengers and crew had filed out on the wings, and ferryboats of all types were en route to rescue them. Everyone survived. It was, as Governor Paterson called it later that day, a Miracle on the Hudson.

Bostic and Zych were on separate rescue boats; they didn’t formally meet until 60 Minutes arranged a tearful reunion with many of the passengers, along with Sullenberger and the crew, down in Charlotte in February. At that time, many passengers were still suffering from symptoms of post-traumatic-stress disorder, but the gathering helped. Then, in July, Kristy Spears (seat 8A) hosted a reunion in her home outside Charlotte. Zych (seat 17B) met up with Amy Jolly (seat 14C), whom she had befriended through a survivors’ Facebook group. Bostic hung out with them, but had to leave early and drive out of town for another party. Late that night, they persuaded him to drive back, and Zych offered to let him crash at her place. “I didn’t think of it until the next day, but it was the second time I crashed with them,” says Bostic, who calls going back into town that night “one of the best decisions I’d ever made.” He and Zych ended up talking on her porch until six in the morning. “I had to work the next day. And I didn’t care! At that time, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.” The couple have been dating ever since.

See?  Not all airline disasters have bad endings….

The Dumbest Response to The Detroit Terrorist Bombing Attempt

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/Torture2 Comments

From the New York Daily News:

I'm for tighter restrictions if that is what is needed, but this doesn't make sense.  It's silly thinking: "Terrorist did X; therefore, we must ban X." 

Think about it.  If this new restriction were in place over the Christmas holidays, what would the Northwest flight terrorist have done?  Answer: He merely would have set off the bomb earlier in the flight! 

So if — IF — the TSA is going to restrict what you can have on your lap, why do it for only last hour of the flight?  It seems to me that even the dimmest terrorist can find a work-around for that.

UPDATE — it gets worse.  There's talk of bans on all electronic devices on international flights.  Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast comments:

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, we've been "tightening airport security" in ways that chase the most recently-used tactic, and don't take at all into account that there's no limit to the ingenuity that people who are not only willing, but eager to die are going to use. Richard Reid tries to ignite explosives in his shoes, and we have to take off our shoes. Someone tries to mix an explosive using toiletries, and we can't take anything larger than 3 ounces on a plane….

[So now…] if your five-year-old has to pee during the last hour of the flight, too bad. If you want to carry a handbag and your laptop bag, too bad. And none of this is going to make one iota of difference, because those who would try to bring down jetliners have already come up with a new and different way to get explosives on planes. How much of checked baggage is really checked for explosives again? And are we going to start doing cavity searches? What makes the TSA think that a guy who seeks martyrdom is going to balk at carrying plastic explosives in his rectum? Is this where we're headed? Cavity searches for everyone? What is this, Beavis and Butthead Do America?

The Decade… In Icons

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & Deficit, Popular Culture, Random MusingsLeave a Comment

Courtesy of the New York Times

Click to embiggen:

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RELATED:  Paul Krugman writes the only interesting decade retrospective that I've read to date.  His basic thrust is that the decade, for all it's ups and downs, amounted to a big nothing:

[F]rom an economic point of view, I’d suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true.

It was a decade with basically zero job creation. O.K., the headline employment number for December 2009 will be slightly higher than that for December 1999, but only slightly. And private-sector employment has actually declined — the first decade on record in which that happened.

It was a decade with zero economic gains for the typical family. Actually, even at the height of the alleged “Bush boom,” in 2007, median household income adjusted for inflation was lower than it had been in 1999. And you know what happened next.

It was a decade of zero gains for homeowners, even if they bought early: right now housing prices, adjusted for inflation, are roughly back to where they were at the beginning of the decade. And for those who bought in the decade’s middle years — when all the serious people ridiculed warnings that housing prices made no sense, that we were in the middle of a gigantic bubble — well, I feel your pain. Almost a quarter of all mortgages in America, and 45 percent of mortgages in Florida, are underwater, with owners owing more than their houses are worth.

Last and least for most Americans — but a big deal for retirement accounts, not to mention the talking heads on financial TV — it was a decade of zero gains for stocks, even without taking inflation into account. Remember the excitement when the Dow first topped 10,000, and best-selling books like “Dow 36,000” predicted that the good times would just keep rolling? Well, that was back in 1999. Last week the market closed at 10,520.

So there was a whole lot of nothing going on in measures of economic progress or success.

Merry Christmas

Ken AshfordBlogging1 Comment

Light blogging continues through the holiday season.

I'll be travelling — totally stalkable here (although not ALL the time).

Proud of the Bubs.

Independent Cinema Coming To Winston-Salem

Ken AshfordLocal Interest, Popular CultureLeave a Comment

About time, too.

I heard it on the local NPR this morning.  A new arts cinema is opening — 2 screens, 160 seats, beer, wine, and a whole bunch of movies you’ve probably never heard of — all in downtown Winston-Salem.

It's called Aperture Cinema and as the video shows, it's coming together fast….

Their first showings are scheduled for January 2010.  They'll be showing A Town Called Panic…

and New York, I Love You…

More details here.

Boston University LipDub

Ken AshfordYoutubeLeave a Comment

Over 120 students and the BU Dean of Students cut loose a little during final exams a few days ago to make this:

LipDubbing is, of course, the newest fad.  Even ministers of the Sarkozy government in France are doing it, so can a White House LipDub be far behind?

The fad is still young, but I think Bloomingdale High School's is still top-notch:

Why We Are Where We Are

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & DeficitLeave a Comment

Conservatives have been going full force in blaming Obama for the exploding deficit.  And it's true, the stimulus package did mushroom the deficit.

But the thing to remember is that Obama inherited a huge deficit from Bush and a crummy economy (the two are not necessarily the same).  And the stimulus spending, while adding to deficit woes, was necessary to prevent a complete economic collapse.

But if one is truly concerned about the deficit in future years, one needs to understand that the stimulus spending was a short-term addition to the deficit.  It's impact in future years will be neglible.

12-16-09bud-f1This chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains it all.  It breaks down the major contributors to the deficit — both the deficit now, and in future years.

As you can see, both the TARP bank bailout (under Bush) and the stimulus funding will have, ten years out, a limited impact on the deficit.

What will have the greatest impact?  The tax cuts passed by Bush and the Republican Congress.

In 2012, Democrats will argue (quite correctly) that TARP and Obama's stimulus had less of an impact on the present deficit than the fiscal policies of George Bush.  And they would be quite right.

So it's quite clear that, in the long run, the only way to reduce the deficits is to reverse the Bush-era tax cuts of the 2000's.  If Republicans are serious about this, they would agree.  But I suspect they will not become deficit hawks and/or, they will continue to blame Obama for the huge deficits that Bush created.

Time, Please Define “Mattered”

Ken AshfordPolls, Popular CultureLeave a Comment

It's that time of year when Time magazine comes out with its "Person of The Year" accolade, usually to much guffawing and consternation.  And to be honest, the Time award thing really has gone downhill since I won it in 2006.

So Time chose Ben Bernake this year, which is a fine choice, to the extent that he embodies the whole economic crisis thing.  Sure a hell of a lot better than any of the four runners-up, which included — for real — Usain Bolt.

So I won't take issue with Bernake.  What truly struck me was the list that Time compiled of the 25 "People Who Mattered" in 2009.  I have no idea what makes Time think some of these people "mattered".  I'm talking about Adam Lambert, "The Twitter Guys", John and Kate Gosselin, Jay Leno and David Letterman, Taylor Swift, among others.  I mean, I can give a pass to Glenn Beck — I guess he "mattered" in these sense that he weighed heavily in the national dialogue, albeit in a destructive and silly way.  But those others?  Really?

Fortunately, Time readers seem to have a better bead on what "matters", more so than the Time editors.