Category: Politics

Roberts confirmed by the Senate…

Via Yahoo News/AP: Senate Confirms Roberts As Chief Justice

Part of me says “damn, this is Bush finally getting the Supreme Court, what we fought so hard against in 2000 and 2004” and write something filled with scathing righteous indignation… maybe change the borders of the blog black or something… but know what? Ever since they announced that he would be replacing Rehnquist after that old conservative warhorse passed on, I just can’t get that excited about Robert… it’s just the bad replacing the bad.

At this point, I just HOPE that people see the importance of Justice O’Connor’s replacement, and are prepared to fight it… up to and including a filibuster… 3 years of it, if necessary.

Super-powerful hurricanes are the “smoking gun” of global warming

This is global warming, says environmental chief

As Hurricane Rita threatens devastation, scientist blames climate change
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 23 September 2005

Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the “smoking gun” of global warming, one of Britain’s leading scientists believes.

The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea, he said. “The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming.”

Bully for them for having the courage to say it. Where is the US scientific establishment on this one?

via AMERICAblog

BORROW and SPEND Republicans.

Bush Rules Out Tax Hike to Fund Recovery

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Friday ruled out raising taxes to pay the massive costs of Gulf Coast reconstruction, saying other government spending must be cut to pay for a recovery effort expected to swell the national debt by $200 billion or more.

Remember all the complaints about “Tax and spend liberals” a few years ago? Well, they beat the heck out of “Borrow and spend Republicans” … can’t even call ’em conservatives, since they show no fiscal restraint… that’s not *exclusively* a conservative value, but it sure is a core part of what they claim to believe.

Sorry for the lack of content lately, guys. Busy life, should be back to my regular procrastinating and blogging soon…

One of the greatest hours in radio history (and political satire)


One of the greatest hours in radio history

The Jounal of MultiMedia History has put on its website one of the best and most important dramas ever presented on radio, the 1954 Canadian play “The Investigator” by comedy writer Reuben Ship. It’s a laugh-out-loud parody of Joseph McCarthy and his hearings, where Joe goes to Heaven and takes over the committee that decides who stays and who goes “down there.” He replaces the original officials with Torquemada, Cotton Mather and The Hanging Judge, and they then proceed to “deport” people like Socrates and Thomas Jefferson.

The Realaudio is at the Jounal of MultiMedia History… I heard an audiotape recording of this radioplay as a kid (my mom probably still has it somewhere) and it is incredibly funny. And given the present political climate climate, it deserves a listen as well.

Here’s another interesting link on the subject.

Why isn’t real election reform a priority for either party?

From AMERICAblog: Bush Stole 2000 Election, 2004 Election and They’ll Do It Again

Paul Krugman talks about the obvious: that Bush lost Florida and lost the 2000 election, the Republicans suppressed the Democratic vote in Ohio in 2004 and given the chance they’ll steal it again in 2006 and 2008. What’s truly shocking is that real election reform isn’t a priority FOR EITHER PARTY.

[…snippage…go read the original… it’s good!]

Why is no one from either party pushing for very reasonable, common sense reforms like these and numerous others that have been bandied about in the press? Why don’t voters care?

The link above to the piece of Krugman’s is What They Did Last Fall (today’s/Aug 19th), which is worth reading:

By running for the U.S. Senate, Katherine Harris, Florida’s former secretary of state, has stirred up some ugly memories. And that’s a good thing, because those memories remain relevant. There was at least as much electoral malfeasance in 2004 as there was in 2000, even if it didn’t change the outcome. And the next election may be worse.

Optimist. We KNOW the next election will be worse. The only question is whether we’ll let them get away with it next time.

A temporary hiatus?

Older story, but worth reposting here….

Calif. housing bubble seen deflating

UCLA researchers see prices flattening
Updated: 5:37 p.m. ET June 21, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO – California has a housing bubble, but it may not pop with a bang, UCLA researchers said in a quarterly economic forecast.

Sounds like wishful thingking. I’ll believe it when I see it.

More California Craziness

Million Dollar Trailers

A two-bedroom, two-bathroom mobile home perched on a lot in Malibu is selling for $1.4 million. This isn’t a greedy seller asking a ridiculous amount no one will pay. Two others sold in the area recently for $1.3 million and $1.1 million. Another, at $1.8 million, is in escrow. Nearby, another lists for $2.7 million.

This is JUST for the trailer itself — you still have to pay RENT on the land that you do not own (nearly $3k a month on top of the million). I do like California weather, but I think I’ll take a little bit of snow for sanity in housing prices.

O’Connor Resigns.

Bugger.

On CNN via DBA:

“This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor.

“It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the Court for 24 terms.

“I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the Court and its role under our constitutional structure.”

Lots of talk on AMERICAblog, MyDD, DailyKos, and I’m sure all the other usual suspects as well.

It cannot possibly be overemphasized how much damage an unbalanced conservative court could to to civil liberties in this country. This was why I vehemently opposed Bush in 2000, and is probably more important even than the war issue today. Get involved, stay involved.

And they’ve been called the “Liberal” justices?

High court OKs personal property seizures

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses — even against their will — for private economic development.
[…]
“The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Granted, this kind of crap is nothing new – it’s a favorite tactic of some big box stores. But I’d always figure that the SCOTUS would set some bar to it if it ever got there, or at least that it would be the pro-business conservatives.

In all, I’m ashamed to be lumped under the same “liberal” label as this decision… on the other hand, major props to Justice O’Connor both for her adissent, and for this particularly apt note:

“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”

via Eddy on the DBA mailing list.

Typo corrected: 2005-07-11T04:53:32

“The Trillion Dollar Bet”

The Trillion-Dollar Bet

American homeowners have made a trillion-dollar bet that mortgage rates will remain near record lows for at least a few more years. But with some interest rates already rising, economists worry that the bet could turn bad.

The problem is that new types of mortgages that hold down monthly payments for families – helping many buy homes that they would not otherwise be able to afford – also require potentially far higher payments in future years.

The bill will soon start to come due in a serious way, as the initial period of fixed payments, typically set at artificially low rates, expires for millions of homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages.

This year, only about $80 billion, or 1 percent, of mortgage debt will switch to an adjustable rate based largely on prevailing interest rates, according to an analysis by Deutsche Bank in New York. Next year, some $300 billion of mortgage debt will be similarly adjusted.

But in 2007, the portion will soar, with $1 trillion of the nation’s mortgage debt – or about 12 percent of it – switching to adjustable payments, according to the analysis.

The 2007 adjustments will almost certainly be the largest such turnover that has ever occurred.

via Escaton(“2007 could be a very bad year.”) and Brad DeLong

r- versus K-selection in politics.

Via a guest-blogger posting on Bitch.Ph.D, we get an link to Affordable Family Formation–The Neglected Key To GOP’s Future

The key reason why some states vote Republican, I’ve found, can be summed up in the three-word phrase:

Affordable Family Formation.

In parts of the country where it is economical to buy a house with a yard in a neighborhood with a decent public school, you’ll generally find more Republicans.

You’ll find less in regions where it’s expensive.

It’s a stereotype that a mortgage, marriage, and babies tend to make people more conservative.

But it’s a true stereotype.

Emphases his; links removed. Goes on to show a set of demographics which correlate reasonably strongly between Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning states… cost of living, “years married”(*) , and total fertility rate (**). All of these could be a sign that he’s right that “a mortgage, marriage, and babies tend to make people more conservative.”

But personally, I think this is a case of confusing correlation with causation — and that, especially in combination, the lifestyle choices these imply are often the result of a conservative social world view. To stretch a metaphor early marriage and a high total fertility can be taken as a human choice for a sort of r-selection…

Similarly, late marriage (generally following greater personal development) and fewer children (with consequently more time and effort put into raising each), can be taken as a sort of K-selection… and oddly enough, this sort of lifestyle tends to correlate with social liberals. Add in other, unrelated lifestyle choices that correlate, and these you can see where the geographic factor comes in.

Now, obviously these analogies aren’t perfect: I know a fair number of social liberals who paired up relatively young, and a modest number with large families… and there are social conservatives who marry late and have small families. And social issues don’t always correlate perfectly with one’s voting, even if they often do. But I do think that the author of that piece manages to put the cart before the horse in assuming that those factors drive or even help determine one’s views/lifestyle/cultural orientation, rather than being signs driven by it.

(* for 18-44 y/o white women, a particularly silly measure given the cut-off age, IMO: it mainly measures age at first marriage, not the actually divorce rate… which as we’ve seen is lowest in some very blue states)
(** here’s that “white women” thing again. Do you think this guy may have race issues?)