THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS....In comments to a previous post, Tacitus praises conservative Republican George Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative. The Washington Post describes it thusly:

It calls for the United States and Europe to press for and assist free elections, foster new independent media, help create a "literate generation"....[promote] freedom, knowledge and women's empowerment....increase funding of democracy, human rights, media, women's and other groups....assistance in civic education, the creation of independent election commissions, and voter registration, particularly of women....with special emphasis on providing computer technology to schools and on teacher-training institutes to target women....It also suggests that providing $500 million in micro-loans -- of about $400 each -- would spur 1.2 million small entrepreneurs out of poverty.

In the meantime, liberal Democrat John Kerry proposes that we need to make the CIA stronger and add 40,000 active duty troops to the Army.

Am I living in Bizarro world, or what? George Bush is proposing a fuzzy, multinational, feel-good initiative and conservatives are applauding, while John Kerry wants more spooks and a bigger military and conservatives are skeptical.

What's wrong with this picture?

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, it's sort of amusing that practically every sentence in the Greater Middle East Initiative seems to mentions women, isn't it? Who knew George Bush was such a feminist?

THREE CARD MONTE WITH ALAN GREENSPAN....Alan Greenspan's comments a few days ago about the necessity of cutting Social Security benefits struck me as disingenuous, but I didn't realize quite how disingenuous until a couple of things came through my inbox today:

Does Alan Greenspan have amnesia? More than 20 years ago he co-chaired a commission to ensure the solvency of Social Security. That commission recommended stiff increases in the payroll tax to create a surplus that would help fund the retirement of baby boomers down the road. The higher payroll taxes, which put a heavy burden on lower-to-middle income taxpayers, were signed into law and remain in effect to this day.

But in 2001 Mr. Greenspan endorsed a fiscally irresponsible income tax cut that effectively gives away the Social Security surplus he created primarily to high-income taxpayers. Now he suggests that those tax cuts be made permanent, while we reduce the enormous deficits that they've created only through cuts in spending, especially on Social Security.

I hadn't remembered that Greenspan was part of the 1983 Social Security commission that raised payroll taxes. (It's one of several Ronald Reagan tax increases that his fans conveniently forget about when they're extolling the virtues of supply side economics.) Here's the Greenspan timeline:

• 1983: Recommended raising payroll taxes far above the amount required to fund Social Security. Since payroll taxes are capped (at $87,000 currently), this was, by definition, an increase that primarily hit the poor and middle class.

• 2001: Enthusiastically endorsed a tax cut aimed primarily at people who earn over $200,000.

• 2003: Ditto.

• 2004: Told Congress that due to persistent deficits Social Security benefits need to be cut.
  

So: raise payroll taxes on the middle class to create a surplus, then cut taxes on the rich to wipe out the surplus and create a deficit, and then sorrowfully announce that the resulting deficits mean that the Social Security benefits already paid for by the middle class need to be cut.

A normal person would at least be embarrassed by all this. But Alan Greenspan has never been a mere mortal, has he?

POSTSCRIPT: Billmon has a Lou Dobbs interview with David Cay Johnston that spells out the whole shell game in illuminating detail.

40,000 TROOPS....Yesterday I linked to the speech on terrorism that John Kerry presented at UCLA on Friday and said that I thought it was pretty good. But I want to highlight one part of it.

First, though, I want to acknowledge how hard it is to evaluate policy proposals like this, primarily because most of them — from both Democrats and Republicans — are little more than motherhood and apple pie. Kerry, for example, supports better intelligence, stronger international alliances, cutting off of terrorist funding, stronger nonproliferation efforts, more money for homeland security, and so forth. There isn't much to argue with here aside from picking nits about individual phrases — who's opposed to straight talk about "radical Madrassas" after all? — so how can you tell if he's really tough on terrorism or not?

But there was at least one very concrete proposal in his speech: we have a "solemn obligation" to finish the job in Iraq and Afghanistan, but at the same time our military is dangerously overextended. Therefore, we need a temporary addition of 40,000 active-duty Army troops, "likely to last the remainder of the decade." That's two divisions.

Is this a new proposal on Kerry's part? If it is, I'm surprised it didn't get more attention. It's absolutely concrete, it's a clear demonstration of increased commitment to fighting terrorism, and it's a direct criticism of the Rumsfeld/Bush insistence that we don't need more troops.

Surely this is the kind of thing that war supporters are looking for when they ask for firm evidence that Democrats are serious about national security? So far, though, I haven't see any reaction.

UPDATE: Commenter Mischa points out that Kerry first talked about expanding the size of the Army at least as far back as December 2003 in this speech in Des Moines.

By the way, I agree with everyone in comments who said that increasing the size of the Army isn't necessarily a sign of being tough on terrorism. It depends on what you do with the troops and on whether you think a larger military is a good way of fighting terrorism in the first place. But even so, this proposal seems like enough of a concrete differentiator between Kerry and Bush and between Kerry and the rest of the Democrats that I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention.

And Tacitus: you must be kidding. Liberals who talk about "root causes" are routinely mocked by conservatives. The Greater Middle East Initiative is, ironically, exactly the kind of thing most Democrats favor, and exactly the kind of thing that would be an object of scorn if a Democrat had proposed it. More here.

FREE LUNCH....Math professors are frequent recipients of proofs that circles can be squared and angles trisected. Physics professors receive packages purporting to show how to build perpetual motion machines.

These proofs and demonstrations are often ingenious and it's not always obvious exactly what mistake the author has made. However, since all of these things are known to be impossible, the recipients of these packages just discard them anyway. Why bother reading through a hundred pages of turgid demonstration when you know beforehand that somewhere, somehow, there's a mistake?

This is about how I felt reading through Brad DeLong's recent critiques of a "free lunch" method of funding Social Security privatization. It started here, where Brad provided a lengthy examination of the plan, and ended up here, where we got the short version. Here it is:

The government should issue treasury bonds paying, say, 3% interest. It should then use the money to invest in the stock market, earning, say, a 5% return. Eventually the government will be rich!

But what's the point of bothering to examine this? Like "proofs" from folks who don't understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the nature of transcendental numbers, there's obviously a flaw here. If there weren't, we could simply fund the entire government for free by doing this.

The free lunch is the economic equivalent of squared circles and perpetual motion, a favorite of cranks through the ages. The only real question here is how a supposedly serious economist in government service can propose something like this, and why people like Brad have to fritter away their time tracking down the flaws in it. What a waste.

PROPOSITION 57....The LA Times supports Proposition 57, Arnold's $15 billion bond measure. I don't. That's fine. But this paragraph in their editorial today is little short of childish:

The most prominent critic is Democratic state Treasurer Phil Angelides. He says it's bad fiscal policy to burden future Californians with debt payoff. But because Angelides is likely to run for governor in 2006, and because fellow Democrat Westly is in the opposite camp, his criticisms come at a discount.

Why the airy dismissal of Angelides alone? Surely the Times isn't under the impression that Arnold and all the other politicians who favor 57 are doing it for purely altruistic reasons?

On a more substantive note, the Times' position is baffling. They claim that the answer to California's deficit problem was "obvious" a year ago:

A combination of budget cuts, about $10 billion in borrowing and some temporary tax increases. Unfortunately, Republican lawmakers rejected any tax increase and Democrats balked at deeper cuts.

But what makes them think this is going to change? Prop 57 simply provides ex post facto approval — funded by bonds! — of Arnold's tax decrease immediately upon taking office; it provides enough cushion that Democrats can once again put off thinking seriously about budget cuts for another year; and it allows Republicans to continue their insane opposition to even moderate and temporary tax increases.

When will we learn? What ought to be obvious to the Times is that the only thing that will get Sacramento's attention is a gun to their head. Prop 57 lets everyone off the hook yet again and promises little more than another year of political posturing. It's time to just say no.

GAY MARRIAGE, ABORTION, AND THE COURTS....When San Francisco's mayor started performing same-sex marriages a couple of weeks ago, conservatives blew a fuse. It was a clear violation of the law, and liberals who heaped scorn on Judge Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument were hypocrites for supporting him.

Yesterday, the South Dakota legislature passed — and the governor is expected to sign — a bill that essentially outlaws abortion. It is quite clearly in defiance of settled constitutional law, something its authors pretty much admit. Conservatives, oddly enough, have not risen up in wrath at this act of legislative civil disobedience.

Nor should they. To be sure, in one case it's a legislature and in the other it's an arm of the executive, but the fact is that these two cases have a lot in common. They are both publicity stunts, they are both designed to force a court challenge, and neither one has much chance of being upheld. The real question at hand is the same in both cases: will the South Dakota legislature back down if a court tells them to? Will San Francisco's mayor back down if a court tells him to?

Roy Moore didn't. That's the difference.

GAY MARRIAGE AND LOCAL ACTIVISM....The Hudson River town of New Paltz became the latest front in the gay marriage movement when its mayor starting marrying gay couples yesterday. Over at The Blogging of the President, Justin Krebs has some interesting background about how New Paltz happens to have a mayor who's doing this.

By the way, one of the people who got married in New Paltz is the New York Times stringer who was recently fired because he belonged to a gay activist group ten years ago.

SERIOUS ABOUT OSAMA....Speaking of Osama, this is the second time recently that I've seen a story like this:

President Bush has approved a plan to intensify the effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, senior administration and military officials say, as a combination of better intelligence, improving weather and a refocusing of resources away from Iraq has reinvigorated the hunt along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The plan will apply both new forces and new tactics to the task, said senior officials in Washington and Afghanistan who were interviewed in recent days. The group at the center of the effort is Task Force 121, the covert commando team of Special Operations forces and Central Intelligence Agency officers. The team was involved in Saddam Hussein's capture and is gradually shifting its forces to Afghanistan to step up the search for Mr. bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the former Taliban leader.

To the extent that this is a result of Pervez Musharraf finally deciding to get more serious about the Taliban and al-Qaeda, it's good news. But to the extent that it's the result of the United States finally getting more serious and "refocusing" on Osama, all I can say is, what the hell?

One of the things that war skeptics have been saying for a long time is that Iraq distracted us from Job 1: capturing Osama, wiping out al-Qaeda, and putting the Taliban firmly out of business. The Bushies deny it. But the denials really don't wash. There's just too much evidence that resources were pulled out of Afghanistan as early as spring 2002, that our commitment to Afghanistan has been weak and our ongoing operations have been starved for funding and manpower, and that the administration has been suspiciously unwilling to lean hard on Musharraf. They were just too damn obsessed with Iraq.

I don't know how long it will be before we really know everything that happened after 9/11, but I suspect that history's judgment of the Bush administration will not be kind. In fact, Dennis Hastert's admission that they don't want the findings of the 9/11 commission to be released during the campaign is a tacit admission that they already know the facts won't reflect well on them.

The Bush administration's record on terror has been amazingly flimsy, all bluster and very little genuine progress. John Kerry has shown a bit more willingness lately to go beyond the defensive and demonstrate ways that he would be tougher on terrorism than Bush and I hope he keeps it up. It's not a subject we should dodge, it's a subject in which we should show how we can do better than the Republicans. Getting serious about al-Qaeda would be a good start.

UPDATE: In comments, Chris Conroy asks what Kerry has been saying lately that I like so much. Here's the terrorism speech that he delivered at UCLA yesterday. I thought it was pretty good.

SO MANY QUESTIONS....Matt Yglesias suggests today that (a) good sex is ipso facto a good thing and the government should encourage it, (b) Christians would probably be happier about church-state separation if Christians were a minority, and (c) if we had 100% taxation on incomes over $400,000 then no one would bother paying anyone more than $400,000.

To which I say, (a) if Christians were a minority maybe we'd have more good sex in this country, (b) you can't tax sex, and (c) how come no one cares about people with incomes of $400,000 having too much sex? Confused? Read this paragraph again very carefully and you will see a solution to all of Matt's problems.

Matt is also confused about the President's "policy" on Social Security reform:

Is Larry Lindsey really incapable of doing math? Is the president really unable to sit through a proper briefing on this subject? Or is someone else trying to keep key players in the dark, lest they propose a politically damaging but mathematically sound policy?

These are good questions. To understand why he's asking them, you really need to read this Brad DeLong post, which is both frightening and enlightening all at once. I know that we liberals have sort of given up on the "Bush is a moron" theme, but we might just have to dredge it up again....

SKYWATCHING....Kieran Healy writes today that due to Ireland's cloudy nature, he didn't really appreciate that the Milky Way truly existed until he moved to Arizona. He links to the picture at right as proof of what the Arizona night sky can do to restore your faith in astronomy.

That's a familiar story for me too, though light pollution was the cause, not clouds. As a child I was fascinated by constellations (as are most children) and often asked my father to point them out. But I just never got it. Those three stars are Orion's belt? OK, but where's the rest of Orion? I think I spent most of my childhood under the impression that I just wasn't trying hard enough, or that perhaps my vision was somehow defective.

Then when I was about ten or eleven we took a camping trip to Yosemite. And guess what? The sky was chock full of stars! I finally got it.

That was pretty much the end of it, though. I'm not much for camping, and I continue to live in light polluted Orange County, so I've never learned much of anything about the constellations. It doesn't take much light to ruin things, either. A few years ago I tried some skywatching in a cruise ship out at sea, but even then I couldn't find a spot on deck light-free enough to really make a difference. (We were in Tahiti and I was trying to spy the Southern Cross. I think I did.)

But if you like pretty pictures (and I do), I highly recommend The Invisible Universe, by David Malin. Used copies are suprisingly inexpensive and the photos are stunning.

OSAMA IN CHAINS?....Al Jazeera and a bunch of other Middle Eastern news outlets are carrying a report that Osama bin Laden has been captured:

The report on Saturday by the external Pashto-language service of Iranian state radio quoted an "informed source" as saying the alleged arrest took place "some time ago", but gave no further details.

It went on to claim that US officials were keeping news of the arrest secret and were likely to announce it later in the year - in order to help US President George Bush's re-election chances in November polls.

The idea that the Bush administration is somehow keeping Osama under wraps in order to spring an "October Surprise" that will guarantee their reelection is a common topic of gossip, but not something that anyone (yet) has been willing to broach in serious news pages — and for pretty obvious reasons.

So instead here's a different angle to chat about. This is the second time that Iranian radio has made this charge (the first time was apparently about a year ago). Why? Do they genuinely have sources that believe this? Or is there some other angle to it? What's in it for them to have people believe that Osama has already been captured?

STACKING THE DECK....Apparently George Bush's Council on Bioethics still has a few members who actually disagree with him about stem cells and cloning.

Can't have that, can we? As of today, they're gone. It's good to know that scientists with opposing viewpoints are being sent packing back to the liberal universities where they belong.

On a related note, the Washington Post reports that one of the new members, Benjamin Carson, laments that "we live in a nation where we can't talk about God in public." I wonder exactly what nation he lives in? Surely I'm not the only one who's noticed that talking about God is hardly in short supply here in the United States?

HASTERT CAVES....Hastert has caved on extending the 9/11 commission by 60 days. Just thought everyone would like to know.

Still hard to figure out what this little puppet show was all about.

WAIT FOR 2008?....A few days ago, in the spirit of mentioning the unmentionable, John Quiggin asked, "Are there any circumstances under which we should hope for, promote, or even passively assist, the re-election of George W. Bush as against either of the remaining Democrat contenders?"

The case....rests primarily on arguments about fiscal policy. Bush's policies have set the United States on a path to national bankruptcy, a fact that is likely to become apparent some time between now and 2008. Assuming that actual or effective bankruptcy (repudiation of debt or deliberate resort to inflation) is unthinkable, this is going to entail some painful decisions for the next President and Congress, almost certainly involving both increases in taxation and cuts in expenditure. On the expenditure side, this will mean a lot more than the obvious targets of corporate welfare and [fraud, duplication, and waste]. Either significant cuts in the big entitlement programs (Social Security and Medicare) or deep cuts in everything else the government does will be needed, even with substantial increases in taxes.

In other words, Bush has dug such a big hole that trying to get out of it, especially in the face of a Republican congress, is going to be a disaster for whoever tries it. Better to let Bush himself keep shoveling until his policies become so obviously catastrophic that the Republican party is sidelined for decades.

His post immediately brought to mind this passage from Conrad Black's FDR biography. This is right after Roosevelt (running for vice president) has lost the 1920 election:

Since the opposition were going to win with a program he was convinced would be proved mistaken, they might as well have a clear mandate to implement that program. "The whole responsibility will be theirs," he wrote. This was a prescient perception and not just the usual glib Roosevelt ex post facto rationalization. His greatest concern was that the Republicans would prove so reactionary that they would transform Democratic moderates and liberals into radicals and extremists.

Kinda reminds you of Paul Krugman, doesn't it?

Still, it's an interesting thought and one that I have to admit I've had myself down in the dark recesses of my mind. If a Democrat wins in 2004, will he be blamed for the almost inevitable economic collapse later this decade? Is there any way to convince Americans that our current economic policy is unsustainable aside from an almost nuclear demonstration of how bad it is?

I don't know. I guess it depends on my mood. But like John, I have to confess that sometimes "I look forward to a Democratic victory with trepidation rather than the unalloyed enthusiasm I ought to feel."

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING....Jasmine used to prefer curling up between our pillows at night, but for the last few weeks she's preferred finding a few spare inches on Marian's pillow instead. Needless to say, she takes no heed of human breathing requirements when she does this and last night she plopped herself smack in front of Marian's face, making me wonder if Marian was going to suffocate in the process. Sort of a grownup version of all those urban legends about cats suffocating babies. However, everyone was hale and hearty this morning, so no harm done, and as you can see Jasmine remained contentedly on the pillow long after Marian had vacated it.

Inkblot spent his morning on our new entryway rug, which instantly became a huge favorite with both cats almost as soon as we unrolled it a couple of days ago. In fact, it's such a favorite that they practically fight over it now. We really can't figure out quite what the attraction is.

Anyway, as you can see Inkblot and Jasmine are both in fine health and are happily frolicking in the backyard as I type this. So with that I have some bad news: I've been faithfully doing catblogging every Friday for a year now (here's the post that started the whole thing) and I'm afraid I need a rest. My bottomless supply of pictures has turned out to have a bottom after all, and taking new pictures on schedule has become a bit of a chore. So this is the final edition of catblogging Friday.

My usual keen insight into human nature tells me that everyone will simply be thankful for a year's worth of catblogging and will refrain from wailing and moaning about my lack of continuing dedication to feline exhibitionism. That's how it usually works, right?

Right. Well, that's what comments are for, I guess. Let the wailing and moaning begin!

GEORGE BUSH, SUPERSTAR?....Via The Filibuster, Albert Eisele and Jeff Dufour of The Hill report on GOP plans for their national convention:

“The entire format and actual physical setup could be radically different,” one GOP insider commented. “They might not even have a podium, or maybe a rotating podium or even a stage that comes up from underground. It would be like a theater in the round, with off-site events that are part of the convention.”

The source, a veteran official of past GOP conventions, said the 50,000 delegates, dignitaries and guests would watch off-site events on giant TV screens. “Now, we’ll go to the deck of the USS Intrepid as the U.S. Marine Corps Band plays the National Anthem,” he said, pretending that he was playing the part of the convention chairman.

“Or, and this is a real possibility, we could see President Bush giving his acceptance speech at Ground Zero,” he added. “It’s clearly a venue they’re considering.”

They can't be seriously considering this, can they? Maybe my instincts are way off, but I think the backlash from using the WTC site as the backdrop for a partisan speech would be enormous.

Then again, who knows? As I mentioned in the previous post, the GOP seems to have lost its previously sure footing for these kinds of things ever since the carrier landing last year. Maybe they really are thinking of doing this.

Note to Karl: a fog machine would be good too. It goes great with stages that rise up from underground. A guaranteed crowd pleaser.

"IF I'VE LOST AARON, I'VE LOST MIDDLE AMERICA"....Even mild-mannered Aaron Brown is disgusted at the partisan hackery so obvious in Dennis Hastert's decision to prevent the 9/11 commission from doing its job:

We admit we don't do causes very well on the program. And I don't do outrage well at all, yet, tonight, a cause and an outrage. The decision by the speaker of the House to deny the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attack on America a 60-day extension -- that's all, 60 days -- to complete its work is unconscionable and indefensible, which, no doubt, explains why neither the speaker, nor any member of the House leadership, nor none of their press secretaries would come on the program to talk about it, despite repeated requests.

The commission itself has gone about its work quietly. It's had to fight tooth and nail to get necessary information. And now this, an arbitrary decision to deny not just the commission -- that's the least of it -- but the country the chance to know all of what happened, how it happened, and how best to prevent it from happening again.

Perhaps, the speaker and his team assume you do not care. I hope they're wrong. I hope you care enough to write them and e-mail them and call them until they relent. Do that. Do it for the victims and their families. Do it for the country that was attacked and for history.

Hastert may have made a serious mistake if even Aaron Brown is blowing a stack over this. Is this yet another panicky miscalculation from the same Republican establishment that seemed almost invincible only a year ago? Ever since the carrier landing backfired on them they just can't seem to find their footing.

UPDATE: Sorry, I realize my headline for this post may have been a little too cute. Reference here.

SURVIVOR....We haven't had a Survivor thread for a while, so let's have one tonight.

Today's topic: is it just me, or has Survivor All-Stars turned out to be pretty flat? I mean, it sounded like a good idea, but it just hasn't panned out. Why do you suppose that is?

GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENT: DEAD ON ARRIVAL....Ah, I see that Josh Chafetz (as of 7:00 PM here in California) now tallies a total of 41 senators opposed to a gay marriage amendment. That means that even if he has a few of them wrong the amendment has no chance of passing.

Good. I'm glad it's official.

HEALTHCARE IN AMERICA....It's official. The grocery strike has been settled:

The stores accomplished such goals as installing a two-tier system of employee compensation, under which new hires would earn considerably less in wages and benefits than current employees, the sources said.

There also would be a cap on how much the supermarkets contribute to their employees' healthcare coverage, a change the stores aggressively sought in order to combat rising healthcare costs, they said. Until now, all of the workers' healthcare costs have been borne by the stores.

I wonder if conservatives realize that it's this kind of thing that's bringing national healthcare closer and closer to reality? The healthcare debate always seems to be focused on the 43 million Americans who don't have health insurance, but let's be brutally honest: those 43 million people are mostly at the bottom rungs of the income ladder and most people don't care that much about them.

What they do care about is their own healthcare. And while most Americans don't know any poor people, they do have neighbors who are seeing their health benefits slowly deteriorate. Across the street is a guy whose company has eliminated dental and vision coverage. Next door is a single mother whose copay has doubled in the past five years and is set to increase again next month. At soccer practice is a guy who just had to switch his longtime doctor because his company changed to a cheaper plan. At church on Sunday is a woman who can't get an operation to relieve her bursitis because her company's plan no longer covers that.

It's not the 43 million Americans who completely lack health insurance that scares most people, it's the steady deterioration in their own benefits, and every time they or a friend lose a little chunk of those benefits it adds to their fear of a future personal health crisis. When that fear becomes widespread enough — when the implicit contract of healthcare via employers deteriorates past a certain point — then people will start demanding government action.

Conservatives love to extol the virtues of an unregulated free market and castigate unions for interfering with it. But as unions lose influence, the unrestrained free market is slowly but inexorably reducing health benefits for workers beyond what they'll tolerate. And in the end that's going to eliminate the free market's role in healthcare entirely. Ironic, isn't it?

JOHN KERRY, COMMUNIST DUPE....Back in the 50s and 60s a favorite trope of conservatives was the charge that some poor sad sack was an unwitting commie dupe. The charge was usually laid out in the most melodramatic way possible and — conveniently — required no proof, merely a vague nexus of associations demonstrating that the dupe's actions were surely approved of by the gray suited men in the Kremlin who were plotting world domination. Evidence to support the charges was inevitably labyrinthine, sinister, and based on the testimony of ex-commies who explained to a credulous audience how the movement really worked, most likely in their own neighborhood!

Besides being easier and more fun, it was in many ways actually more effective than accusing someone of genuine communist activity. Aside from being impossible to defend against, it also suggested that the chosen liberal was not just a traitor to American values, but also impossibly weak, stupid, and naive. What's more, the conspiratorial tone and "can it be possible?" flavor of these charges appealed mightily to the conspiracy theorists who were already convinced that there was a commie under every bedsheet.

This kind of thing went out of favor about the same time that Mickey Spillane novels did, largely because everyone eventually realized that Harry Truman and George Marshall weren't commie dupes after all, and neither were all the other liberals routinely accused of treachery. It scratched out a precarious existence for a few more years within groups of true believers like the John Birch Society but had pretty much died out by the 70s.

Why the pop culture history lesson? Because apparently the genre has made a comeback: today National Review digs up an actual commie spy master (!) to write a classic updating of the story aimed at none other than John Kerry. And I have to tell you, his renditions of Soviet disinformation tactics, counterfeit documents, gullible reporters lapping up the party line, and grandiose pronouncements of his own importance ("As far as I'm concerned, the KGB gave birth to the antiwar movement in America") really bring back memories. It's like reliving air raid drills, fallout shelters, COINTELPRO, and the Army-McCarthy hearings. It's great stuff, it really is.

So go read the article and enjoy. It's a real stroll down the dark recesses of memory lane.

TV ROMANCE....So we were watching the finale of The Bachelorette last night — I'm using "we" in a pretty loose sense here — and once again I found myself wondering about the attraction of these shows. I'm not thinking of how they're arguably sexist, classist, racist, just plain offensive, or any of that. I'm just wondering how they succeed even on their own terms.

The draw of these shows is obviously their romantic lure: we get to watch in astonishing detail while a couple falls in love. But doesn't the format of the show make it a little too obvious just how mechanical the whole affair is? After all, on every single one of these shows all you have to do is give the guy/gal 25 members of the opposite sex for a few weeks and bingo! With almost computerlike precision they fall deeply in love with at least one of the contestants — and usually with two or three of them.

How is it possible to retain our fantasies about the ineffable and mysterious qualities of love under these circumstances? Or our common notion that the people we choose as our mates are one in a million? Why does this all-too-obvious refutation of romance nonetheless seem romantic?

I know, I know, I'm overanalyzing. But I still wonder about this.

APOLOGIZE, PLEASE....OK, count me in as a Democrat who thinks Corrine Brown was out of line yesterday:

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown verbally attacked a top Bush administration official during a briefing on the Haiti crisis Wednesday, calling the President's policy on the beleaguered nation "racist" and his representatives "a bunch of white men."

Her outburst was directed at Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill. Noriega, a Mexican-American, is the State Department's top official for Latin America.

....Noriega later told Brown: "As a Mexican-American, I deeply resent being called a racist and branded a white man," according to three participants.

Brown then told him "you all look alike to me," the participants said.

Calling our policy racist is OK — it's not my style, but it's within the bounds of common polemical language — but the rest isn't. It's offensive, and it's still offensive regardless of whether Brown is black, white, or Martian. She needs to apologize, and she needs to mean it.

Via OxBlog.

A REAL UN ARMY....Am I just being suckered by a pretty face, or is Max Boot genuinely a neocon worth listening to? Maybe a little of both, but it's hard not to pay attention when he writes seriously about the problems of peacekeeping and nation building in the 21st century:

Nationally, the United States needs to create a standing agency devoted to nation-building; it should have a director with the authority to force disparate departments in the U.S. government to work together, something that didn't happen before the invasion of Iraq....There are also international organizations that can assist. NATO is creating a 21,000-strong Response Force. The European Union wants to follow suit.

....Don't forget the United Nations. It currently deploys more than 45,000 peacekeepers, but their effectiveness is severely limited because they are supposed to enforce existing peace accords and stay strictly neutral even if one party is clearly at fault.

....The U.N. needs a tough, professional force like the French Foreign Legion that would not quail before Haitian gang leaders or Serbian ethnic-cleansers. Members of such an outfit would have to be recruited on merit and trained together; it could not be cobbled together at the last minute from the military riffraff of Third World dictatorships.

Boot himself admits that these ideas are currently "wishful thinking" both because of problems with the UN itself and with the deep animus toward the UN within the United States. But even so it's nice to hear a conservative voice willing to face the obvious: we can't police the world by ourselves, and that means having to rethink our willingness to cooperate with multinational institutions if we want to achieve our goals.

Needless to say, that kind of cooperation inevitably requires genuine concessions on both sides. We simply won't get everything we want and we have to accept that up front. Would Boot be willing to accept these restrictions on our freedom of action when push came to shove?

I don't know. But it's good that he puts the issue on the table. Democrats and liberals ought to pick up this peace offering and run with it.

SUPERMARKET STRIKE ABOUT TO END?....The LA Times reports that the supermarket strike may be close to an end:

The deal on the table would trim supermarket employees' health benefits and create a second tier of new workers who would earn less than those hired before the dispute began, according to sources who know the rough details of the proposed contract.

It's hard not to have mixed feelings about this. The strike has been brutally hard on the supermarket workers, and for their sake I'm happy that they may be going back to work soon. On the other hand, it sounds like management is going to get away with fairly substantial cutbacks in both pay and benefits.

It's just heartbreaking. I don't support every union demand in every case, but it's hard to believe we've come to this: instead of bargaining for increased pay and benefits, the UFCW is reduced to merely begging for pay and benefits to be cut a little less than management would like.

When did the land of opportunity become a country where the only thing that modestly paid service workers have to look forward to is even lower pay in the future?

LIFE AT THE TOP....I saw this story earlier today about how well senators did in the stock market but didn't pay much attention to it. Sure, they did way better than us ordinary schmoes. And yeah, they even did a lot better than top corporate executives, beating the market by 12% compared to the execs' 5%.

But who knows? Senators are probably able to hire pretty good financial planners, aren't they? Maybe it's all completely innocent. But then there was this:

The Ziobrowski study notes that the politicians' timing of transactions is uncanny. Most stocks bought by senators had shown little movement before the purchase. But after the stock was bought, it outperformed the market by 28.6 per cent on average in the following calender year.

Returns on sell transactions are equally intriguing. Stocks sold by senators performed in line with the market the year following the sale.

Uncanny indeed! Maybe somebody should bring a class action suit against the entire senate. And quickly, before they pass some kind of tort reform bill that makes it impossible....

UPDATE: Mark Schmitt expresses some doubts about this study here.

BUSH AND THE CONSTITUTION....Interesting tidbit on ABC News tonight. In the past few years George Bush has expressed support for no fewer than five constitutional amendments:

• Flag burning
  

• Victims rights
  

• Abortion
  

• Balanced budget
  

• Gay marriage
  

He really seems to think the constitution is just a rough draft, doesn't he?

On the other hand, he apparently opposed ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. I guess there are a few things too trivial to justify mucking with the constitution after all.

REPUBLICANS AND NATIONAL SECURITY....House Speaker Dennis Hastert has decided not to extend the May 27 deadline for the 9/11 commission to finish its work. The commission had previously asked for a 60-day extension because they were having trouble getting the documents and interviews they needed from the Bush administration.

Here's the explanation from Hastert's spokesman:

He thinks the report is overdue and we need to get the recommendations as soon as possible. He is also concerned it will become a political football if this thing is extended and it is released in the middle of the presidential campaign.

Aren't you supposed to at least pretend that you're motivated solely by what's best for the country? But here we have Hastert's spokesman blithely admitting in public that he doesn't want to let the commission do its job properly because it might be politically inconvenient for the president.

They don't even have the good grace to lie about this stuff anymore. Jeebus.

UPDATE: There were actually two ridiculous things about this story and I decided to limit my post to this one. Josh Marshall regales us with the other.

YEAH, THAT ABOUT COVERS IT....Via Sully:

GAY MARRIAGE HEADCOUNT....Over at OxBlog, Josh Chafetz is making use of the distributed nature of the blogosphere to try and figure out how much support a gay marriage amendment would have in the Senate. So far (as of 8:00 PM here on the west coast) he's collected data on 56 senators and it looks like Republicans are in favor 27-5 while Democrats are opposed 22-1 (plus one independent opposed).

Now, there's no telling how these votes might change once the arm twisting starts, but it sure looks like an amendment has practically no chance of passing Congress, let alone getting approval from the states. In other words, like the impeachment of Bill Clinton, which was also a foregone conclusion before the voting even started, it's just political theater, not a serious attempt at legislation.

It's a funny bit of calculation, too. Obviously Karl Rove has read the tea leaves and thinks this is a good issue to energize Bush's Christian conservative base, but at the same time presidents need to look like winners and being on the losing end of an important vote shortly before the election is hardly the way to do that. All in all, the more I think about this the more I think that there are some pretty serious political downsides here for Bush:

• It turns off centrist voters.

• It takes the focus off national security, Bush's signature issue.

• It's likely to make look Bush look weak since he'll almost certainly be on the losing end of a vote on an issue he's staked some personal mojo on.

• It energizes gays, at least a few of whom were likely to give him the benefit of the doubt before this (see Sullivan, Andrew). How many gays are going to vote for Bush now? And how many are going to work hard to defeat him even if they were relatively apathetic before?
  

I'm no Karl Rove or James Carville, but put all this together and I wonder if the White House has made a serious political miscalculation here? I'm starting to think maybe so.

TAXES, TAXES, TAXES....Alan Greenspan, testifying as an individual, not as chairman of the Fed — and what's up with that? — is worried about the size of federal deficit. However, he

admitted that the size of the deficit made it unlikely that spending cuts alone would be sufficient to accomplish the task. And he said it was unlikely that the United States could "grow its way" out of its budget deficits solely with an expanding economy, a solution often promoted by conservatives.

Hmmm, let's see. Spending cuts won't do it. Economic growth won't do it. So what's left?

Oh yeah, repealing Bush's tax cuts. Funny how he just hates to admit that even though he's left no other mathematical alternative, isn't it?

There are times when I wonder if there are any adults left in Washington. As it happens, I agree with Greenspan that some minor tweaks to retirement ages and cost-of-living calculations could go a long way toward reducing the future cost of Social Security, but why is it so hard to admit that taxes are going to have to go up too? What's with these guys?

DICK CHENEY: NO AUDIE MURPHY?....I'm saddened, of course, that my preoccupation with George Bush's National Guard record has been brought to a halt by the lack of any solid evidence that he did anything wrong. Sigh. Needless to say, I keep hoping that our intrepid corps of investigative journalists is busily digging away and will eventually come up with something juicy.

In the meantime, the conservative Byron York has been talking to his conservative friends and says that Dick Cheney may be next on the chopping block:

"There's going to be a massive attack on Dick Cheney soon," says one source who keeps up with such matters. "The Cheney story of deferments makes Bush look like Audie Murphy."

I'll bet it does. I eagerly await the details.

POSTSCRIPT: In case you don't get the Audie Murphy reference, click here.

PROPOSITION 57....Enough about gay marriage. How about those deficit bonds that Arnold wants us Californians to approve next Tuesday? I know that 90% of you don't care about this, so consider this a bit of pandering to my fellow inmates here in the Golden State.

Here's the deal: last year the legislature passed about $10 billion in bonds to help cover the deficit for 2003-04. Needless to say, 2003-04 is nearly over, and the money has been spent, so it's too late to fix this problem either by raising taxes or lowering spending. What's more, since there's a chance that the courts might overturn these bonds, our only choice is to approve Arnold's bonds via a constitutional initiative. It's either that or default.

Up until now, anyway, that's been my vague understanding. However, thanks to a reader I finally located a genuinely readable explanation of the whole issue from the unlikely source of E.J. De La Rosa & Co., an investment banking firm. It's only four pages long, so go ahead and read it if you're interested in learning more about the nuts and bolts of the deficit.

The bottom line is this: it's not true that the money has already been spent and that's why we have to approve Arnold's bonds. Rather, California has $14 billion in short term debt that we have to pay off in June. That's what the bonds are for.

But if the bond measure doesn't pass (and if the legislature's bonds get overturned in court), what can we do? Answer: we can issue more short term debt.

Now, there are indeed problems with this. The short term debt would be issued at a higher interest rate, it would put a pretty tight straitjacket on state spending, and it would have to be paid back fairly quickly.

However, it wouldn't be fiscal Armageddon. What it would be is a firm order to the legislature to raise taxes and cut spending in order to pay off the short term debt. This is what should have happened years ago, and painful as it may be, it's now obvious to me that this is still an option.

Arnold wants to have it both ways: he wants to have a tax cut and he wants a bond measure to help finance it. This is almost Kafka-esque irresponsibility and I think it's time to cut the crap. The only way to get ourselves out of the mess we're in is via both spending cuts and tax increases.

So despite the undoubted problems it's going to cause, I think Californians ought to vote No on 57. Combined with a Yes vote on 56, which allows the legislature to raise taxes, and the line item veto, which allows every California governor to cut spending to his heart's content, we have all the tools we need to bring the budget into balance.

It's time for everyone to grow up. If the credit card is a bad idea next year, it's a bad idea this year too. Let's go ahead and tear it up.

UPDATE: Armed Liberal has a different take: we need to restore liquidity first and then fix the budget. It's a reasonable point. But after three years of this crisis, my feeling is that the legislature (and the governor) have proven that they won't act responsibly unless there's a gun to their head. If we ease up the pressure, we're just going to see more smoke and mirrors, more posturing, and more flights from reality.

So while I might have voted for the Prop 57/58 combo three years ago, I'm not willing to do it now. I flatly don't believe them when they say that if we give them one more chance they'll do the right thing this time.

SPECIAL RIGHTS?....Does this even make sense? After bringing up the tired bogeyman of third graders being recruited to the gay cause, John McIntyre says this:

It's not surprising that many people are uncomfortable at seeing homosexuality actively promoted in schools, glorified by the media, and now sanctioned by the state.

In fact, most Americans want the government out of the business of casting moral judgments and would be fine with the government remaining agnostic on the issue of homosexuality. That means the state should not punish or discriminate against gays and lesbians, nor should the government cede special rights to them.

Special rights? The whole point of the fight for gay marriage is that it's not a special right. It's simply allowing gays and lesbians to have the same legal rights as everyone else. What's so hard to understand about this?

(And on a related note, what's with the common belief among social conservatives that homosexuality is being "actively promoted" in our schools? It's true that I haven't been in school for nearly 30 years now, but this still seems rather unlikely to me. Is this just a code phrase for schools suggesting that gays shouldn't be routinely mocked and beaten up, or what?)

KERRY ON GAY MARRIAGE....I've had a number of people email to say that I was unfair to John Kerry yesterday when I suggested that his opposition to a gay marriage amendment was less than inspiring. I based that on a news clip in which he said this:

I believe, as a matter of belief, that marriage is between a man and a woman....If the amendment provides for partnership and civil union, which I believe is the appropriate way to extend rights, that would be a good amendment.

Several people have pointed out that the clip failed to provide the context of Kerry's reply: he wasn't talking about approval of a differently worded federal amendment, he was talking about possible state amendments. His official statement says he opposes a federal amendment, will vote against one, and thinks marriage should continue to be a state issue.

Fair enough. I'm sticking with my initial reaction that Kerry's response was fairly flat, but as a factual matter it appears that he wasn't endorsing any kind of federal amendment, only possible state amendments, something the video clip didn't make clear. Correction so noted.

LEAD PIPE CINCH....The Washington DC water district is finally getting serious about lead:

D.C. health officials plan to announce today that all pregnant women and children younger than 6 who live in homes with lead service lines should immediately stop drinking unfiltered tap water and have their blood tested, a rare safety measure they say is necessary to safeguard the city's most vulnerable population.

....WASA conducted tests last summer on tap water at 6,118 residences, and most of them, 4,075 homes, had water that exceeded the lead limit set by the EPA in 1991. This is the first time the city's water has shown significant lead contamination since the late 1980s, officials said.

It's about damn time. There's compelling evidence that lead levels even well below the federal standards cause large IQ drops in small children, and there's just no reason we should be taking chances with this stuff anymore. If DC can replace all its lead pipes for eight bucks a month on local water bills, they should do it.

Right now.

MORE ON GAY MARRIAGE....Some miscellanous thoughts on a gay marriage amendment:

• One of the reasons I think this is purely political posturing on Bush's part is that a constitutional amendment on gay marriage has almost no chance of passing. The polls I've seen show roughly 55-60% in favor (some higher, some lower) and that's probably not nearly enough. After all, the ERA had upwards of 90% support when it was first proposed, but it stalled at 35 states even though it also had the advantage of being on the right side of social trends. FMA has much lower levels of support, is clearly on the wrong side of long-term trends toward greater tolerance of gays, and is a highly partisan issue. It's a loser.

• The text of the leading amendment proposal is this:

  Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

  Is the intent of the second sentence merely to prevent courts from forcing gay marriage on states without legislative approval, or is it to ban both gay marriage and civil unions entirely?

  Eugene Volokh and Ramesh Ponnuru have long and learned opinions about this, but I have a short and simple one: it's designed to ban everything. Why do I say this? Because it would be quite easy to construct wording that made their intent clear if the amendment's drafters wanted to. The fact that they've chosen deliberately confusing language indicates that they're hoping to ban everything but are also hoping to fool people into thinking otherwise.

• It's hard to pretend to be a "compassionate conservative" when you've so publicly allied yourself with a group that's almost certain to be publicly frothing at the mouth over this before long. Maybe the whole compassionate conservative thing is a dead letter anyway, but I have to think that some people continue to believe it. They probably won't for much longer.
  

Finally, I have to say that John Kerry's response to Bush's statement wasn't very impressive. He's for civil unions, which is fine, but also said he'd support an amendment as long as it allowed for that. I wish he were willing to take a stronger stand against any kind of constitutional amendment instead of indulging in this kind of all-too-typical fence straddling.

UPDATE: It appears that I was fooled by a video clip that failed to include the context of Kerry's remarks. He was talking about possible state amendments, not expressing support for a differently worded federal amendment. More here.

PRIVATIZE MARRIAGE?....Libertarians frequently suggest that the state should get out of the marriage business entirely. Just make it a private contractual affair.

This sounds good, but it's impossible: the state is heavily involved whether we like it or not, and in ways that simply can't be privatized. Atrios explains.

HOORAY FOR DENTISTS!....Dental technology sure seems to have improved lately. I just had two fillings replaced and (a) it took about 20 minutes, (b) I didn't even feel the novocaine (or whatever) going in, (c) the novocaine (or whatever) worked absolutely perfectly and I didn't feel a thing during the whole procedure, and (d) I had only a very minor numbing left over when it was done. No drooling!

This is excellent. Toothbrush technology, on the other hand, is positively annoying these days. Note to Virginia Postrel: sometimes concern with aesthetic factors can become excessive. I think the toothbrush manufacturers of the world might have crossed that line.

REIGNITING THE CULTURE WARS....It's official: George Bush has now endorsed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. This has obviously been in the works since at least the State of the Union address and comes as no great surprise.

But while there are plenty of things to say about this — you can head over to Andrew Sullivan's site if you want to dive into the detail — the thing that strikes me most about today's announcement is that it's so blatantly political. I don't think that Bush himself is especially anti-gay, and I'm willing to bet that most of his advisors aren't either. This decision isn't one of principle but of careful political calculation.

And that calculation is this: the culture wars are good for Republicans. And not just in the background, but front and center, waved around like a bloody sheet. There are some pretty obvious risks to this strategy — why risk losing votes in the center, after all? — which means that Bush and his advisors must have made the calculation that they have no choice: they can't win unless the hardcore culture warriors are fighting mad and on their side.

I haven't thought through all the implications of this but wanted to toss it out half formed anyway while it was on my mind. Is reigniting the culture wars really a winning strategy for Bush? And why did he feel like he had to do it? I'll probably have more thoughts on this later.

UPDATE: I thought this was clear in my post, but maybe not. All I'm saying is that I suspect that Bush is not personally especially homophobic. Rather, he's supporting FMA mainly because he thinks it will help him win votes.

What's more, this is actually more despicable than if he were acting out of genuine conviction. To me, it looks like he's willing screw an entire class of people that he doesn't really care about just in order to win a few more votes. That's contemptible.

SEARCHING ALABAMA....Lead times for comic strips being what they are, I suspect that Garry Trudeau has missed the boat on this. Still, you never know. The National Guard story may have quieted down after the document dump a couple of weeks ago, but something new might come up to put it back on the front page at any moment. It's worth a try.

HAITI....I don't really have a strong opinion about whether military action in Haiti is justified, but Phil Carter puts some perspective on Colin Powell's surprisingly firm insistence that we don't want to intervene there:

However, one has to wonder just what is on the table in the way of U.S. contingency plans for [Haiti]. This is not 1994 -- we can't load the XVIII Airborne Corps onto planes to back up any sort of diplomatic initiative in Haiti. At most, we could probably muster a MEU to send to Haiti on short notice, or perhaps a piece of a unit that's already redeployed from Iraq. But doing so would have tremendously difficult secondary and tertiary consequences for America's military that's already stretched to its breaking point. Our commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan now constrain our foreign policy to the point that we cannot consider the deployment of troops to a place like Haiti as a viable option -- there just ain't any more to give.

Phil's general point — all our troops are currently tied down in Iraq — is a commonplace one, but this example really drives the point home. Haiti is a small place, after all, and is it really the case that our military is stretched so thin that we don't even have the troops necessary for this kind of relatively small intervention?

If we are literally stretched so thin that even intervening in Haiti causes problems, it means our freedom of action is now practically nonexistent. Not a comforting thought, is it?

THE DECLINE OF PUPPETRY....Jeez, they don't make puppets like they used to, do they? Last November, the Pentagon's favorite Iraqi exile puppet, Ahmed Chalabi, displayed a rare moment of honesty while commenting on the Bush administration's insistence that power had to be handed over to Iraqis on June 30 no matter what:

The whole thing was set up so President Bush could come to the airport in October for a ceremony to congratulate the new Iraqi government. When you work backwards from that, you understand the dates the Americans were insisting on.

Then, last week, responding to criticism that pretty much every piece of intelligence Chalabi provided on Iraqi WMD during the 90s has turned out to be fabricated, he said this:

What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants.

How to say this nicely? You're supposed to stay loyal to the people you've duped into spending billions of dollars and hundred of lives to liberate your country. And you're definitely not supposed to admit that the entire thing has been driven by crass political considerations and outright lies on both sides.

Is this part of some even deeper scheming on Chalabi's part that isn't apparent on the surface? Is he unable to control his fury that the U.S. didn't simply install him as ruler of Iraq last summer? Or is he just not very bright as puppets go?

Take your pick.

POLL RESULTS....According to a new Los Angeles Times poll, Kerry leads Edwards in California by 56% to 24%.

They also claim that 51% of voters approve of Proposition 57 — Arnold's $15 billion bond — "once the measure was explained to them." What the hell is that supposed to mean? Lots of opinions change once the issues are explained, but most voters aren't going to hear the Times' explanation before they vote. Wouldn't it be better to tell us what people think before the measure was explained to them?

CALIFORNIA INITIATIVES....I sort of promised last week to try and make some sense out of the initiatives on the California ballot. After all, I am Calpundit, right?

And I tried, I really did. But I failed. At least, I failed on the hard stuff. But before we get to that, let's go through the easy stuff:

• Proposition 55 is a school bond, just a run-of-the-mill bond for repairing schools, fixing infrastructure, etc. My take: sure, go ahead and vote for it. On the other hand, if you hate bonds, vote against it. In any case, it's pr