Body and Soul

Thoughts on the body politic, the human soul, Billie Holiday songs (and other people's) -- with a lot more questions than answers

Sunday, August 03, 2003

I have moved Body and Soul to a new site in a much more friendly and attractive neighborhood:

http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/



Please update your bookmarks and click on over.

Saturday, August 02, 2003

I don't think my brain has really shifted back to politics yet, but I found a few intriguing, and connected, posts that I want to take note of:
  • First, Kos says (and demonstrates) something that ought to be carved in stone: Lieberman is not a Republican. And he's not just a Democrat on paper, either. On most issues he's well to the left of any Republican.

  • Next, Ampersand wonders why progressives like Dean and don't give Kucinich as much support as his positions deserve. As usual at Alas, a great discussion follows in the comments section.

  • Kevin Moore continues the discussion of Dean and Kucinich at blargblog (just added to the sidebar).

  • And finally Kevin Raybould finds an interesting reason to be pleased that Kucinich is in the race.

Put all those posts together, and they've started me thinking about why I slapped a Howard Dean bumpersticker on my car awhile back. I've thought about plastering the bumper with stickers from all the Democrats (okay, I might skip Lieberman, even though I'd vote for him) because I really don't have a favorite. I like some things about each of them, and dislike other things. I'm not sure that would make any sense to anyone, because that's not how the game is played, but that is where I am politically at the moment. Getting Bush out is far more important to me than electing any particular candidate.

When people write about Dean's appeal to progressives, two words come up all the time -- electability and anger. But I don't especially like Dean because I think he's electable. I don't know if he is or not. For all I know, he may be no more electable than Kucinich. And while hearing someone voice a lot of the anger I feel is appealing, Kucinich can do it just as well, and he's angry about more of the same things I am.

So why Dean? I think what I like about him at this point is not so much what he has to say to me as what he says to the other candidates. When Dean started attracting a lot of money and attention, the other candidates began losing a little of their caution. Kerry, especially, seemed to suddenly remember some of the things that got him into politics thirty years ago. When Kucinich got into the race, I hoped he would have that effect, raising concerns about war, empire, and civil liberties that the Democrats seemed determined to ignore. I never thought he had a chance to win, but I hoped his presence would force them to deal with those issues. It hasn't happened very much. Kucinich has simply been too easy to dismiss, and I don't think you can blame lack of support from progressive Democrats for that. Whatever intangible quality it is that inspires people and makes them want to hear you out, Kucinich seems to lack it. But I continue to pay attention to what he says, and I hope he'll prove me wrong.

I don't particularly care if Howard Dean ends up as the Democratic nominee. On many issues, I prefer Kerry, or even Gephardt. But I would like whoever ends up as the nominee to have a little of Dean's fire lit under him (I'm assuming, of course, that the nominee will be male, which I think is a safe assumption, although far from a reasonable one). I'd like him to have proof -- and I think Dean offers that proof -- that he'll be rewarded for speaking up, not for caution.

Monday, July 28, 2003

Communing with the redwoods

I'll be gone all this week. Should be back at the computer on Saturday. In the meantime, I just added several good blogs to the top of the sidebar on my new TypePad site. And the old ones are great, too. There are also several interesting discussions going on over there, including a remarkably enlightening and civil -- keep it that way, okay? -- debate about Democrats and Greens.

Colonialist mentality watch

The natives are unbelievably shiftless, and lack initiative without our example to guide them.

Sunday, July 27, 2003

I just discovered a new factor in the California recall election. The recall won't be the only thing on the ballot. Ward Connerly's suspiciously financed , anti-affirmative action "racial privacy initiative" qualified last year to go on the ballot in the March 2004 primary. The initiative would stop state and local agencies from collecting racial statistics, except for medical research.

A poll taken a little over a year ago showed almost half of California voters supporting it. Eighteen percent were undecided. Tricky to fight, because it's superficially appealing -- who's against the concept of making race irrelevant? Especially in a minority majority state like California. But there are reasons for collecting such data:

I hate checking the box on government forms, but less out of concern for my privacy and more because of my desire for accuracy. As a Filipino American with a Spanish surname, I'm a demographer's nightmare. Asian? Hispanic? On the census, I mark "other" and write-in "Aspanic." But race information is more helpful than not. A short time ago, your humble columnist was stopped by a police officer for speeding. Principles of the free market do not extend to driving. After the standard ticketing process, the officer asked me about my race.

I was totally taken aback by the question -- angry, even (though perhaps I was more angered by the speeding ticket). Later, after successfully contesting the ticket in court (the officer hadn't used a calibrated radar gun), I learned that having law enforcement ask the racial question is the only way for the government to find out whether, over a period of time, the law stopped ethnic drivers more than whites. If we drive while color-blind, how will we know whether the CHP is protecting our rights or violating them?


That pretty much sums it up. A lot of bigotry shows up not in obvious incidents, but in patterns of discriminatory behavior. Without the data, you have no way of tracking it. Racism won't disappear, but fighting it will get harder.

Anyway, according to today's LA Times, the initiative has been kicked up to October, and will share the ballot with the recall.

Now that's interesting because turnout is crucial here. Talk radio is doing it's best to bring out the angry white guy vote. The "personalities" are appearing in paid ads. My question is, will the threat to affirmative action bring out progressives who won't rush to the polls only to support Davis?

Speaking of potential California gubernatorial candidates...

Max was right.

Anytime I say anything positive about Bush and Company, I end up eating my words later. But fools rush in...

The news that they're planning to triple the amount of aid to Afghanistan sure sounds like a good thing. The United States never had a better opportunity to contribute to the development of a democracy in an Islamic country than it had in Afghanistan, and we simply threw it away. I don't know if it's too late now to make up the difference, but it's certainly worth trying.

Now, the things that make me wary:
  • The money "is designed to fund projects that can be completed within a year to have maximum impact on the lives of the Afghan people before scheduled elections in October 2004."

    Coincidentally, we happen to have elections scheduled a month later. A few shiny new Afghan schools and training programs for women would show the president's enormous compassion. Will anyone notice if security is so lacking that no one can make any use of those schools or programs a few months later?

  • The money is "to be shifted from existing foreign and military aid accounts so as not to increase the deficit."

    I wouldn't blink at that if this administration didn't make a habit of shifting money around between aid programs in tricky ways. Promising money for AIDS relief in Africa, while simultaneously cutting food aid to the continent. Getting part of the money needed to rebuild Iraq by cutting our contribution to the World Food Program. The new money always makes headlines. The cuts go unnoticed.

  • "The administration hopes to hold another donors conference as part of the September meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico, with the expectation that the new $1 billion aid package will inspire other countries to increase their contributions as well, one senior administration official said."

    Sounds good. Except the last time Bush challenged Europe to live up to our example when it comes to foreign aid, he used the occasion as an excuse to bash Europeans for denying starving Africans the benefits of genetically modified food. I hate to be this cynical, but I will not be the least bit surprised if Bush and Company suddenly discover hunger in Afghanistan, and insist they have the perfect solution. By the way, Iraq's "agriculture reconstruction efforts" will be led by Dan Amstutz, an expert at destroying agriculture in developing countries, and a former executive of the Cargill Corporation, which is a leading promoter of GM food.

  • And then there's just the fact that blatant lies set off my radar. Compare:

    In a speech in October, President Bush noted that the United States and 60 other countries had pledged $4.5 billion in aid to Afghanistan over five years at a donors conference in Tokyo and said "America is delivering on our pledge; we're writing our checks. We're currently implementing more than $300 million worth of reconstruction and recovery projects."


    And contrast:

    Although Congress authorized $3.3 billion in financial and military assistance to Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, a relatively small part of that amount has been spent. Testifying in June before the House International Relations Committee, Barnett R. Rubin, former special adviser to the United Nations on Afghanistan, said that $200 million in construction projects have been completed.


    I might have more faith in this new money for Afghanistan is the president was just a tad more honest about the old money. If you pledge 3 billion and end up spending 200 million, somebody's forgetting to sign some checks.

I have mixed feelings about the prospect of Arianna Huffington running for governor. Maybe my discomfort is just a matter of her style -- too slick, too celebrity-wanna-be. Maybe it's because I first got to know her as the conservative wife of my conservative congressman (who, by the way, is also running.), and I'm wary of political converts. Sometimes they're trustworthy; sometimes they're people with no core beliefs, always looking for something new. I don't know which kind of convert Arianna is. And while she's great with one-liners, that doesn't necessarily mean she has the skills to govern a state.

Then there's her love of vouchers. We don't need a governor who wants to take money away from public schools.

And then, I wonder if she has a chance. I wonder if her presence on the ballot would make people more likely to vote for the recall (which I think is a lousy way to run a government, however much I dislike Davis), and thereby hand the election to the Republicans. I wonder if anyone who snuck in with a small percentage of the vote, no party support in the assembly and senate, and inheriting our magnificent budget could do anything other than make speeches and flounder. I wonder if anybody can deal with this state's problems.

I wonder if anyone knows what they're talking about when they make predictions about this election, which is certainly weirder than any election I ever voted in.

But even though I definitely plan to vote no on the recall, and hope it fails (although I can't see very many people showing up at a special election, with nothing else on the ballot, for the sole purpose of saving Gray Davis's job), it would be nice to have someone to vote for on part 2 of that ballot, and on most issues Huffington is good. She obviously has much higher name recognition and more money than Peter Camejo, the Green Party candidate, who, in any case, seems willing to support Huffington if she decides to run, and apparently they're working together on a progressive response to this mess.

It's intriguing. Not surprisingly, people who are a lot less wary than I am have already set up a website to support her candidacy.

Saturday, July 26, 2003

George Soros has been reading Billmon. He will be running full page ads in the New York Times the St. Louis Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle tomorrow with a list of a dozen Bush administration lies about the war. You can download a copy of the ad -- headlined WHEN THE NATION GOES TO WAR, THE PEOPLE DESERVE THE TRUTH -- here.

UPDATE: Oh, Jeez, I was kidding about Billmon, but check out the fine print.

I find it very hard to make sense of what Bush is doing in Liberia.

From today's New York Times:

President Bush gave orders today for a naval amphibious force that includes 2,300 marines to sail from the Mediterranean and nearby waters to a position off the coast of Liberia, but left vague what its specific mission would be.


So, we're sending more than 2,000 marines to somewhere in the vicinity of Liberia, but we don't know what they're going to do when they get there, or if we do know, we aren't telling anybody?

That's what I like about this gang -- straight-shooters who always know exactly what they're doing, the whole lot.

Okay, I really don't want to be snide or partisan about this, because the situation in Liberia is not one anyone should be playing politics with (although, God knows there are even worse crises that seem to have fallen completely off the world's radar), but it does look distinctly like Bush is attempting to have it both ways -- to get credit for intervening to save desperate people, while at the same time not actually doing anything. In typical Bush fashion, he seems to be grabbing credit for good-hearted rhetoric, while immunizing himself against criticism of the mission. Hard to criticize when you can't figure out what it is.

The Washington Post quotes an interesting display of Bushspeak in explaining the mission:

"We're deeply concerned that the condition of the Liberian people is getting worse and worse and worse," Bush said during a Rose Garden appearance with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. "Aid can't get to people. We're worried about the outbreak of disease. And so our commitment is to enable [the Economic Community of West African States] to go in."


We're deeply concerned about people in Liberia, and we plan to watch as Nigerians try to save them.

I admit, that's a bit harsh. The Pentagon, according to the NYT is talking about "providing logistical, intelligence and communications support" but what that means is that right now there don't seem to be any plans to get the marines off the ships. And Nigeria, to put it mildly, doesn't have the military capacity of the United States. Worse, history doesn't bode well here. ECOMOG (the West African peacekeeping force and military arm of ECOWAS) was formed in 1990, specifically to deal with the civil war in Liberia, but quickly began to take sides in the conflict. It doesn't have a stellar reputation for respecting human rights law.

If there's any good news in this, it's simply that the marines are there -- or will be in a week or so -- and will be able to do something if anyone in the administration figures out something for them to do. But it doesn't look like the Pentagon is exactly putting its best minds to work day and night trying to figure out a solution.

Not much has been offered, and Liberians know it. And so do the aid workers who are trying to help them:

For aid workers, there have been too many dashed hopes. "I'm not impressed," said Sam Nagbe of Oxfam. "The US is the world superpower. They have all the logistical and financial might. We expected them to be playing a leading role, not just sending a ship off the coast."


Since this is a blog post, not a book, I won't go into what a meaningful intervention would entail, but International Crisis Group has made a number of recommendations. Here is a whittled down version.

The key though, is that solving the problems in Liberia isn't just a matter of keeping warriors away from civilians for a few months. It would mean a long term commitment to dealing with the social and economic problems of the entire region, and it is hard to imagine Bush taking any real interest in that.

I find it very hard to make sense of what Bush is doing in Liberia.

From today's New York Times:
President Bush gave orders today for a naval amphibious force that includes 2,300 marines to sail from the Mediterranean and nearby waters to a position off the coast of Liberia, but left vague what its specific mission would be.


So, we're sending more than 2,000 marines to somewhere in the vicinity of Liberia, but we don't know what they're going to do when they get there, or if we do know, we aren't telling anybody?

That's what I like about this gang -- straight-shooters who always know exactly what they're doing, the whole lot.

Okay, I really don't want to be snide or partisan about this, because the situation in Liberia is not one anyone should be playing politics with (although, God knows there are even worse crises that seem to have fallen completely off the world's radar), but it does look distinctly like Bush is attempting to have it both ways -- to get credit for intervening to save desperate people, while at the same time not actually doing anything. In typical Bush fashion, he seems to be grabbing credit for good-hearted rhetoric, while immunizing himself against criticism of the mission. Hard to criticize when you can't figure out what it is.

The Washington Post quotes an interesting display of Bushspeak in explaining the mission:

"We're deeply concerned that the condition of the Liberian people is getting worse and worse and worse," Bush said during a Rose Garden appearance with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. "Aid can't get to people. We're worried about the outbreak of disease. And so our commitment is to enable [the Economic Community of West African States] to go in."


We're deeply concerned about people in Liberia, and we plan to watch as Nigerians try to save them.

I admit, that's a bit harsh. The Pentagon, according to the NYT is talking about "providing logistical, intelligence and communications support" but what that means is that right now there don't seem to be any plans to get the marines off the ships. And Nigeria, to put it mildly, doesn't have the military capacity of the United States. Worse, history doesn't bode well here. ECOMOG (the West African peacekeeping force and military arm of ECOWAS) was formed in 1990, specifically to deal with the civil war in Liberia, but quickly began to take sides in the conflict. It doesn't have a stellar reputation for respecting human rights law.

If there's any good news in this, it's simply that the marines are there -- or will be in a week or so -- and will be able to do something if anyone in the administration figures out something for them to do. But it doesn't look like the Pentagon is exactly putting its best minds to work day and night trying to figure out a solution.

Not much has been offered, and Liberians know it. And so do the aid workers who are trying to help them:

For aid workers, there have been too many dashed hopes. "I'm not impressed," said Sam Nagbe of Oxfam. "The US is the world superpower. They have all the logistical and financial might. We expected them to be playing a leading role, not just sending a ship off the coast."


Since this is a blog post, not a book, I won't go into what a meaningful intervention would entail, but International Crisis Group has made a number of recommendations. Here is a whittled down version.

The key though, is that solving the problems in Liberia isn't just a matter of keeping warriors away from civilians for a few months. It would mean a long term commitment to dealing with the social and economic problems of the entire region, and it is hard to imagine Bush taking any real interest in that.

Miracle of miracles! What do you know? Gray Davis is running as -- of all things -- a Democrat, and a progressive one at that:

Davis, who has sought in recent days to portray himself in a more liberal light, moving away from a carefully calculated image as a centrist, made his only public appearance with his wife, Sharon, at a battered-women's shelter in East Los Angeles. Surrounding himself with Latinas and speaking broken Spanish, Davis criticized a proposal by Assembly Republicans to cut money for such shelters to help pare down the state's $38-billion budget shortfall, painting himself as a defender of progressive social programs.

"Women need to know someone is on the other end of the phone when they call for help," the governor told counselors at the center, which established the first bilingual abuse hotline in California 27 years ago with aid from the state. "This race is really about changing directions, not changing governors," he added, suggesting again that the recall election amounted to a coup attempt by conservatives.

Signaling the governor's support from left-leaning organizations, a leading abortion rights group launched a nationwide e-mail campaign Friday condemning the recall, while environmental groups including the Sierra Club announced a Monday event to criticize the election as a threat to California's air and water.


There seems to be a plan here, although I'm not politically astute enough to judge whether it's a good one or not. But I must say I'm feeling like a crazy fundamentalist at a Republican convention. It is so nice to be pandered to.

Friday, July 25, 2003

Apparently the blues have passed (see the post below) and I feel like I have something I have to say -- albeit something brief.

I hate Green bashing. Democrats need to stop blaming Greens for everything and reach out to them. If you can't find a whole lot to agree with Greens on, you're so far outside the history of what the Democratic Party has always stood for that you shouldn't even call yourself a Democrat.

Dennis Kucinich has set the standard. Who's going to follow?

Blogger Blues

I gathered together a bunch of things I wanted to write about, looked at them all, and suddenly felt...well...dumb -- in both sense of the word. Speechless and stupid. I don't know if it's me or the news, but I suspect the former. I know ignorance isn't supposed to stop anyone from blogging, but awareness of my own ignorance seems to have cut off the supply of ideas and opinions to my brain, or at least the ability of those ideas and opinions to clasp hands and form a complete circle.

Fragments:

  • Back in May, Bush signed an executive order giving American oil companies operating in Iraq immunity from "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process" related to "all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein." Which I guess makes the oil companies more powerful than the U.S. government, because, as an interesting article from Financial Times points out, the U.S. is constrained by a body of "occupation law" that was designed to discourage aggression by making the occupying power completely responsible for meeting the needs of the civilian population. Under international law, Iraqi civilians can bring civil and criminal actions against the occupying powers if they're needs aren't met. As long as the complaint isn't agaist the oil companies.

  • Richard Lugar says that before the war he asked people in the administration about the cost of reconstruction, but he always got the same answer, ''No problem -- oil, oil, oil.''

  • This is just a coincidence, right? Philip Carroll, a former chief executive of the American division of Royal Dutch Shell, heads the team that runs the Iraqi oil industry, and

    ....BP and Shell were among the first foreign companies to benefit from resumption of Iraqi oil exports when the country signed its first long-term supply contracts yesterday since the war was declared over....The Iraqi contracts indicate that the oil ministry believes that looting and sabotage at Iraqi oil facilities will not prevent it from honouring export contracts.....The news will also be seen as evidence that conditions in the country are becoming more stable.


    I guess it depends on how you define stability.

    It's tempting just to laugh at Bush and Company when they laud "Iraq successes" that most of us, thinking more in terms of how people are coping, don't see as terribly successful, but I guess it's all a matter of what you view as important.

  • On the other hand, some oil companies seem to think Bush, Inc. is so incompetent it can't even make the world safe for profit.

  • Did anyone read Seymour Hersh's latest in The New Yorker about how the Pentagon threw away useful sources of information on Al Qaeda because invading Iraq was a lot more important to them? Remind me again who we're supposed to be fighting.

  • Well, there's always fear and patriotism.

  • Idi Amin is feeling much better, thank you, although he does have a minor problem. I don't know why I found that interesting, except that with everybody celebrating the death of evil in Iraq, it seemed ironic to me that evil made a miraculous recovery in Saudi Arabia (in more ways than one). Evil makes a habit of doing that. As Elvis (the other one) once said, "That's what you get if you go chasing after vengeance."

  • And think vengeance is better than law.

  • There are alternatives.

Anyway, in case you've forgotten, tomorrow is the Blogathon and if you're not already sponsoring someone, please consider putting in a few dollars for Elayne, Eszter, Dustin, or MB, all of whom are giving up a lot of their time this weekend for some great causes. Good luck, guys.

Me, I'll be back when I think I have something worth saying, or re-acquire the audacity to say nothing.

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Consider how the Eli Lillies grow
Interesting revelation in the fight to allow Americans to import prescription drugs. With even Republicans supporting it, the drug companies are running scared, but they have one ally -- Christians. Or some group of people going by that name anyway.

The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) portrays its campaign as a moral fight for the "sanctity of life." Documents provided to The Washington Post, however, show that drug lobbyists played a key role in crafting its argument and in disseminating the information to lawmakers. Pharmaceutical companies oppose the legislation -- which would legalize the reimportation of U.S.-made prescription drugs that sell for less in Canada than in the United States -- not over abortion but because it would erode their profits.

The bill, likely to be voted on this week, is popular with many lawmakers seeking to reduce the cost of medicine for older Americans without relying on government subsidies. Opponents say it would open the door to unsafe and less regulated drugs and drain profits that companies use, in part, to research and develop new medicines.

A recent TVC letter sent to Congress was signed by the coalition's executive director, Andrea Sheldon Lafferty. It was originally drafted, however, by Tony Rudy, a lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies and a former top aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), computer records show. Lafferty also circulated a memo -- linking the legislation to RU-486's availability -- that was drafted by Bruce Kuhlik, a senior vice president at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group funded by the nation's biggest pharmaceutical firms.


Interesting revelation in the fight to allow Americans to import prescription drugs. With even Republicans supporting it, the drug companies are running scared, but they have one ally -- Christians. Or some group of people going by that name anyway.

The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) portrays its campaign as a moral fight for the "sanctity of life." Documents provided to The Washington Post, however, show that drug lobbyists played a key role in crafting its argument and in disseminating the information to lawmakers. Pharmaceutical companies oppose the legislation -- which would legalize the reimportation of U.S.-made prescription drugs that sell for less in Canada than in the United States -- not over abortion but because it would erode their profits.

The bill, likely to be voted on this week, is popular with many lawmakers seeking to reduce the cost of medicine for older Americans without relying on government subsidies. Opponents say it would open the door to unsafe and less regulated drugs and drain profits that companies use, in part, to research and develop new medicines.

A recent TVC letter sent to Congress was signed by the coalition's executive director, Andrea Sheldon Lafferty. It was originally drafted, however, by Tony Rudy, a lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies and a former top aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), computer records show. Lafferty also circulated a memo -- linking the legislation to RU-486's availability -- that was drafted by Bruce Kuhlik, a senior vice president at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group funded by the nation's biggest pharmaceutical firms.


Getting to the bottom of Yellowcakegate

The janitor did it.

Let's Do The Time Warp Again
I know I'm way behind on this story -- You don't really expect me to keep up on all the twists in turns in the yellowcake saga, do you? I mean, I do have a life, you know, and this administration turns out fiction faster than Joyce Carol Oates -- but the most recent version I've heard is that Stephen Hadley, a deputy to Condoleeza Rice, says it's all his fault. In October, he received memos from the CIA on the agency's doubts about the intelligence, and even discussed the matter with George Tenet, but when the garbage leaked into the SOTU address -- oops! It just slipped his mind completely. This is a guy known for his "fanatical attention to detail."

Is anyone surprised that his other career accomplishments include serving as counsel to the Tower Commission, and writing much of the report that exonerated Ronald Reagan and George I in the Iran-Contra scandal?

Career Planning 101: Providing Excuses for the Boss.

Conversation with a Republican friend responding to the bumper sticker on my car

Him: So you're for Dean?

Me: Sort of. We need a fighter. If a better one comes along, the bumper sticker's gone. Dean's really pretty far to my right?

Him: To your right?

Me: He's not a leftist, although the media spins it that way. He's pro-death penalty, anti-gun control...

Him: Sounds like my kind of guy.

Me: In some ways, more yours than mine. The only reason anyone has him pegged as a liberal is that he's been stronger on civil liberties and the war than anybody except Kucinich, and Kucinich isn't really....

Him: And, well, you know, the gay thing...

Me: Howard Dean is gay?

Him: I don't think so. But he's in favor of gays.

Me: In favor? You mean, like they should be allowed to exist? That doesn't make him liberal, that makes him human.

Him: It doesn't win elections.