Pre-adolescent boys shall lead the way!

I was watching The Daily Show last week (here it is!), and they had a piece about the "Values Voters Summit," which features conservative Christians talking about politics. They showed a video clip of Michael Swartz, the chief of staff of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) talking about homosexuals. Of course, it's on YouTube:

It's a long video, but Stewart's crew broke down the important stuff: Schwartz says it hasn't been that long since he was "closely associated" with "pre-adolescent boys" (which, come on, sounds really funny, even though I'm sure it was very innocent), and that he finds that boys of that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than "just about any other class of people." They speak badly about homosexuals because "they don't want to be that way." They don't want to "fall into it, and that's a good instinct." As Stewart points out, there's only one thing 10- to 12-year-old boys like less than homosexuals, and that's girls.

Schwartz went on to say that all pornography is homosexual pornography, because it tuens your sexual drives inward. He thinks we can use this to turn boys away from pornography, because if you tell them that if they look at Playboy they'll turn gay, they won't want to look at Playboy!

Oh dear. Good stuff. I know that liberals say really, really idiotic things quite often and do really, really idiotic things quite often, but I always love when conservatives say stuff like this. Liberals, at least, are less concerned with behavior and more with pseudo-science, so they come off as a bit goofily earnest. Conservatives are concerned with behavior, so it's always fun to hear them thunder about it.

Man, politicians are idiots.

Moral relativism and torture

I read an interesting opinion piece in the newspaper this week about torture. It was written by Grumpy Old Man Charles Krauthammer (and yes, that's his official title, hence the capital letters), who I often (almost always) disagree with, but who's still interesting to read.

Krauthammer begins by explaining that he wrote a column about the two exceptions to the no-torture rule. The first is the ticking-time-bomb scenario, the second is a less extreme variant, "in which a high-value terrorist refuses to divulge crucial information that could save innocent lives." He then writes that the column elicited spirited protestations. One response that he calls "stupid" came from a writer who claimed the "ticking-time-bomb scenario only exists in two places: On TV and in the dark fantasies of power-crazed and morally deficient authoritarians." Krauthammer, of course, has a real-life example to counter this, and follows up with:

One therefore has to think about what kind of transgressive interrogation might be permissible in the less pristine circumstance of the high-value terrorist who knows about less imminent attacks.

Of course, that's the crux of it. Krauthammer goes on to point out the "contemptible" hypocrisy of Nancy Pelosi. His critics, he says, reply that "her behavior does not change the truth about torture." "But it does," Krauthammer claims:

Our jurisprudence has the "reasonable man" standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable man would do under urgent circumstances.

On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and senior and expert members of Congress represented colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable-person verdict.

And what did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to [then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter] Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the existing circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Krauthammer points out that the "circle of approval" was wider than even Congress. Even liberals believed torture was warranted in the aftermath of September 11th. He writes:

The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at that time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly re-elected [52% of the vote is "strongly"? Krauthammer is engaging in some revisionist history, methinks] the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered from a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken.

It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions - our blindness to al-Qaida's plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that interrogation would extract intelligence that President Barack Obama's own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed "high-value information" - and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

They were right.

Krauthammer concludes:

[Y]ou can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

On the one hand, Krauthammer raises some interesting points. The idea of torture, in whatever form, is repellent to civilized human beings (or ought to be) until it becomes the only way to save someone you love. There's also the question of what constitutes torture. According to some reports, three people were waterboarded, and very few were psychologically traumatized by the various methods we used. I have no idea about the absolute numbers, but it doesn't really matter. The question remains: What is moral, and is torture ever okay?

Krauthammer obviously thinks it's okay sometimes, and he claims that the American people think so too, because they re-elected the man who sanctioned it. Well, I would argue that most people in 2004 still didn't know what we were doing, and if people like Nancy Pelosi knew and didn't object, I blame her as well for not making more of a big deal about it. We heard rumors, of course, but when the president of the United States stands in front of the press and says emphatically that we do not torture, we tend to believe him. So Krauthammer's argument there is dumb, but the question of whether or not torture might be okay in some circumstances is a difficult one. We would like to say that it's never okay, but what if my daughter is kidnapped and she's going to be raped or killed soon and the only way to find her is by torturing a suspect? That's the moral conundrum Krauthammer brings up, and it's a tough one. Of course I would say, "Torture away!" Then it comes back to - how could I ever teach her to have moral principles if I betray my own? But I'm sure she would say that I couldn't teach her anything if she was dead. That's why we don't like to be put in those situations.

I have argued this point with Mia's PT, who's quite a bit more conservative than I am. He accuses Barack Obama of wanting to be "nice," meaning speaking to regimes like Iran rather than pre-emptively striking them, and he disagrees with this. He's also a Christian, and this is where the moral question becomes sticky. I have no idea if Charles Krauthammer claims to be a Christian, but considering something like 90% of Americans consider themselves to be, I'll go out on a limb and say Krauthammer does as well. Even if he's not, plenty of "good Christians" are on board with torture. I've written about how hard it is to be a "real Christian" - as in strictly following the words of Jesus as represented in the Bible - because it's practically impossible in today's world, but it would seem to me that a Christian wouldn't condone torture no matter what the circumstances, even to save a loved one. After all, if you're a true Christian, this world means nothing - you're focused on the next one. I'm not about to accuse Mia's PT of being a bad Christian, because he's a wonderful therapist and a very nice man, but unfortunately, I don't feel like I'm a close enough friend to him to ask him how he reconciles these two somewhat opposing viewpoints. I can't imagine someone being a Christian and condoning anyone who tortures. But maybe I'm just being naïve.

If we continue in this vein, I like how some self-professed Christians have come out in favor of torture "in extreme circumstances," meaning morality is relative to the situation. Yet these same people (usually) consider something like gay marriage the death knell of all civilization and claim that there's no gray area when it comes to homosexual unions or, say, abortion. Moral absolutism rules there, it seems, but when it comes to defending the fatherland (yes, I'm using that word very deliberately), nothing is too horrible. This is why I try to avoid using moral absolutist terms, because it will always come back to bite you in the ass. And yes, that includes torture.

I'm certainly against the concept of torture, but again, how would I feel if it was necessary to rescue someone I loved? The biggest problem I have with the Bush Administration using torture is that they always took the moral high ground and claimed that we didn't do it and that the United States remains a shining beacon of how things ought to be done. It's bullshit, but it's fancy-sounding bullshit, and Americans love to believe that we're better than everyone else. I honestly think that "torture" might have been more effective if Bush and his cronies had come out and said they were doing it. If Bush had come out and told the terrorists that they had forfeited any rights to be treated as humans and therefore we were going to do anything to extract information, not only would the American people have been on board (especially right after 11 September) and therefore these days we wouldn't have all this moral hand-wringing, but maybe potential terrorists might have thought twice about attacking us. Even if that didn't happen, at least we the people would have known where we stood. Another columnist I read today claims that we're already complicit, as we could have figured things out in 2004. Well, that's one of the reasons I didn't vote for Bush in 2004 - I was repulsed by what he was doing, and that included locking people up for no reason other than they looked funny. Had Bush been more forthright, he might have had to deal with a brief shitstorm, but according to him, he never cared what people thought of him, so why would he have cared then?

The fact that we tortured people, even if it was just three people, depresses me. Not because we did it, but because this is what the world has come to. However, it always makes me laugh a bit bitterly when the same people who refuse to compromise to allow two men or two women to get married twist themselves into knots to justify torture. The irony, I would imagine, is lost on them.

Yeah, okay, I'm a slacker

Yes, it's been over a week. And what do I do? Link to two odd news stories!

Pentagon reports no longer quote Bible.

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.

...


The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers' deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.

On Thursday, April 10, 2003, for example, the report quoted the book of Psalms - "Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him ... To deliver their soul from death" - and featured pictures of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down and celebrating crowds in Baghdad.

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand," read the cover quote two weeks earlier, on March 31, above a picture of a U. S. tank driving through the desert, according to the magazine, which obtained copies of the documents.

Sheesh. Good to know we have separation of Church and State. Especially when we're talking about a supposedly Christian president sending people to kill and die.

Here's something a bit more fun:

Man calls 911 over 28-year-old son's messy bedroom.

An Ohio man who argued with his grown son over a messy bedroom said he overreacted when he called 911. Andrew Mizsak called authorities Thursday after his 28-year-old son - who's a school board member in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford - threw a plate of food across the kitchen table and made a fist at him when told to clean his room.

The son, also named Andrew, lives in a room in his parents' basement.

The father declined to press charges and told police he doesn't want to ruin his son's political career.

The son, who also works as a political consultant, said he's lucky to be living in the house rent free. He also promises to keep his room clean.

So ... many ... jokes ... to ... mention ...

Maybe the father should tell his TWENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD SON to move the fuck out!!!!!

Maybe the son's political career will be ruined when his future opponents bring up that he was living in his parents' basement when he was twenty-eight years old! That might work.

Better content soon, I promise!

Damned revisionist history!

Here's an interesting article about the Boston Tea Party and how it was different from what the modern-day Tea Party people (who were called "Teabaggers" by several newspeople who are apparently blissfully ignorant of what teabagging is) think it was. This is why conservatives bitching about "revisionist" history bugs me. I don't know if you subscribe to this dude's interpretation, but the fact is that he has a document that sheds new light on the protest, so people who think we know everything about the Boston Tea Party (to use just one example) are idiots. That's why we have "revisionist" history - it's ALL revisionist!

Anyway, that's a soapbox for another day. Go read the article. It's pretty keen.

Why I ignore the news

I've been trying to keep my anger about certain things off the blog, because once I've gone over what makes me angry and what makes me happy, it's kind of pointless to keep bringing it up, right? Plus, it's not like I ignore the news, I just wish I could sometime. This week, unfortunately, has been kind of annoying.

1. Why are so many people more bent out of shape by the administration releasing memos acknowledging that we tortured than by the torture itself? I was arguing with Mia's PT this week about this (he's relatively conservative). He made the very good point that if Obama wants to release all the information that says we tortured, then he should be willing to release all the information that indicates what information we actually extracted from those we tortured. It's ironic that Chaney and Rove, the Masters of Misinformation, are calling for exactly that, probably so they can cover their asses by claiming that at least we thwarted some plots. That's perfectly reasonable. It still doesn't explain why conservatives, who claim to be for "freedom" and not necessarily "equality," don't think it's reprehensible that we did this. As I pointed out to Mia's PT, the hard core Al Qaida types have goals that are so beyond the realm of reality (like remaking the entire planet as a backward-looking Caliphate) that they don't really care if they get tortured. All it does, ultimately, is make our so-called ideals look foolish. Mia's PT pointed out that we had Founders who believed in the freedom of individuals, which is a good thing, because most people today would trade freedom for security in a heartbeat. At least we could have the guts to admit it.

2. Why was there such a kerfuffle over Miss California's answer to the question about gay marriage? The last time I checked, we had something in this country called freedom of speech, so why are people jumping all over her for answering something truthfully? From what I've read about it, Ms. Prejean didn't say she wanted to slaughter all homosexuals or that they are an abomination or they should be rounded up and kept in camps, she simply said that she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. The pageant people foolishly let out that it was the reason she didn't win, which is idiotic, as it's a beauty pageant. You can think Ms. Prejean was misguided all you want, but she doesn't make policy, so who cares what she thinks? Why is no one bagging on Perez Hilton, who asked a person who attends San Diego Christian College such a loaded question?

Ms. Prejean, by the way, is a wholesome young lady who happens to like posing in bikinis:













Let's not hold that against her!

3. Recently in Arizona there's been a huge debate over speed cameras, which snap photographs of speeding cars. People have reacted antagonistically, leading to several people (including me) to think, "Maybe you shouldn't speed." Mia's PT, ironically (or perhaps not) enough, believes the speed cameras are a violation of the law because the tickets are not given by a lawfully appointed officer, but that's neither here nor there. Obviously they're in place to collect money for the state, and with the state in the financial difficulties it's in, I don't have a big problem with what is essentially a tax on people who speed. Some people have taken axes to the cameras and placed Post-It notes over the aperture in protest, but earlier this week, some dude pulled up next to an officer who was checking the cameras and shot him three times, killing him. As horrible as that is, people on the Arizona Republic's web site defended the killing, wondering why they should feel bad for some fascist. These are, presumably, the same people who want to round up every swarthy person and ship them to Guatemala when one illegal immigrant kills a cop, but they were defending some guy murdering someone in cold blood just because they might have to pay $200 for going 77 mph in a 65 mph-zone. I know the Internet is all about the freedom of anonymity, but that still disgusts me. It's one of the reasons why I am so open about everything on the Internet. I will never register for a web site under a pseudonym. You know who I am! The murder saddens me, but the reaction of some disgusts me.

4. Not really newsworthy, but we had our first 100-degree (Fahrenheit) day here on Tuesday. GOOD FUCKING TIMES!!!! Of course, the only thing that makes summer bearable, the pool, isn't quite warm enough to swim in. But it's getting there! So for now, I'm trapped in the house until the temperature falls (which it's supposed to do this weekend). 102 degrees in April. People wonder why I hate it here.

Legislation I can't get behind!

It's not American legislation, thankfully. It still turns my stomach.

A new Afghan law makes it legal for me to rape their wives. Yes, you read that right.

The law - which some lawmakers say was never debated in parliament - is intended to regulate family life inside Afghanistan's Shiite community, which makes up about 20 percent of this country of 30 million people. The law does not affect Afghan Sunnis.

Well, that's nice. I guess Sunnis have no desire to rape their wives. Or maybe it's already legal for them to do so!

One of the most controversial articles stipulates the wife "is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires."

"As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night," Article 132 of the law says. "Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband."

That seems fair, right?

Sayed Hossain Alemi Balkhi, a Shiite lawmaker involved in drafting it, defended the legislation saying it gives more rights to women than even Britain or the United States does. He said the law makes women safer and ensures the husband is obliged to provide for her.

Really?

Egads, this is just sad. I know that there are cultures like this, but it just upsets me whenever I think about it. I know that the U. S. can't necessarily throw stones too much, but legislating rape is just disgusting. And even the lawmaker who was involved in drafting it just doesn't get it. He sounds like the kind of guy who, in this country 150 years ago, would have said that the slave laws "ensure the owner is obliged to protect his property."

I very much doubt if any of this will change in my lifetime. But we can hope, right?

Legislation I can get behind!

Here's something fun:

California state Rep. Anna G. Eshoo ... introduced H.R. 6209, otherwise known as the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act. The bill would require the Federal Communications Commission to "prescribe a standard to preclude commercials from being broadcast at louder volumes than the program they accompany."

In doing so, she has tapped into an issue that often rankles TV viewers: Why do TV ads seem to shout like a ringmaster at the top of his lungs, when the TV shows they interrupt often speak in modulated tones?

This woman is my new hero. Or heroine, I suppose.

Ms. Eshoo's bill, however, has sparked reaction among the people who count on TV commercials to help generate sales and purchases. Marketers themselves would prefer to devise a solution on their own rather than getting a government mandate on how loud Billy Mays can talk about OxiClean. What's more, major media companies such as CBS Corp. and NBC Universal have been working to address the issue.

Billy Mays does crack me up. Especially those ESPN commercials he does. They're awesome.

Some concern exists whether such a volume-moderation law could be enforced. The typical TV-ad buy often doesn't include information on the level of sound or the plotline of the program in which a commercial will air. "From the advertiser point of view, obviously they don't want to violate a law, but they may not have control over where the ad shows up," said Dan Jaffe, exec VP-government relations, Association of National Advertisers.

Ms. Eshoo doesn't seem to buy that line of thinking. "They haven't chosen to do a darn thing about it all of these years, and I believe it remains the top complaint to the FCC," she said.

I have one message for advertisers: Fuck 'em.

[S]ome ads are just loud because they're designed that way. Rock music has become a more common element in some TV commercials. Likewise, some commercials of the direct-response variety employ pitchmen who speak in booming fashion. Other loudness might simply be due to a viewer's perception [Yeah, right]. Ads often play at the higher end of broadcast volume, but the TV shows they support typically have noisy moments and quiet ones.

Once again: Fuck 'em.

There's more at the link. I miss most commercials, as I DVR most of the television I watch and can therefore fast-forward through the ads, but man! they're really loud. Occasionally I won't hit the FF button soon enough or I won't time it right and catch the very end of the block of ads and I can't believe how loud they are. A lot of television shows are doing what movies do these days - having really, really quiet dialogue and louder action scenes, which is annoying enough, but then, when the commercials come on, the volume is even louder. It's extremely annoying.

Yes, I know we have more important things to worry about. But this is still awesome legislation. Good for Ms. Eshoo!

Fifty years of Chinese rule in Tibet

Technically, today is the 50th anniversary of China's invasion of Tibet that brought that country under Communist rule. Of course, for several years prior to that, Tibet had been dominated by the Chinese, and 10 March 1959 was just the beginning of active rule after the Tibetans got a bit peeved by the fact that the Chinese were encroaching on their affairs. The fact that the United States, which went to war in Korea and Vietnam to stop tiny Communist countries from expanding, ignored this breach of international boundaries is somewhat disconcerting. It's not like we "learned" our lesson in Korea - we went to war in Vietnam after this. The Americans believed that Tibet was Commie, too, although they didn't do much research into it, which is probably why they ignored the invasion. I don't mind realpolitik at all, because it's all that states really practice, but I do mind when it's dressed up as ideological concerns, which it usually is. The U. S. should have said, "Tibet is of absolutely no strategic use to us, so what do we care if the Chinese take it over?" At least that would have been honest.

Why is there no love for the American system of government?

As Barack Obama gets inaugurated and conservatives stew (I heard a complaint of a conservative this morning that it was the "tackiest" Inauguration ever because everyone was selling so much Obama crap - which I agree with, but I think it just shows how desperate people are to believe that their president isn't a scumbag), I wonder why our system of government isn't emulated more often around the world. A while back, I read in the book about Napoleon that the French, with "vivid memories of political pretensions by the old regime's high courts of parlements ruled out the American solution of vesting such authority in the Supreme Court." (page 28) This was part of a longer discussion of how the French were setting up their government, and although it's from 200 years ago, it still seems that countries setting up their democracies model them after the British form rather than the American. I'm not sure why that is.

The British have a parliamentary system of government, and many ex-British colonies follow this lead, but it seems like Iraq has set one up as well. I understand Canada, India, Australia, and other Commonwealth countries following the British model, but it seems weird that no other country follows the American model (at least none that I know of). In the British system, the prime minister is selected after the elections, when it's determined which party has the most members. The leader of that party becomes the prime minister. That's all well and good, but what's strange about the parliamentary system is that elections are held at any time. In Britain, they have to occur at least every five years, but there's no specific time for one. There's also no reason for a prime minister to ever give up his or her job. As long as his or her party wins the majority in the election, the prime minister could, conceivably, continue forever. I know this never happens, but there's no reason it couldn't. I wonder if this is a reason it's popular with nascent democracies - the prime minister can feel just like a dictator, and it's easier to shift from "prime minister for a long time" to "prime minister for life!"

I know there's a lot more to the British parliamentary system, but it seems a bit more unstable than ours. Not in Britain, of course, but they've been tinkering with it for 800 years. If the government can "fail" at any time and new elections be called, what's to stop despots from taking advantage of that? I know, a despot can take advantage of any system, but whenever you read about democracies falling apart, it starts with a prime minister getting a "no confidence" vote and the government needing a re-org. In the chaos, someone moves in and takes over. Yet countries keep trying it. I wonder why they don't look to the American model.

I admit that the American model isn't perfect. There's probably not enough direct democracy, although given the opinions of some people, that might be a good thing. But we always know when we have elections, and we usually know when there will be a new head of state. To all those people who bitched and moaned about what a wannabe dictator George Bush was, I would point out that we knew, with absolute certainty, that on 20 January 2009, we'd have a new president. It wasn't up for debate. Now, you can argue that the policies he put in place will be hard to undo (whether they should or not is something others can argue about), but the fact is, in 2006 or 2003 or whenever you started hating Bush, you knew that, at the latest, his last day in office would be 20 January 2009. There's no vote of no confidence in our system that destroys a government just because the opposition party is pissy about something. That may suck (I'm sure several Democrats would have liked to bring down the Bush government and install one of their own), but in the long run, it's fine. What did the Democrats do instead? They campaigned for Congress in 2006, when the elections were scheduled, won back the majority, and then got back the presidency in 2008, when elections were scheduled. And now, just like every four or eight years, we have a peaceful transfer of power. No fuss, no muss. If the Republicans don't like it, they have the 2010 and 2012 elections to gear up for. In the meantime, they can try to sway voters and even other members of Congress with more moderate policies. Or they can wait for Obama and the Democrats to screw up. It's not perfect.

It just seems to me that the American system is more stable than the British system. I get that the United States often doesn't have a stellar reputation overseas, but neither does Great Britain, so why is their system so much more attractive than ours? The United States, after all, has been the most stable government in the world for 226 years, and that's saying something. I'm not saying that countries shouldn't adopt the parliamentary system, because the Brits have made it work, but I often wonder why our republican system isn't more portable. Any ideas?

The only reason I'll miss our current president

Ah, Dana Perino. Why must you leave us?

Can't the Messiah convince her that he's right and that she should switch sides? That's what the old Messiah did, after all. Can't he use his hope-and-change persuasive powers to show her the error of her ways? Instead, he chose this guy. Look, I'm sure Robert Gibbs is a swell guy. He yelled at Sean Hannity, which is always nice. But is he as dreamy as Ms. Perino? I think not!

Oh, Dana. You can spread the president's lies to us anytime. They're so much sweeter when you tell them to us!

We could kind of see this coming

It's depressing whenever a large number of Americans, whatever the stereotype about them, live up to that stereotype. It's depressing and frightening when those stereotypes are of racist rednecks, but after our historic presidential election, it's not surprising that a lot of crazy people are coming out of the woodwork.

I don't even want to get into what people have been doing since the election. It's all at the link. It's just really sad. I know it means nothing, but I'd like to apologize to minorities everywhere for the idiocy of these people. Sheesh. What the hell is wrong with some people?

There's an election in New Zealand!

And the Maoris hold the key! The Maori party holds only four seats in Parliament, but they weren't aligned as of the election, so they could tip the balance!!!! Oh, if only I could send you somewhere where you could get up-to-the-minute New Zealand election coverage!!!!

More election fallout

Let the teeth-gnashing begin!

Hey, remember back in 2004, when conservative pundits claimed that Bush had a "mandate" to do whatever the hell he wanted because he won 51% of the vote and beat John "I Was a Teenaged Wooden Statue" Kerry by 3.5 million votes? Well, professional douchebag Robert Novak is claiming that Obama's victory on Tuesday was "no mandate." Because winning by 7.5 million votes and getting, what, 53% of the vote is somehow less impressive than Bush's win. As Think Progress points out, Novak specifically said that Bush's margin gave him a mandate. Good stuff, Bob. Shut the hell up, okay?

I hope Obama doesn't consider this election a "mandate." I cringed when I heard Bush use that, because it ignored the half of the country who didn't vote for him. Almost half of the country didn't vote for Obama, either, so I hope he's more intelligent than 43 and realizes that if he treats this election as carte blanche, he's in trouble. You know what a mandate is? Reagan in 1984. When a president wins 49 states, that's a mandate. Obama should remember that, just like Bush should have remembered that four years ago.

Meanwhile, remember all those conservatives who told liberals to "get over it" four years ago when the crazy left-wingers were whining about Bush winning? I'm fairly certain it won't surprise you to know that those crazy right-wingers who wanted to move on are now, well, freaking out. This post is just an example of some of the craziness out there (and that entire blog is, frankly, frightening, just like a lot of crazy left-wing blogs were frightening after Bush won). The best thing in that post: that Obama will implement sharia teaching in the schools. Won't someone think of the children???? The same people who said that we should all unite behind Bush in '04 when he won legitimately and in '00 when he won illegitimately are now claiming that Obama will never be their president. Listen, if Bush didn't destroy this country, I doubt if Obama will.

Finally, on the radio today, a conservative talk show host played a clip from a Swedish documentary in which a teacher in North Carolina humiliated a girl who was voting for McCain in the school's mock election. Fine. That's despicable. I agree. But this dude went nuts, claiming that this sort of thing happens all over the place (with no empirical evidence, mind you). Well, using my own evidence, at the school where once I taught, we hired a science teacher who refused to teach the theory of evolution. Chew on that for a while. And did this guy get all bent out of shape when a 7th-grade teacher used the word "nigger" to describe Obama? If he did, okay. But don't single out one stupid teacher and claim that we're now going to "indoctrinate" our children. School is indoctrination. Parenting is indoctrination. Church is indoctrination. Everything is indoctrination. Deal with it.

We're off to a rousing start to the presidency, aren't we? Conservative talk radio should be a barrel of laughs for the next 4-8 years! (And by "barrel of laughs," I mean "cause for apoplexy while I'm driving," so I might have to keep the dial tuned to sports talk!)

Post-Election Day thoughts

I don't know if Barack Obama will be a good president. Those who rail about his lack of experience ignore that this job is unique, and some people rise to the occasion and others don't. Theodore Roosevelt didn't have a lot of experience. Abraham Lincoln didn't have a lot of experience. Woodrow Wilson didn't have a lot of experience. Barack Obama might just have what is necessary to be a great president. Or he might not. We don't really know based on his previous political experience. I hope he'll be a great president, but pundits have no idea what kind of leader he'll be.

I mentioned this in the comments of a previous post, but I was disappointed by FOX News. They were deflated and a bit saddened by the results, but nobody went nuclear (or nucular, as our outgoing president might say) and ranted about how the country wouldn't exist in a year or two because of the president. Charles Krauthammer, whose columns are well written but often reflect the grumpiness of an old man, made a key point. Obama has a wide base of support, from moderately conservative independents to even hard core Republicans who are sickened by what Bush has done to their party. Because he has such a wide base, he can't implement a crazy left-wing agenda that (presumably) Congress will try to push now that they've gained seats. If he falls in line with Congress, he'll lose the support of a lot of people who want him to be something different than a traditional Democrat. I would love that, because I don't want government to be easy. I want it to be a struggle to get things passed, because that means they really have to think about it and make the legislation better. That's why I wouldn't really have minded if McCain won, even though I think McCain of 2008 is far less interesting as a candidate than McCain of 2000. McCain might have stopped the Democrats in Congress and forced them to write better bills. But maybe Obama will understand that he can't go completely ultra-liberal because he won't get re-elected. We'll see.

Here in Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio got re-elected because all Arizonans care about is punishing people who cross the border illegally to work. Arizonans don't care about Arpaio raiding businesses and holding legal residents against their will without charging them with anything (which he's done more than once) on the off chance there might be illegal immigrants working there. Arizonans don't care about punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants, even though we passed a law against it two years ago. Andrew Thomas, the county attorney (who works closely with Arpaio and also won re-election), has prosecuted either no employers or one (I haven't checked, but Mia's PT thinks it's one, while I read last week that it was none). Arpaio doesn't seem concerned about shutting down these businesses when he actually does catch an illegal immigrant, even though they're breaking the law. Arizonans love Arpaio because he talks tough. Illegal immigration is a very tough thing to deal with, but most people want it to be simple. Arpaio doesn't do anything to solve it, but he makes it look simple. So he won. Again.

Arizona also passed Proposition 102, the amendment to the constitution that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. This depresses me, but doesn't surprise me. Mia's PT and I argued about this on Tuesday, because he's a conservative guy and voted for the proposition. He doesn't have anything against gay people forming domestic partnerships, but doesn't like applying the term "marriage" to it. This gets back to what a "marriage" is. To him, it's a traditional definition, and that tradition should be honored. I didn't get into the idea of marriage as a union between a man and a woman who love each other is a very modern phenomenon, but that's a point. He said that if you ask elementary students what a family is, they'll say a man, a woman, and children. I pointed out that in today's society, half of them will say mommy and a boyfriend or mommy for four days a week and daddy for three, but his point was that they'll say a man and a woman. But that's biology. The idea of "traditional families" is meaningless, because for centuries, illegitimate children were common among the upper class, as marriages were not love matches and the man went off and got a mistress. The wife was, if not happy with this arrangement, resigned to it. I honestly don't get the objections to two men or two women wanting the same recognition as partners that married people get. If you want to start talking about saving the children, that's a different thing. If you want to stop gay people from adopting, that's a whole different argument. It's still stupid, but it's a different argument.

The only thing it comes down to is that people, mostly men, think gay men having sex is disgusting and they don't want to think about it. That's a poor reason to enact laws. But that's what we do in America!

I am curious to live in the Obama United States. I don't think Obama will bring about a huge revolution, because I think he's a fairly typical Democrat. However, the fact that he's neither black nor white will help us get beyond those labels, including calling him "black." If he were light-skinned, would we call him "white" even though his father is black? I love how if you have a drop of "black" blood, you're black, no matter what your skin color looks like. How silly. But I think he will be more successful dealing with the problems the country faces, mostly because he seems, if not smarter than Bush (I think Bush is an idiot, but he could be empirically intelligent), than at least more thoughtful. In this world, you can't go into situations using your "gut." That's the biggest problem I have with Bush. Common sense tells us the sun rotates around the Earth. Your "gut" often gets you in a lot of trouble. Maybe Obama will be a failure. It won't be because he didn't think about things, though.

Is it Inauguration Day yet?

So much politics!

You know, I really should have posted about the Phillies winning the World Series. So here it is: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, that was fun. I'm certainly happy that the Phillies are the 2008 World Series Champions, but I haven't lived in Philadelphia for 15 years, plus I have a life (to some extent), so while I still want the teams I root for to win championships, it's not that big a deal. Let's move on!

Election Day is apparently Tuesday, and things are getting snippy in the presidential race. But there's plenty going on locally, as well!



Here in Arizona, as in other states (California for one), there's a proposition on the ballot to amend the state constitution banning gay marriage. I got this flyer in the mail imploring me to vote for Prop 102. I love how they ring the title with children. Who doesn't love children? If I don't vote for this proposition, my children will turn gay automatically! I bet you didn't know that.

I got a phone call earlier in the week from some dude asking me to vote for this proposition. I was impressed that it wasn't a robot, so I let him talk. When he asked if he had my support, I told him I was bisexual, living with two women and one man. He sounded completely taken aback, as if he hadn't considered someone saying this. I hung up because I didn't want to say anything else, and then thought I should have mentioned I was raising two children in this environment and trying actively to turn them gay. That would have been even awesomer. But I had fun for a time.

I get the idea of religious people wanting marriage to remain a union of a man and a woman. What I don't get is how gay marriage will destroy my marriage or even affect my children all that much (as this is all about protecting the children, as you see by the flyer). I have never read anyone giving a good reason why gay people can't get married. I hear the stupid reasons - the Bible doesn't like it, society will fall apart, gays are weird - but nothing really valid. I mean, will straight people stop marrying because gay people can? Straight people are already not marrying. I guess letting gay people marry continues the horrible moral decline of our wonderful American life. Boy, wouldn't that suck?

I'm a bit disappointed that the web site on the flyer doesn't seem to be viable anymore. That kind of stinks. I'm sure it was pretty neat-o.

Also in Arizona, Paul Newman is running for office. That's fairly impressive, given his current state of living. And the unfortunately named Frank Schmuck is also running for office. Man, that's a bad last name. Poor Frank.

Have fun voting! I'll be dropping off my mail-in ballot on Tuesday and won't have to wait in line. And remember - when I'm dictator, Election Day will be a federal holiday and take place on a Monday. It doesn't need to be on Tuesday anymore, people! (Of course I'll have elections when I'm dictator! They're cute like that.)

Fun with Sarah

Two stories about Sarah Palin:

In the first one, she says that God has blessed the United States with natural resources, and dagnabit, we've got to use them! That doesn't offend me too much, any more than any insistence that God cares more about Americans than he does anyone else in the world does. What's awesome about the story is the quote by John Shirley, 63, of Pittsboro (presumably North Carolina, as that's where she was speaking): "She's a hunter. She opposes abortion. She's religious. She reflects a lot of the values we have here in the South." That's just too excellent for words. God, guns, and gangs of children - it's all in the South, man!

In the second story, Palin is reported to have said that she likes being in North Carolina, which is a "pro-America" part of the country. I haven't seen any confirmation of that, but if it's true, that's a great quote. Joe Biden jumped on that in a speech in New Mexico, and the Obama campaign issued a news release asking what parts of the country aren't "pro-America." I wonder if New York, which suffered the worst terrorist attack in American history and which politicians use whenever they want to look "concerned" but then decry in their speeches about small-town America, is "pro-America." Probably not.

I love Sarah Palin. If I weren't so angry at Bush and if I thought McCain would do any kind of good job, I'd vote for him just so we could get four years of Palin trying to explain herself. She'd be like an attractive Dan Quayle!

What I've been reading

Young J. Edgar: Hoover, The Red Scare, and The Assault on Civil Liberties by Kenneth D. Ackerman. 2007, 472 pages, Carroll & Graf Publishers (the paperback edition is from Da Capo Press).

Recently, I read a different Ackerman book about James Garfield. I liked it a lot, so when I saw this, I picked it up. Technically, I shouldn't have read it, as I had already passed this point in the alphabet, but rules are made to be broken, damn it! Plus, this is an extremely relevant book, as you can probably tell by the title.

Ackerman frames this book with an interesting device: he begins in 1924, when Harlan Fiske Stone, the new attorney general of the United States, appointed J. Edgar Hoover, at the tender age of 29, as head of the Bureau of Investigation (which was not yet called the FBI, but it's the same thing, so I'll call it that). Hoover followed Stone's lead in cleaning up the wildly corrupt Bureau, which had been stained (like most of Washington) by the Teapot Dome scandal. Hoover cleaned it up and went on to lead the FBI until his death in 1972. In his later years, of course, he became extremely controversial for the secret files he kept on American citizens that he considered "dangerous," which to him meant anyone who believed in any kind of liberal political ideology. Stone was proud of his choice, but Ackerman makes the point that Hoover was already corrupt. Stone was most disturbed by the so-called Palmer raids, which were anti-communist sweeps that detained hundreds of American citizens, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants - most of whom had broken no laws - in 1919 and 1920. They were named after Stone's predecessor, A. Mitchell Palmer, but Hoover, a 24-year-old special assistant, was the driving force behind them. Unbelievably, by 1924, Hoover had managed to convince Stone and the rest of the country that he had very little to do with the raids. So Ackerman goes back in time to show exactly how involved he was, and how the tactics he devised in his mid-20s would serve him well as he built the FBI into a powerful secret police force.

Ackerman turns the story into a thriller, even if it ends limply (the book doesn't, but if it were a thriller, they'd have to change the ending, as it wouldn't work in a movie). He starts with the bombings in June 1919, when several political figures were targeted by "anarchists." One of the targets was Palmer himself, and he barely escaped with his life. In the aftermath of World War I, with social upheaval wracking the world, with a civil war in Russia that involved, for a time, American soldiers, with unions strong throughout the country, the bombings became the spark for a crackdown on "communists" everywhere. Hoover was tasked to head the Bureau's new Radical Division, which investigated, well, radicals. Ackerman goes into Hoover's early life and his home life, which was dominated by his mother, but he doesn't try to draw too many conclusions about the connection between that and his professional life. He ignores any salacious speculation about his sexuality, mostly because there's absolutely no proof that he was gay at all. More likely he was so devoted to his work that he had no interest in sex, whether with a woman or a man. Ackerman mainly focuses on how he came to believe that anyone who criticized the government was naturally a criminal - remember, during World War I the government promulgated laws against criticizing the war effort, and those laws were still in effect in 1919 - so while he was investigating the bombings, he might as well start rounding up radicals and kicking them out of the country. He needed the help of the Labor Department, which was in charge of deportation, but he got it when he offered to help prosecute Emma Goldman, one of the most famous anarchists in American history. Goldman's lover, Alexander Berkman, had tried to assassinate Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead strike in 1892, and later Leon Czolgosz, who killed William McKinley, said Goldman's speeches inspired him (even though she always said the crime horrified her). Goldman had come to the United States in 1885 and had never become a citizen, although she claimed citizenship through her husband, even though they were divorced. Goldman was a thorn in the side of the Labor Department, because she kept inspiring workers to strike. So Labor agreed to help Hoover deport anyone he wanted if he gave them Goldman. Which he did.

Hoover decided to round up as many anarchists as he could in quick sweeps. He figured this was the easiest way to keep the targets from alerting other cells, and he was right. In two big raids in November 1919 and January 1920, Hoover and his Bureau agents went into legal meetings of communists and other radicals and simply arrested everyone they found. In many cases, Bureau agents posing as communists arranged the meetings to make sure everyone was in one place. The Bureau took the people to holding areas, including Ellis Island, where they were crammed into small cells and deprived of their rights, including their right to lawyers. Of course, most of them were not illegal immigrants, so their only "crime" was attending a meeting. In many cases, the immigrants, whether legal or not, had no idea what kind of meeting they were attending. The Socialist Party was an accepted political entity in 1920 (Eugene Debs, their perennial presidential candidate, received almost a million votes in 1912), but in 1919 and 1920, communists split from the mainstream Socialist Party and in many cases didn't bother to tell those who attended their meetings that they, the communists, were more radical. As many members didn't understand English too well, very often they thought they were going to meetings of a social club and had no idea the group had been radicalized.

The conditions in the holding areas were atrocious, and many people were held for months without access to legal representation or even contact with the outside world. Palmer and Hoover continued to look for the actual perpetrators of the bombings, but when they finally got leads in the case, one witness committed suicide rather than testify against his comrades and two other key figures fled the country, never to return. Hoover and Palmer overreached when they starting arresting prominent Americans like William Bross Lloyd, the so-called "Millionaire Socialist," who wanted to be arrested so he could drag the whole case into court. Clarence Darrow, who hated communists, got involved in the defense of some of the Americans who had been jailed, and his courtroom histrionics made headlines. As the tide slowly turned against Hoover, one man stepped up and became a hero. His name was Louis Post. It's a shame he's not more famous in American history.

In March 1920, through a set of circumstance, Louis Post became acting secretary of labor. Post had always resented Hoover and the Justice Department ordering Labor around to get deportation orders, but he had never had the power to do anything about it. With the actual Secretary of Labor, William Wilson, away for weeks at a time dealing with a sick wife and illnesses of his own, Post decided to sit down and go through every warrant that the Labor Department issued to Justice in order for Hoover to carry out his raids. He decided most of them were fraudulent and started cancelling them. Hoover was blindsided. He managed to get Post in front of a special committee of Congress, but Post dazzled the judges with his friendly manner and his utter devotion to the facts. He had gone over every single case file of the people who had been arrested, proving that Hoover had illegally acquired warrants, arrested people without cause, and suspended habeas corpus while keeping detainees in squalid conditions for months. Post tore apart Hoover and Palmer's case, at a time when Palmer was running for president, destroying the attorney general's political career and ruining Hoover's attempts to squash any and all dissent. It was during this time that Hoover began keeping files on all his political enemies, but he couldn't stop Post. The great quote of the book (and one that should be taught more) is when Edward Pou, one of the committee members grilling Post, said, "You realized, of course, Mr. Secretary, that all of these rules that you have laid out operate to make it more difficult to deport the alien?" Post responded, "Every rule in the interest of personal liberty makes it more difficult to take personal liberty away from a man who is entitled to his liberty." Yeah!

As Hoover's scheme unraveled, another bodyblow came, ironically, from Harlan Fiske Stone, the man who would later promote him. Stone wrote a letter summarizing the views of several lawyers who disagreed with the government's tactics. Stone wrote:

It is inevitable that any system which confers upon administrative officers power to restrain the liberty of individuals, without safeguards substantially like those which exist in criminal cases, and without adequate authority for judicial review of the actions of such administrative officers will result in abuse of power and in intolerable injustice and cruelty to individuals.

Ackerman's book is timely, obviously, because of what is happening in our country following 11 September 2001. Hoover's Bureau of Investigation is one of the first "modern" intelligence agencies, in that the world was connected enough at this point so Hoover could communicate relatively quickly with agents across the country and could also amass a huge file system detailing the indiscretions of his enemies for use against them when he needed it. Hoover's efficiency and ability to deflect blame is chilling, because we have to consider how many lives he ruined for the almost 50 years he ran the FBI. He never changed, either, as he believed people like Martin Luther King, Jr. should be arrested for preaching equality. The parallels between what happened then and what's happening now is disturbing, too. A terrorist attack leads to crackdowns on anyone even remotely linked to the perpetrators (meaning, back then, anyone who argued that people weren't treated well by rich capitalists, while these days it's anyone who's slightly swarthy in skin color) and the denial of due process, while the real criminals remain at large. For all of Hoover's efficiency, the Justice Department never caught the bombers. Maybe they're living in a cave with Osama bin Laden.

This is a tremendous book. It's a scary story about the abuse of power, but more than that, it's disturbing because we haven't learned anything in 90 years. In fact, many of the people in power today would probably read this and think that Hoover got hosed by some crazy radical within the Labor Department. The statements that Post made in front of Congress and that the Stone and other lawyers made to reporters should be self-evident, but too often we forget them. It's certainly easy to, when we experience terror. But as Ackerman makes clear, it's when these ideals are hardest to promote is when we should. I just wish more schools would teach about this period in history and about Louis Post, who really is an American hero.

No Man's Land in the political war

I'm not sure when taking the middle ground became such a horrible thing. Actually, that's not true. Taking the middle ground has always been a horrible thing for the loud-mouth extremists on either end of the political spectrum. I wonder when the loud-mouth extremists became so loud that they drowned out any reasonable discussion of a topic. Sometime recently, I suspect, since the rise of 24-hour "news" networks and talk radio and the Internet. And that's the way the world is, now. And it's a damned shame.

The latest kerfuffle here in Phoenix in which the loud-mouth extremists are setting the agenda has to do with Julie Erfle. You may not know who Julie Erfle is, but that's okay. Julie Erfle's husband, Nick, was a police officer killed in the line of duty almost a year ago. He was killed by ... an illegal immigrant.

Oh dear. Nothing brings out the extremists in Arizona like illegal immigration. And that story really made them nuts. Well, until Julie Erfle went to Washington with Phoenix's mayor, Phil Gordon, to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. Oh dear, again.

Erfle's trip put a bug in the butt of Bruce Jacobs, a morning talk show host on a local radio station in Phoenix. KFYI claims that Jacobs is their "resident right wing ranter," but this station carries both Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, so it's not like they have a lot of NON-right wing ranters, but whatever. Jacobs tore into Erfle, claiming that "comprehensive immigration reform" is really amnesty (and it's always funny how conservatives, while they acknowledge Reagan's famous amnesty of 1986, never seem to take that into account when they lionize the Gipper) and that Erfle should be ashamed of herself. More to the point, he claimed her dead husband would be ashamed of her for taking this stance and that he would put part of the blame on her the next time a police officer is gunned down by an illegal immigrant.

Wrap your head around that for a moment. Bruce Jacobs has no idea what Nick Erfle's political stance was about illegal immigration, yet he knows that he would be ashamed of the woman whom he married and had two kids with. Now, as he's in law enforcement, maybe Nick Erfle was completely on board with the "deport them all and build a mile-high brick wall along the Rio Grande" attitude that many conservatives have. But Bruce Jacobs doesn't know that. Plus, now he's going to blame a grieving widow raising two small kids for any other killings of police officers? Classy, Bruce. Well done.

As many reasonable people have pointed out, there's a difference between criticizing Julie Erfle for going to Washington and advocating for a position you don't agree with and ripping into her personally and claiming she'll be to blame for more deaths. Jacobs is an idiot for saying that, but that's his right (there are calls for him to be fired, but how about people stop listening to him, for crying out loud!). Julie Erfle became a public figure when she went to Washington, so go ahead and disagree with her position. I'm not sure why opponents of someone feel the need to insult people personally when they don't agree with them. It's sad. Of course, people who show up to comment in posts like this one and this one show that a lot of people think it's okay to insult people for their beliefs, because everyone thinks they're right and will never admit that they might be wrong. I guess that's what passes for political discourse in the country these days.

I was listening to Laura Ingraham this morning, and she was making fun of the attendees of the Democratic convention. She said they were given flags and it appeared they needed to be told how to wave them so they could act patriotic. She was having a good laugh at her lame joke. Why did she feel the need to do that? If she doesn't agree with Democrats (and she doesn't), can't she just point out where she disagrees with them and leave it at that? I think the attendees of both conventions look like idiots, but we'll see if Ingraham makes this point when the RNC fires up. Probably not - they'll all be heroes dancing around and weeping because they love their candidate and their country so much. It's beneath people to insult others just because you don't like their beliefs, yet extremists from both sides act like they're in grade school all the time, and nobody calls them on it.

Illegal immigration is a serious problem in this country, but no matter what the conservatives say, it doesn't have a simple solution. You can call it amnesty all you want, but there's no way we're deporting 12 million people (the estimate of the number of illegals in the country). We definitely need to secure the border, but we're not deporting those who are already here, and Bruce Jacobs and his ilk need to recognize that. Even if they don't, insulting a woman who knows the cost of illegal immigration far more than Bruce Jacobs does is idiotic. How will we ever get anything done if we're reduced to insults? I guess that's why we're not getting anything done.

Interesting news from the United States Census Bureau

According to the Census Bureau, by 2042 non-Hispanic white people will no longer be a majority in the United States. They'll still be a plurality, but the number is expected to be 203 million out of a population of 439 million. Hispanics, meanwhile, are expected to triple to 133 million, while the black population is projected to increase barely at all, from 14 percent of the population to 15 percent (66 million). By 2023, less than half of the children will be white.

This is a pretty interesting report. Of course, a cursory look on Google shows some people freaking out about it, but I haven't been to any really hard core conservative blogs, where I'm sure the paranoia is up to 11. The Census Bureau says it's the high birth rate of Hispanics, not necessarily illegal immigration, which will account for this growth. Of course, say the naysayers (can I write that?), the illegal immigrants will pump out ten kids each, so even if we don't have a huge influx of immigrants, we'll have to care for their huge families that, technically, are citizens. That stupid Constitution!

I don't really care about the news of whites no longer being the majority. Whatever. My ultimate dream is that everyone starts interbreeding anyway so we'll all be kind of mocha, but that's probably not going to happen. I read a brief report about this that points out the real problems: the United States needs to start figuring out how it's going to handle this increasing population, which is quite impressive for an industrialized country (those damned Hispanic Catholics with their lack of birth control again). In case you haven't noticed, our infrastructure is old and in horrible shape, and nobody seems to care about that. Our schools fall behind more and more every year, and handling more students doesn't seem to be their forte, but that's what's happening. I don't care about Hispanics coming here, because I have seen Hispanic teenagers in bulk, and they're just like teenagers everywhere - and after a generation, they'll be "Americanized," whatever that means. What I am concerned about is that white folk will Balkanize the country willingly simply in order to hold onto a majority where they can, and the rest of the country can go to hell. Hispanics and black people want to be middle class as much as white people do, but they're not going to be able to if we don't start making the schools better right now.

I don't know what the big deal is about separate races. We always talk about integrating immigrants into the American Way of Life, but we resist doing anything positive to help that process. We simply demand that people conform, without showing anyone the benefits of buying into the American Dream (and there are benefits, despite my issues with this country). People come here so they can partake of our bounty, and we ostracize them for it. I have no idea what to do about the illegal immigrant problem, but trying our hardest to get rid of them is not the way. There's plenty of room in this country, even if the population balloons to 500 million in the next 50 years. I hope that we get people who want to make the country a better place for everyone. Yeah, it's a pipe dream, probably, but wouldn't that be nice?

What I've been reading

Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield by Kenneth D. Ackerman. 551 pages, 2003, Carroll & Graf Publishers.

Long-time readers of the blog may recall that I absolutely adore the Gilded Age. It is by far my favorite time period of American history. One problem with this era (let's say the end of the Civil War, 1865, to the beginning of the United States' involvement in World War I, 1917) is that there aren't a lot of books written about it, or at least books you can find in your average bookstore. I mean, there's plenty written about Theodore Roosevelt (not that there's anything wrong with that), but there's a lot more to the time period than Teddy, right? I mean, that Grover Cleveland - he was a pretty neat, guy, right? Where's his biography???? (Okay, they exist. But you get my point!) The other big topic of "Gilded Age" writing is the expansion of the white man into red man territory. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm a bit sick of George Custer.

So I was happy to see this book, as Garfield's assassination is probably the least well-known of all the presidential killings. Granted, there have only been four of them, but Lincoln's, McKinley's, and Kennedy's are of much more interest to the general public, even if McKinley's is only such because he was succeeded by Roosevelt. I mean, Garfield was succeeded by Chester A. Arthur, whose name does not resound in the Presidential Pantheon (although he, as well as Garfield, probably doesn't get as much respect as they ought to). I certainly didn't know much about Garfield's life and death, and even after reading Assassination Vacation, I didn't, as Vowell focused more on Charles Guiteau, the assassin, than Garfield himself. This book doesn't focus on Garfield's life as much as it focuses on the events surrounding his nomination and brief presidency, and it's a fascinating read.

Ackerman begins with an argument in 1866. Two titans of the late 19th-century American political scene, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York and Senator James Blaine of Maine, got into an argument over a piece of a bill, and this tiny little disagreement escalated into a name-calling donnybrook on the Senate floor. Both men were extremely proud, and this argument led to a lifetime of acrimony that influenced the political course of the country. It's fun to read about these bitter fights in Congress because these days, everyone is so polite. Sure, the two parties don't agree with each other and take shots at the policies of their opponents, but Conkling and Blaine were both Republicans, for one, and it's rare that one senator calls another from the same party a liar in public, as Conkling did to Blaine that day in April 1866. That's just a taste of the political scene during the Gilded Age, where the men spoke high-mindedly but were far more insulting than they are today.

Then we flash to the Republican Convention in Chicago in late May 1880. Remember when conventions were held in late May? Okay, probably not. The other interesting thing about conventions back in those days was that no one knew who the nominee was. There were no primaries, so the two parties just got together to decide on a candidate. In 1880, the Republican party had developed a rift between the "Stalwarts," those who supported Ulysses Grant's bid for a third term as president, and "Half-Breeds," those who didn't back Grant because of the scandals of his two terms. Grant had left office in 1877, but in the years since, he had become more popular, mainly because of the ineffectiveness of Rutherford Hayes, the man who replaced him. Conkling was Grant's biggest supporter, and he threw the weight of the New York Republican machine behind him. James Blaine, who had run for president in 1876, was another candidate, representing those who wanted to move past Grant. John Sherman, the Secretary of the Treasury (and brother of Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman), was the dark horse candidate. He counted among his supporters James Garfield, the senator-elect from Ohio.

The backroom dealings of the parties is fascinating to read about, especially because the actual wannabe candidates back then didn't attend the convention - campaigning was considered unseemly. So their proxies campaigned for them, and they had to convince delegates to throw their lot in with a certain candidate. Sherman didn't have much support, but it was hoped that he could swing the nomination one way or the other. Conkling had heard rumblings about a group of Republican delegates from New York breaking from him and not supporting Grant, something he could not abide. Parties ran things with iron fists back then - you voted for a party, not really a candidate - and the idea of New York Republicans breaking with their party boss was astonishing. Yet break they did, as did delegates from two other supposedly "solid" Grant states - Illinois and Pennsylvania. Without all of the delegates from those states, neither Grant nor Blaine got enough votes on the first ballot to secure the nomination, and led to more wrangling.

Garfield was a long shot to get the nomination, obviously, as he was actually in Chicago as a supporter of Sherman. As the balloting went on (this was the longest Republican convention, at 36 ballots; Democrats needed a two-thirds majority to select a nominee, so many of theirs went longer), Garfield suddenly became a viable compromise candidate. Blaine would never allow his delegates to support Grant because of his vitriol toward Conkling, and Garfield was seen as someone whom Blaine would support. When his name was first mentioned, Garfield actually protested, but soon the support for him became a groundswell. Unbelievably, Garfield became the nominee, and as a compromise, he picked Chester Arthur, Conkling's protégé, as his running mate. Actually, based on the rules of the day, the convention picked Arthur. Garfield had no choice in the matter.

Ackerman then has to bring Charles Guiteau into the proceedings, which he does efficiently. Guiteau was a huge fan of Conkling and the New York Republican Party, and he began writing speeches in order to get the Garfield/Arthur ticket elected. He even wrote a speech that he later claimed was crucial to Garfield's win. He hung out at the headquarters of the campaign and spoke often to Arthur, believing that he was friends with the vice presidential candidate. Of course, he barely registered with the higher-ups of the party, although they later recalled speaking to him. Ackerman makes the point that patronage was the way business got done in 19th-century politics, and Guiteau was just doing what many others did - he helped out the campaign with the expectation that he would be rewarded in the new regime. Of course, he was basically a nobody, so that probably wouldn't happen, but it didn't stop Guiteau from believing that he was more important than he really was.

Garfield won the election, of course, and then his problems began. He had to satisfy two powerful members of the party who hated each other - Blaine and Conkling. As he had Arthur as a vice president, he offered the job of Secretary of State to Blaine, which angered Conkling, as that position was far more important than that of VP back in the day. Conkling was peeved that Rutherford Hayes had fired Arthur as Collector of the Port of New York, the most lucrative job in the civil service, and he wanted one of his men installed in that post. Garfield balked at it even though the Stalwarts claimed he had promised it to them. When this became public knowledge, it sent Guiteau over the edge. Ackerman makes it clear that Guiteau didn't shoot Garfield because he didn't get the job he wanted; he shot him because he believed Garfield was screwing his "friend" Chester Arthur and Arthur's mentor Conkling.

Garfield became more revered for standing up to Conkling and garnered sympathy after he was shot. Ackerman goes into detail about the doctors basically killing Garfield with their inept care, as they often stuck unwashed hands into the wound and didn't even know where the bullet was until they did a postmortem examination. Arthur, of course, was horrified that Guiteau shot the president because he wanted Arthur to succeed to the office. The mood in the country was ugly for months afterward, because most people resented Arthur and his boss, Conkling. When Garfield defied the New York senator, Conkling resigned his seat in protest. Back then, senators were appointed by the state legislatures, and Conkling just assumed he would be sent back in triumph. The legislature, however, sent a different man, breaking Conkling's power. Arthur distanced himself from Conkling and gained a measure of respect from the country at large. It didn't help him in 1884, and he wasn't nominated.

The book is riveting, not only for the story Ackerman tells, but the little facts he drops into the narrative about the way politics worked 120 years ago. We learn about the backroom deals, the patronage system that Guiteau inadvertently destroyed (Hayes had begun reforming the civil service, but Arthur took it further and created a meritocracy), and how conventions and elections worked. Ackerman gives us an interesting statistic: almost 80% of those eligible voted in the 1880 election (of course, women weren't eligible, but that's still an impressive number). He also writes extensively about the Republicans' relationship with black voters, as this was a time when the Republicans were the party of the black man and the Democrats were often connected to ex-Confederates. This is only four years after Reconstruction ended, after all, and the ex-Confederates were re-asserting their power in the South. It's interesting reading some of the statements the Republicans made about African-Americans, because many of the politicians said things that some of today's Republicans would find reprehensible and some of today's Democrats would agree with. It's a fascinating shift.

There's a ton to like about the book, and I encourage everyone in this political season to read it (or at least a political book!). I mean, a senator who resigns with Conkling got caught having sex with a prostitute in his hotel room, and other legislators lined up to take turns looking at him through the transom. That's pretty awesome. It gives us a glimpse into a relatively forgotten age of American politics, shows us that many powerful people in American politics were not president (in case you didn't already know that; Conkling and Blaine were very powerful kingmakers), sheds new light on a president who showed a great deal of potential in only a few months in office, and is surprisingly tense even though we know how it ends. It's easy and fun to read yet is amazingly complex. I blazed through it, and you can too!