watch this

Everyone who cares about politics, especially liberal politics, must watch this Frontline on Karl Rove right now. The whole 50-minutes is on that website, and it will fascinate, depress and inspire you. American politics is a dirty, important business, and no one more depressingly represents that than Karl Rove.

CONGRATULATIONS! Another semester done. Have an amazing summer. 

the end of the veep mess

A letter in the Crimson from Faraz Munaim on the veep mess that I hope begins to put this all to rest.

from The Onion: “Bush Gets Caught In One Of His Own Terror Traps” 

three interesting videos

Amnesty International blasts the US for Gitmo, compares them to Soviet gulags and the disappearing peoples in South American dictatorships. Video here.

Hardball has an interesting (although over-simplified) history of the religious right in the last 40 years and Frist’s modern day problems. Video here.

60 Minutes did a piece on the failures of abstinence programs, and the ways the Bush Administration is giving money to what are essentially evangelizing programs. Link here, video at bottom of page.

Enjoy, congratulations if you’re done! I am not. Damn you Pinker and your last day final!

Bulworth v.Terminator

Warren Beatty seems to be testing the waters for a run for Governor against the Ahnold. Either that or he’s just trying to knock him down a few more pegs so he’s a softer target for Angelides. For those of you who don’t know, the current Democratic challenger to my Governor is Phil Angelides, the California State Treasurer and father of a Quincy House Junior. Smart man, would be a good Governor. What he couldn’t do, however, is pull off the amazingly funny and pointed hit on Schwarzenegger that Beatty did last week speaking at a UC Berkeley grad school graduation:

“cut down the photo ops, the fake events, the fake issues, the fake crowds, the scapegoats, the ‘language problems,’ the broken promises, the ‘Minutemen,’ the prevarications and put some sunlight on some taxes.(more in expanded post)

“It’s become time to define a Schwarzenegger Republican . A Schwarzenegger Republican is a Bush Republican who says he’s a Schwarzenegger Republican,” Beatty said. “Can’t we accept that devotion to the building of the body politic is more complex and a little more sensitive than devotion to body-building?”

Witheringng! I love it. Beatty’s a smart guy and an experienced political operative. Who knows whether or not he’d be a good Governor, but I wouldn’t mind a few more of those speeches…

zing!

Keith Olbermann, who I still remember fondly growing up as the head anchor of Sports Center, nails White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan (watch the video here). While I obviously like Olbermann because of his fairly clear liberal bias, that bias also allows him to cut through a lot of the WH’s truth-twisting because he’s willing to go against the GOP talking points.

Mr. Olbermann then does a great job of respectfully interviewing a pastor who believes, and put up on his church sign, that the Koran should be flushed down a toilet. His damning proof that it is not the word of God and the Christian Bible is: the Koran says Jesus was born under a palm tree, the Bible says he was born in a manger. Wow, brilliant logic. I think Olbermann does a great job in pointing to the problem of fundamentalism and absolutism like this in his questioning (watch the video here).

I do miss Olbermann on Sports Center, but I love what he’s doing at MSNBC.

hmmm…

Well, for the first time Cambridge Common is actually in the Crimson, not just making fun of it or questioning it’s factual basis. Nothing much new, just a fairly reasonable accounting of this whole ridiculous Veep controversy. God knows it was a slow news day if something CC was involved in was the lead story. They’re really desperate in these slow days of finals (newsflash: students sit in library, take exams). While I think it’s good that they wrote about it to clear the air, it seems like there are other things that could have been the lead story that are maybe a little more important:

- Harvard continues to be one of the only Ivy League schools without a Women’s Center.
- Harvard continues to sub-contract every possible worker so that they don’t have to pay for benefits like medical insurance for their children.
- Harvard continues to invest in companies with holdings in the Sudan.

Oh, I could go on and on. And that’s just here at Harvard. Who else has something important that would have been a more appropriate lead story than some lying UC member trying to malign good people?

reasonable people win

Who would have thunk it? The nuclear bomb that would have gone off on the floor of the Senate tomorrow has been diffused by 14 (really twelve with two jumping on when they knew it would happen) Senators working across the aisle. Basically, by agreeing to vote for cloture (end a filibuster) on three nominees- Rogers, Owen and Bryor – and agreeing not to support the nuclear option to end judicial filibusters, this group has apparently ended the entire thing. While this isn’t ideal (these judges are pretty far right), it’s an important compromise (see the text here) to maintain the filibuster in principle and reduce its abuse. In terms of politics it looks like Frist is the big loser, McCain is the big winner, and the Democrats are a wash.
(some VIDEO LINKS in expanded post)

Alright, first you can watch the press conference (parts one, two and three). It’s a haphazard but nice little thing with each Senator speaking for a few sentences. You can also watch Frist try to save face on the floor of the Senate. When I was watching all I could think is “who advised him to do this? He looks desperate!” You can also watch Leader Reid’s press conference and speech on the floor. Both are measured but happy.

the conservative divide(s)

It’s coming. For years now, the coalition that is the Republican Party has been held together with shrewd politicking and calls for solidarity in the face of the supposed evils of liberalism: moral relativism, pacifism and elitism (or as I like to call them: tolerance, respect for human life and intelligence). The GOP is rampant with contradictions: top-down federalized social conservatism v. bottom-up federalist communitarianism; big government militarism v. small government libertarianism; cautious, isolationism foreign policy v. robust, preemptive idealism; lower taxes on the rich v. um… wait they agree on that. While the Democratic Party is equally internally contradictory, our contradictions have been more pronounced at the top, while the GOP has pretty much kept things together. In the national leadership to this point, all of those different strands have blended into a pro-war, pro-market, anti-tax Goliath that talks up social conservatism in election years, and mostly ignore it in reality. (more in expanded post)

But the fault lines are starting to show. Social (very) conservatives, who claim ownership over George W. because they (wrongly) claim they got him reelected, are cashing in their favor cards. The want Schiavo, they want judges, and they place their goals in the apocalyptic terms of Christians versus the World. But they may be overplaying their hand (I love bad metaphors). In USA Today (yesterday), Trent Lott has to defend his Christian cred to the Christian Right’s new leader, James Dobson:

“James Dobson: Who does he think he is, questioning my conservative credentials?” Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said in an interview. Dobson, head of the conservative group Focus on the Family, criticized Lott for his efforts to forge a compromise in the fight over the judges. Lott is still angry. “Some of his language and conduct is quite un-Christian, and I don’t appreciate it,” the senator said.

When Trent Lott is at odds with the right wing of the Republican Party, you know other people are squirming. And the fact that 6 GOP Senators may (let’s hope) jump ship to maintain the filibuster in the face of incredible pressure from the base and the White House doesn’t speak well.

Then you have Pat Buchanan who, while all put kicked out of GOP in 2000, is declaring conservatism dead,and a war a-brewin over the remains:

“The conservative movement has passed into history,” says the one-time White House aide, three-time presidential candidate, commentator and magazine publisher. “It doesn’t exist anymore as a unifying force,” he says in an interview with The Washington Times. “There are still a lot of people who are conservative, but the movement is now broken up, crumbled, dismantled.”

It hard to ignore his claim that he lost the culture war, when you see that folks like these are going to be going to dinner with Bush:

“I’m honored to be invited to this event,” Kulkis said. “Republicans bill themselves as the pro-business party. Well, you won’t find a group of people more pro-business than pornographers. We contributed over $10 billion to the national economy last year.”

Cognitive dissonance anyone? And best of all, a Presidential campaign is coming up! How many times do you think Frist or Santorum will hint that McCain is un-Christian?