Ann Friedman notes that Rudy Giuliani doesn’t only have the most male-dominated staff of any presidential candidate, he takes the prize for whitest campaign staff as well, clocking in at a striking 100 percent white. Phoenix Woman terms Team Rudy bad for diversity, but only Giuliani among the major contenders has child molesting priests and mobbed-up former police commissioners in his retinue. It’s only diversity in the racial and gender senses that he’s lacking.
CBS News has obtained a photo of the FEMA’s staged press conference from last month. “The photo, taken by a FEMA employee, is one of the only known photos of the press gallery of that event”:
CBS has the rundown of who’s who in the photo here.
Far be it from me to mock the typos of others, but this one in Mike Tomasky’s great essay on Paul Krugman for The New York Review of Books brings a smile to this comic book fan’s face:
Many liberals would name Paul Krug-man of The New York Times as perhaps the most consistent and courageous—and unapologetic—liberal partisan in American journalism. He has made his perspective on the Bush administration and the contemporary right, and on the need to see politics as a battle, manifestly clear in column after incendiary column.
Conservatives, being a superstitious and cowardly lot, naturally fear and loathe the Krug-Man and his powers of shrill, but the good people of Liberal City look to him as a friend and protector….
Earlier this week, congressional conservatives mapped out a plan to engage in a “war over earmarks” with the majority in Congress by targeting “certain earmarks” deemed “egregious” and “wasteful” to “question spending priorities.”
One of the first skirmishes in this new “war” was a coordinated effort by the right wing to attack an earmark benefiting House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) placed in the Defense Appropriations bill. The earmark provides $3 million to The First Tee, a program “that uses golf to ‘teach life lessons’ to low-income kids.”
In the past two days, the National Review, Hot Air, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), the South Carolina Republican Party and the National Republican Congressional Committee have all lit into Clyburn, calling the earmark “disturbing” and “wrong.”
Unmentioned by Clyburn’s critics, however, is the fact that First Tee has been heavily praised by movement conservatives like Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), who organized a hearing to attest to the program’s virtues, and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who delivered official testimony in support of the program:
We’re here today to recognize the efforts of The First Tee, a youth character building organization with programs located throughout the country that provide young people of all backgrounds an opportunity to develop, through both the game of golf and character education, values and character traits that will positively impact their lives and experiences in school. [...]
No activity better parallels life and teaches you the character you need to be successful in life than the game of golf. On the golf course, you learn responsibility, honesty, patience, self-control, integrity, respect, confidence, and sportsmanship. [...]
The First Tee is working to make the game of golf more affordable and accessible to young people throughout the nation.
The conservatives have crowed over the fact that the earmark is in a defense spending bill, but as Clyburn’s spokeswoman, Kristie Greco, told the National Review, the funds are specifically meant to spread the program to the “children of servicemembers all over the nation.”
The fact that after searching through all of the earmarks, the best conservatives could come up with is a program benefiting the children of military families that has bipartisan support, suggests that their claims of “egregious” and “wasteful” earmarks are nothing but hype and political posturing.
Fisker Automotive is taking orders for its $80,000 (only $1,000 down!) “4-door plug-in hybrid sports sedan” (click on pic for high-res image):
The specs released so far are:
Performance details for the first car are impressive achieving 50 miles (80 kilometers) on a pure electric charge [sic]. Additionally, by further utilizing a gasoline or diesel engine offered by Fisker, one can extend the total range of their Fisker to more than 620 miles (1000 kilometers). The first Fisker will also deliver an extraordinary 100 miles per gallon – performance figures that will ultimately help to reduce the need for the importation of foreign oil.
Delivery will be in 2010, unless you drop $100,000 — and heck, it’s only $5,000 down — for one of the first 100 in the “Signature edition.” Then you’ll get it in Q4, 2009, “with exclusive show car package (final details to be revealed after Detroit launch, Jan. 2008).”
The Customer Registration Form is here.
Tip o’ the hat to Plug-in Partners, whose post on the car also discusses some other plug ins that may soon be in showrooms around the globe.
[Note to readers (and concerned CAPAF legal eagles): This blog post should not be taken as an endorsement of any product or company, particularly one that has not offered me a discount or even a test drive -- hint, hint.]
A correspondent directed my attention to the second page of Ann Scott Tyson’s Washington Post article on counterterrorism in Pakistan and wondered how long it’s going to be before we see a Weekly Standard article about proclaiming General Ashfaq Kiyani to be the Petraeus of Pakistan. There’s certainly food for thought here:
Nevertheless, U.S. military officials said that Kiyani, Musharraf’s possible replacement as head of the military, is supportive of the counterinsurgency plan in the tribal areas, which he visited within days of assuming his current post last month. Kiyani has also indicated an openness to having the Pakistani military focus on missions other than conventional operations aimed at the threat of India, which senior U.S. officers consider diminished. “He has a different view,” said one senior military official. “I’d expect he will step up and be head of the army, and there will be some changes.”
This reminds me that Americans — from journalists to congressmen to senior miltiary officials — ought to consider adopting a less personality-driven view of how the world works. The fact that a Pakistani general angling for the top spot in Pakistan’s all-powerful military tells American military officials that he wants to concentrate less on the top priority of the Pakistani military and more on the top priority of the American military tells us only that General Kiyani understands how to tell people what they want to hear.
Meanwhile, it raises a good issue. When we think about Pakistan’s security forces, we think about fighting al-Qaeda. When Pakistanis think about Pakistan’s security forces, they think about fighting India. If we want Pakistan to spend less time worrying about India and more time worrying about al-Qaeda, we should be thinking about whether or not there’s something we could do on the India front that would make it worth Pakistan’s while to worry less about India and more about al-Qaeda.
In general, this is what’s really gone awry with the heavily moralized post-9/11 climate in the United States. We spend tons of time worrying about whether or not this or that leader — Musharraf, Putin, Mubarak, Arafat, Sharon, Khameini, Kim, whatever — is or is not a “good man,” a “moderate,” a “man of peace,” a “tyrant,” a “terrorist,” a “pygmy,” whatever — that there’s little thought given to the idea that countries have interests, and the United States has interests, and the name of the game is to set priorities and let other countries have their way on their top priorities if they’ll let us have our way on our top priorities.
A new study by Physicians for Social Responsibility, which shared the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, predicts that “healthcare for Iraq veterans could top $650 billion, another warning of a looming social crisis as thousands of veterans struggle with mental and physical disabilities and other disruptions to family life.” More on the challenges faced by veterans in today’s Progress Report.
OK — maybe it is a good thing that the morally-challenged Senator is on the other side of the debate. He recently said:
Yes a very good position for a delayer, since a carbon tax is a political nonstarter (and dubious for other reasons), while a technology-only strategy can’t do the job.
This is not, however, an especially new position for the conservative senator. Back in 1998, he said:
Craig isn’t going to win a Nobel prize for prognostication….
Glenn Sacks concedes that “Feminist Writer Ann Friedman Has a Point” about the goofiness of arguments grounded on the alleged ugliness of liberal women only to get immediate pushback from commenters:
Lack of attractiveness results in quite a few middle-aged, embittered women, women who are ready, willing, and able to declare war on men. They did not have a line of men vying for the right to support them and their life-choices, looked around for a convenient class of oppressor and learned in their Womyn’s Studies that they were being oppressed by MEN all along!
9′s and 10′s among women generally do not NEED those artificially constructed entitlements and privileges for women – they have men willing and able to cater to their comforts and needs.
So…. don’t get caught up in Ann Friendman’s ovary-think, Glenn.
Also — “Even if all feminists looked like a model their obnoxious, hate mongering will allow them the same dislike and distrust as the ugly male-haters get today.” Heh. Indeed. These guys really need to read Steven Den Beste then they might realize that the only real (Anglo) women left are strippers (or something).
Speaking in the UK yesterday, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) predicted that if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, he or she would seek to install universal health care, similar to the system in Britain. This possibility “received thunderous applause.” DeLay claimed that, under the U.S. system, “no American is denied health care”:
By the way, there’s no one denied health care in America. There are 47 million people who don’t have health insurance, but no American is denied health care in America.
The audience, understandably, greeted DeLay’s preposterous claims with “derisive laughter,” according to the AP. A recent report showed that for the sixth straight year, jobholders continued to see a decline in employer-provided health insurance, with 38 states seeing “significant” drops in benefits offered by employers.
Observers estimate that anywhere from one to 18 percent of Americans are denied health insurance because of pre-existing health conditions. These conditions can range from heart disease to high cholesterol to yeast infections to being too skinny. A few examples of Americans who were denied health care:
Texas resident Shirley Lowe was denied health care because her breast cancer was diagnosed at a medical center rather than a clinic receiving federal cancer-research funds.
New Orleans bus driver Emanuel Wilson was denied health care when the government refused to pay for his chemotherapy because he had had a job that had provided insurance — a job he lost after Hurricane Katrina.
Thousands of 9/11 workers who worked at Ground Zero were denied health care when the federal government approved woefully inadequate funds to address the permanent health problems, such as sinusitis and asthma, associated with work at the site.
As Michael Moore’s film “Sicko” showed so clearly, millions more Americans who have health insurance are denied the care they need due to insurers’ “cost-cutting strategies.”
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