Hawkgirl got a piece of hate mail. It was rude and offensive, and she didn't deserve it. She had this to say about it:

"This is what really bothers me about the far left. They tend to be self-righteous and so sure in their belief that they are correct, that they think they are somehow above the human failures and fallibilities that make things like war an unfortunate necessity. Countries battling with each other are no different than two individuals who might exchange fisticuffs because, say, one calls the other a "stupid f*****g c**t"."

I can only assume that she is equally bothered by the far right, who are so self-righteous that they regularly send liberal journalists hateful letters like this:

"You deserve to be hit by the next terrorist strike. And after we're done with the Taliban it's time to start on clearing out the real terrorist threat to America . . . the Left.

Too bad Osama doesn't have a suitcase nuke to finish off the rest of New York. Hitting the NY Times would be a good start and one of the best things to happen for the good of the country.

If there is another terrorist strike I hope it hits your home, your city, your children's school, your families airplane, and not mine. (It would also be fine with me if they'd wipe out Berkley.)"

Unreasoning hatred for the other side isn't a left/right issue; it's an anti-idiotarian issue.

(Much thanks to The Sideshow for the link, and for the kind words about my blog.)

UPDATE: Hawkgirl sent me an email and put up a response that couldn't be more graceful. It made my day.

I broke 1000 hits! As I write this, I'm at 1025 according to WebCounter.

Of course, BigClawz, a site for people with a foot fetish for giant lizards, has 8333 hits. So I'd be wise not to get too cocky.

Andrew Sullivan writes about Colin Powell's appearance on MTV:

"Contrast Bill Clinton's excruciating dialogue with MTV viewers not so long ago with Colin Powell's masterful, engaged colloquy. No boxers or briefs questions. No attempt to pander shamelessly for votes. Just a principled and effective defense of America's role in the world to a global generation that desperately needs to hear it."

I think that Sullivan should retire the word "Clinton" from his vocabulary, because it does funny things to his head. Two thoughts:

1. Funny how Powell doesn't "pander for votes," considering he's not running for anything, huh?
2. How the hell is Clinton supposed to be responsible for the GODDAMN QUESTIONS THAT SOMEBODY ELSE ASKS HIM? Tell you what. I'm going to write to Andrew Sullivan, call him a doodyhead, then criticize him for getting email that calls him a doodyhead.

Think, Sully, think.

A superb Rolling Stone article is now online: "The Press versus Al Gore." Read it and see why some of us go bonkers when right-wingers refer to the "liberal media" as if that were an accepted fact, like the "round earth" or the "yellow sun."

I was an Enron employee in London, but I follow the story in the paper just like anyone else. Sherron Watkins was a lot closer to the action at Enron than I was. She knew Ken Lay personally, and I don’t. So take this with a grain of salt or two.

I’m sorry, it just doesn’t seem plausible that Ken Lay was unaware of what was going on, especially when Watkins herself made such a vigorous good-faith effort to inform him. I believe that Skilling and Fastow were the drivers who took an already-profitable company on a path of deceptive accounting practices. But Lay wasn’t a moron, and since he listened to Watkins, ipso facto he knew what was going on.

Watkins testified yesterday (I’m paraphrasing, I heard it on the radio) that in an all-employee meeting, Ken Lay compared their problems to the situation Enron had faced when Jamaica nationalized one of their major assets. She said that if he understood the situation, he wouldn’t have compared their serious accounting problems to this wholly dissimilar situation.

When Ken Lay said this, he wasn’t opening his heart among friends. He was spinning! He was in a public meeting that shareholders and analysts had access to. Imagine if he had said, “The big problem here is that we’ve been practicing deceptive accounting strategies, deliberately inflating our profits and hiding our debts with bogus third-party transactions.” He would have sunk the company in a day. Instead, he made a dumb comparison to downplay their problems and buy some time.

Let me tell you a true story. There was an all-employee meeting when Skilling resigned and Ken Lay reassumed the position of CEO. At this time, before there was any whiff of bankruptcy, Enron’s stock price had fallen significantly from its peak, losing almost half its value. When it came time for questions from anonymous employees, the first question was basically, “We are concerned about our retirements. How do you plan to improve Enron’s stock price?” Lay said, “Well, I’m concerned about the stock price, too. I was planning on using it to pay for my grandkids college with my options, but I guess…” There was an audible groan in the room at this absurd reach for pity, and employees watching remotely in London called BS right away.

If I tried to use this as evidence that he didn’t know that he was a multi-millionaire, you’d think I was a moron.

UPDATE: I didn't see this earlier, but Watkins had actually written a memo to Ken Lay in October encouraging him to blame Skilling and Falstow. "In disputing Ms. Watkins's testimony, Mr. Hiler cited an Oct. 30 memo that Ms. Watkins presented to Mr. Lay in which she outlined for him ways to handle the company's public relations crisis and urged him to lay the blame on subordinates.

That memo to Mr. Lay, Mr. Hiler said, "was not the memo of a whistle- blower, but a memo inviting him to participate in a plan for public relations spin control and scapegoating." He added, "She talked about assigning blame to my client, who conveniently was no longer with the company.'""

Doesn't her testimony yesterday reflect the pursuit of the same strategy?

On NPR tonight, they read a letter about a turntablist: "The turntables are no more a musical instrument than a pair of corduroy pants." I don't completely agree, but that's pretty funny.

Bush has put out new proposal for voluntary pollution controls. And Andrew Sullivan loves them(!) Kyoto, he explains, would have "would have all but destroyed the U.S. economy (and thereby the global economy)". Let me know when he starts exaggerating.

Smarter people than me will look at this proposal in more detail; I'm just reading the Post summary. But my first reaction is, who does he think he's fooling by asking for voluntary caps of emissions? Voluntary controls are not controls. This is why there are no voluntary crime laws, or voluntary tax laws. ("All right, Mugsy, we've got you surrounded; you're voluntarily coming with us, if you don't mind.") He tried this when he was governor, and surprisingly, it didn't work. As it turns out, if you want to make an industry stop polluting, you have to make it illegal, or you have to make it cheaper not to pollute. Politely asking them to stop polluting didn't work. His father started a comission that "encourages companies to report their carbon emissions and voluntarily reduce their emissions levels." It didn't work. Why in the world would it work now?

Sullivan praises the "cap and trade" plan that would allow polluters to buy credits from cleaner producers for the right to pollute. I like this plan, too. What he doesn't mention is that cap and trade only applies to three especially egregious pollutants, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury. There are no caps on greenhouse gases. But if the administration buys the logic behind cap and trade, why not extend it to greenhouse gases? If he wanted to, he could put a cap on greenhouse gases right now. It wouldn't have to pinch anyone in the short run, but it would provide massive incentives for R&D to reduce greehouse gas emissions in the medium term. The genius of the market solves the problem, and everyone wins. But I don't think he'll do it, because I don't think he actually cares.

Today's Valentine's message comes from Dubya to John Poindexter- All is forgiven! Let's put all that Iran-Contra ugliness behind us, shall we? XOXOXOX

"Charles Dodgson" explains all.

Man, do I like Oliver Willis. He's got a great post about race that doesn't mention Br****y Sp**rs once.

Once again, the guys at Spinsanity are national treasures. We don't deserve to win a fight if we have to lie to do it. And Senator Hollings should be ashamed of himself for just making stuff up about his political opponents out of thin air.

Jonathan Cohn gets it right on Republican fear of campaign finance reform:

"Unions and environmental groups can call upon millions of Americans who can write small, hard money checks or influence politics via more traditional means--i.e., by writing letters, marching in rallies, etc. Big corporations generally can't do that. And while the Republicans can certainly count upon their own large membership organizations to do the same--I'm thinking here of the NRA and Christian Coalition--maybe McConnell worries their numbers and enthusiasm aren't large enough to overwhelm the Democratic groups.

But if that's the case, it's quite a damning admission. It means that unless business groups are allowed to use their money to sway political debate, over the long run, popular opinion will nudge politics toward the left--and, more or less, in the direction of the Democrats. Or, to put it more simply, it means that Republican ideas don't really have that much popular support.

No wonder McConnell is so worried."

Jay Zilber has a great line about Maureen Dowd: "I'm just waiting for it to dawn on Maureen Dowd that there's grist for a whole 750-word column to be had, by drawing comparisons between The Producers and the Enron saga."

It ties into something interesting about the blogging phenomenon: Maureen Dowd can't write that column now. From what I can tell, columnists really do look at websites all day. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of political bloggers out there sucking up all the good column ideas. The really popular sites burn through dozens of perfectly good column ideas every day, and I don't think that print columnists could get away with using an angle after Glenn Reynolds or Andrew Sullivan got through with it. It's got to make it hard for print columnists to work in the way they're used to. I love it.

The next time you hear someone talking about how the Clinton era was the most corrupt in history, refer them to When Character Wore Pinstripes.

Here's the scoreboard, in brief:

- Total number of Reagan officials convicted: 32

- Bush I pardons of those indicted and/or convicted of Iran-contra crimes: 7 (5 had been convicted, one was about to receive his sentence, and one, Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger was about to stand trial)

- Total number of Clinton officials convicted: 0

SUFFOLK -- "A previous commitment will keep a Suffolk man from traveling to Washington, D.C., to accept a Republican of the Year award: He's serving a 26-year state prison sentence (for sex crimes involving children)."

I used to post a lot on a message board before I discovered blogging, "methadone for news junkies." I remember when this bastard first came to the attention of the press. Someone posted it to the board, and some Republican bottom-feeder posted, "A Democrat would do the same thing... but with a boy."

It still makes my head hurt, a year later, to think about this zinger. I miss the instant feedback from message boards, but I don't miss some of the idiots who posted to them. Hail bloggers!

Oliver Willis proves that Democrats are better than Republicans. I've used it to show that the pope is better than sucka MCs. I could waste a lot of time on this site.

Ted Turner says his comments about how the terrorists were "brave" and "a little nuts" "were reported out of context, and I deeply regret any pain they may have caused."

BZZZZT! Wrong answer! When Jerry Falwell said that his comments immediately after September 11th were taken out of context, I was furious, and I absolutely did not accept the "out of context" explanation. It's no different here. I can't imagine the context that could justify this kind of soft-shoe on the terrorists. (From what I saw, I can't fault the coverage he got for providing context.)

Second, this is not an apology. An apology is when you admit that you did something bad, you say that you're sorry that you did it, and you shut up and take your licks. I can't stand it when public figures "apologize" by blaming the press, blaming their critics for taking offense, then exiting stage left. Makes me wanna holler.

I haven't found a transcript of Ted Turner's speech; maybe there is some wiggle room. But I doubt it.

Glenn Reynolds is a very smart guy, but he can't be paying attention to the Enron case if he can say with a straight face, "Enron didn't get anything for its money, as best anyone can tell."

Enron got to reshape government policy, which is supposed to protect the public interest, to its taste. Charles Dodgson puts it very well, and I can't resist quoting him at length:

“Let's start with the strange case of Curt Hébert, the first Chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Bush, who resigned under pressure, and was replaced by a good old boy from Texas. The GAO was asked to look into whether Lay had exercised improper influence. Their intriguing report says that:
• Hébert wanted Lay's political support.
• That support was contingent on Hébert changing his policy stands to be more favorable, in specific ways, to Lay and Enron.
• This was understood on both sides of the conversation.

...but that none of this was improper because Lay's political support was not an "intangible ... thing of value" (it was only Hébert's job, after all), and because no one had uttered the magic words "quid pro quo". It's for logic like this that I named this blog for the works of Lewis Carroll.

Or consider the remarkable memo uncovered by the SF Chronicle, which was passed from Lay to Cheney at a private meeting. Almost all of its "advice" instantly became administration policy.

That meeting itself was more than passing strange --- it featured extensive discussions about the then-current California energy crisis at a time when California's elected officials, Governor and Senators alike, were repeatedly denied meetings on the subject. And not only that, Lay was the only corporate executive Cheney met with one-on-one. (But Lay denies knowing that he had any special role. Quelle surprise).

But, the administration's defenders argue, Enron didn't get its way in everything --- Enron supported the Kyoto protocol, for instance, which the administration opposed, thus proving its independant judgment. In other words, Cheney went against Enron when its peripheral concerns butted up hard against the vital interests of the coal and oil industries, thus demonstrating for all that he is not a spineless tool of the energy industries. Or so the argument goes. I'm underwhelmed.

But Enron wasn't just throwing money at Bush --- they were throwing money at anyone who would take it, goes another line. True --- as I've noted elsewhere, the notoriously flawed California deregulation plan was shaped by Enron-channeling Democrats. But, quoth the Washington Post, they were fairly careful about getting value for money; their system for monitoring the influence market featured high tech and elaborate models comparable to anything they used to run their dealings in, say, natural gas. And if their contributions to Republicans, and Bush in particular, were disproportionate, we might reasonably refer that the "influence peddlotron", as Joshua Marshall has memorably dubbed it, was telling them that that's where they could get value for money."

Here's more cases where government policy was changed to benefit Enron, from the New Republic:

“Lawrence Summers, the previous Treasury secretary, sought to crack down on tax shelters but was stymied by congressional Republicans. His successor Paul O'Neill has renounced even the modest steps to discourage tax havens proposed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The previous chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arthur Levitt, tried to ban accounting firms from soliciting other business from their audit clients. But the accounting lobby beat back his efforts. And the lobbyist who represented the accounting firms, Harvey Pitt, was appointed last year by President Bush to serve as the chairman of the very commission he helped to defang.

No law required Enron to disclose its derivatives' investments on its balance sheets at all. Some regulators found this alarming--in 1997 Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, proposed more stringent disclosure requirements for derivatives. But financial interests, including Enron, vigorously resisted. At one point, according to The Wall Street Journal, House Banking Committee Chairman Jim Leach scolded Born for two hours for her pro-reform leanings.”

Let's not forget that until last week, Bush was pushing for the Republican stimulus package that would write a check for a quarter of a billion tax dollars straight to Enron. The guys at Enron weren't stupid. They made an investment in politics that paid off, big time.

Heretical Ideas has some fun questions for anti-globalization acitivists. The best one, by far, is this:

"4. If economic sanctions mean that citizens in Iraq, for example, are impoverished and starving, doesn't that mean you support free trade with poor nations?"

Bullseye. It more than makes up for this howler, two posts down: "Dole would've wolloped Clinton if he'd allowed his humorous side to show during the campaign." Oh, come on...

"A Texas City man with a long history of mental health problems shot his girlfriend because he thought she was about to say the words New Jersey, Wisconsin, Snickers and Mars that inexplicably send him into a rage, prosecutors said Tuesday."

The best caption contest I've ever seen was at Pointless Waste of Time. Start from the bottom; I think that the first ones were the best.

BartCop has an impassioned argument calling Bush out for encouraging our Olympic athletes with "Let's roll." I think he's right.

"Todd Beamer wasn't settling for the silver when he said those words.
He wasn't trying to win some damn football game.
He wasn't after some fucking three-peat in basketball...

Don't get me wrong. Besides Usurperboy, I don't mean to accuse people who've used that term of anything, but I think it's time someone stood up and said, 'This is not a phrase we use when we're trying to break the beer chugging record at some fucking bar.'"

The New Republic is right on target about the Bush budget. I'm sorry to be such a harp about this, but Mr. Honor and Integrity's budget priorities are going to cost me an arm and a leg as I get older.

I made this point a while ago, and I'll make it again: A lot of conservatives take it as a matter of faith that it's just a matter of time before Social Security and Medicare collapses under its own weight. I've seen a lot of young conservatives start with the assumption that Social Security will be gone when they retire. This frees them from worrying about the deficits we're taking on now.

I strongly disagree. Look at the political, economic, and cultural power that baby boomers currently hold. Now imagine them as members of the AARP, the most powerful PAC in the United States. They'll have money for donations and all the time in the world to call Congress. They've been paying into Social Security their whole lives. Do you think that the Me Generation will nobly step aside and allow Social Security and Medicare to evaporate so that my age cohort don't have to shoulder the weight of their retirements? I don't believe it for a second.

When you have a rich, well- organized special interest group like elderly boomers are sure to be, they will get what they want. I'll bet that Social Security benefits increase, rather than decrease, after 2010 or so. And I'm going to have to pay for it.

Righteous column about how shamefully inaccurate it was for Ari Fleischer to compare Cheney's secret energy task force to the Constitutional Convention.

Charles Dodgson has an excellent, detailed post about right-wing bloggers endless ability to rationalize Enron news. He should look at the Wall Street Journal (unofficial motto: "About Face!") for some X-treme rationalization. Extreme partisans on either side of the political spectrum are always better on offense than defense; I think that they're demonizing Daschle so much just because they're bored.

A great story, for free, on Salon? Has the world gone mad?

The guys from Spinsanity are a national treasure, and Mitch Daniels deserves all the abuse he gets and more. I expect some spin when it comes to the budget, but his approach is completely irresponsible. Everyone in the room agrees that middle class taxpayers are going to be protected from a tax increase under the alternative minimum tax. So why the hell isn't it in the budget?

In hearings about the budget, he lashed out at "tax and spend extremists in the Democratic Senate caucus," calling them "people for whom taxes can't be high enough and we can never spend too much government money." So at least we know he's reasonable.

This is why Paul Krugman is so important to the national discourse- he usually seems to be the only person in the major media who catches on to these sort of outright deceptions. Could this be why Andrew Sullivan hates him so much?

The "drugs fuel terrorism" ads have come under a lot of fire recently. I completely agree that drugs are so profitable only because of our insane drug laws. I also agree that if we were serious about cutting off terrorist funding, we'd be trying to figure out how to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Drilling Alaska in ten years doesn't count. (I see a lot of warbloggers who are furious at the Saudis for supporting terror, but very few who think that we ought to, you know, buy less of their oil as a result.) Since the administration is not even pretending to take either of these courses, it's hard to pretend that these commercials are part of an earnest effort to economically starve terror groups.

However, there's something I like about the sentiment behind them. Back in the day, a lot of my friends would boycott Pepsi, or Cracker Barrel, or Starbucks, or Kraft foods, or whatever, on ethical grounds. Fair enough; it's your money. But if there's one industy that deserves a boycott, isn't it the illegal drug industry? I'm not talking about the guy growing pot in his basement. But drug dealers really do kill judges, terrify neighborhoods, bribe officials, and distort the economies of third-world countries. They hurt far more people than Starbucks.

Karin posts about the lack of powerful women in pop/rock music. I have two thoughts:

1. She could have written this post any time since the beginning of rock and roll, since there have never been very many women in rock at one time. I could probably count the mainstream female-fronted rock groups in the last decade on one hand. Rock has always been dominated by guys. The list of popular rock bands fronted by women is very, very short; I'm running out of ideas after the Pretenders, Hole, and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Big Brother and the Holding Company.
2. Young women looking for tough, in-control women have just got to turn on black radio, where you can hardly find anything but powerful women. J. Lo doesn't need a man- her love don't cost a thing. Destiny's Child are Independent Women/ Survivors. TLC don't want no scrubs. Mary J. Blige is back, and wants no more drama. Eve will blow ya mind. L'il Kim... she'd eat you alive. Missy Elliot don't want no one minute man. Alicia Keys is the only female black pop singer I can think of who seems to be in less than total control.

This ties in to a larger trend in recent years, in which white musicians wear their weaknesses and neuroses on their sleeves, while black musicians go on and on about their skills, money, strength, intelligence, etc. I saw a poster of Eminem in which he was dressed as a busboy in a filthy apron. I thought, you'd never, never, never, never see Jay-Z in this outfit.

UPDATE: I thought of two more mainstream rock groups with female leads- the Cranberries and Garbage. I would also have to count Melissa Etheridge as a rock and roll girl, even thought I can't stand her. Also, on the drive home I started thinking about two of my favorite imaginary bands: Adequate G, the rapper with a realistic sense of self, who boasts that he has approximately as many rhymes as comparable rappers. The other thing I'd love to see is some punk band with a sense of humor do a video in which they drive around in hot tubs in the back of limos, drink champagne with bikini models, and nod enthusiastically as big bootys shake in the camera. Maybe Blink-182 has already done this, I don't know.

I've noticed a small boom (ok, two) posts about "Why I am not a libertarian/ liberal". Since I don't have time to write much today, (and I'm sorry about that; I'd like to comment about where the left-wing bloggers are) I thought I'd link to Bertrand Russell's great "Why I Am Not A Christian" and Joey Ramone's "Why I Am Not A Brat."

Did you ever see the Kevin Kline movie "Dave", where a kind-hearted ordinary guy who looked just like the President had to fill in after the real President went into a coma? Do you remember how they established the cartoonish supervillany of the real President? He went to a popular social program for a photo op, and basked in the cameras while showing how much the government cared. He then turned around and cut the funding for the program after the cameras were off.

As it turns out, truth is more appalling than fiction. In January, Bush went up to Oregon, for a “Message: I care” photo op with a federally funded job-training program. According to the New Republic, “He commiserated with the out-of-work at Portland's Youth Opportunity Center, a federally financed program that helps jobless young people in the city's poorest neighborhood. The half-hour photo op and visit produced some touching copy: Several youngsters talked to the press about their former lives on the streets; a girl named Amy sang "God Bless America." At a speech later in the day, Bush praised the work being done at the job-training program: "I went by and saw the good instructors there that are trying to help people help themselves.""

He then turned around and cut the budget for these good instructors by 80%.