Kids these days

Now I don't know Facebook from Live Journal from My Space from Auto Admit, but this (and its accompanying graph) is interesting, primarily because of the sheer number of Democratic supporters that so kicks the teeth out of the Republican supporters.

Bed-time reading

Just a little Saturday night bed-time reading, boys and girls. Spot hasn't digested it yet. It's the Senate Foreign Relations testimony of Nir Rosen.

A thump of the tail to A Tiny Revolution.

Technorati Tags: Iraq war

Boy, Spot, you must feel really bad!

Oh, why is that, grasshopper?

Well, here's a quote from Il Duce, also known as Tracy Eberly, in a comment about your post The Devil Made Me Do It!:

It is sad that you have to blame your poor writing on a dog.

That had to hurt, Spotty!

Yes, grasshopper, it was like a kick to the stomach - or perhaps even lower - it shook Spot's self-esteem like no criticism he has ever received before. With that one sentence, Tracy delivered a blow that made Spot question his very existence, his raison d'être.

But Spotty is resolved to soldier on in the face the humiliation!

You are so brave, Spotty!

Yes, he is, isn't he grasshopper?

Technorati Tags: Tracy Eberly,humiliation

Terri Bonoff at DL tomorrow night!

DFL candidate for the endorsement for the Third Congressional District in Minnesota, Terri Bonoff, will be at Drinking Liberally tomorrow evening (Thursday, April 3rd). Drinking Liberally meets at the 331 Club in Minneapolis; our regular meeting time is six to nine.

Candidate Bonoff will arrive around seven, offer a few remarks and take some questions from the assembled DL denizens.

Technorati Tags: Minnesota Third Congressional District,Terri Bonoff,DFL endorsement

Connected

The world can be a pretty small place sometimes. We've read about the complaint the DFL filed with the FEC over the pro-Norm sham issue ad being run by the American Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) set up in Iowa, but with a contact address as 98 Alexandria Pike, Suite 53, Warrenton, VA 20186.

That is the address of the law firm that represents not only the American Future Fund, but also the Vets for Freedom, whose political tour was disinvited from Forest Lake High School last week. Jill Holtzman Vogel and her cohorts have an outstanding pedigree of assisting GOP candidates win elections, no matter what (including a stint as counsel for the Florida recount in 2000).

She's been legal adviser to the Bill Frist Campaign, too. Not a good one - there were multiple fines dealing with campaign law violations - but an adviser nonetheless.

And just last year, Ms. Vogel was accused of having a political crony indict her state senate primary opponent just a few weeks before the primary.

Then there's the matter of the unsolved murder of one of the lawyers in her office.

I know, just another bit player in the vast right wing conspiracy, but it's like this huge spider web.

The re-virgining of Michael Brodkorb

There has been a little, er, discussion over at Centrisity about Michael Brodkorb's "disclosure" page. Flash, and Spot, too, think it's too cute by half. It starts out this way:

I have spent most of my entire professional career working in Minnesota politics and public relations.

(You can get a link to Brodkorb's page at the Centrisity post, if you are so inclined.)

Spot says put in a call to the syntax homicide detectives. (Young man asks old man: Have you lived here your whole life? Old man replies: Not yet.)

Where was Spot? Oh, yes. Mikey goes on to identify all the party and campaign jobs that he has had, and how he is a "Republican operative," but then he says that if he is "hired" by the Republican party or a candidate, he will disclose that, because the failure to do so would "tarnish the effectiveness" of Mikey's blog. As the Brits might say, Really?

Spotty, what does "hired" mean?

It means to become an employee, grasshopper. Mikey calls himself "self-employed," which means he takes money as an independent contractor. From all manner of sugar daddies who aren't the Republican Party itself or a Republican candidate. It is incomprehensible, really, that Mikey isn't some kind of kept man.

Boys and girls, your Aunt Tild was thinking of what it would be like if Mikey was really as independent as he wants you to believe. She put together some pictures, which Spot has collected for your viewing pleasure.

You can just hit the full screen button for a larger version, boys and girls.

Technorati Tags: kept men,Miichael Brodkorb,Minnesota Democrats Exposed

Al, Debate Jack! reprise

Spot sent a link to his video Al, Debate Jack! to the Al Franken campaign, asking for comment. None thus far. For those of you who may have missed, here is the video again:

Technorati Tags: Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer,Al Franken,US Senate,DFL endorsement

The Devil Made Me Do It!

Wasn't that Jimmy Swaggert's line when he was caught in compromising behavior with hookers?

Yeah, and the bubbas bought it, Spotty.

Yes they did, grasshopper. Unlike, apparently, a jury in Colorado that convicted a man of rape of and theft from a woman hired to be his maid when the man claimed he was merely engaging in "traditional Muslim behavior."

Someone named Il Duce - clearly a person of munificent sentiment - at the odious snot rag, Anti-Strib.com, wants to charge all liberals with complicity:

I have no doubt that rape and abuse are typical Muslim behavior, but do we really want to be tolerant of this shit? Are liberals really ready to sacrifice all of our laws at the temple of Multi-culturalism?

By the way, Il Duce, it should be altar of multi-culturalism: temples are usually much larger, and generally refer to entire buildings. But never mind. Spot digresses.

Joe Bodell, the proprietor of Minnesota Campaign Report, replies: Hey, it's unfair to blame all Muslims, or certainly all liberals, for that matter. And, of course, it is. But Joe, it is the sort of libel you must expect from drooling cretins like Il Duce and his ilk.

This is perhaps a good time, boys and girls, to remember the difference between natural law and positive law. Interestingly, it is the conservatives - especially the Christian conservatives - who most often posit that natural law, God's law, governs the affairs of mankind.

God's law, however, is an elusive concept, and it exists in many forms, depending on the beholder, or believer. Which God's law should we apply? Should we apply Sharia law, lopping off the odd limb or noggin here and there? Or perhaps we should apply the law of Moses and stone non-virgin brides on their fathers' doorsteps? Maybe we should obey the Catholic Church's condemnation of capital punishment?

It's a puzzle, isn't it, Spotty?

Indeed, grasshopper. It is why, in spite of Tommy Jefferson's regrettable rhetorical flourish in the Declaration of Independence (perhaps forgivable because it was addressed to a fellow who believed in the divine right of kings), the United States, and its foundation document, the Constitution, are thoroughly positive law institutions. We choose democratically the laws by which we are governed, according to a guiding set of principles, not by some theocratic hoo hah who claims to know the mind of God.

It is for precisely the same reason that we do not accept that: 1) women may be kept in involuntary servitude and raped when convenient, 2) gays and lesbians are "abominations," and 3) women do not have sovereignty over their own bodies and lack reproductive choice.

Jimmy Swaggert may have successfully pleaded that the devil made him do it, and it may have worked for his congregation, but claiming that the devil - or God - made you do it, or permitted you to do it, is of no moment in U.S. law. That's what a jury in Colorado concluded, too.

Technorati Tags: Sharia law,natural law,positive law,Constitution,jury verdicts,non-virgin brides,snot rags

The sun: Nothing New Under Department

Today, boys and girls, we turn to a couple of excellent legal writers to tell us that George II is just following in the footsteps of Charles I and the Federalist John Adams. Spot finds it oddly comforting to consider that George Bush is not an innovative charlatan, but merely a charlatan.

Consider Charles I of England. A monarch beheaded for treason - consider that for a moment, boys and girls: a king adjudged guilty for crimes against his own Crown, himself in other words - who found the courts, weak and ineffective as they were in England at the time, to be a nuisance to avoided:

In England of the seventeenth century, the Stuart monarchs gradually found the court system to be entirely too much of a bother. Of course, they would pick the judges and keep them in line with promises of royal favor or the reverse, and they developed the cajoling of juries into a high art form, often enough promising retribution against jurors who failed to render the desired verdict. But the bottom line was that this legal system was simply too unpredictable. Why, it actually dispensed justice in some cases. And that was decidedly not what the monarch desired—or to put it more in the framework of the times, it was the King’s justice that they were after, a particular and personal flavor. So some cures were crafted. One was the use of military tribunals to try cases—tribunals which immediately dispensed the justice that the sovereign desired. And another was the practice of putting prisoners, especially those in political cases, on boats and shipping them off to places where the hated writs of the English courts, and particularly the writ most in disfavor, habeas corpus, did not run—to the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and even on occasion to America.

Much of the reign of the Bush dynasty has been an exercise in reliving the mistakes of the seventeenth century, and in short order we have seen Bush resort to each of [these] techniques of the Stuart monarchs so close to his heart. And now we leap forward some three hundred and fifty years to discover that we have an Administration intent on dispensing not American justice, but Bush justice–and that it’s best doing this with a sleight of hand worthy of a Stuart monarch.

That's Scott Horton, writing on his blog, No Comment. As Horton points out, the architect of a lot of this seventeenth century thinking is John Yoo, Professor Organ Failure. The avoidance of habeas corpus and military commissions to try "certain" prisoners are the acts of a monarch, or as John Yoo might put it, a unitary executive.

The second legal writer that Spot wants to quote today is Anthony Lewis, the author of the award-winning Gideon's Trumpet and the author of the new book Freedom for the Thought We Hate. Here's Lewis on page 21 of the book:

But one feature of the Sedition Act did not disappear: the political use of fear to justify repression. Again and again in American history the public has been told that civil liberties must be sacrifices to protect the country from foreign threats. There have been repeated examples of what Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style in American politics." As in 1798, when the Federalists spoke of French terror to justify the Sedition Act, so in the twentieth century Congress many laws branding as infamous anyone who was suspected of a Communist taint; politicians from the 1920s through Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy won votes by charging their opponents with being soft on communism. In the "war on terror" in the twenty-first century, President George W. Bush persuaded Congress to deprive alleged "enemy combatants" of legal rights in order, he said, to keep the country safe.

James Madison [a principal drafter of the Constitution] foresaw the problem. Two months before the Sedition Act was passed, in a letter to Vice President Jefferson, he wrote: "Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

When the witless cowboy George Bush proclaimed that "everything changed on 9/11," he actually proclaimed his historical ignorance once again. Terrorism as a political force is very old, some placing its roots with the Jewish Zealots, the Sicairii. It is a tool of the dispossessed, usually inflamed by nationalist or religious sentiments.

The notion that we can "beat" terrorism is laughable and naïve. We could just as well declare war on human nature.

Technorati Tags: Scott Horton,Anthony Lewis,habeas corpus,military commissions,Jewish Zealots,terrorism,Charles I,John Adams,Sedition Act,French Revolution,Sicairii

The self-hating woman

Janet at SCSU Scholars has no time for feminists; they're just a waste of space on college campuses:

A few years ago, one of the Twin Cities major papers (I forget which one) ran a front page article questioning the value of a college education. Seems a young lady had just graduated from one of our local private institutions (say $120,000 investment) with a degree in women's studies but couldn't find a job.

DUH - what does one learn in a women's studies curriculum? Do they learn about: Chinese foot binding; east African gender mutilation; the Hindu practice of making widows throw themselves on the burning funeral pyres of their husbands (until the Brits forced the end of this absurd practice); polygamy in the Middle East; "temporary" mandated marriages; etc. No, the female instructors of Women's Studies curricula focus on white men, period.

Janet, there are lots of undergraduate majors that don't prepare one well for the job market. That's why God created graduate school! Janet sounds like the principal of Mechanics Arts High School, not the college lecturer that she apparently is. [involuntary shudder from Spot]

Laying aside the fact that Janet is a little wide of the mark in describing women's studies, what is the measure of the value of an education? We may conclude without contradiction that Janet believes education is solely to train the next generation of troglodytes or Deltas. But education is not merely an industrial process that prepares children for a life of toil. Parents hope their offspring will be employable, of course. But there are countless writers, artists, composers, and musicians with parents who wanted them to be dentists. And the world is richer for it.

Other than cheerleading for the decaying American economic system, it is hard to see what anyone could be getting out of Janet's class.

Technorati Tags: SCSU Scholars,feminism,women's studies

'Atta boy, Nick

Long time, or even short time, readers of the Cucking Stool will know that Spot had a little post about the cancellation of the Vets for Freedom traveling roadshow at Forest Lake High School. In yesterday's column, Nick Coleman called it out even better: A political agenda hid behind a talk with heroes:

Tuesday's cancellation of a visit to Forest Lake High School by Iraq War veterans in a giant bus labeled "Vets For Freedom National Heroes Tour" produced a bonanza of outraged media reports:

"Heroes banned by School! Minnesota hates the Heroes!"

Or maybe a Minnesota school was just trying to keep its students from becoming pawns in a political game.

There would not have been much outrage if that big bus, instead of saying "Heroes Tour," had been painted to say "Republican Tour to Shore Up the Pro-War Vote." But that would have been an honest paint job.

Here's how the planned visit came about:

The visit to Forest Lake was worked out by [Forest Lake High's principal Steve] Massey and Forest Lake alum Pete Hegseth, an Iraq veteran who heads Vets for Freedom. VFF says it is nonpartisan, but the liberal watchdog group the Center for Media and Democracy said it began as a Republican front group managed by White House insiders.

Their plan? According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the plan is to drum up support for the war. The group's political bent was clear last year when it bought TV ads to thank Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., for supporting the war.

Nick points out correctly that the right-wing blowfish would have a different view if the veteran was on the other, er, foot:

After all, they [students at Forest Lake High] may soon be in Iraq, or Iran, themselves. But if they hear from Vets for Freedom, they should hear from Iraq Veterans Against the War, too. Or see "Body of War," a documentary about a soldier named Tomas Young who volunteered after 9/11 and was paralyzed in Iraq.

"Many of us volunteered with patriotic feelings in our heart," he says. Until he was "sent into the wrong country," to fight in Iraq, not Afghanistan.

Your assignment this morning, boys and girls, is to google (some day they're gonna lose that trademark) "Nick Coleman" to see how many right-wing blogs have commenced their wounded bellowing over Nick's column.

Technorati Tags: Iraq war, Vets for Freedom, Peter Hegseth, Nick Coleman, Forest Lake High School

The Wege would want you to know this

Thanks to lots of attention from all manner of people who just wouldn't let it alone - including the intrepid Wege - former Alabama Governor and political prisoner Don Siegelman is being granted release from prison on an appeal bond:

Former Gov. Don Siegelman will be released from prison, after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted him an appeal bond, the lead prosecutor in the case said.

Acting U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin said he received a courtesy call from the court today. "He's going to be released," Franklin said.

He said he was disappointed but said, "The 11th Circuit has the discretion to do that and I respect that."

Drinking Liberally tonight!

Drinking Liberally tonight in its regular location, the 331 Club in Minneapolis. Six to nine.

Tonight, we will be discussing the art of the political film, particularly the new blockbuster, Al, Debate Jack!

We'll probably also celebrate March birthdays in the group.

UPDATE: This just in: PZ Myers will try to make an appearance tonight!

Technorati Tags: Drinking Liberally,political films,331 Club,PZ Myers

Al, Debate Jack!

Jack believes we had better tackle climate change sooner rather than later.

Technorati Tags: Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer,Al Franken,US Senate,DFL endorsement

Peter's Victory Through Carnage tour

Spot learned yesterday via RSS and a post that he correctly guessed was from Janet, that the Forest Lake High School principal had canceled an appearance there by Peter Hegseth's competitive uniformed cheer squad, currently on its Victory Through Carnage tour across this broad and beautiful land. This is the road show featuring Fadi Fadhil, the Iraqi ex-pat who will tell all who will listen that things are getting really peachy in Baghdad, although he hasn't been there for a few years.

Janet says that the excuse for canceling the visit was "lame," and she quotes Kathryn Jean Lopez, K-Lo of the NRO, in support of that position. Why, these students would have been lucky to touch the hem of the garments of the likes of Peter Hegseth, Michael Baumann, Dave Thul, or maybe even the beatified (or is is fossilized?) Joe Repya. Of course, as K-Lo says (you can find the link to her NRO post at Janet's post, if you're interested), Peter Hegseth is a frequent contributor to the National Review Online. Imagine that!

Janet and K-Lo cannot imagine how anyone would think that a tour organized by Peter Hegseth and featuring Fadi Fadhil would be considered political.

There is an article in the Strib this morning that Pete was able to pitch his tent revival at the local American Legion in Forest Lake, and that some students were in attendance. One young fellow said he just wanted "to support the troops" and was sorry that the show didn't take place at the school. But really, boys and girls, does anybody actually think this is about supporting the troops and not the war policies of the current administration?

If it's just about the troops, what the @#$%^&* is Fadi Fadhil doing there?

Technorati Tags: Peter Hegseth, Joe Repya, Vets for Freedom, Forest Lake High School

What have you done with him?

Who are you, and what have you done with our Spotty?

What ever are you talking about, grasshopper?

Oh, you're not fooling me! I know you're not the real Spot!

Don't be foolish, grasshopper.

If you are the real Spot, how can you explain a couple of things: that you endorsed two candidates for DFL endorsements, and more important, you haven't said boo about Katie in weeks and weeks?

Ah, grasshopper, Spot takes your point. Uncharacteristic, really. As to the first point, Spot fell into a fit of conviction for a couple of candidates, only one of whom, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, is still a candidate. As to the the latter point, Spot has no defense. But how about if Spot discusses Katie's column from Sunday, right now?

Yay! It is you after all, Spotty!

First of all, grasshopper, it really hasn't been that long.

It seems that way when you're looking forward to it.

All right; Spot is sorry.

Sunday, Katie told us the story of an Iraqi ex-pat who wants us to continue the war. Spot will let Katie set it up for you, boys and girls:

Fadi Fadhil -- Freddie to his friends -- is probably marking the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war's launch with closer attention than the average Minnesotan.

Fadhil, an Iraqi citizen living in Minneapolis, served as an interpreter for U.S. forces in Baghdad, his hometown. From April 2003 to February 2005, he guided American soldiers through some of their most challenging days.

Lt. Col. Michael Baumann, commander of a battalion task force with the 5th Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division, with whom Fadhil worked, calls him a vital "cultural bridge." Baumann, of Lakeville, moved heaven and earth to bring Fadhil to Minneapolis in 2005, after his life was threatened.

Freddie is an interesting story. Imprisoned by Saddam Hussein - for refusing to be a Baathist, according to Katie - released about the time the Baghdad fell, Freddie saw a US officer and a Muslim cleric talking or arguing on a street, and as an English speaker, Freddie went up to the two and offered to help.

What does this tell you, boys and girls?

That Freddie is a do-gooder?

No, grasshopper; Freddie is actually the hero of this little story. But this is an example of the kind of preparation that was done for the occupation of Iraq. The Administration didn't think much of civil affairs; our soldiers are warriors after all. The guy who hired Freddie as an interpreter on the spot, says as much:

Lt. Col. Michael Baumann, commander of a battalion task force with the 5th Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division, with whom Fadhil worked, calls him a vital "cultural bridge." Baumann, of Lakeville, moved heaven and earth to bring Fadhil to Minneapolis in 2005, after his life was threatened.

Of course, Freddie might have been other than a boy scout, but there was no way for Lt. Col. Baumann to have known one way or the other. One has to wonder whether everyone who offered to help really intended to be helpful. But Freddie did, and good for him.

But here's Spot problem with Freddie. He fled the country in 2005, but now he says this:

Fadhil will be telling Minnesotans he meets at [Vets for Freedom] tour events that Baghdad is now a far safer and better-functioning city than it was when he left in 2005. "Baghdad has taken huge steps toward where Iraqis want it to be," he says.

What is Freddie not, boys and girls?

An eyewitness to what Baghdad is like now, Spot?

Right, grasshopper. Freddie would make a laughable witness on two grounds: he has no first-hand knowledge, and he's a little, well, biased in favor of his former employer and life saver. Here's another view of the "facts on the ground" in Baghdad as military types like to say:

Over the course of five years, Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq, has been transformed from a metropolis into an urban desert of half-destroyed buildings and next to no public services, dotted by partially deserted, mutually hostile mini-ghettos that used to be neighborhoods, surrounded by cement barriers reminiscent of medieval fortifications. The most prominent of these ghettos is the heavily fortified city-inside-a-city dubbed the Green Zone, where Iraq's most fearsome militia, the United States military, is headquartered. It is governed by the Americans and by the American-sponsored Iraqi government, headed by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

Here's was Nir Rosen - who is an eyewitness to rather more recent conditions - had to say in a chilling Rolling Stone article:

It's a cold, gray day in December, and I'm walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city's no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what "victory" looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush's much-heralded "surge," Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence.

But that doesn't stop our Katie, fawning bootlicker that she is, from trotting out the story of Freddie as spokesman for "the surge is working." Katie, never a critical thinker, doesn't put the smallest energy into finding out if Freddie has any idea what he is talking about.

Technorati Tags: Katherine Kersten, Iraq war, Freddie Fadhil, Baghdad, surge, Nir Rosen

The counter-protest was apparently even smaller

A bilious old soldier had this letter in the Strib today:

I was amazed at the poor showing of war protesters at the Lake Street Bridge on March 19, the fifth anniversary of that war's start. As I walked the bridge in my personal counterprotest, carrying my "Liberate Iraq -- Support Our Troops" lawn sign, one of the 30,000 we printed and gave away in 2003, I heard media and police estimate the crowd between 600 and 800 people. It struck me that in a metropolitan area of nearly 3 million people, this was a very small crowd to show up when the weather was so mild.

It becomes more obvious each day that the people of Minnesota realize that the change in strategy and tactics by the "surge" are now working. Even the mainstream media, which many accused for so long of slanting the news to the negative, are now reporting the success of both the military and political advances in Iraq.

No matter how you feel about the events that took us to war, we are there and must succeed. We are faced with an election this year that will decide whether the Iraqi people will actually succeed in their efforts to build a safe and secure nation. An independent democracy in Iraq is in the best national interest of America. We as a nation have sacrificed too much to turn tail and run away. [italics are Spot's]

JOE REPYA, EAGAN

Joe, those 30,000 signs you had printed up? Spot hasn't seen a single one for a long time.

Even Gen. David Petraeus, the surgemeister, says that there is no military solution to Iraq. And Joe, your boy Dave has also said that nobody thinks adequate progress is being made on a political solution, either.

What color are you eyes, Joe? Spot bets they are brown.

Joe's remarks about sacrifice as a nation is insulting to families who have lost a service member, or service personnel who are now saddled with lifetime disabilities. The Administration has done everything to avert national sacrifice, whether it be by taxation, or even looking at rows of the caskets of the KIA. But whatever the sacrifices were, and by whom, is irrelevant to decisions about staying in Iraq. Those sacrifices, to use the clinical terms of economics, are sunk costs. That cannot be recovered regardless of what we do. Here's a quote that was in an earlier post by Spot, too:

Some economists who track the war expenses say they worry that politicians are making mistakes similar to those made in 2002, by failing to fully come to grips with the short- and long-term financial costs.

“The relevant question now is: what do we do now going forward? Because we can’t do anything about the costs that have already happened,” said Scott Wallsten, an economist and vice president of research with iGrowthGlobal, a Washington research institute. “We still don’t hear people talking about that.”

But the chickens, and the chicken hawks, too, are coming home to roost. Surging oil prices and the collapse of the dollar are directly related to the credit card war. If you want to jump off a cliff, Joe, be my guest, but don't take the rest of us with you.

Technorati Tags: Joe Repya, oil prices, collapse of the dollar, Iraq war, Gen. David Petraeus, sunk costs

DL: looking into the future

This just in:

Candidate for the DFL endorsement for the Third Congressional District Terri Bonoff will be at Drinking Liberally on Thursday, April 3rd. This is not next Thursday - apparently State Senator Bonoff will be in session into the evening that night - but the following Thursday.

Details to follow.

Technorati Tags: Terri Bonoff, Minnesota Third Congressional District, DFL endorsements

Reminder: DL with Ashwin Madia tonight

Ashwin Madia will be at DL tonight. Sources tell Spot he'll be there around seven for some remarks and a meet and greet. Six to nine is the regular meeting time. 331 Club in Minneapolis. Madia's running for the DFL endorsement for the 3rd Congressional District seat currently held by Jim Ramstad.

Technorati Tags: Drinking Liberally

Just swipe that card again, Mr. President

Alternate title: Happy Birthday Blunder!

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq. And we've put the whole damn thing on the credit card. Well, we thought we got good terms! Nothing down with generous repayment terms: the next generation pays. But the pesky bill keeps coming due earlier and earlier.

Nobel Economics Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author, Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, have estimated the total cost of the war, just to the United States, to be three to four trillion dollars. The rest of the world will pay similar amount. They wrote a book called The Three Trillion Dollar War, but that estimate is apparently out of date, although the book just came out:

All of the war-price tallies include operations in the war zone, support for troops, repair or replacement of equipment, reservists’ salaries, special combat pay for regular forces and some care for wounded veterans — expenses that typically fall outside the regular Defense Department or Veterans Affairs budgets.

The highest estimates often include projections for future operations, long-term health care and disability costs for veterans, a portion of the regular, annual defense budget, and, in some cases, wider economic effects, including a percentage of higher oil prices and the impact of raising the national debt to cover increased war spending.

The debate raging on Capitol Hill, on the presidential campaign trail, in research institutes and in academia touches on such esoteric factors as the right inflation index for veterans’ health care costs; the monetary value of nearly 4,000 soldiers killed; and what role, if any, the war has had in higher oil prices.

Some economists who track the war expenses say they worry that politicians are making mistakes similar to those made in 2002, by failing to fully come to grips with the short- and long-term financial costs.

“The relevant question now is: what do we do now going forward? Because we can’t do anything about the costs that have already happened,” said Scott Wallsten, an economist and vice president of research with iGrowthGlobal, a Washington research institute. “We still don’t hear people talking about that.”

In discussions about the economy, the elephant - boy, is that an apt metaphor - in the room is the war. The national debt has soared, as has the price of oil, and the dollar has plunged. The Fed keeps throwing "liquidity" on the fire; it seems to help for a little while - at least in terms of buoying the stock market - but only for a little while. As the Fed accepts dodgey-er and dodgey-er debt as collateral, the prospect that the taxpayer is going to foot the bill becomes more and more inevitable.

Privatize the profits and socialize the losses!

Technorati Tags: Iraq war, The Three Trillion Dollar War, Happy Birthday