Jan. 21st, 2004

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NPR this morning, reporting on the SOTU, hit on a point I noticed at the time but forgot to remark on: the negative reaction within the chamber at points to the president's speech.

As well as the number of members who started applauding when the president noted that the Patriot Act was about to expire, there was visible division when people rose to applaud. Not during most of the foreign policy portions of the speech (more's the pity), but when the president was speaking about the economy, Democrats often failed to applaud and failed to stand. There was one point, when the president was hectoring the Congress to make his tax cuts permanent, when there was something that came as close to actual booing as I have ever heard during a SOTU address, a sort of low, but sustained murmuring. I understand the need for decorum, folks, but it doesn't kill British prime ministers when people shout "shame" at them. I think it's OK to actually say "boo" out loud when the president proposes making permanent a series of tax cuts (the income tax cuts, the capital gains cuts, and the *estate* tax cuts) that are designed primarily to help the wealthy and which have balooned the federal deficit.

And whilw we're on taxes, let me just make a plea that I know will fall on deaf ears. Can we stop the name games with tax cuts? Not making a temporary reduction in tax rates permanent is not a "tax increase." The estate tax is not a tax on death and dying, it's a tax on passing wealth (*wealth*) from one generation to another; it only affects a tiny proportion of Americans, the ones who can most easily afford it.

And here's another little rhetorical device of the Republican conservatives that drives me up the wall: the attitude that taxes are somehow money that is unjustly being seized from average Americans by a hosilte (perhaps even foreign, the way they talk about it) government that just wastes it on nonsense. But even the Republican president and Congress that got elected on this kind of nonsense are only too eager to spend more and more money. Is it somehow different moeny? Does it appear out of thin air? Or grow on trees?

Taxes are paid by all Americans, a share of our earnings and our wealth passed voluntarily to our government (*OUR* government) so that it can do things *we* ask it to do. WE. All of us together. Just because I don't agree with the rest of my fellow citizens on a spending measure doesn't give me the right to withold my taxes. That's not the social compact we're part of. But the Republican act as if it were. They want to say "We're in favour only of our spending programs, and if government doesn't do exactly what we want, then they're the enemy, a foreign, alien power. But the exact same government, when it does what we want, is the Good Guys." Doesn't work like that, guys. All that attitude does is suggest its proponenet sare not willing to live in a civilized society and accept that sometimes each of us doesn't get exactly what we want. This is a violation of the social contract, and every time a Republican politician talks about the government (that he's trying to get elected or reelected to serve in!) as if it were the enemy, he or she drives a wedge just a little bit further between the people and the government, drives a stake just a little bit closer to the heart of democracy. Make no mistake: this platform (the government is the enemy) is a fundamentally anti-democratic one, and its widesprread adoption by conservative Republicans is a dangerous and self-serving gamble.
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Brian McBride to Fulham instead of Rovers, and Clint Mathis to Hannover 96. Quite a pair of surprises. McBride may be what FFC need to push them to the top, and Clint managed to get a first-division team to take him after he almost played his way out of a job with the Metros last season.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/headlinenews?id=289026&cc=5901
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Thanks again to veiled4allah for pointing to this piece. I haven't had a chance to read the whole review yet, but it's unexpected (by me, at least) for members of Egyptian Al-Jama'ah Al-Islamiyah to publish a critical analysis of the actions of al Qaida that it critical and includes the passage:

Following a lengthy analysis of US strategy in dealing with the issues of the Muslim world, the leaders of the Al-Jama'ah Al-Islamiyah argue that the US strategy toward Afghanistan -- especially in the early 1990s -- did not justify the strategy that was adopted by Al-Qa'ida. We will cover these points in future episodes. The co-authors say that the leaders of Al-Qa'ida entangled the Muslim nation in a conflict that was beyond its power to wage, a conflict that it did not want. The authors note that the consequences that resulted from Al-Qa'ida's strategy did not serve the interests of the Muslim nation, but led to many negative results: 1. It led to the collapse of the young Muslim state in Afghanistan. 2. Al-Qa'ida and the Islamic movements were hunted down as part of security globalization. 3. Al-Qa'da's strategy hurt the interests and issues of the Muslim minorities by deliberately confusing between terrorism and resistance movements against occupation. 4. It paved the way for the realization of Israel's objectives and designs.
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From the Washington Post today:

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), campaigning with his fellow home-state senator at a diner here, said: "This is the beginning of Lieberman week in New Hampshire." Lieberman aides said the Iowa results showed that Democratic voters are looking for an alternative to Dean and that Kerry and Edwards were mere "place-holders" for that desire.

[If that were true, I guess it was a mistake for Lieberman not to campaign in Iowa, huh?]

Lieberman on Tuesday received the endorsement of the conservative Manchester Union Leader newspaper, which called him a "man of conviction" and urged independent voters to consider supporting him in the Democratic primary.

The endorsement drew a rebuke of Lieberman from state Democratic Party Chairman Kathleen Sullivan. "I'm very disappointed that he accepted the Union Leader endorsement," she told reporters. "The Union Leader has not stood with Democratic principles for decades, and it really breaks my heart to see someone I respect so much accept an endorsement from that newspaper."

[Given that Lieberman is Republican in everything but name, it's no surprise to me that he got the MUL endorement...]

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