Letter to My Senator

Senator Bingaman:

Please, I beseech you, there are times to keep a low profile, and I respect that is your style, but this is not one of those times. Assuming that you are in fact opposed to torture, you have an obligation, in my opinion, to speak out. As Thomas Paine wrote more than 230 years ago: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it Now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorius the triumph.”

All you have to do, in order to become a leading national figure among the Credomats over the weekend, is to get out there and say something like this: “Torture and ‘extraordinary rendition’ are contrary to everything this nation stands for, every tradition of liberty and the rule of law for which our brave fighting men and women have died over the past 230 years. This administration’s craven and reckless policy will not only endanger our servicemen and women overseas, all for the sake of ‘interrogations’ that have gotten us precisely zero useful intelligence in five years, as we have tortured mentally ill detainees whose pain-induced babblings have led us on one wild goose chase after another; it will also erode our moral fiber and damage us irreparably in the fight against totalitarianism and political extremism around the world. No one who proposes such a policy is fit to lead this land of the free, and the political party that supports such a policy, and such a leader, can rightly be called anti-American.”

There! It’s that easy. You say a bunch of true things, you defend your country’s best political traditions, you remind millions of your fellow citizens that your party opposes the other party on some core issues, and you get some face time. It’s a win-win-win-win.

The second and third paragraph above are not my own, but they represented my sentiments exactly, so I have sent them to you as mine. It’s time to speak out. You owe it to your constituents, many of whom are simply heartbroken at this turn of events.

Sincerely,

[The language in the second and third paragraphs is from Le Blog Bérubé.]

Just Luck

So gasoline prices have come down and people are happy again — just in time for the mid-term election.

What a stroke of luck for the oil companies!

What a further stroke of luck it would be if prices then went back up after the election.

Of course, there’s that old expression about “making your own luck.” But only a cynic would suggest that oil companies have any influence over the price of gasoline.

Or that, even if they did, they would ever try to use their influence to help the Administration retain unchecked power (other than with political contributions, which thus far in 2006 exceed $12.5 million, 83% to Republicans).

— Andrew Tobias

[Update: Here’s a chart tracking gasoline prices and Bush’s popularity.]

You worthless passel of cowards

THE SILENT PARTY. You worthless passel of cowards. They’re laughing at you. You know that, right?

The national Democratic Party is no longer worth the cement needed to sink it to the bottom of the sea. For an entire week, it allowed a debate on changing the soul of the country to be conducted intramurally between the Torture Porn and Useful Idiot wings of the Republican Party, the latter best exemplified by John McCain, who keeps fashioning his apparently fathomless ambition into a pair of clown shoes with which he can do the monkey dance across the national stage. They’re laughing at him, too.

The New York Times has the right of it here, limning the pathetic gullibility at the heart of the “compromise.” There is nothing in this bill that President Thumbscrews can’t ignore. There is nothing in this bill that reins in his feckless and dangerous reinterpretation of the powers of his office. There is nothing in this bill that requires him to take it — or its congressional authors — seriously. Two weeks ago, John Yoo set down in The New York Times the precise philosophical basis on which the administration will sign this bill and then ignore it. The president will decide what a “lesser breach” of the Geneva Conventions is? How can anyone over the age of five give this president that power? And wait until you see the atrocity that I guarantee you is coming down the tracks concerning the fact that the president committed at least 40 impeachable offenses with regard to illegal wiretapping.

And the Democratic Party was nowhere in this debate. It contributed nothing. On the question of whether or not the United States will reconfigure itself as a nation which tortures its purported enemies and then grants itself absolution through adjectives — “Aggressive interrogation techniques” — the Democratic Party had…no opinion. On the issue of allowing a demonstrably incompetent president as many of the de facto powers of a despot that you could wedge into a bill without having the Constitution spontaneously combust in the Archives, well, the Democratic Party was more pissed off at Hugo Chavez.

This was as tactically idiotic as it was morally blind. On the subject of what kind of a nation we are, and to what extent we will live up to the best of our ideals, the Democratic Party was as mute and neutral as a stone. Human rights no longer have a viable political constituency in the United States of America. Be enough of a coward, though, and cable news will fit you for a toga.

However, because I know it is vital for the Democrats to “recapture” the good Christian folks, there’s a passage from Scripture that seems apropos: “When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.”

Charles P. Pierce.

RSS the Oprah Way

Back in skinny jeans simplifies RSS for the non-techie. Well done.

[In looking for something else, I came about this Understanding RSS from the Goochland County (Virginia) Public Schools that’s also good at explaining the basics.]

It comes down to this: surfing or subscribing.

If you surf, you have to go to all your favorite websites (like NewMexiKen) and see what’s new.

If you subscribe, all (or nearly all) of your favorite websites will send what’s new to you (to your RSS reader).

It’s relatively simple and free, though some of the better RSS readers charge for the software. There’s a free basic reader in Firefox and Safari and coming soon in Internet Explorer 7.

Winner-Take-All

A Stanford professor — the guy who invented the scratch-off lottery ticket — suggests an electoral college compact among the states — like Powerball is a compact among many states. The compact would commit each state’s electors to vote for whomever has the most popular votes for president nationwide. A bill is on Schwarzenegger’s desk now, waiting for his signature. It would commit California’s 55 votes to the scheme.

This does seem like it would make the election national, rather than dominated by the battle in a few key states. And it would be a whole lot more difficult to jimmy the vote in every state.

And it might be a good time to get it done, with so much uncertainty after two close elections.

Read all about it in this report in The New York Times.

Tune Up

The number one single in the land according to Billboard is Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack,” in its fourth week at the top.

Number three is “Too Little Too Late” by JoJo. Fact about JoJo: She was born in December 1990. Nineteen-NINETY!

Even so, her song isn’t number one and JoJo’s already older than Little Peggy March and Brenda Lee were when they made it to the top. (They were both 15.)

And George Strait just pushed aside Conway Twitty. Twitty had 40 Country number ones. Strait has now had 41.

All this trivia thanks to Chart Beat.

Multiple Libraries in iTunes 7; Multiple Libraries in iPhoto

Via Lifehacker, a very, very useful tip for Macs.

Hold down the Option key while launching iTunes or iPhoto and you can choose from among libraries. (Keep holding the Option key until the dialog box opens.)

This is great for dividing your music or photos into separate collections (I don’t for music, but do for photos).

The iTunes tip works in Windows, too: Hold the Shift key while launching iTunes.

Best line of the day, so far

“Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world. We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment.

— Sir Richard Branson, announcing that all future profits from his transportation companies (an estimated $3 billion) would be donated to developing energy sources that do not contribute to global warming.

Just Put a Little Green Chile on It

Ten scientists at the New Mexico Department of Health laboratory have isolated the connection between the nationwide outbreak of E. coli and fresh spinach tainted with the same bacteria after testing a partially eaten bag of Dole baby spinach from the refrigerator of a Bernalillo County resident.

The unnamed resident, who ate some of the spinach before becoming infected with E. coli on Aug. 31, was hospitalized for about two weeks.

Until now, the link between fresh bagged spinach and people sick with the identical bug, including five in New Mexico, was based on anecdotal evidence from patients. Since August, E. coli O157, as this strain is called, has infected at least 146 people in 23 states and killed a Wisconsin woman who died of kidney failure caused by the infection.

With the Bernalillo County patient’s bag of spinach and a stool sample, scientists on Tuesday night were able to confirm the link on a molecular level.

— The New Mexican

Nice work guys!

Best line of the day, so far

“The Geneva Conventions are there for a reason. I think that, number one, it’s consistent with our values. Number two, it’s consistent with our interests.”

— Bill Clinton on NPR

“But more often than not, it just gets people to lie to tell you whatever you want to hear to keep beatin’ the living daylights out of them.”

This really is an excellent discussion by President Clinton, well-worth a listen.

Selling Your Freedom, One Tax Cut At a Time

Functional Ambivalent has a whole post you should read, but here’s the essence:

If you’re a libertarian and you vote Republican because you like lower taxes, you’re empowering people who would ban books, set up a huge federal broadcast censorship aparatus, give the President the power to arrest and imprison without evidence or appeal, and empower everyone in the medical supply chain to decide who gets treatment based on their own standard of moral worthiness. You’re almost literally selling your freedoms for a few dollars in after-tax income. That’s what you vote for every time you vote Republican.

Sam Would Be Proud

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, said it would begin selling generic versions of widely prescribed drugs to its workers and customers at sharply reduced prices, a move that could force rival pharmacies to do the same.

The giant discount chain, which has used its size to knock down the costs of toys, clothing and groceries, will sell 300 generic drugs for as low as $4 for a one-month supply. On average, generic drugs cost between $10 and $30 for a 30-day prescription.

Wal-Mart will test the lower prices at 65 stores in the Tampa, Fla., area and, depending on consumer response, is likely to expand the program next year.

— The New York Times

Not This U.S. Government, That U.S. Government

As reported in The New York Times:

Asked at a news conference on Tuesday about a Canadian commission’s finding that the man, Maher Arar, was wrongly sent to Syria and tortured there, Mr. Gonzales replied, “Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria.” He added, “I’m not aware that he was tortured.”

The attorney general’s comments caused puzzlement because they followed front-page news articles of the findings of the Canadian commission. It reported that based on inaccurate information from Canada about Mr. Arar’s supposed terrorist ties, American officials ordered him taken to Syria, an action documented in public records.

On Wednesday, a Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Gonzales had intended to make only a narrow point: that deportations are now handled by the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice.

NewMexiKen guesses Gonzales was speaking as the head of the Justice Department, not as the Attorney General of the United States.

Best line of the day, so far

“However, if the parameters of our political life are now that we seriously discuss whether talking about torturing people is enough to blunt the political disadvantage of talking about an illegal war based on stovepiped intelligence and the messianic fantasies of a bunch of think-tank cowboys and war profiteers, we are well and truly lost in this country.”

— Charles P. Pierce

Poor Aidan

Just three Tuesday, Aidan found out from his mother Wednesday that Abraham Lincoln was dead and they couldn’t go visit him. The little guy cried for 20 minutes.

I feel the same way some times.

Which reminded me of a meme1 I saw at Shakespeare’s Sister.

“If you could sit down to a meal with a president (any president) and ask him one question: who is the president and what is the question?”

Shakes’ Sister suggested George W. Bush and her question was “What the f**k?”

I think I’d have to choose Lincoln. And, being from New Mexico, of course I’d have to ask him, “Red or green?”

1 A meme is an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

“Red or green?” is the official state question of New Mexico. It refers to the kind of chile you’d like on your New Mexican cuisine. Check it out.

Coincidence, I Think Not

Today is an important day in the history of three related genres of literature: science fiction, horror, and fantasy. It’s the birthday of the science-fiction novelist H.G. Wells [1866], the horror novelist Stephen King [1947], and it was on this day in 1937 that J.R.R. Tolkien published his first novel, The Hobbit.

From The Writer’s Almanac, which has a little about each of the three.

So Who Buys Albums Anyway?

Top six albums this week:

  1. Justin Timberlake, “FutureSex/LoveSounds”
  2. John Mayer, “Continuum”
  3. Beyoncé, “B’Day”
  4. Bob Seger, “Face the Promise”
  5. Bob Dylan, “Modern Times”
  6. Lionel Richie, “Coming Home”

Ages of the six 25, 28, 25, 61, 65, 57.

Could Someone Please Buy David Broder a Shuffleboard Cue

“Bush was elected twice, over Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, whose know-it-all arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself. The country thought Bush was a pleasant, down-to-earth guy who would not rock the boat.”

— The dean of America’s political correspondents, David S. Broder.

Better to know-it-all than know nothing.

I think I might start a subscription to The Washington Post just so I can cancel it. Sheeesh!

Birthday Folks

Red Auerbach is 89.

Red Auerbach is the architect and mastermind behind one of the most dominant franchises in professional sports history, the Boston Celtics. The cigar-chomping Auerbach wasn’t a passive bench coach, but an aggressive, demanding and often volatile mentor who coached 11 Hall of Famers and led Boston to 10 Eastern Division titles in 16 years. Auerbach’s passionate style reaped large rewards. From 1959 to 1966, the Celtics won eight straight NBA championships, a streak unmatched in sports history. His 938-479 (.662) career coaching record currently ranks fifth all-time in NBA history. Auerbach led Boston to 99 playoff victories, third all-time behind Phil Jackson and Pat Riley. (Basketball Hall of Fame)

Academy Award winning actress Sophia Loren is 72 today. She won the best actress Oscar for Two Women (La Ciociara). (A film well-worth seeing even 45 years later.) Loren was nominated but did not win for Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’italiana).