Same song, second verse

In 1998, Ensign was the first member of Nevada’s congressional delegation to call for President Bill Clinton’s resignation over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Speaking on the Senate floor in 2004, Ensign called for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, saying, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded.”

In 2007, Ensign was among the most prominent Republicans calling on Idaho Sen. Larry Craig to resign, calling Craig a “disgrace” for his arrest in an airport men’s restroom on disorderly conduct charges.

On Tuesday, Ensign indicated he would not step down, saying, “I am committed to my service in the United States Senate and my work on behalf of the people of Nevada.

Read on: Ensign admits affair with ex-campaign staffer

So here in Nevada, we've got a Republican governor and U.S. Senator who can't keep it in their pants when their wives aren't around, yet they are happy to tell you who you can and cannot have sex with or marry. God bless whoever invented hypocrisy ...

Original conservative thought, and other myths

You know those lame e-mails that miscreants send around about your favorite politicians? Those screeds filled with "facts" -- most of which are easily debunked -- that clog your inbox during election season? Of course you do. You probably got more than your share of them about Obama or McCain or Palin last fall. I even wrote about the phenomenon, and did a little research that indicated that Obama was the target of about six times as many false attacks as McCain in the accountability-free world of e-mail land.

I recently got another one of those screeds from one of my most reliable right-wing trolls, purporting to compare the "gaffes" of Obama's first 120 days with the record of one George W. Bush. You might have received this e-mail too. It's been posted repeatedly on right-wing websites and in online discussion forums the past week or two.

Well, apparently the editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal don't get out much, or they don't have any right-wing friends, or they don't read right-wing political sites, because they just printed the very same comparison as a letter to the editor on Friday. Some local genius named Warren Willis Sr. did the old cut-and-paste thing and sent it almost verbatim to the R-J, and the paragons of journalistic virtue ran it as the top letter in Friday's editorial page.

I'm not even here to debate the content of the letter -- it points out some of Obama's inevitable and regrettable missteps, blows a few others out of proportion, but seems to endorse the idea that Bush's record of incompetence, corporate cronyism, fiscal malfeasance and utter disregard for the truth compares favorably to four months of Barack Obama in the White House.

My point is that either the R-J can't differentiate between a recycled e-mail rant and legitimate, original political criticism, or they didn't have anything better to run in its place. Either way, it's a sad statement on the journalistic ethics or competence of the R-J's editorial board and opinion page staff. Nice going, Sherm.

On the head

Great piece by E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post this week, commenting on the Obama speech at Notre Dame's commencement ceremonies. You really should read the whole thing if you're interested in how the left and right can find common ground on cultural issues, but if you've only got time for the highlights, here's one:

Obama was as explicit in talking about his faith as George W. Bush ever was about his own but with distinctly different inflections and conclusions.

The former president often emphasized the comfort and certainty he drew from his religious beliefs. Obama said that "the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt."

"This doubt should not push away our faith," Obama preached. "But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness." It was a quietly pointed response to his critics.

To me, that perfectly summarizes what has always bugged me about the born-again crowd -- to them, religion = certainty. But if you are certain of something, is it really a matter of faith?

In his letter to the Romans, Paul said, "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance." And that's what faith is about to me -- it's about hope, the promise of salvation, not a smug sense of certainty that I'm right and the rest of you are going to Hell if you don't believe what I do.

I know I don't have all the answers, but I have faith that I'm on the right path. It's a long road to where we're going -- let's hope we all get there together.

Strange bedfellows

I find myself feeling oddly sympathetic toward Miss California in the latest Miss USA kerfuffle. Not because I agree with her stand on same-sex marriage -- I don't -- but because I have no idea what that issue has to do with one's qualifications to serve as Miss USA.


Perez Hilton is gay. And he wants to see people like him have the same civil rights as the rest of the planet. I get that. But there comes a point where you have to pick your battles. And the Miss USA contest is not the place for this battle to play out. I understand that it's important to get this issue on the front burner, but this kind of attitude is just going to alienate people who have yet to form a concrete opinion on the issue.

Beauty contests attract a pretty traditional audience, so I guess Hilton figured he'd be reaching a group of people who hadn't thought much about same-sex marriage. But to basically admit that he wouldn't vote for Miss California because of her answer to his question about the issue sends the wrong message. Hilton comes off as just as intolerant as the Yes on 8 crowd in California.

Now, Hilton has given the right-wing bloggers, radio hosts and pundits all kinds of fodder for their fake-outrage cannons. Nicely done, you old queen.

Go Iowa!

Never thought I'd say that. Then again, I never thought I'd see such clear, uncompromising support for civil rights in the heartland. Here's hoping this is a movement that spreads.

Why yes, our mayor is a delusional, self-promoting windbag!

No, not Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson. He seems like a decent, well-mannered, professional person. You know, an adult.

Of course, the headline refers to Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who proves the old axiom: the bigger the village, the bigger the idiot. This week, hizzonorless has demanded an apology from none other than President Barack Obama (man, it's still fun typing that!) because according to the gin-soaked former mob lawyer, the Prez overstepped his boundaries when he suggested that companies that have received taxpayer bailout money should refrain from using that money to send senior executives on lavish junkets to Las Vegas.

President Obama's direct quote, from a town hall meeting in Elkart, Ind., reads as follows: "You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime." Goodman, whose Bombay-addled brain distills every message down to a single question ("How does this affect meeeeeeeeeeeee?"), took the Obama quote as an attack on Las Vegas tourism in general.

He must have missed that whole "on the taxpayer's dime" thing, or else he's intentionally ignoring it because he knows that any publicity for the city is good publicity as long as they spell the name right. That's "Goodman" with two o's and no dignity.

And believe me, I know from undignified politicans. I come from a state that elected a former professional wrestler as governor. But Oscar Goodman makes Jesse Ventura look like Pierce Brosnan in the suave department. This is a guy, remember, who famously told an elementary school audience that his one indispensable, desert-island accoutrement would be a bottle of his beloved Bombay gin (stay classy, Oscar!).

His delusion was on grand display last summer when he proposed that the city build an 80,000-seat football stadium so Las Vegas could play host to the Super Bowl and be the permanent site of Monday Night Football. Putting aside the obvious gambling hurdle, why would an NFL owner agree to give up a Monday night home date and the financial windfall that accompanies a prime-time game, not to mention 1/8 of its home schedule?

Because it would be good for Las Vegas. I kid you not -- that's what he said. "Believe me, they need us more than we need them," Goodman said of the NFL.

That's right, Oscar. You and the showgirls keep on telling each other that the world needs Las Vegas more than Las Vegas needs the rest of the world. And watch the world keep on passing us by.

The end of ignorance?

With one week remaining in the Bush presidency, the time has come for a look back at the administration's many failings. But lost amid all the talk of 9-11, the response to Katrina, the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, our crumbling infrastructure, etc., is the faux cowboy's greatest achievement -- the triumph of anti-intellectualism. Or, to put it in terms he'd probably prefer, the dumb guys won.

Simply put, in the Bush years, being smart was no longer a good thing. If you went to a good college -- or any college -- you were branded "elitist." God help you if you were a patron of the arts ... you elitist creep. If you believed in global warming or evolution or if you drove one of those sissified hybrid ve-hicles ... that's right ... elitist!

So it thrills me to no end to see the walking, talking embodiment of this attitude ambling his way out of the White House. But of course, this doesn't mean the end of the line for the Know-Nothing crowd, so it never hurts to remain vigilant.

Which brings me to Population 485 by Michael Perry. He's a pretty intriguing guy who straddles both worlds -- a writer who also owns a rusty pickup and fights fires as a hobby. Yesterday, I reached a passage in the book that just floored me, the best summary of the brain wars I've read to this date. He'd just attended a lecture by noted feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum and he was contemplating the intellectual divide on the drive back to his small-town oasis of New Auburn, Wisc. He writes:

Part of the blame lies with intellectuals who are unable or unwilling to convey their ideas in terms that will play down to the cafe. But anyone who sits in that cafe and dismisses complexity by reveling in their own simplicity is no less pretentious. Civilization itself depends on complication. As a dyed-in-the-slop farm boy, I find I have an almost atavistic urge to poor-mouth anyting more theoretical than a bag of feed. I have come to realize this is not always attractive.

For the last eight years, this country has been run by the kind of people who booed the principal at every school assembly. Now, under President Obama, this country has a chance to bounce back. Let's declare a War on Ignorance. Actually, let's not -- you can't eliminate ignorance, just as you can't eliminate terror, although if we'd had a president who was less ignorant, most of the country would have figured that out by now.

She's a rising star

The most compelling subtext to come out of this campaign is the rising-star status of a woman who used the past two months to burst onto the national scene, a smart, charming, affable woman who's a great communicator and has flashed the potential to become a cornerstone of the political scene for the foreseeable future.

I refer to, of course ... MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.

What, you thought I was talking about Sarah Palin? The woman who reportedly thought Africa was a country, not a continent? Or who didn't know that NAFTA was a treaty signed by Canada, Mexico and the U.S.? Or whose much-reported $150K shopping spree apparently was much, much, much more expensive?

No, I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about the new voice of the center-left. A lesbian liberal that even Pat Buchanan can love.

If you haven't caught her show (which follows flame-thrower Keith Olbermann on a nightly basis), Ms. Maddow brings a decidedly leftist bent to her overview of the day's news, but she does it with a sprinkle of wit and a fairness and balance that Fox News could only dream of.

Maybe it's because she's a Rhodes Scholar, so she understands that you have to show all sides of an argument to give your audience enough evidence to show that you're right. Or maybe it's because she always idenfities who her guests are supporting (i.e. "Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is a Barack Obama supporter") when she introduces them.

Or maybe it's because she just flat-out rocks. Whatever, it's clear that she's kicking ass and taking names. Her ratings have blown away those of her predecessor in that time slot, and are causing the talk giants at Fox to look over their shoulders in fear.

If you're tired of the "my party, right or wrong" type of commentary that's taken over cable news at the expense of careful thought and nuance, give Rachel Maddow a shot. I'm confident that you won't be disappointed.

Amen.

Don't let this happen to you!

A bed of bunk

The recent controversy surrounding U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and her comments regarding anti-American views in Congress has been fascinating to watch. Within three days of her appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball" show, where she made the incendiary comments in response to a question from interviewer Chris Matthews, Bachmann's opponent in the upcoming election, Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg, raised more than $800,000 in campaign contributions, the money reportedly flowing in via the Internet from around the country.

Anybody who's followed the career of the gay-bashing, Bible-thumping, global-warming-denying Bachmann is not surprised by her viewpoints. The longer she stays in office, the more she starts to resemble Joe McCarthy in pumps -- or J. Edgar Hoover on casual Friday.

But the story did bring to light another interesting phenomenon from this campaign. On Tuesday, Bachmann tried to clarify her comments (falling back on the old "blame the media" canard, shockingly), and the StarTribune story reporting her backtracking included the following passage:

"I'm a staunch Republican supporter of hers, but I think it's going to be a factor," said Don Watkins, 72, a retired business owner. "When you look at the money the Democrats are pumping in, it's going to have an impact, no doubt about it. Whether it will cost her the race or not, I won't venture."

As for the merits of Bachmann's earlier concern that Obama may be anti-American, Watkins said, "I get a lot of e-mails on the subject, a lot of it's pretty negative regarding Obama. There's ways to check out information, but I don't have time to do it."

This highlights a point that I've been pondering for awhile now -- the misinformation out there about Barack Obama and the public's willingness to believe it. Snopes.com is a fantastic website that was founded as a collection of urban legends that we've always heard about and started to spread like wildfire once the Internet and e-mail became ubiquitous.

In election years, it's not uncommon that more and more of these urban legends concern political figures running for office. Snopes relies on regular citizens ("Joe the Plumber," if you will) to send in the e-mails they've received regarding these figures, and the good people at Snopes will research the "facts" and anecdotes to determine their veracity.

As of today, Snopes lists 42 different entries about Barack Obama -- most of them along the lines of, "Barack Obama was born in Kenya" or "Barack Obama is a Muslim," or (my personal favorite) "Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ."

Meanwhile, the McCain page includes 11 such entries, including a couple that were intended to make McCain look good but proved false. Really, only four of the 11 entries debunked myths intended to attack McCain, compared with 24 Obama myths debunked and another nine that were proven at least partially false.

So, of the 42 Snopes entries examining e-mails flying around the country about Obama, 33 of them were found to be partially or wholly inaccurate. And yet, these e-mails keep flooding the in-boxes of potential voters around the country.

Why is that? Could it be that Republicans are looking for a reason to believe that Obama is a horrible person, some "fact" (no matter how demonstrably false) they can fall back on when people ask them why they support McCain over Obama? That seems more likely than the possibility that conservatives are just more gullible than liberals -- there's a willful ignorance on display here that is not accidental.

And if a 72-year-old retired business owner doesn't have time to check out these claims, what hope do we have for the rest of the voting public?

That flapping you hear ...

... is the sound of chickens coming home to roost. After a full week of tossing bloody chum into the waters, John McCain is shocked -- shocked! -- to find out that supporters at his rallies think Obama is a terrorist, an Arab, a Marxist, or merely somebody who should strike fear in the hearts of God-lovin' 'Murkins.

Here's the money quote:

"I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."

McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:

"No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."

He had drawn boos with his comment: "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

So there remains a kernel of integrity somewhere deep down inside John McCain, a sense of decency and honor. Too bad it took this long to reveal itself. True, he may lose the election by tamping down his personal attacks on Obama (actually, he may lose it either way), but at least this way, "Country First" doesn't ring entirely hollow.

(Smirk. Snort! Titter!!)

I've got quite a bit of bile stored up about the ugly tone of the recent McCain-Palin campaign rallies, but I'll save that for a later post. I just had to get this on the record -- here's the caption for the following photo, courtesy of the arch-conservative Las Vegas Review-Journal (and if you've lost the R-J, you've lost right-wing America):


The caption: "Republican presidential nominee John McCain kisses a boy Wednesday during a rally in Bethlehem, Pa."

Not "kisses a baby" or "kisses a child" but "kisses a boy." Nice one, R-J copy editor. If Sherm Frederick hasn't ordered you to clean out your desk by now, I'd be stunned.

As for McCain ... well, if Larry Craig and Mark Foley can keep getting elected ...

A team of mavericks

OK, first of all, I have to say that I thought Sarah Palin did a fine job in Thursday's VP debate. She stuck to her talking points, didn't answer any questions, and certainly connected with the "values voters" who comprise the Republican base. Also, she didn't vomit, faint, or start praying at the podium.

And I honestly thought the post-debate mingling between the families was rather touching. There seemed to be some genuine respect and goodwill on display, and it gave me some hope for possible national unity come next January 20, regardless of which ticket wins.

BUT ...

Seriously, folks. She kept referring to the Republican ticket as "a team of mavericks." Now, I know we can't all be English majors (jealous much?), so it's no surprise that the language is abused on a fairly regular basis during political campaigns. But this is a pretty basic contradiction of terms.

team: a number of persons forming one of the sides in a game or contest; a number of persons associated in some joint action

maverick: a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates

It stands to reason, then, that true mavericks are incapable of associating in some joint action. Oh sure, at first they can act in concert to achieve a specific goal -- say, getting elected. But once in office, can't you just seem them spinning off in 100 different directions, entirely incapable of getting anything done or staying on point? Take a look at McCain's erratic performance in the campaign so far if you want to see what a team of mavericks is capable of.

So ... a team of mavericks:

or

Very few people here in Henderson have positive stories about betting on Mavericks.

Celebrity skinny

So, I'm at the club on Thursday, warming up on the bike before getting my butt royally kicked by my trainer (Thanks, Valerie!) when I see the following "news" scroll across the bottom of the TV monitor above me:

Trump Endorses McCain on Larry King

And I thought, "Jeez, when will these celebrities ever get it through their thick heads that we just don't care what they think? Somebody had better tell the McCain campaign to get these celebrities to shut the hell up, because they're doing him more harm than good!"

Well, not really. But that's exactly what I hear from my friends on the right whenever another actor, musician or professional athlete speaks up in support of Barack Obama. Cuz, you know, just because they're celebrities doesn't mean they know what they're talking about.

However ... just because they're celebrities doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about, either. Many of these people have devoted significant amounts of time, energy and money in educating themselves about the issues of the day, and many are legitimate activists for their pet causes. To remain silent when they have a platform to speak out (don't blame them because our society is infatuated with celebrities) would be to turn their backs on those causes.

So when Don Cheadle endorses Obama because he thinks an Obama administration would do more to end the oppression and genocide in Darfur, the knee-jerk Republican reaction to be dismissive reveals a lot more about them than they'd care to admit.

As anybody who watched the Republican National Convention coverage can attest, the righties hate the celebrities. Hate 'em. Think they're anti-American. Use 'em to rile up the base and get the money flowing to the campaign coffers. Heck, they even make clever campaign commercials comparing Obama to such celebrities as Paris Hilton (whose parents are major McCain donors) and Britney Spears (who famously backed George W. Bush in his re-election campaign).

However, if the celebrities are on their side, then they're welcomed with open arms. Oddly, they don't seem to mind if actors, musicians or athletes speak their mind and offer their opinions, as long as they're opining in favor of Republican candidates and causes.

So the next time you hear a right-winger complain about celebrities offering their uninformed political opinions, just nod your head and say, "Yeah, I hate that Chuck Norris guy, too."

In other news, the Earth is, in fact, round

I'm shocked, shocked, to find that propaganda is going on here!

Why televised debates suck

Bashing Political Punditry Week continues with this astounding op-ed piece by the New York Times' Frank Rich, decrying the performance of ABC debate moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos in the latest Clinton-Obama jawfest last week in Philadelphia.

By all accounts, the questions asked by ABC's tag-team tandem fell woefully shy of probing the issues that actually matter to most Americans. Or should matter to most Americans. Instead of addressing bottom-line issues like the economy, the war in Iraq, or health care, we got more of the usual schtick, with breathless questions about "Bittergate," Serbian snipers and tenuous connections to long-forgotten controversial figures.

Here's the money shot:

"In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Mr. Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead. In 2008, they are supplanted in part by an energized African-American electorate and the young voters of all economic strata who fueled the Obama movement that many pundits didn’t take seriously before Iowa. And that some still don’t. Cokie Roberts of ABC predicted in February that young voters probably won’t show up in November because 'they never have before' and 'they’ll be tired.'"

Read on ...

Why political coverage sucks

From Glen Greenwald of Salon.com:

"Our elections are dominated by the same tired personality script, trotted out over and over and over. Democrats and liberals -- no matter how poor their upbringing, no matter how self-made they are, no matter how egalitarian their policies -- are the freakish, out-of-touch elitists who despise the values of the Regular Americans. Right-wing leaders -- no matter how extravagantly rich they are by virtue of other people's money, no matter how insulated their lives are, no matter how indifferent their policies are to the vast rich/poor gap -- are the normal, salt-of-the-earth Regular Folk. These petty, cliched storylines drown out every meaningful consideration and dictate our election outcomes, and they are deployed automatically.

"It doesn't matter what the candidates actually say or do. The establishment press just waits for the right episode and then reflexively and eagerly fills in the gaps in the shallow script -- the script with which they are intimately familiar and which serves as their only framework for talking about and understanding political disputes."

Read on ...

MMM: Shut up and pay your taxes

This week's meltdown was triggered by an op-ed column I read over the weekend in the Las Vegas Sun. It was a syndicated deal, penned by some guy named Walter Rodgers (apparently he's a former international correspondent at CNN), and it struck a nerve.

Usually when that happens, it stems from an opinion that ruffles my feathers, that gets my knickers in a proverbial twist. But this time, my ire was raised because I agreed with this guy 100 percent.

The topic of the column is taxes, which of course is timely given the month we've just entered. And the gist of the column was this: "Shut up and pay your taxes."

Like anybody who pays attention to political punditry, I've been inundated over the last decade or so with anti-tax opinions. From right-wing radio to reactionary newspaper columnists to conservative think tanks, the drumbeat has been consistent -- we're all shelling out too much of our income to fund a government that doesn't fulfill its obligations to society.

OK, that's probably putting to fine of a shine on it. The more common reaction has actually been more like, "I've got mine -- get your grubby hands out of my pockets and get your own!" And it's been successful, because as a basic, gut-level, common-sense response, it passes the smell test -- you know, the whole American dream, pull yourself up by your bootstraps thing.

But Rodgers put a different spin on taxes, one I hadn't heard much before, and one that makes perfect sense to me. As he says, "I'm happy to pay my fair share to the government. It's part of my patriotic duty – and it's a heckuva bargain."

What a novel approach -- viewing taxes as your contribution to society, your share of the costs of the services that you can't provide for yourself. If you don't want to pay taxes, fine -- just don't drive on the roads, don't use any electricity, don't use your plumbing, don't watch TV, don't send your kids to public schools, etc.

Of course, the comeback from right-wing types would be something along the lines of, "I'm more than happy to pay for those services I use. I just don't want to pay for anything that doesn't help me, and I don't want anybody to get away with not carrying their own water. There's just too much fat in the government, and we need to slash their budgets before it gets any further out of hand."

Which is fine -- up to a point. But here's another way of looking at it. Let's say you pay your 16-year-old son an allowance of $20 a week. And let's say you find out the kid is using this money, along with other funds he has available, to purchase crystal meth. If you're following the starve-the-government logic, you'd say to the kid, "That's it -- no more allowance for you. If you want to buy crystal meth, you'll have to get a paper route or to flip burgers to pay for it."

But wouldn't it make more sense to try and get the kid some help and solve the problem? Instead of cutting off funds, get him into rehab and keep him away from his friends who use meth. Don't just kick and scream and cut his allowance -- get active and solve the problem.

So to further stretch this analogy, don't just kick and scream and whine about paying your taxes -- if you truly believe that your tax dollars are going to fund plasma TVs and Gucci handbags for Ronald Reagan's legendary "welfare queens," then get active, try to address specific problems. Get off your butt and investigate the circumstances, rather than just believing what you hear on the radio or read on PowerLine. Get some first-hand experience, then go to work for a political candidate who shares your views. Or better yet, run for office yourself.

Otherwise, shut up and pay your taxes.

I rest my case

Turns out, Barack Obama has to focus on Hillary Clinton before he turns his attention to John McCain, because apparently fear still buys votes.

The Strib has an interesting look at what lies ahead on the road to the Democratic nomination, in light of Hillary's wins in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday. The headline says it all: "Wins could ratify bitter attack ads." In my mind, here's the money quote:

In Ohio and Texas, a majority of voters also thought Clinton attacked Obama unfairly, the exit polls found.

"That ad makes me angry," said one Ohio voter, Josh Stoneburner, a dog groomer. "We've been dealing with that kind of politics long enough. I don't want to be scared into voting. Enough fear-mongering."

And yet, Clinton's "3 a.m." ad seemed to do the trick. It'll keep her in the race, and it'll probably lead to more mudslinging before the Pennsylvania primary next month. Is it any wonder people are sick of politics in this country?