Thursday, February 21, 2008

Today's Video Link

Here's another one of those 1986 educational spots that the Warner Brothers cartoon people whipped up for ABC. This one features the Coyote and the Road Runner asserting your Constituional Right to chase a bird up a mountainside and plunge into an abyss.

It's followed by the end credits for that season's Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show with, annoyingly, the theme song removed. But do note that June Foray received a voice credit, which was something that didn't happen often on WB cartoons.

• Posted at 12:47 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Jeremy Morris reads my little comment on the McCain "affair" story (item before last here) and writes...

...under normal circumstances I'd agree with you. But there are two points that I think are salient here in the case of John McCain that make this event actually worth considering:

1. McCain's reputation is for "Straight Talking" and for "Campaign Finance Reform". He's the one who made these two things the centerpieces of his run for office and his Senate career respectively. Cheating on your wife puts a lie to his whole "Straight Talking" persona that he's wrapped himself in. Now, granted he probably only got into Campaign Finance Reform as a cause after his participation in the "Keating Five" scandal, but still - Campaign Finance Reform is one of his hobbyhorses. If he's having an illicit affair with a lobbyist, that shows that his championing of Campaign Finance Reform is a sham. Which you may be expecting, but there are still many people in this country who expect their politicians to actually believe the things that they say. The more examples of this sort of thing, the more that expectation can be lowered and the more people will hopefully pay attention to what the politician actually does instead of just the words they say.

2. McCain voted to impeach President Clinton based on Clinton's sexual conduct while in office. Had McCain stood up and called out his own party for the stupidity of it all, I'd have more respect and more sympathy for the Senator. As it is, this is a classic example of one being "hoisted by his own petard" - if he didn't want to play by these rules he shouldn't have put them on the table when the board was setup. Any Republican who voted to impeach Clinton in the Lewinsky matter deserves to have their sexual closet thrown open and have all of the moths shaken out. And if they didn't realize the Pandora's Box they were opening when they cast that vote then they are fools who doubly deserve what they get. (Personal bias note - I considered myself a Republican up until the whole impeachment circus. So I may still be a little bit bitter that the party that I supported at the time turned out to be a bunch of corrupt little children intent on scoring political points about trivial issues instead of actually governing like adults.)

I don't know that I can disagree with most of that. McCain's support for the impeachment of Clinton was, for me, the moment he vaulted the proverbial shark. It was when he stopped being a Republican I could see myself voting for and entered the phylum of "He's just like all the others." Where I guess I differ a bit with you is that I think the part of this story that obviously interests most people — Ooh, John McCain was cheating on his wife! — doesn't seem to have been nailed down with sufficient evidence, nor would it be the real wrong. If he's doing improper things to help out lobbyists, that's the sin, whether he's in bed with one financially or literally. I suppose one could argue that the sex angle to the story is a good thing because a story that just said McCain lets lobbyists manipulate him like he's Topo Gigio would not get as much attention...but you kind of hate to see it work that way. I do, at least.

• Posted at 10:50 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

How much are we spending for defense these days? Apparently, as much as the Bush Administration wants. According to — you guessed it — Fred Kaplan, military budgets are an outmoded concept. We sort of limit the spending in the formal budget and then spend any additional amount requested as a "supplemental" with little or no oversight.

And while I'm hectoring you into reading Fred Kaplan, I might as well go the distance: Mr. Kaplan has gifted me with an autographed copy of his new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, and I'm about halfway through it. It's a stunning, chilling account of mistakes that G.W.B. and his minions have made with regard to defense and foreign relations, not just in Iraq but around the globe. In case after case, someone — often Rumsfeld but there were others — had some new theory about what America should do, how we should position ourselves vis-a-vis some other nation...and it not only didn't work but actually achieved the opposite of the intended goal. The book is not angry and not intended to rouse rabble. It just lays out a pretty sorry history that will scare the bejeesus out of anyone looking for the government to make a safer world for us to all live in.

• Posted at 8:58 AM · LINK