McCain Showing His Age, Rapid Brain Cell Death

In a move usually reserved for long-faced New Englanders, John McCain performed an impressive backflip, made even more impressive by the fact that I'm fairly confident that his joints are in pretty bad shape.

Remember back in the day when John McCain was all anti increased drilling in the United States? Waaaaaay back when. Waaaaaaaaaaaay back when he was running for president the last time. Yeah. John McCain, the man who was so against new drilling in the United States back in the stone age of 2000, is now blaming Barack Obama for the ridiculous cost of gas. There's a fucking tv ad about it: "Pump" TV Ad

Since fucking when is Barack Obama opposed to energy independence, reducing America's dependence on foreign oil, and, you know, making energy affordable? But whatever, like that's the point.

No. The point is, that this is fucking stupid. Let us not even try to blame Barack Obama, or even Democrats in general for the high cost of oil (unless you're trying to make the argument that Democrats voted to go to war in Iraq, in which case, kindly go fuck yourself. We don't have time for that argument). Regardless of who voted for it, the invasion of Iraq, and subsequent clusterfuckery is a totally Republican initiative. Also, which is the party drafting green energy legislation, pushing for renewable energy, and, you know, believing in global warming? Democrats, Democrats, and Democrats.

Also, not that it needs to be said again, but increasing domestic drilling is not going to significantly affect the cost of oil. Don't make me tell you why for the millionth time.

For more: McCain Urges More Drilling, Blames Obama For Gas Prices

Why We Shouldn't Drill Off-shore or in ANWR

I've been hearing a lot of bullshit about how we should drill more oil to fuel our disastrous amounts of oil consumption.

I absolutely believe that fuel prices shouldn't be so high--because, like everything else, it hurts the poor worst.

The answer is not to drill our way out of this crisis.

If we were to start developing more drilling sites off our coasts and in ANWR this very instant, no oil would be extracted from those sites for 5-10 years. By that time, if there is any hope of mitigating the human and economic casualties of global warming, we need to be relying largely on renewable, carbon-neutral fuels.

Secondly, contrary to public opinion (because the media and the government is being purposely misleading), the oil that would be extracted from off-shore points and from ANWR would not go exclusively to the American market. It would not get directed towards the American market at all. It would enter the world market, sold by the same oil companies that are reaping morally repulsive profits today. Because that "American" oil would be going all over the world, we wouldn't even see a 10 cent decrease in the price of gas. And given that that will be 7 or so years from now, I don't think it'll make much of a difference if your gas is $7.10/gallon or $7.20/gallon.

However, if your algae-derived ethanol (and jet fuel, for that matter) is just $3.50
/gallon and falling as production increases and technology improves, well, that would make a big difference.

Bush, the EPA, and the Court

Or: The Executive's Radical Abdication of its Responsibilities Under the Separation of Powers

Not that the Bush administration gives a shit about the Constitution anyway. Which is to say that the Bush administration doesn't give a shit about the only thing that makes all American citizens united as Americans. I could go on and on about how, as everyone who lives here originally came from somewhere else, we cannot, as the French, the Chinese, or Nigerians, claim that we are American because this is where our flesh and blood originated. We don't have race to unite us. We have no "creation myth." We have the Constitution, and we have the Declaration of Independence. And I think that's so much more beautiful. But I'm not going to go on about that. I'm going to talk about the EPA

A few days ago President Bush's EPA head Stephen Johnson announced that the EPA is not going to to anything about greenhouse gas emissions. He claimed that the EPA is going to do more research about whether or not greenhouse gas emissions have consequences harmful to people.

Despite the fact that, as the New York Times reports (click on the title of this post to go to that article), "last December, a task force of agency scientists concluded that emissions do indeed endanger public welfare, that the E.P.A. is required to issue regulations, and that while remedial action could cost industry billions of dollars, the public welfare and the economy as a whole will benefit (emphasis mine)."

This WOULD be business as usual with the Bush Administration (and what we can expect from a potential McCain administration) EXCEPT that the Supreme Court last year decided in Massachusetts et al v. Environmental Protection Agency that the Bush administration MUST take action to determine whether greenhouse gasses were harmful (which it was determined they were) and if so, they MUST take remedial action.

In other words, the Bush administration has been evading the law since EPA scientists submitted their report last December. Now, with the official announcement that the EPA is not going to act on emissions, the administration is openly breaking the law.

Dear 9th Circuit, I love you. Dear war-on-drugs, fuck off. Dear zero-tolerance policies, you are destroying the lives of the young.

Somewhere in the American West in the recent past, a 13 year old girl was strip searched for drugs. At her middle school. The drugs searched for were Advil. She was searched based on the accusation of a girl who was actually caught with prescription strength Advil (hello? cramps!). No corroboration of that claim was sought for. No call to the parents for notification or permissin was attempted.

The girl who claimed that Redding had pills did NOT indicate that she had them on her at the time nor did she suggest anywhere that Redding might be keeping them. Certainly not IN HER UNDERWEAR.

Vice Principle Wilson simply took 13 year old Savannah Redding into his office and took off her clothes. To see if she had Advil in her underwear.

I couldn't possibly explain why this is both shockingly unconstitutional and morally disgusting better than the 9th Circuit already has.

“It does not take a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old girl is an invasion of constitutional rights. More than that: it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”

The court said further, “A reasonable school official, seeking to protect the students in his charge, does not subject a thirteen-year-old girl to a traumatic search to ‘protect’ her from the danger of Advil,” and obviously, “We reject Safford’s effort to lump together these run-of-the-mill anti-inflammatory pills with the evocative term ‘prescription drugs,’ in a knowing effort to shield an imprudent strip search of a young girl behind a larger war against drugs.”

"Knowing effort"--I like this hint that the Court agrees with many other commentators that any sane person would see the issue here as not whether or not it is constitutional to strip search a student or even if it is moral to strip search a 13 year old student, but rather the issue is how the fuck is some dude who thinks it's ok to strip a young girl naked in the name of "war on drugs" allowed to be near children?

I simply can't believe that this ever happened.

How Long Before The New Cameras Fall Victim To A Drive-by?

The Washington Post reported today that the Metro Transit Police have recommended the installation of security cameras outside 30 of the most dangerous Metro stations. [WaPo] DC has agreed to pay $225,000 for the installations, and the Metro Transit Police are urging Virginia and Maryland to fund the installation of outdoor cameras at stations in their jurisdictions as well.

And, in case you're wondering, Metro is funding the installation of security cameras outside the Anacostia station...independently of their larger camera installation project. Anacostia has the highest crime-rate of any station in the Metrorail system.

I won't ask if anyone wants to place bets on how long it's going to take before the cameras at Anacostia are destroyed by gunshots, rioting, or some other enormous but somehow not surprising event.

(Don't hate me, Anacostians, for I love your neighborhood and desperately wish I lived there, too.)

BREAKING NEWS! Congressional Staff Not Good Secret Keepers.

So it turns out that giving every Hill staffer a BlackBerry was maybe not the smartest idea in the world. [Politico]

Apparently, everyone, up until now, thought anything owned and operated by Congress was totally impervious to outside forces, including the sensitive information bouncing through the exosphere where, you know, really anyone who's taken an introductory computer science class and has a decent understanding of network security can access it. Especially if you don't take such strident precautionary measures as maybe password protecting your BlackBerry.

Not convinced? Still think you have to be pretty retarded to accidentally leak private information? Turns out that "an employee at a local investment firm unwittingly leaked personal information about Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and others while downloading music online." Up until now, I thought you had to be pretty intelligent to be employed at an investment firm, but apparently the hiring process is a little less intense than I'd imagined. I'll ignore the fact that this genius employee was clearly pirating music on his company laptop, and just say that the term "file sharing" does actually mean what it says. Also, if you're not skilled enough to go to the Account Settings tab of your Limewire window and change it so that you're not giving the entire world access to your hard drive, I really seriously don't want you handling my investments or anyone else's.

The best part of this article, however, is when Harvard computer science professor, Harry Lewis, author of Blown to Bits, confirms that all computer hackers are, in fact, male: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

To the roughly 49% of the world population with a scrotum, I say: SUCKS TO BE YOU!

On Off-shore Drilling, Democrats Feeling Effects of Anesthesia

Before my iPod died and I had to make three trips to the Apple store, I started writing this post with the intention of saying that Congressional Democrats seem to be moving in the direction of compromise with Congressional Republicans. The headline above the fold on today's Politico is "Democrats Searching Their Sould On Drilling," which certainly seems to imply fairly widespread reluctance throughout the Democratic Caucus. [Politico]

I don't believe this for one minute. Not one stinking minute. Approval rating numbers just came out, and Congress, with its stellar NINE PERCENT approval rating seems to be in an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" kind of mood. And so continues the ridiculous trend of quick fixes that pander to national interest but ultimately fuck us in the end...so to speak.

Just a few minutes ago, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer spoke with considerable enthusiasm on the need to increase domestic oil product, because, well, the United States consumes 25% of the world's annual oil product while producing itself only 3%. So, yes, technically if we want to spend less money per barrel of oil without actually confronting OPEC, and we've never ever shown any real interest in confronting OPEC, and without taking the time and effort to shake off the vice grip of oil companies.

However, an increase in domestic oil production is not going to do much good. First of all, Congressional Democrats have stated repeatedly that drilling could not feasibly begin until 2020, with Congressional Republicans calling their bluff and stating that drilling could begin much sooner than that. Whatever. Regardless of when drilling actually commences, drilling in an area the size of the ANWR is not going to yield enough oil to effect the price of oil in the long-term. We know this already. Back when Congressional Democrats were vehemently opposed to increased off-shore drilling, they talked about that point at great length. (GovSpot has a well-outlined point/counterpoint.)

But sucky legislation is apparently favorable to no legislation (see: FISA reauthorization), so we've stopped thinking about how increased off-shore drilling will undoubtedly shift focus away from what was shaping up to be a decently enthusiastic jaunt through the world of alternative energy, sustainability, and breaking America's "addiction to foreign oil."

I can say with reasonable certainty that the reason Congress' approval rating is 9% is because of deals like this. Save the caribou.

-This post is dedicated to the guys at the Pentagon City Apple store who saved my iPod and my sanity.

Louisiana or 1950s Mental Hospital? It's Your Call.

Yesterday, the Louisiana State Senate voted 32-3 to send a bill to the State House that would make castration an acceptable and sometimes mandatory punishment for sex offenders in the state. [Fox News] For second-time offenders, castration would be mandatory, provided that a "medical expert" decided castration would be effective. Chemical castration, via medroxyprogesterone acetate, would be the default method, but offenders would be able to choose physical castration instead.

Take a moment. I'll wait for you to catch up.

Let's roam into the hypothetical. Medrozyprogesterone acetate is a progestin that, when used as a treatment in males, reduces sex drive. Makes sense. Yes, introducing progesterones in a testosterone-filled environment will reduce sex drive. That seems like a common sense statement, and unfortunately I cannot veryify it because there are no studies on the effects of medrozyprogesterone acetate in healthy men. Every study I found was about sperm count in men having recently received vasectomies. Moving on. That's not the ridiculous part.

The ridiculous part is the assumption that too much sex drive is the underlying problem. Grown men do not rape children because they have overactive libidos. Rape, whether of grown women or of children, is an action driven by anger and rooted in violence.

Non-consentual sex is a physical manifestation of anger, violence is the coping mechanism, and mental illness is what we should be addressing. How often sex offenders feel the urge to get laid is not what we need to be talking about.

Religious Education Will Save DC!

So, in case you weren't aware, President Bush is a huge fan of school vouchers and created the first federally funded education voucher program. In DC, 1900 students were able to escape the torment of their every day lives and the horrible, terrifying DC public education system.....by way of $7500 vouchers to the private or religious school of their choice. [WaPo]

Not that I don't appreciate how terrible the state of DC's public education system is. I know I wouldn't want to have to rely on Michelle Rhee to provide me with a sound education. And I fully support providing students with access to a good education, but seriously, Spellings herself writes in the article that the problem is "institutionalized failure." So clearly, we should be paying kids to go to religious schools instead of using that money to, you know, fix the system.

Spellings even lays out the statistics: more than 7000 students have applied for the federal scholarships. The federal program costs $74mn; money that, according to Spellings, we might as well use to pull kids out of the DC public school system because, hey, if it weren't for the federal program, the District wouldn't receive it anyway! So what they hey! Let's drain the DC public school system of its impetus to reform.

Spellings even states that 86% of the students receiving federal vouchers would otherwise be in schools that "did not meet 'adequate yearly progress' goals in reading and math for 2006-07." This means that an atrociously high percentage of DC schools are undoubtedly sub-par and unable to provide their students with a comprehensive education.

So where does the $74mn come into the picture? Here's my hypothesis: sending a tiny percentage of DC public school students to private and religious schools costs a similarly tiny fraction of what it would cost to reform the school system that continues to fail the thousands of students who do not receive federal vouchers.

The silver lining, however, may come in the form of increased attention paid to the state of DC's public school system. Hopefully, while the parents of 1900 students are lauding the greatness of the federal voucher program, the parents of all of the other students in the system will take the opportunity to remind Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee just who they're here to serve.

Money is the mother's milk of politics, and that, my friends, is the name of the game.

Let's Keep Waffles on the Breakfast Table

E. J. Dionne Jr. is now apparently playing the constructive criticizer role favored by former Speaker Newt Gingrich. [WaPo] For those of you who didn't make it all the way through the A section this morning, I've done the reading for you. If you pass the test, I'll take my payment in the form of cigarettes, alcohol, or this wicker chaise lounge.

Anyway, Dionne actually makes an excellent point. Barack Obama needs to work on his flexibility, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Having one position ("I intend to end this war.") will not allow Senator Obama the range of motion he needs to successfully and decisively blow Senator McCain's campaign out of the water.

Right now, the Bush White House is banking on the Iraqi Parliamentary elections, slated for October 2008, being successful; a label that requires enthusiastic voter turnout, strong international support and reinforcement, and no post-election surges in violence.

But here's the lynchpin: if the Iraqi elections are successful, Obama will need a message that is in line with his current thinking, but can still make the argument that the war was a tragic and misguided undertaking. All while Senator McCain is standing on the other side, stating, correctly, that the surge worked, that Iraq is more stable than it has been in the last five years, and that all of this is proved by the fact that Iraqi citizens just peacibly elected a new parliament.

Senator Obama has run an incredibly intelligent and effective campaign, and he undoubtely knows that using the death toll since 2003 is not an effective tactic when it comes to building a stong foreign policy platform. Instead, Senator Obama must draw a distinction between himself and Senator McCain that does not leave him open to the charge of defeatism. After all, Iraq has begun to stabilize, and Obama's original sixteen-month timeline for withdraw, as he must realize now, leaves the door wide open to resurgences in violence at the hands of a Sunni insurgency, Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, and Al Qaeda; all of which, although currently diminished and flailing, have great potential to revive if the United States were to redeploy all troops within sixteen months, not having taken into account the ability of the Iraqi government to pick up the slack.

Long story short, Senator Obama needs to take a page from Senator McCain's book and begin shaping a foreign policy platform that is based on viable foreign policy instead of fondant and marshmallow.

For more, read George Packer's essay in this week's New Yorker: Obama's Iraq Problem

I Don't Understand Your Methodology, America.

So, after about 6 weeks, I finally started reading some of my subscriptions, and I happened upon this little gem from Ann Applebaum. I remember when I was a wee youngin, writing a reflection on one of her more mundane and rambling op-eds, and realizing sharply that her work often encourages America's disordered thinking. However, she may finally....finally have come around. [WaPo].

Sadly, we all remember how America twice elected George W. Bush, hailing him the candidate they most wanted to throw a few back with. 8 years later, we're somehow still talking about this, and even, horrifyingly, using this characteristic as a ruler for electability. Apparently, and I'm going to have to take Applebaum's word for it since I've spent the last month or so reading Women's Wear Daily and watching copious amounts of TLC, Bravo, and HSN, America is shitting itself over the fact that Sens. Obama and McCain aren't as "nice" as we once thought.

Well no shit. It takes a great deal of ego and arrogance to run for President of the United States. Seriously, to seek any elected office, you have to be pretty fucking convinced that you're the greatest and most intelligent person in the world. Now, that's not to say that the halls of legislatures and executives across the United States are filled with raging megalomaniacs, although I'm certainly not willing to wager my salary that they're not. But really, America, after 8 years of a country led by the guy everyone wanted to have a beer with, don't we think maybe, just maybe, it's time to be sober this time around?

Electing someone idealistic is certainly a good thing, but when we delude ourselves into thinking that that idealism is going to persist throughout a full term is completely absurd. Of course, an idealistic candidate is still going to be an idealist, but holding elected office, especially one as demanding as President of the United States, is going to provide a shock of realism that campaigning can't.

Having spent a longer-than-necessary amount of time on Capitol Hill, and now in my fashion industry refuge, I can tell you with some authority that the ones most able to maintain their idealism through the demands of performance are the ones who are less "the guy you want to have a beer with", and more "the guy you want running the country."