President Bush is not even done with his speech supposedly honoring the dead and displaced by the hurricane that hit land one year ago today, and already he has begun trying to spin the needs of Louisianans in a comically cynical way. To rebuild levees costs money, you see. And that's why Bush just urged Congress to open the Gulf Coast for drilling, to raise the money necessary. Seeing him pull this sick maneveur should give every environmentalist reason for concern. Remember Bush used the argument that Sept 11th proves the need for energy independence to argue for drilling in ANWR.

That said, I'm not too worried that Bush will actually be able to capitalize on this to pass any of his pre-existing agenda. Whereas Bush's speeches about Sept 11th have always demonstrated his political charisma at its most adept, this speech, like his handling of Hurricane Katrina all along, has been puzzlingly weak by comparison. Speaking right now on CNN, he is visibly nervous, rushing and pausing at all the wrong moments. It doesn't convey strength, and Bush's underwhelming admission that the government "fell short of its responsibilities" and will "respond in better fashion" during the next disaster are unlikely to inspire the sort of confidence in the American public that will allow Bush to say "just trust me, your fearless leader, when I tell you we must despoil the environment" --much less disregard the Constitution or lead the country into an unjustified war.

Can anyone who was watching CNN explain those weird overlays of some woman talking about her love life that kept intruding?

Cross-posted on TAPPED

A new explanation for the burgeoning epidemic of childhood obesity and related illnesses like Type 2 diabetes: From the University of Texas:

In 1969, about half of all students walked or bicycled to school. Fast forward 35 years and less than 15 percent of students walk or bicycle to school.

Obviously this decline in daily exercise has some effect on the health of children. The steepness of this curve though is especially interesting because it seems to be accelerating more quickly than suburbanization. In other words even within the same communities where the distance from home to school may not have changed people are making different, less healthy choices.

Dr. Tracy McMillan, a professor at UT, has been conducting surveys to figure this out. Apparently many parents view the time they spend driving their kids to school as quality time they wouldn't otherwise have with them. Also, they are concerned about the safety of walking in car-oriented areas, where automobiles are increasingly large and fast-moving. The first problem is probably the result of larger trends that cannot easily be remedied, but the latter can be improved through sensible town-planning that makes streets more walkable or bike accessible. Also there should be a national effort to educate parents about the health benefits of walking and the relative danger of riding in an automobile; approximately 40,000 Americans die in auto accidents every year.

Cross-posted on TAPPED

I was just watching the legendary civil rights documentary series Eyes on the Prize, in anticipation of its coming re-release on public television (the first time it will be shown in ten years.) In just the first episode I noticed a recurring theme: that the economic power of civil rights activists was completely dependent on a transportation and urban planning structure that has since been abolished.

In the 1950's the black community of a small Southern city like Birmingham could cause the entire downtown business district to suffer by boycotting the buses. Nowadays, in cities like that across America the downtown is often a burned-out shell, and no one between the ages of 18 and 80 takes the bus. If a community that today faces lack of access to public transportation, like people with disabilities, wanted to effect change through a bus boycot would they be able to? Or has the triumph of the automobile and strip mall made the public sphere the sole province of a disadvantaged minority, thus making it impossible for them to force the more privileged to confront their situation?

Yesterday's Washington Post op-ed page had a very sensible column from education writer Jay Mathews. He argues that the media sensationalism surrounding over-worked, over-pressured high-schoolers is totally misplaced. Media elites regurgitate this story because their own children attend fancy suburban public schools or urban private or magnet schools, where students have too much work, too many extracurriculars, and too much pressure to get into Dartmouth. In fact, as Mathews demonstrates, for the vast majority of American high-schoolers, the problem is that their schools are not demanding enough, and, rather than not having enough time for contemplation, they have too much time for television.

So imagine my surprise when I then turned to the Post's Metro section on the very same day and saw a story on how local Big Three alumni are reacting to this year's U.S. News college rankings. The story was incredibly narrowly focused, only discussing the reactions of Harvard, Yale and Princeton graduates. And it ran at a more-than-sufficient length given that everyone the reporter talked to professed to not know or not care whether their school was first or second this year. It would seem the Post is as guilty as anyone of perpetuating this myth that the important news in American secondary and higher education is how Harvard compares to Princeton, and not stagnant reading and math scores or high rates of college dropouts.

cross-posted on TAPPED

We at CampusProgress are all very proud of our West Coast Advisor Amanda Angelotti for her bravura performance on CNBCs Donny Deutsch tonight. Naturally they came to her for expert analysis on the Jon Benet Ramsey case because they read her piece on cp.org about being a juvenile beauty pageant contestant. The entire hour was an in-depth examination of whether paegants for girls under 13 or 14 should be banned. It certainly was comprehensive and being of the mind that this particular form of child abuse should be banned, I can't fault Deutsch for pursuing it. But it did get me wondering why the cable news networks are so much more apt to give this level of in-depth treatment to a social ill that has caused, at most, one violent death, as opposed to, say, the Iraq War, or our auto-dependent culture (which claimed 40,000 deaths in car accidents last year alone.)

I also thought it interesting how this issue seems to pit two different classes of rightwinger against each other. On the one hand was the host, who has the sort of O'Reilly/Scarborough-esque, anti-smut angry white man shouting head demeanor (although he seemed much more fair-minded and responsible than either of them.) On the other side were the platinum blond women in the kiddie paegant industry (mothers, organizers, coaches) who stood up for the tradition. These things occasionally crop up, like when the legislature in Texas banned suggestive cheerleading (you dont mess with cheerleading in Texas). If progressives had more political sense they'd probably figure out a way to exploit these fissures a little more successfully. Maybe bring up bills to ban the pageants and label anyone who opposes it "soft on pedophilia."

Civil rights advances are often made during times of war -- when an oppressed group proves itself capable of fulfilling every obligation of citizenship. Women's suffrage being buoyed by the increased presence of women in the workplace during World War I comes to mind, as does the 1948 desegregation of the military. So I wonder if gay rights advocates can make something out of this news, Link in The New York Times on Tuesday:

The Defense Department discharged 726 service members last year for being gay, up about 10 percent from 2004, figures released by a gay rights group show.

It's interesting that gay marriage has replaced gays in the military as the hot button gay rights question, when the former one was never really resolved. And it might make sense to put open military service ahead of marriage on the gay rights agenda, considering, for example, that military desegregation preceded the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws. With the military over-stretched it would seem like now might be the right time to pursue it.

Of course, there is the inconvenient fact that even the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which released the numbers, acknowledges that the spike in gay discharges may be partly attributable to some members coming out as a way of leaving the military at a time when morale is especially low. But, then again, closing a loophole that lets soldiers off the hook in times of war could be seen as another selling point for the argument that gays should be allowed, and compelled, to serve like anyone else.

Cross-Posted at TAPPED

Obviously not. And Ellie Reeve's argument in TNR today that she should be is remarkably weak, even considering what she has to work with. First of all, the crux of her argument is supported by zero evidence. She says:

Coulter shocks and offends, but underneath her offensiveness is a grain of truth that people cope with by critiquing her hair....

Coulter has said some terrible things. But I don't think it's the terrible things that really bother liberals. Coulter makes us cringe not when she lies, but when she says things we wish weren't true.

This would be an interesting point if she had any empirical evidence that any of Coulter's outrageous comments were either true in some objective sense or that many liberals actually agree with them. She provides neither. Rather she simply proffers examples where she herself was amused.

And being as representative a liberal as Ellie, I suppose it's worth pointing out that I disagree with every example she gives. To wit:

Asked to define the First Amendment: "An excuse for overweight women to dance in pasties and The New York Times to commit treason."

Hardy har har. I don't smile on the inside when Coulter describes The Times as treasonous, and I'll venture a guess that most liberals would say the same.

Ellie also tries to argue that Coulter should be admired by feminists for her cojones, and it seems to me that would be her strongest point if she drew it out a little more. But then she'd have to explain why feminists should admire someone who suggested that women should lose their right to vote (she doesn't mention this.) Also, she does mention that Coulter refers to women she disagrees with as "broads" and men she disagrees with as "fags". How, pray tell, is that feminist?

Finally, Ellie asserts that "we" liberals respond to Coulter by denigrating her looks. But by far the harshest quote in that vein she provides comes from Andrew Sullivan, a self-professed conservative. I suppose "liberal counter-intuition" might be one generous description for this piece, but, pace Mike Tomasky "liberal self-flagellation"--the idea that its our fault we hate Ann Coulter and a prominent conservative says bad things about her--would be more accurate.

You'd think, having just complained that The Nation and other lefty media outlets ought to be more focused on the increasing influence of rightwing Christian Zionism than on AIPAC, that I'd be delighted by this new piece by Max Blumenthal. And I am pleased to see Blumenthal's comprehensive reporting on the influential new group Christians United for Israel (CUFI), and the Armageddon-based philosophy of its founder, John Hagee.

But why does Blumenthal indulge in outdated Israel-baiting by saying CUFI believes "supporting Israel's expansionist policies is 'a biblical imperative'"? Expansionist policies? Didn't Israel withdraw from Gaza? Wouldn't that be precisely the opposite of expansionism? Indeed Blumenthal later mentions that when Christian Zionist Pat Robertson suggested Ariel Sharon's stroke was God's punishment for withdrawing, CUFI's spokesman defended Robertson. So wouldn't it be more apt to say that Christian Zionists encourage Israeli expansionism, even when it conflicts with Israel's policies?

cross-posted on TAPPED.

As Jim Henley notes we ought not to let our relief and gratitude that British authorities successfully stopped a planned airline attack in London cause us to forget the lesson this reaffirms: that the "flypaper" justification for the Iraq War (e.g. "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here") is completely bogus.

Evan Derkacz, writing on Alternet's blog The Mix, quibbles with the Anti-Defamation League letter to Keith Olbermann requesting that he stop using using the "Sieg Heil" when referring to Bill O'Reilly. According to Derkacz, the ADL should have pointed out O'Reilly's anti-Semitism in the letter and acknowledged that on some level he deserves that particular form of mockery.

I disagree. Derkacz is conflating two different forms of anti-Semitism when he draws a parallel between Olbermann's action and O'Reilly's. O'Reilly has a long history of making traditionally rightwing anti-Semitic comments, which Derkacz collects. Indeed, he doesn't even mention the recent obnoxious example in which O'Reilly complained that "vampires" (whose tastes presumably run towards the blood of baby gentiles) were making too big a deal out of his hero Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade.

But Olbermann is guilty of something completely different: minimizing the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust. This kind of casual, juvenile comparison is often made across the political spectrum. It is noxious to equate any run of the mill bigot or buffoon, be it Bill O'Reilly or George W. Bush with Adolf Hitler or Nazis more generally. The ADL is committed to opposing both kinds of hate speech, as well as many others. There is no reason to demand that they criticize O'Reilly for perpetrating one kind (as they already have) when calling on Olbermann to cease perpetuating another.

I have to defend our friend Helen Thomas from Jon Chait's scathing--if typically hilarous and fairly insightful--takedown of her in this week's TNR. First of all, his criticisms are internally inconsistent. On the one hand he claims she has only become such an icon because the quirks of the White House press corps have granted her the right to sit up front and ask the first question based on seniority. Then he goes on to assert that her tough, scolding questions of the Bush Administration have actually helped Bush politically, so his kicker reads, "maybe there's a reason they seat her in the front row." Well, that's cute, but as Chait himself pointed out, whether the Bushies want her in the front row or not has nothing to do with it.

He also ascribes far too cynical motives to her when he says:

Thomas's relationship with the Bush administration, in other words, is a symbiotic one, in which both sides have an incentive to play up her role--she, so that she can posture as a crusading icon; they, so they can smear the entire press corps as ideologically biased.

He marshals some evidence that the Right uses Thomas's questions for that purpose, but to say that she is "posturing as a crusading icon" is ridiculous. She's a liberal journalist trying to get the truth out of the administration. Chait has evidence to question her success, but not her motives.

Also, considering that Chait is one of the country's most talented opinion writers, and himself a newspaper columnist, I thought this passage extremely odd:

a turning point in her role took place in 2000, when she quit her beat at United Press International and started a column with Hearst Newspapers. Liberated from the constraints of objectivity, her tough questions increasingly devolved into unhinged rants.

It seems here as if Jon Chait--a career opinion journalist mind you--is buying the crusty notion that only straight news reporters are "objective." Helen Thomas can be a columnist and be objective in the sense that she calls it as she sees it, through the prism of her own opinions. Non-objectivity would be columnists who twist or select the facts to fit the point they wish to make. There are plenty of objective liberals columnists, such as Michael Kinsley, or, for that matter, Jon Chait, which is why it's weird to see him insult the very profession he not only belongs to, but is an expert practitioner in.

So here's big story out of Montana: Senator Conrad Burns insulted the hardworking forest firefighters last week when he:

pointed across the Billings airport Sunday and accused a member of an elite firefighting team of not doing "a God damned thing" and charged that crew members just "sit around" on the job, the original version of a state report said.

He got the state government to censor the worst of his comments in its offical report but then the truth came out.

Some of us who are skeptically inclined towards conservatives have long suspected that Burns' comments represent their true feelings towards first responders. Even as they venerate them publicly they cut their funding. One can infer from that that they don't respect them, but now Burns proved it. Of course he apologized, but get this, from Midterm Madness:

Burns' efforts to put an end to the scandal were also awkwardly handled (subscription only) on a conference call with reporters:

During the call, a Department of Agriculture official based in Montana rushed to Burns' rescue and took over answering questions about firefighting efforts in Montana. When the official, Undersecretary Mark Rey, stopped speaking, Burns thanked the reporters for joining the call, and everyone hung up.
Except the video camera was still rolling.

"That's the way to shut that down," Burns is seen saying on the tape, a video file of which was e-mailed to HOH. "Huh? That works!" Then came a "you bet!" as he put on his white cowboy hat and prepared to get up from his desk.

So even his making amends has been exposed as a cynical ploy. I'd crow about how this confirms my worst suspicions, but, given that I actually think it's important for the country that first responders have bi-partisan support, I'm more saddened than amused. OK, I'm both, but still...

The Chron of Higher Ed gives us an unfair shake, and an unduly generous one to YAF in their blog post on YAF's cowardly ejection of our reporter from their open press annual conference. They describe us as "a liberal student group that had already been denied press credentials by the foundation." Well, that is technically true. But anyone who read our earlier piece on the subject knows that we run an online magazine and we provided the YAF spokesman, Jason Mattera, with ample evidence that we meet any commonly accepted definition of a web publication. So we applied for press credentials not as a "liberal student group" but as an online magazine.

Furthermore, while the Chron. completely ignores our amply supported assertion that we are on online magazine entitled to treatment as such, they quote, and end with, Mattera's unsupported assertion that we are "a left-wing smear group that does not accurately represent our events and is not a news organization." That hardly seems fair.

Apparently Jason Mattera is not the only rightwinger who throws out reporters with legitimate press credentials from his rightwing events. Evan Derkacz of Alternet and his partner Mike Stark obtained legitimate press credentials and pre-approval for their cameras to attend Sean Hannity's "Freedom Concert" but were thrown for being liberal. And Hannity slandered them by saying that they used fake credentials and snuck their cameras in! Watch the hilarious and shocking video here.