People want something to get done

Or the Terrorists Win: the government argues in court that refugees from poverty-ridden Haiti are an ominous threat to national security. Says the Post: INS officials told the judge that if the Haitians are released, they will spark a mass migration from Haiti to South Florida, endangering lives and causing the U.S. government to deploy too many resources in patrolling the seas. "We're concerned that very important resources of the Coast Guard and the Department of Defense would be diverted from their primary mission of protecting the homeland and fighting the war on terrorism," said Mario Ortiz, an immigration officer. "It sends the wrong signal of mass migration. The primary focus of this country should be in fighting terrorism."

Evidently GeeDubya Bush’s [that one’s from Molly Ivins] little education act passed earlier this year included a provision that high schools must give military recruiters names and addresses for every student, or have all federal money revoked.

If you’re looking for a fresh face to hate, given the retirement of Thurmond, Gramm and Helms, I recommend you start with Thurmond’s replacement, Lindsey Graham. And with Orrin Hatch back as chair of the judiciary committee, you might resume thinking about him, which will inevitably lead to despising him.

On the bright side, I guess, Loretta Sanchez, who displaced the amusing but psychopathic Bob Dornan, is joined in the House by her sister, which hasn’t happened here before, although the British Parliament beats them all to hell with the Eagle sisters, Labour MPs who are twins, and one of whom is a lesbian.

Another story on Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian olive-pickers. It does mention Israeli peace activists who help, but gives no sense of the scale, probably not many.

Shrub sheds his brilliance on the elections: “If there is a mandate in any election, at least in this one, it’s that people want something to get done.”

This was the year of the po’ white ignorant Southern voter. According to the NY Times, the Dem. governor of Georgia was ousted because he sponsored changing the flag to remove the image of the burning cross, or whatever. Blacks to a great extent failed to vote at all. One of the things the D’s have failed to realize over the decades is how much they depended on hereditary Democratic voters: blacks, Irish, unionists, Hispanics, Hawaiians, etc., who have now largely stopped voting the way their ancestors did. D’s now actually have to fight for votes and plainly most of them don’t know how. None of this bodes well for the future.

It could have been worse. Consider that one result of the election was that D’s are now a minority of state legislators for the first time in 50 years, meaning that D’s had a large hand in the reapportionment that went into effect this year.

Slate analyses a US sting operation in Colombia and notes that the headlines in the Times and Post saying that an arms-for-drugs deal (and something similar in Pakistan) had been “foiled” was inaccurate and might as well have been written by John Ashcroft; since one side of the deal consisted only of American undercover agents, no actual deal existed that could have been “foiled.”

A must-read on the Pentagon’s budgeting for Star Wars, which is essentially $7.4 billion for whatever they feel like spending it on, and the 39¢ for defense against biological or radiological threats that might actually be real.

I’ve just read the 50th analysis of the elections that says the D’s lost because they were seen to have no plans of their own, and the R’s did (otherwise not a bad election analysis). I said something like this myself, but I didn’t say what they all seem to be implying, that any plan no matter how crazy, slanted towards business and the rich, unilateralist etc etc is considered ok, as long as they, you know, have a plan. And this is a must-read indictment of the D’s.

My own analysis is all over the map, I know. I’ve said that the D’s as opposition party didn’t oppose, and I’ve said that partisanship á la Britain would be a bad thing. What I’d really like to do is get rid of any recognition of parties as institutions in the Congressional rules. Parties are not in the constitution, which is the only document that should give institutionalized power. The decision of a Jim Jeffords, a single senator, to change parties shouldn’t have a dramatic effect. The replacement of might-as-well-be-Republican Democrats like Max Cleland and Zell Miller by actual Republicans with similar positions but more arms and legs should not be made artificially significant by the party names they chose.

NATO has a new policy, or will later this month: sending troops anywhere in the world to help countries defeat “terrorist groups” on their territory. I don’t see how that could possibly go spectacularly wrong.

What does it say about Dick Cheney that Bush was only able to promise to keep him on as VP after the 2002 elections were over?

The Commerce Dept is fining and threatening any companies that participate in unofficial boycotts, like say that of Israel.

The EU finally comes to agreement to ban animal testing for cosmetics, phased in over a number of years, overcoming fierce objections from France, which may cave in to any dictator that comes along but evidently isn’t afraid to take on bunnies.