Tuesday Two-fer

Israel's push in Gaza has entered its tenth day.  And by all accounts, it's (predictably) a humanitarian crisis.  Palestinian civilians are bearing the brunt of the Israeli attack: Palestinian casualties have exceeded 550, fuel and water has been cut off to hundreds of thousands, and basic medical care is hard to come by.

The stated purpose, of course, is to rid Gaza of its Hamas political leadership and to put an end to years of rocket attacks.  Israel has expressly said that it has no designs on occupying Gaza (Strip, not City).  But, however, there seems to be something strangely familiar, even Bush-like, about the assault.  When our nation invaded Iraq, we, at least at some point, stated that our goal was to crush terrorism and promote democracy and freedom.  But we went into Iraq with guns blazing, stirring up a hornets nest that still hasn't died down.

Israel, according to the spokesman I listened to on NPR this morning, aims to instruct the Palestinians that they should abandon terrorism and direct their efforts towards things like economic development - things that promote peace.  But the approach, to me, is both disproportional and wholly misguided.  Why not invest in better infrastructure, free economic development, and improving impoverished conditions rather than bombing folks into the stone age?  Just doesn't seem right.

On the home front, we're nearly two weeks away from Inauguration Day, which we're all waiting for.  And waiting for our new President will be the worst financial meltdown we've seen since the Depression.  We all know that.  And, we all know that the way to solve all this is to prop up our vital industries and financial services companies with huge, huge infusions of cash and credit.

Or do we?  If you've been following the editorials, you'll note some folks, like Paul Krugman of the NYT, noting that one of the worst fiscal moves our country made was President Franklin Roosevelt's attempts to balance the federal budget after only a few years of deficit spending during the Great Depression.  The theory goes that if he and Congress hadn't pulled back, the Depression wouldn't have last as long as it did.  Therefore, the thought goes, we should not make the same mistake twice and fail to dump many trillions of dollars into our economy.

But let me play devil's advocate here for a moment, bearing in mind that I'm no economist.  However, what about letting things be?  At least part of the modern conservative theory of capitalist economics holds that from time to time modern economies must re-allocate resources from less productive industries to more productive industries.  Our economy has recently been tied up in financial services and heavy investment in real estate.  That served us fairly well after we recovered from the collapse of heavy manufacturing.  If we prop up our economy now, do we in some way prevent it from transitioning to the next big thing?  Should we hold up on the economic stimulus, maybe let this thing play out, regardless of the pain?

Five for Friday

I have been scouring the interwebs for literally minutes, and I've come up with five blog-worthy things to share with you. In no particular order:

First, my boy Krugman at the NYT writes about the effect John Edwards had on this campaign. Without Edwards, and I think everyone who writes for the blog hit on this in one way or another, the Democrats would not be talking about actual ideas and concrete policy initiatives. Instead, the nominee would John Kerry version 2.0. So, if you see him, thank John Edwards.

Second, Gene Upshaw is prepared for an NFL players strike if the owners decide to opt out of the current contract after the Super Bowl. Owners say they're broke, but Upshaw isn't buying what they're selling.

Third, we've all heard by now that Microsoft has made a bid to buy Yahoo!. The bid, however, is likely to go hostile. Here's some more on the could-be takeover. If there's a request, I'll post a blog soon explaining the mechanics of a hostile takeover. Question is, can Microsoft make my Yahoo! mail suck more? I'm betting on yes.

Fourth, in news from my hometown of Barre, Vermont, it looks like a property management company has taken a bunch of its tenants for a ride. Why is this news? Well, it's looking like I'm one of them (maybe, I must throw in the allegedly cause I don't know all the facts).

Fifth, and finally, in a sign that Hillary cannot, and should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to win the Democratic nomination, there's news that she's earned Ann Coulter's endorsement (and probably the endorsement of the Horsefaced Women's Alliance - HWA for those of you not in the know).

That's it. Have fun in Vegas, WTFers.

gore! Gore! GORE!

Paul Krugman of the New York Times has written a brilliant article about Al Gore and why the hard line right wingers, read Faux News, and the like absolutely hate Al Gore and trash him in a way that is usually reserved for Bill Clinton.

On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journal’s editors couldn’t even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore’s name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more.

And at National Review Online, Iain Murray suggested that the prize should have been shared with “that well-known peace campaigner Osama bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore’s stance.” You see, bin Laden once said something about climate change — therefore, anyone who talks about climate change is a friend of the terrorists.

This is great, cause alerting folks about a possible environmental crisis is a terrible thing to do. It's so bad that one must lump them in with Public Enemy Number One since he has the same belief about the environment. You can never congratulate a man who has done some legitimate good for the people, or at least he's attempting to do that. No, you have to bash and act like a seven year old child whose parent won't buy him a toy while they're at the grocery store.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.

That is a big part right there, the right HATES being shown that it is wrong about any subject. All Al Gore has done since he was in the national and world spotlight is disprove many of the lies the right would have you believe. Instead of debating a man with facts and science, they ridicule his name and call him stinky and claim the man has cooties, since they is in their arsenal.

Al Gore is a difficult man to like, he can be a bit robotic, our own political version of Spock and his wife is an absolute horror. That being said, I'd still vote for him over any of the Republican candidates they currently have running. Check that, I'd still vote for him over ANY candidate running as I think he's taken the last seven years and stepped back from politics and realized what is important to him and to people. He hasn't be a part of the "Beltway" and seems to have a clearer view then he did before. Bottom line is he seems more, human.

Krugman sums it up with his very last paragraph:

Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy.