The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog

Mac¹⁰

I made the jump to Mac OS 10.2 last night, and I’m having a great time making it work. iCal has me hooked, and the revamped Sherlock web services app might save me from ever having to wade through piles of nonsensically incompatible sites just to accomplish the simple task of ordering movie tickets. Now, if only Apple would add an Amazon search interface . . .

Right now I’m toying with a program called BlogApp; I’m using it to write posts straight from the desktop. If you can read this, it works like a charm.

Here’s my question: are there any killer apps out there that I should know about? If you know of some good scripts, shareware or freeware, send your recommendations to me via e-mail. Muchos gracias.

More Gore

Did Pavlov ever conduct experiments on political reporters? You have to wonder. If I read one more piece like this Dan Balz article in today’s Post, I just might convert to the belief that bashing Al Gore whenever he speaks is a trained reflex.

Look at this paragraph:

But Gore also praises the president for winning unanimous support from the United Nations for a new resolution calling on Hussein to disarm. Asked why he had been so critical of Bush on Iraq at the very moment the administration was pursuing the U.N. resolution, Gore said that his critical speech had come before Bush initiated action at the United Nations. In reality, Gore criticized Bush on Iraq 11 days after the president spoke to the United Nations.

What’s the story? That Gore got his timeline wrong? I wouldn’t call that earthshaking news. After all, when it comes to Iraq, you can hardly accuse the President of being consistent. Following the endless flips and flops of Bush and his aides over the last few months would be enough to make the most rigorous observer misremember the facts.

We can’t expect the Post to mention Bush every time it talks about Gore. But how about a little perspective? Claiming exoneration from having to worry about budget deficits all because of a joke the president never made seems a little more serious than, say, an off-the-cuff answer that misses the timing of a policy shift by ten days. And some of Bush’s misstatements are even more breathtaking. I could go on. Some of us already have.

But dropping the Paint-by-Numbers™ approach to Gore would force the press to think, y’know, about the merits of his ideas. Seriously: who practices journalism that way these days?

The Saudi Connection

Newsweek lobbed a bombshell tonight: Michael Isikoff reports that part of the funding for the Sept. 11 hijackings may have come from the Saudi government. Associates of the hijackers, according to the magazine’s account, received thousands of dollars in funds through the bank account of the wife of Bandar bin Sultan, a longtime Saudi ambassador with a seemingly permanent perch on ‘A’ lists all over official Washington.

The Newsweek report continues:

        [S]ources (outside the White House) describe the financial records as “explosive” and say the information has spurred an intense, behind-the-scenes battle between congressional leaders and the Bush administration over whether evidence highly embarrassing to the Saudi government should be publicly disclosed — especially at a time that the White House is aggressively seeking Saudi support for a possible war against Iraq. “This is a matter of the foreign-policy interests of the United States,” said another administration official, who cited the need to prevent a rift in the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

A matter of the “interests of the United States”? Oh. And I suppose this isn’t?

This story could bolster the growing conception that some among our friends the Saudis have an interesting understanding of the word ‘friendship.’ It could also give ammunition to those who argue that the way to stop terrorism is to stop the funding at its source. That all depends, though, on whether our friends in the White House consider us mature enough to handle the news.

In Case You Haven’t Noticed . . .

. . . I spent some time reworking the blogroll this morning. Have fun!

Going Out with Style

Don’t pity Max Cleland — he lost his job, but found true love. Bully for him.

Open to Question

Does Georgia law allow the new governor to call a referendum on bringing back the old state flag? I’m working on finding out. Stay tuned.

Constantly Getting Gored

Dwight Meredith trains a floodlight on the fundamental dishonesty of conventional wisdom about Al Gore.

They Have Adapted—

I waged guerrilla warfare against spam earlier in the year, setting up a Maginot Line-rivaling network of filters that whittled my e-mail intake down to a manageable handful. Now, just a few months later, I can open the progress window in Outlook Express and see 40 or more messages from a few hours’ time pour into my Mac.com account.

I could tear my hair out. Spam all but nuked my Hotmail account a few months ago, and in my main accounts it comes in such torrents that I can delete blocks of 20 to 30 messages wholesale. Was this the promised efficiency the internet was supposed to bring to my life?

A program that Jason Levine mentions takes a step toward changing the ground rules — rather than forcing users to figure out how to block mail, the program would make companies certify that they never send spam. Kevin Werbach has discussed another method of self-defense: adopting whitelists that exclude e-mail from everyone but the senders whose e-mail you opt to accept.

I’m willing to experiment with that. I want to give the self-correcting filter in MacOS X a chance first, but unless that techique works, it may take radical surgery to keep spam from rendering my e-mail accounts useless.

Trust Them, They Know What They’re Doing

The New Scientist is reporting yet another Microsoft© Windows™ security hole: a defect that can let a hacker disable security controls and hijack a user’s computer. The company suggests that users protect themselves by deleting Microsoft from a file of “trusted” code publishers.

I’m not too worried. I stopped trusting Microsoft a long time ago.

Role Reversal

Remember the days when Prince freaked people out and Michael Jackson was considered the wholesome one?

Don’t Look Now, Here Comes Newt Gingrich . . .

. . . reviewing paperbacks on Amazon.com!

With a war book here, and a crime book there — here a book, there a book, everywhere a book book . . .

Expecting a snarky comment here? Sorry — no can do. I don’t have the heart. He plugged a few books that really looked interesting, and the fact that he’s just as eager to goof off at his computer like the rest of us bloggers seems, as Patrick Nielsen Hayden put it, fairly endearing.

Daydreaming

Winter suits me well. I know that sounds nuts — I’m from Alabama, for Pete’s sake! — but something about crisp air and cold wind makes me feel chipper.

This monsoon season that Atlanta has fallen into, though, I could do without. We’ve had such endless rain lately that I walk out of the front door every morning to find my car smothered under leaves with a dank, moldy haze. Yuck.

Today we had yet another gray afternoon, and I had to spend part of it locked up in a meeting with a man far too enamored of his own voice. I can usually handle prattle, but somewhere in the middle of his twenty-first or twenty-second monologue, I started thinking I’d rather be someplace different. Radically different.

Eze would hit the spot. Clear views, high mountains, great wine, no Republicans . . . what more do I need? If I could only afford the air fare . . .

Okay, so this talk of jetting off to France is just idle musing. But that’s good for you! After all, I used to dream of having an office on One Infinite Loop, which is just as unlikely to happen as my spending next week in an easy chair on the Cote d’Azur. But it sounds like big fun, doesn’t it?

Hit and Run

And now, a quick wrap-up of choice moments from elsewhere in Blogland:

• A secret court upheld secret wiretaps the other day, and Anil Dash feels like busting out with glee.
• Does the GOP cut taxes for the irresponsible hell of it? Of course not, according to Berkeley professor Brad DeLong — it’s really the first step of a clever plot! Problem is, the Republicans might have been a little too clever . . .
• Back to silly clichés of the Republican kind: that Charles Krauthammer sure is brave for facing the mortal threat that Barbra Streisand poses to the American way of life, eh?
• Bush administration
  überhawk Richard Perle just won the Nobel prize for obliviousness.
• Glenn Reynolds tells us that President Bush is Harry Potter, and Beliefnet wonders whether Harry Potter is Jesus Christ. Anyone thinking through the transitive implications of that statement, please stop now.
• Local blogger Todd Dominey goes to the Apple Store, but yieldeth not to temptation. Yea, verily!
• A final note: did anyone notice that The Onion rocked the house last week? Who dreamt up the Senator Mix-a-Lot satire? (Scroll down to find the headline.)

Hah!

Has anyone else noticed how much of a resemblance the logo for the Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto bears to the French flag? Oh, the irony . . .

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

The bloggers at Tapped have worked up a funny — and apt — set of revisions to the old Usenet maxim, Godwin’s Law:

1. A pundit or blogger is worth reading in inverse proportion to the frequency with which he or she uses the word “leftist.”

2. A conservative pundit or blogger immediately loses whatever argument he or she is trying to make once they compare any Democrat in Congress to a socialist or Communist.

Fairness demands application of the same standards to liberal bloggers who rant about “the far right.” I’m okay with that. But some conservative blogs out there have this rule written all over them. Let the hijinks begin!

Campaign Finance: Time for a Little Revolution

The president’s policies run the gamut from obnoxious to laughable, but I have a pet theory: that what we’re witnessing right now is the apotheosis of a campaign finance system gone awry.

Everywhere you look — from the corporate responsibility dog-and-pony show at the Securities and Exchange Commission to the pending anti-environmentalist hoe-down in the Senate, from the maximum-security lockdown of the notes of the vice president’s energy task force to the attempt to use the homeland security bill to absolve GOP-backing pharmaceutical companies of responsibility for harm inflicted by potentially defective vaccines — you see an administration totally unashamed to sell policies to the highest bidder. It’s a dismal spectacle.

Fortunately, the corporate influence on the Bush administration is about as blatant as one could imagine. One would be hard put to envision more absurd circumstances than these, short of actually having Karl Rove running an open-air auction for naming rights to the Rose Garden. Consider it safe to say, in short, that we’ve hit bottom.

Now that we’re here, though, the Democrats need to ponder an undertaking more ambtious than the usual cosmetic changes that sponge up the appearance of impropriety. Been there, done that. Been there since Watergate, in fact — and what can we show for the effort? McCain-Feingold? That’s a Rube Goldberg contraption if ever I saw one, and the parties have already riddled the law with new loopholes to replace the old ones.

So why go that route again, and let hope triumph over cold experience? Forget about tinkering at the edges. Blow the campaign finance laws up and start afresh.

Sounds daft? Sure. Radical change usually does. But most good ideas sounded daft at the outset — in the end that hardly matters. Besides, the insurgent campaigns of recent years — Ross Perot, Ralph Nater, Jesse Ventura — demonstrate, if nothing else, that more that a few voters feel sick of the politics of tweedledee and tweedledum, and might vote for something completely different if given a chance.

Democrats have an opportunity to stoke popular outrage about the auctioneering going on at the highest levels of government. Anyone who tries it can count on getting laughed offstage, though, as long as voters believe the party is just out to make loot under the same rules itself. It will take a radical proposal to break through the public’s cynicism &mdash and I know just the one the party needs.

Sick of Ernst & Young buying the administration’s accounting policies? Then how about telling the company that it’s free to give Republicans however much it wants — but with the catch that no one but the firm itself gets to know about it? The check would go into a blind trust, which would bundle the donations every few days, deposit them, and wire the candidate a check for a lump sum.

The proposal wins on three fronts. Without knowing which nameless contributors to thank for their largesse, candidates would have a hard time determining whose checks might have bought what policies. As a flip-side bonus, candidates would also have a hard time trusting ostensible donors who might crawl through the woodwork to claim credit and ask for favors. Third, companies could use mandatory anonymity to shield themselves from the badgering of Rep. Tom DeLay and his fellow pay-to-play shakedown artists.

I’ve talked about these ideas once before, in a post in August. They’re still well worth considering. In an age when the greatest guessing game in politics focuses on which Bush contributors get the quickest rewards for their loyalty, a proposal that does away with that spectacle might provide just the change in direction that disaffected voters are looking for.

Selling Off the Government

President Bush, according to Paul Krugman’s column today, stands to gain something useful from putting 850,000 federal jobs up for sale: a passel of new — not to mention generous — allies. Read how he puts it:

A few months ago Mr. Rove compared his boss to Andrew Jackson. As some of us noted at the time, one of Jackson’s key legacies was the “spoils system,” under which federal jobs were reserved for political supporters. The federal civil service, with its careful protection of workers from political pressure, was created specifically to bring the spoils system to an end; but now the administration has found a way around those constraints.

We don’t have to speculate about what will follow, because Jeb Bush has already blazed the trail. Florida’s governor has been an aggressive privatizer, and as The Miami Herald put it after a careful study of state records, “his bold experiment has been a success — at least for him and the Republican Party, records show. The policy has spawned a network of contractors who have given him, other Republican politicians and the Florida G.O.P. millions of dollars in campaign donations.”

What’s interesting about this network of contractors isn’t just the way that big contributions are linked to big contracts; it’s the end of the traditional practice in which businesses hedge their bets by giving to both parties. The big winners in Mr. Bush’s Florida are companies that give little or nothing to Democrats. Strange, isn’t it? It’s as if firms seeking business with the state of Florida are subject to a loyalty test.

It’s dispiriting to give in to cynicism about a president’s motives, but in the context of the administration’s furtive attempts to nudge federal employees into Republican campaign activities — including this anecdote about Chief Justice Rehnquist’s daughter — Krugman’s theory has the ring of plausibility. Hard as it is to accept — an American president, selling government off to friends so he can run it as a fully owned subsidiary of his political machine? — that might happen unless Democrats put up a fight.

What Kind of Homeland?

It took long enough to happen, but a William Safire column today kicked up a storm about the “Total Information Awareness” intelligence dragnet proposal stashed inside the ‘homeland security’ bill. If the bill passes . . .

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as “a virtual, centralized grand database.”

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver’s license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop’s dream: a “Total Information Awareness” about every U.S. citizen.

Someone in the White House really needs to read his Eliot. He once wrote:

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Last September, the National Security Agency intercepted an interesting phone call — it included a statement, in Arabic, that “tomorrow is zero hour.” What a great bit of information! Problem is, the agency never got around to translating it . . . until Sept. 12.

Where is the wisdom in addressing that problem, and others like it, with a grab for more information? That makes as much sense as responding to getting lost by driving faster. Total information awareness in the midst of a total comprehension failure misses the point, and could end up making matters worse.

Instead of sniffing up more data smog, why doesn’t the government redouble its efforts to parse the information it has? We seemed to have quite a bit before Sept. 11. It might have been nice if the nation had possessed the wherewithal to make sense of it.

Jiang’s Jiggy Wit’ It

Chinese President Jiang Zemin ceded the post of general secretary of the Communist Party today, but not before stopping to revise the party constitution around “the important thought of the three represents.”

“The three represents”? What?! Are Chinese officials taking time out at party conferences to give shoutouts to their homies?

I can already imagine it: “Whazzup, my dogz, this is Jiang Ziggy-Ziggy Zemin, givin’ big shout-outs to Deng Xiaoping, who represented in the new school, kickin that capitalist flava wit’ tha bling-bling; to Mao Zedong, to whom I give all honor and glory for all that I have achieved — peace; and much love to our main man Karl Marx, the original gangsta, keepin’ it real since all the way back in the day in 1848. Wherever you are, Karl, to us you’re always in tha hizzz-ouse — every breath we take. Word up.” (Cue P. Diddy with the Beijing Gospel Choir here.)

Silly? Yeah. But would it be any more meaningless than this tripe?

What’s Up, Mr. Snarky Citation Man?

On Tuesday, Howard Bashman — who runs a top-notch blog — pointed readers to a 9th Circuit opinion that, while reinstating Gennifer Flowers’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, shoehorned in a darned peculiar citation (emphasis added):

We agree with the district court that the trio of colorful waste metaphors — the references to the Star stories as “trash,” “crap” and “garbage” — are not defamatory under Nevada law. “[M]ere rhetorical hyperbole” is not actionable. Wellman v. Fox, 825 P.2d 208, 211 (Nev. 1992). Wal-Mart can call a competitor’s store “trashy,” even if the store is not, in fact, unkempt. Levinsky’s, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 127 F.3d 122, 129-30 (1st Cir. 1997) (no relation). And the Washington Times can call the protest signs in Lafayette Park the “garbage” of “pitiable lunatics” with impunity. Thomas v. News World Communications, 681 F. Supp. 55, 60, 63 (D.D.C. 1988). Even assuming that the “trash,” “crap” and “garbage” statements were directed at Flowers rather than at the Star or the situation as a whole, they are nothing more than generic invective. See Levinsky’s, 127 F.3d at 129 (“The vaguer a term, . . . the less likely it is to be actionable.”). The law provides no redress for harsh name-calling.

Levinsky’s? Clinton? “No relation”?! What’s that all about? I think Judge Alex Kozinski (no relation) has some explaining to do.

Follow the Money

Hey all! Sorry to leave you all so bereft of fresh, snappy content.

Chris Mooney — I’ll append his name to the blogroll before the week’s out — has background information about the ‘science and religion’ cover story in the latest Wired. Given the success of the well-funded vast right-wing conspiracy [note to readers: envision a slight twinkle in my eyes as I wrote that], I suppose I have to keep my skeptical wits about me now more than ever.

Selective Amnesia

Before Glenn Reynolds pops his cork one more time about the raging “racism, antisemitism and homophobia” that defines Americans who lean left, I’d like to gently point out that here in Georgia, the Republican candidate for governor surfed to victory with the help of a wave of sentiment in favor of putting the Confederate battle emblem back on the state flag.

One can argue that the flag honors nothing more than pride in the South’s heritage, of course. Anyone who does would, though, has to reckon with the fact that the ‘Conferderate’ Georgia flag was first raised in 1956, a mere two years after Brown v. Board of Education. That seems to suggest alternative motivations, to say the least.

Does that prove that progressives can’t be racists? Of course not. But assailing political adversaries for the [debatable] biogotry of a few while ignoring it amongst one’s allies takes a healthy amount of disingenuousness.

You would think that a Yale Law graduate would be more careful with his intellectual integrity. But such is the dissembling, obfuscation, and misrepresentation that has become the stock in trade of the the right’s house provocateurs.

Notes on the State of Virginia—

When I stopped in at Barnes & Noble yesterday, I noticed that Garry Wills has a new book out about a favorite topic of mine: the University of Virginia. Appropriately enough, he gave it the title of Mr. Jefferson’s University. [Gosh — where did he think of that? =, ]

It looks like a stimulating read — but then, Wills usually is. If I read it soon, I’ll let you know what I think.

Y’Know, The Emerging Democratic Majority Never Mentioned This

Next time you hear new Senate environment committee chairman Wayne Allard and his cohorts itching to get their mitts on the Clean Water Act, just remember that chemical-tainted water may be causing bigger problems for blue-state voters than the GOP thinks. A new University of Missouri study suggests that fertilizers may be giving men in farm country a case of, er, flagging fertility.

Let’s think about this: lower fertility could mean lower birthrates, which would help the red states out grow the blue ones . . . hmmm. If I were totally unprincipled, I might say that the Republican victory last week might not have been such a lousy development after all. =)

Don’t Call It a Comeback . . .

. . . but Wired magazine has been on a great roll, and I don’t just say that because Brad DeLong writes a column for them these days. Somehow, the magazine has managed to emerge from all the turmoil of its post-Condé Nast purchase, late ‘90s days with its edge back, thank God.

Speaking of whom, the magazine gives the God in the machine top billing this month. In a package of four stories, writers such as Gregg Easterbrook and Kevin Kelly range through topics from the nascent rapprochement of science and faith to a medical researcher’s increasingly personal embrace of the power of prayer. It’s a compelling issue, one that provokes like nothing else on the newsstand — just like the first issue I ever bought, way back in 1994.

Switch

Here in post-wipeout Georgia, that’s not just an admonition to PC users.
==
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “GOP to have majority in state Senate.”

Republicans will secure a majority in the state Senate, giving Gov.-elect Sonny Perdue control of half of the Legislature.

State Sen. Rooney Bowen (D-Cordele) said in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Friday he would switch to the GOP. Bowen explained the switch will allow him to “bring more back to community.” He also said he hoped to hold on to his chairmanship of the Public Safety Committee.

Friday morning, state Sen. Dan Lee of LaGrange became the first Democratic legislator to announce his switch to the GOP. Lee made his announcement as Perdue’s seven-city victory tour stopped in his hometown.

Later, Sen. Don Cheeks announced his switch to the Republicans when Perdue’s airplane arrived in Cheeks’ hometown of Augusta.

Adding those three senators will give the Republicans a 29-27 majority, their first since Reconstruction. The GOP’s effort to convert Democratic lawmakers is concentrated on the Senate because Democrats still hold 106 of the 180 House seats. Still, the GOP is targeting about 10 rural Democrats in the House, Republican officials said.

Controlling the Senate will allow the Republicans to strip away much of Democratic Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor’s power. Under the state Constitution, the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate and votes when there is a tie. Senate rules allow the lieutenant governor to make committee assignments and give him power over the flow of legislation. But a majority of senators can establish new rules that assign those powers to someone else.

I hope the good lieutenant governor has a good pair of scissors ready — if the GOP can keep this roll going, he’ll have to spend the next four years of his life cutting ribbons.

It’s Gonna Be Alright

The last time the Democrats got clobbered was 1994, and back then I was living in Atlanta for a year between stints in Charlottesville. Care to know what I was doing that election night? With a little prodding from a friend, I had grabbed a notebook from my paper and headed out to cover . . . Newt Gingrich and his election night party. Which, before long, became ground zero for the Republican revolution.

I had a fascinating time watching Frank Luntz, Larry Kudlow, and a host of other machers go absolutely berserk with glee, but I felt out of place. I stayed past one o’clock or so to take in the scene, but when I left, it only took the distance from the door to the car for the shock to set in. I don’t know quite how I felt — ‘blind fury’ might be the most accurate description — but I remember cranking the windows all the way down (on a November night!) and blasting The Downward Spiral for the entire 25-mile ride around I-285 back to the house.

I listened to Nine Inch Nails for a couple of weeks after that, actually. The lyrics to this song kind of summed up where I was, emotionally speaking. Primal scream territory. Not a healthy place. Time and a little bit of Brahms — well, that and some Smashing Pumpkins — were enough to heal all that.

Fast forward a few years, and a great deal changes. When the news rolled in this Tuesday night, I didn’t feel myself getting upset at all. The moment was all off-kilter — I was the one telling some of the downcast people around me not to think all was lost, to remember that every crisis brings opportunity, to sit back for a minute and wonder whether we might have needed a defeat. I’m used to having people call me unruffled — or detached — but I don’t think I’ve ever taken a political loss with so much sanguinity.

After all, there’s more important things in life than electoral politics — starting with the people whose interests our fights are supposed to be all about. Oddly enough, one of the first songs to pop into my head Wednesday morning was a little nonsense ditty by Edie Brickell called “Times Like This. ” There’s nothing all that meaningful about it, in the capital-M sense, but it gets at those little moments that make life feel worthwhile.

Raise the window listen to the rain
I’ll be your pillow rest your head on me again
Here in the darkness let the lightnin’ flash our room
& smell the rain it’s in the air like sweet perfume
Make sure the cat’s in don’t worry ‘bout the dog
We’ll let it rain on him throw another log on the fire
I live for times like this

Wind blows the trees & they make shadows on the wall
Cool midnight breeze feel it coming through the hall
Earthquakin’ thunder shakes the roof over our heads
Sleep taking wonder keeps us turnin’ in our bed
We’ve got each other & a soft blanket to share
The rainy weather washed away all of our cares
I live for times like this
I live for times like this

Alright, that’s more philosophical than I usually get, but still . . . even with Wayne Allard running environmental policy in the Senate, and the president having free rein to wage war in Iraq, we still have plenty of time for moments like that. So all isn’t lost.

I’m not advocating a full retreat from the public sphere, where we all cuddle up around the fireplace and turn the country over to Jerry Falwell. To heck with that. We own this country. But for those who want to back away for a second, that’s okay — we have plenty of other channels for our energy, and we need to use them. Take your political skills and put them to use building civil society. Donate your time. Or donate your money. Innovate. If you can, fund others who have the enterprise to innovate, but lack the resources. Or take the opportunity to teach — you just might learn something yourself.

But I urge people to stay in politics — we need you here. There’s work to do. We’ve got a ruling party running amuck, and we need a plan for America that’s compelling enough to convince voters to stop them. We need to rebuild from the ground up — to learn how to organize community by community, block by block, street by street. And we need new ideas. We can wait for the leadership to do that, but the party is no more the leadership than the Catholic Church is the pope. We are the party. We can change it ourselves. It’s up to us.

So don’t give up. Two years is a short time. It’s gonna be alright. The Democrats survived 1994 — remember the jokes about Clinton, the half-term president? — and have the strength to survive this. Have we taken a hard blow? Yes. So let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Where Do We Want to Go Today?

That’s the question we Democrats need to ask. I’ve been mulling it over, and at here my office, we’ve already started reaching for ideas on fighting the Reed juggernaut. America’s progressives face a twofold dilemma, however: we not only need to remember how to win, but also what it is we’re fighting for.

With help on that second front, oddly enough, comes former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan.

Here is the Democrats’ problem: They have achieved every major goal they sought in the past 100 years. The party is losing because it won.

They got Social Security. They got Medicare and Medicaid, with the help of some Republicans. They got civil rights with the help of a lot of Republicans. They supported equality for women, and women are equal. (How many were elected the other night? So many it wasn’t a story, really, because it’s a 30-year trend that just keeps growing.)

They got the New Deal, and they got the Great Society. They got the welfare state. And you can argue they have been undone by their success.

Most of what they got they got long ago—long enough ago that the people of the United States have become used to the benefits, and long enough that they have experienced the costs. For, as we used to say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The Democrats’ programs cost plenty. And in time it wasn’t the rich that were paying for it but the rich and the comfortable, and then the rich and the comfortable and the middle class, and then the working-class Joes and the waitresses at the diner.

I don’t wholly agree with the last part of her analysis; a better way to nullify gripes about costs would be to rethink, and rejigger, the benefits. [For instance: can anyone make a compelling argument that Georgia’s Hope Scholarship isn’t an improvement over traditional student loans and grants?] But she’s right about the important fact: that in order to justify our existence, we Democrats need to find out what we want — not for ourselves [obsessing about that got us into this mess], but for America.

Helpful Advice?!

Hooooooooooooo-boy! What a knee-slapper! I tell you, that Dinesh D’Souza sure is one funny guy.

Roy Barnes: the First Black Governor?

Governor Barnes shook some Georgians’ world with his lightning-quick flag change in 2001, but it looks as though opponents of the change shook him right back. Sonny Perdue scored his shock victory this Tuedsay in spite of polls suggesting that anger about the flag was — at best — an afterthought of an issue.

Why the surprise? After all, when it comes to race, polls get it wrong all the time.

About 13 years ago, my second home state of Virginia crowned the nation’s first elected black governor — but just barely. Doug Wilder, the top man on the Dems’ ticket in 1989, blitzed to a quick lead by focusing press attention on his rival’s strict pro-life stance, and rode that momentum — reflected by double-digit leads in the tracking polls — to a crushing, shattering . . . um, 7,000-vote nail-biter of a win.

Why the huge difference? Po-faced pollsters, baffled that they never saw the squeaker coming, hit the streets to find out. A factor that popped up all over, as it happened, was something no one thought of: that white voters sometimes felt so awkward about planning to vote against a black candidate that they pledged to do just the opposite, which threw poll results off by a country mile.

The last year or so saw the flag become the issue that dare not speak its name — the fast change relegated the cause to country folk and kooks, which made it worth only a chuckle from everyone else. Rallies for running the St. Andrews Cross back up the flagpole had a country-fried air — old-school twangy music, twangy Southern accents, and Confederate gray outfits to spare.

That atmosphere probably even turned most rural Georgians off — even here in the deep South, most people got past yelling “forget, hell!” a long time ago. And die-hard backers of the old flag, according to press reports, planned to give up if Barnes had won re-election.

Barnes got buried alive, though, and the avalanche that killed him had to come from somewhere. Surely enough, the Journal-Constitution tally of results by county shows voters in middle and south Georgia rural counties deserting the governor in droves. People I know who spent the last week or two in those parts of the state buttress those numbers with talk of towns blanketed with “boot Barnes” flag signs and billboards telling viewers not to “vote for [flag-changing] legislators who didn’t vote with us.”

On Tuesday, that’s just what happened, and it’s hard to believe that the phenomenon was spontaneous. Voters may have kept their anger to themselves, but this week, the silent majority finally roared.

Bizarro World

Let’s be frank about what happened last night: we got our asses kicked. Big time.

I wouldn’t be the only Georgia Democrat to tell you that last night’s returns came as an ambush. My predictions went out of the window, but the same goes for the entire state. Nobody had a clue about a sweep — not campaign workers, not the pollsters, not the advisers, not the observers, and sure as hell not the candidates themselves. Even Sonny Perdue probably had to slap himself for a good few minutes before the news sank in.

I can’t do justice to the scale of the disaster — you really have to be here. The Republican romp was total: the Democrats who held complete and unchallenged control of the machinery of state government for 135 years just saw their birthright terminated overnight. The bloodletting hardly confined itself to the governor’s mansion and the senate seat; voters axed the House Speaker and the Senate majority leader, as well. If rumors in the air about party switching deals hold up, the GOP could claim the state Senate before the end of the week.

That’s a hell of a lot of news to absorb in one night. Forgive us folks if we’re still dazed.

Before I get analytical, though, I need to doff my cap to the prime force behind last night’s upheaval: Ralph Reed.

While local politicos and pundits looked elsewhere, the former Christian Coalition director and current Georgia Republican Party chairman put together a fully operational death star. He never spoke for the cameras much, and didn’t wage the campaign solely through television; instead, he organized actrivists on the county and local level, and got them to walk neighborhoods, write letters, speak at neighborhood meetings, make phone calls and spread the word. The governor spent $16 million on television ads, but his opponent — who raised less than a fifth as much — built on that grassroots machinery and relied on it to carry him through.

As much as we Democrats laughed at him, the plan worked.

That’s the cold truth we’re facing: that we got outhustled, plain and simple. Considering the tens of millions of dollars the party spent, it’s embarrasing to have to say that.

Still, Perdue and Reed deserve congratulations for pulling off a stunt no one believed possible: obliterating the Democrats’ one-party rule in a fell swoop. It’s a magnificent achievement for them, and they deserve to celebrate. I wish them the best of luck in learning the art of government.

I also hope that now, having won, they can rise to the moment by developing an agenda for the people of Georgia. Georgia Republicans don’t yet share much of an identity beyond the resentment forged from years as the ‘out’ party — now that they’re the ‘in’ party, simple resentment of the Democrats won’t do. Republicans are free to lead, but can’t do that without defining more than what they’re against.

That said, I have another hope: that in four years’ time, the Republicans won’t mind being back on the outside looking in. We’re down now, but we’re long from being done yet.

While You’re Waiting . . .

Everything Matthew Yglesias has written today has been spot on about the causes of — and wrong lessons from — last night’s train wreck. Charge your minds by reading it while I work up some content.

Wha?!!

Oy vey. What a night . . .

I’m on conference calls today, but I’ve got thoughts. Lots of thoughts. I’ll share them later — keep your chins up til then.

Vote!

Rain is pouring down in bucketloads here in Atlanta this morning, but it’s a gorgeous day for an election. Every day is. After all, when you find enough perspective to remember how many people around the world — and in this country — fought and died just to get a chance to vote, a little rain hardly seems like much of a hassle.

What’s keeping me motivated today? The hope that we can whack some serious Republican tail — that’s what. My list of complaints about the Bush administration and the Republican congress runs so long that it could rival Homer’s Catalogue of the Ships, but I’m not going to sit here complaining about it; I’d rather let my ballot do the talking. As for what I want to see at the victory party tonight . . . well, it’s like R.E.M. once said it:

if Bushes were trees,
the trees would be fallin’

[Before you race to tell me McBride’s chances: I’ve seen the poll numbers. But a man can hope.]

Time for me to split — I’ll be volunteering for the rest of the day — but make sure that you all get out there and vote like your future depended on it. After all, it does.

Whew! What a Relief

“Bartow County voters shouldn’t be intimated by the new voting machines, state and local officials say.”
— The Daily Tribune News (Cartersville, Ga.), November 4, 2002.

Vote Perry for School Board

Let me pull a Zell Miller for a moment and vouch for the integrity of William Perry, a colleague from work who’s in a special election tomorrow for the Atlanta School Board.

If you want a candidate who’s willing to face the problems of the city’s public schools — low student performance, high property taxes, and an administration that places more emphasis on building a new headquarters than on building new schools — then he’s not just the best choice; he’s the only one. He’s got great ideas on how to repair the system. What’s more, although he won’t tell you this, his relationships with leaders like the city council president and Sen. Max Cleland give him the tools he need to put those ideas into practice.

So if you live in east/central Atlanta and you vote, you’ve got a great opportunity tomorrow to get the city’s schools back on track. Let’s get started by putting William Perry on the Atlanta School Board.

No News Is Good News

Georgia politics was chock-a-block with kabuki theatre this weekend; the players hit the stage and read their lines, but none of it mattered.

The actor in chief was President Bush — who, when he flew to the state on Saturday to make a last minute push for Republican candidates, must have known that the governor’s race was as done as three-day-old blackened redfish. Poll numbers released that morning confirmed that the agenda-free, underfunded campaign of Sonny Perdue had been as effective as a toothless piranha; after two months of effort, the Republican was still stuck 11 points behind Roy Barnes, the Democratic incumbent, with just 40 percent of likely votes.

In a state where any Republican with a pulse can garner 40 percent of the vote, Perdue has to have earned himself some of the lowest marks of any recent statewide campaign in memory. So long, Sonny — don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Sen. Max Cleland, meanwhile, looks like a man locked in a tight race . . . which is exactly what anyone who’s witnessed a recent Georgia senate campaign expected to see. Even with the aid of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — a richer-than-God organization that’s dumped millions into the state to fund attack ads like this one — Republican candidate Saxby Chambliss is stuck five points behind with only hours left in the campaign.

Cleland’s team will probably sweat through the early returns on Tuesday night, but a great many things will have to break Saxby’s way to keep Cleland from winning re-election.

Democrats in east Georgia, on the other hand, are watching in horror while the campaign of congressional candidate Champ Walker self destructs.

Set up with his own, personal congressional district by his daddy, Champ Walker hit the ground stumbling this fall, getting through a runoff only to find himself dogged by news reports of arrests for drunk driving and shoplifting. Just last week the Savannah Morning News slapped him with a story about a year he spent doing nothing in particular on the state payroll — a revelation that left the candidate spluttering at the telephone when a reporter who called him on it.

Want a glimpse of his smooth manner with the press? Look at this: “The (Augusta) Chronicle (newspaper) is not on my side. . . . They dig ditches looking for trash. And people distrust them. And thank you for your time, sir. Idiot.”

Last Friday saw Walker reduced to rebutting attack ads by suing his opponent for libel — not exactly a move that a thick-skinned, seasoned or swift candidate would make. Of course, no one ever accused Walker of having any of those qualities.

At this point he looks set to lose, and lose big. The best guesses about the race have him running about 15 points behind in the district — which legislators designed, incredibly enough, to have a Democratic voting performance of 60 percent. (How bad is it? Here’s how bad: he’s lost the support of his own web site.)

What a ridiculous excuse for a candidate. But this is kabuki theatre, remember? We already knew that.

Knowing the Score

What with all the commercials airing about alleged votes against God, country and the Boy Scouts, the middle of a campaign season can be a lousy time to get the facts about a candidate. On environmental issues, for instance, just about every Republican has pawned off earlier votes on drilling holes in the Arctic to come out as a fan of big blue skies, clean rivers and tall trees. People who don’t keep score inevitably get confused.

At the League of Conservation Voters we do keep the score, and last week our scorecard for the 107th Congress hit the street. Here in Georgia, the difference between the candidates for the Senate can boggle the mind — Republican nominee Saxby Chambliss netted a zero, a score reserved for politicians who still think trees pollute.

Other revelations abound. Colorado senator Wayne Allard, touting his environmental ‘accomplishments’ while he totters on the verge of a blowout, gets caught voting against forcing mining firms to strengthen restraints that keep arsenic and other chemicals from entering the water supply, and for sticking the general public — rather than corporate polluters — with the bill for Superfund cleanups.

Anyone who cares about the state of the environment should look at our findings before the election. To find a full-length version of the scorecard, click here.

I Don’t Want That Extra Time

High school students in Henry County, Ga., have no problem keeping their minds focused on their studies, thanks to a high school principal who considers it his personal mission to help teens curb their hormonal urges. His chief means of encouragement: dishing out healthy in-school suspensions to students he catches in mid-amorous dalliance in the hallways. He benched a football player from the homecoming game this weekend for giving his girlfriend a peck on the forehead.

With Georgia students coming close to scraping up double-digit scores on the SAT, I thought that schools here might have better priorities to tend to. But that’s just me. The principal says the hugging and kissing detract from a “strong academic environment,” and he may have a point — but if you ask me, a good kiss is an education in itself.

The kids of Henry County are smart enough to figure that out in good time. But would I ever hate to be that principal’s kids when they start dating.

My Public-Service Ad Can Beat Your Public-Service Ad

It’s Friday afternoon in the ATL, and I’m feeling cocky. Why? Well, our office got hit with a flurry of e-mails last night and this morning about a get-out-the-vote radio spot we produced last month. We needed to get something quick to boost turnout among black women between the ages of 30-54. We did it in stealth mode.

What’s so nifty about it? Nothing really. Just a voiceover by some lady named Coretta Scott King (*.mp3 player required).

Now the whole nonprofit is beating a path to our door to get the rights. They’re welcome to join the party, of course. When you hear the ad in your town, though, just remember: we thought it up first.

What’s the point here? Simple: that I’m the king of rock. There is none higher. Now, get back to work.