Understand Me?

Ken AshfordBloggingLeave a Comment

Readability Results for this website, as analyzed by this website:

Summary Value
Total sentences 548
Total words 5,664
Average words per Sentence 10.34
Words with 1 Syllable 3,650
Words with 2 Syllables 1,176
Words with 3 Syllables 568
Words with 4 or more Syllables 270
Percentage of word with three or more syllables 14.80%
Average Syllables per Word 1.55
Gunning Fog Index 10.05
Flesch Reading Ease 65.11
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 6.75

So . . . it’s basically a 6th grade reading level of authorship, somewhat on a par with Time and Newsweek.

Read a more detailed explanation of the analysis below the fold.

Read More

Oh, the Irony!

Ken AshfordRepublicansLeave a Comment

"The time has come that the American people know exactly what their representatives are doing here in Washington. Are they feeding at the public trough, taking lobbyist-paid vacations, getting wined and dined by special-interest groups? Or are they working hard to represent their constituents? The people, the American people, have a right to know. I say the best disinfectant is full disclosure."

– Rep. Tom DeLay, delivered on the House floor, November 1995

Not Practicing What He Preaches

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & DeficitLeave a Comment

Then-Gov. George W. Bush as a presidential candidate in 2000:

The president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price . . . [As President I will] convince them to open up the spigot to increase the supply.

President Bush yesterday:

I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow.

Keep in mind that in April 2004, Saudi Arabia led the fight within OPEC to cut production to keep prices high. What did President Bush do?  He “refused to lean on the oil cartel” and refused to even “personally lobby OPEC leaders to change their minds.”   In a word, nothing.

A Link-o-riffic List

Ken AshfordCongressLeave a Comment

Top 10 Reasons Why Bolton Should Not Be Confirmed As U.S. Ambassador To the United Nations:

10. He hates the UN. He’s said that the U.S. should be the only country on the UNSC, that the UN building could be shaved of 10 stories without it making a difference, etc.  Check here for direct quotes.

9. He doesn’t believe in paying U.S. dues to the UN. And has said so.  A big part of the job of UN envoy is working with the Hill to get U.S. contributions paid.  Withholding dues in the ‘80s and ‘90s led to a diplomatic debacle that took years to put right.  We don’t have the time, energy or goodwill to waste on such battles.

8. He won’t enjoy the support of U.S. diplomats around the world. 60+ ex-diplomats have signed a letter opposing Bolton. Current envoys feel the same way.  But Bolton will need the embassies to back him in capitals to succeed in pushing through U.S. proposals (see Retail Diplomacy).  Personal views about Bolton will undercut this support. 

7. He and the Secretary of State are not on the same page. Insiders seem unanimous that Bolton was foisted on Rice.  This is a recipe for tension between USUN and the Seventh Floor, a fissure that other countries will try to exploit. 

6. His statements on China are reckless.  He clearly enjoys the role of provocateur vis-à-vis China and Taiwan.  At a sensitive point in relations, we cannot afford to have a flamethrower in the mix.

5. The damage will not be confined to the UN.  Bolton is not a team player.  He has  a track record of breaking rules and exceeding his mandate (including by setting an unauthorized deadline for Russian acceptance of US conditions for remaining in the ABM treaty).  The UN post touches on a wide range of issues, and is notoriously difficult for the State Department to control.

4. Denying confirmation would signal the world that the foreign policy opposition is alive and kicking.  If they see an active progressive opposition, the world will continue to distinguish between their view of this Administration and their view of America at large.  With Bush’s reelection and supposed mandate, the separation gets harder — and more important — to sustain. 

3. He will not change his spots.  Some, including progressives, have argued that Bolton may change his ways once at the UN.  But this is the man with whom Jesse Helms wants to stand at Armageddon.  Can you imagine, if the roles were reversed, conservatives giving the “benefit of the doubt” for a nominee they saw as weak on security (“well, once he gets to the Pentagon, that may toughen him up”).

2. He is a proven opponent of arms control.  Bolton has blocked a slew of arms control agreements, from the CTBT to a small arms accord and a biological weapons agreement.   With proliferation, terrorism and the combination thereof topping of the list of threats against the U.S., arms control belongs at the forefront of U.S. national security strategy.  Bolton will stand in the way of that.

1. He will be ineffective in representing U.S. interests.  And this is most important of all.  Promoting U.S. interests at the UN is an art and a science.  A hammer is an essential part of UN diplomacy.  But Bolton is missing the rest of the toolbox.  See my article on Retail Diplomacy (PDF) for more on how the US can get its way at the UN through crafty diplomacy.

— Courtesy of Democratic Arsenal

Dumb DeLay Quote Du Jour

Ken AshfordRepublicans, Supreme CourtLeave a Comment

Amazingly, Tom DeLay is going after Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.  Apparently, DeLay is ignorant of the fact that Kennedy was a Reagan appointtee, and while occasionally a "swing vote", he is undisputably right-of-center.

But DeLay really steps in the steamy hot Texas cow manure when he says this:

“We’ve got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That’s just outrageous,” DeLay told Fox News Radio. “And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous.”

It’s "incredibly outrageous" for a judge to do legal research on the Internet?  I hate to burst your bubble, Tom, but every lawyer (except for the very aged who never learned computers) does research on the Internet.  The days of cavernous dusty-book lined law libraries are virtually over.  And it has been that way for over a decade.

Of course, what DeLay probably prefers is that judges resort to books when it comes to doing research.  Specifically, one book: the Bible. 

Viva Voinovich!

Ken AshfordRepublicansLeave a Comment

Credit should be given where credit is due.  It is not often when a politician — especially a Republican — especially a House Republican — goes against his party and acts on his conscience.  I’m still skeptical about the likelihood that Bolton’s nomination can be stopped, but it sure is nice to see a guy like Voinovich (R-OH) have the backbone to put the brakes on the process until (at a minimum) all the facts about Bolton are fully vetted.

Publius, who (thankfully) has more time to write lately than I do, is completely correct:

John Bolton is, by any objective measure, a horrid choice. Even if you hate the UN with every fiber of your being – even if your genetic sequence of A-G-C-T nucleotides consists of variations of the letters N-E-O-C-O-N – Bolton remains an absolutely dreadful choice. He treats subordinates like scum – he screams at them. He fires them for not agreeing with him. He spies on them. He withholds national security information from his superiors in government.

The fact that you hate the UN should not blind you to the systematic pattern of intolerance, abuse, recklessness, and lack of basic human decency. The man is scum.

And this is who we want to be our representative to the world? John Bolton? In a time when our troops are dying because we can’t persuade people to help us – in a time where world hatred of us has never been higher – do we really want to send a universally reviled asshole who has a history of enraging everyone he comes into contact with to be our public face to humanity?

What makes it all so ridiculous is that, given his history, there isn’t any objective reason to support him other than party loyalty or the hope of getting something in return from the administration. Hagel and Lugar and Chaffee are all decent people, but they sat there like spineless cowards and would have voted for that scumbag knowing full and well that he was not only a horrible choice, but a liability to our foreign policy goals – goals that affect our national security and the safety of our own troops.

I could go on, but I want to get back to Voinovich. I suspect that voters in Ohio wouldn’t have cared one way or the other how he voted. I also suspect the Democrats didn’t have much to offer him in return. He also knew the wrath he would face – and is apparently already facing – because of his decision. But Voinovich – for now anyway – put the public good of America first. I can’t think of any other reason why he would delay the vote (which will probably kill the nomination) other than his conscience. Maybe something will turn up, and I’ll have to rethink all this. But for now, it looks like someone put the public good before party loyalty.

So thank you Senator Voinovich – you restored my faith in our political process – at least for a few hours.

[UPDATE: NYT – Voinovich, "My conscience got me." Sleep tight Sen. Chaffee.]

For those of you who are on the fence about Bolton, ask yourself this: Is this the best guy that Bush could come up with for the job as a diplomat?  And if not, shouldn’t we have the best guy possible in that position?

Anti-Christian Bigotry In The Air Force Academy

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family Values2 Comments

I’ll let Josh Marshall tell it:

There’s a profoundly disturbing article out tonight from the AP about what appears to be a widespread climate of intolerance and even harassment of non-evangelical Christians at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. ‘Widespread’ is a vague word. And I’m only going on the basis of this one article — and I’d strongly recommend reading the whole piece to decide for yourself if I’m using the correct word. But what the piece describes at least is not a matter of a few outrageous incidents but something much more pervasive.

Here’s the passage that stands out to me …

”There were people walking up to someone and basically they would get in a conversation and it would end with, `If you don’t believe what I believe you are going to hell,”’ Vice Commandant Col. Debra Gray said.

Critics of the academy say the sometimes-public endorsement of Christianity by high-ranking staff has contributed to a climate of fear and violates the constitutional separation of church and state at a taxpayer-supported school whose mission is to produce Air Force leaders.

They also say academy leaders are desperate to avoid the sort of uproar that came with the 2003 scandal in which dozens of women said their complaints of sexual assault were ignored.

”They are deliberately trivializing the problem so that we don’t have another situation the magnitude of the sex assault scandal. It is inextricably intertwined in every aspect of the academy,” said Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, N.M., a 1977 graduate who has sent two sons to the school. He said the younger, Curtis, has been called a ”filthy Jew” many times.

The superintendent, Lt. Gen. John Rosa, conceded there was a problem during a recent meeting of the Board of Visitors, the civilian group that oversees the academy.

”The problem is people have been across the line for so many years when you try and come back in bounds, people get offended,” he said.

The board chairman, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, warned Rosa that changing things could prove complicated. He said evangelical Christians ”do not check their religion at the door.”

These articles are always hard to evaluate since you don’t get a sense of who the ‘critics’ are, how many of them there are, or even some objective measure of how legitimate their beef is. Though inappropriate, a few of the other incidents mentioned in the piece don’t seem in themselves to be causes of great concern. But the Rosa quote above seems to suggest that there is a very real problem. And what’s with Gilmore’s response?

The piece ends with this delightful passage …

Two of the nation’s most influential evangelical Christian groups, Focus on the Family and New Life Church, are headquartered in nearby Colorado Springs. Tom Minnery, an official at Focus on the Family, disputed claims that evangelical Christians are pushing an agenda at the academy, and complained that ”there is an anti-Christian bigotry developing” at the school.

Anti-Christian bigotry. That’s marvelous. Needless to say, Focus on the Family is SpongeBob persecutor and Arch-Wingnut James Dobson’s outfit.

Landmark Restaurant Going Bye-Bye

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

HojoPlaybill informs us that the curtain is coming down on the wonderful Howard Johnson’s in Manhattan’s Time Square:

Howard Johnson’s, Landmark of Old Times Square, to Shut Down

Howard Johnson’s, one of the last functioning remnants of the rough-and tumble, Runyonesque Times Square of yesteryear, will be torn down sometime this year, the New York Post reported April 19.

The restaurant and the land it sits on, a prime site on the northwest corner of 46th Street and Broadway, was recently sold for "more than $100 million" by longtime owner Kenneth Rubinstein to Jeff Sutton’s Wharton Acquisitions. Sutton plans to flatten the four-story edifice and replace it with a gleaming new retail outlet.

The Howard Johnson’s was built in 1955 and is the oldest, continually operated business facing directly on Times Square. Its squat dimensions once fit in nicely with the low-scale, slightly down-at-heel architecture that for a long time characterized the area. But the real estate revival of the late 1990s saw it dwarfed by glass towers and glossy stores like Toys ‘R’ Us and the Virgin Megastore. Increasingly, the venerable old institution looked like an anachronism.

To me, it’s anachronistic feature was part of it’s charm.  I’m sad to see it go.  Let’s just hope it is not replaced with a Gap.

Pope Benny 16

Ken AshfordGodstuff2 Comments

I have absolutely no thoughts on the subject, although that may be rightfully attributed to my fatigue arising from rehearsals for this.

Suffice to say this: I’m already sick of right wing pundits trying to make this a victory for conservative moral values, continuing Pope John Paul’s legacy.  Need they be reminded that the conservative Ratzinger — at Pope John Paul’s right hand — was adamantly against the Iraqi War?  That he has spoken quite eloquently about aggressive evangelical "sects" (which would include Prostestantism) drawing people away from the Catholic faith?    That he openly advocated banning Turkey, the only mostly-Arab democracy at the time, from entering the European Union?  That he pooh-poohed the uproar over priestly pedophilia in the United States?

I mean, is that a conservative value — denying priest pedophilia?

P.S.:  Yes, I accidentally caught portions of Rush’s show this afternoon, where he actually praised Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI for having performed military service in his native country (And yes, Rush was aware that the country was Germany, and Germany’s leader at the time was Hitler, and the war was WWII).

Cold Black Hearts

Ken AshfordIraq, Right Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Yesterday I posted about the sad death of Marla Ruzicka, the California humanitarian who went to Afghanistan and Iraq to help innocent victims (often, orphaned children) of those wars.  She was killed in a car bomb explosion in Bagdhad Saturday while en route to visit a young girl orphaned in the Iraqi War.

It seems that the right wing blogosphere has seized upon her death to basically trash her and her work.  Why?  Because she actually helped people rather than, you know, killing them, I suppose.   It’s creepy and revealing when the denizens of WingutLand disparage a woman who helps orphans.  Read more here, if your stomach can take it.

Dobson Christianity

Ken AshfordGodstuff3 Comments

The "influential" Publius has a post about Hugh Hewitt’s defense of James Dobson.  In it, Publius invokes the term "Dobson Christianity", distinguishing it from others forms of Christianity.  I’m sure this comes as a surprise to many on the religious right, who simply don’t believe in diversity of beliefs even within the Christian faith.  To them, you are either a Christian — meaning, their kind of Christian — or you are not a Christian at all.

But I’ll let Publius explain further, picking up from his post mid-stream:

An attack on Dobson Christianity is not an attack on Christianity. Just like an attack on the Ayatollah’s interpretation and exploitation of Islam for political purposes is not an attack on Islam itself.

On another level, I’m not sure there is such a thing as “Dobson Christianity.” Dobson actually represents the opposite of Christianity. If I’m recalling my Sunday School classes correctly, Jesus’s whole point was to emphasize love and tolerance, and to show the ridiculousness and spiritual bankruptcy of blind adherence to a rigid set of moral codes long since divorced from the more basic values of love, forgiveness, and tolerance. The hapless Pharisees – those rule-bound suckas – were always the butt of Jesus’s jokes.

Whether you’re a Christian, atheist, or anything in between, if you actually sit down and read the four Gospels, I suspect you’ll see that Dobson fits the role of “Pharisee” pretty well. He’s everything that Jesus opposed. That’s why it’s so utterly ridiculous for him to claim the mantle of the values of love and tolerance espoused in the Gospels – values that do not, by the way, require a belief in the divinity of Jesus or even in God at all.

Right. On. The. Money.

Of course, the thing to remember here is that Publius’ views on Christianity and Jesus (which parallel mine) are no more "correct" or "valid" than Dobson’s.  But that’s the point.  In this society, we don’t allow one religious view to have government-approved dominance over another view, because such a situation would be contrary to the notion of religious freedom. 

The goal of Dobson, Frist, and Co., however, is to saturate our political and legal systems with adherants to their brand of Christianity.  This should cause discomfort to followers of other faiths, followers of other brands of Christianity, and even to followers of Dobson as well. 

Why?  Because when you empower government to impose or encourage one particular religious view, you ipso facto empower that government — at some future point in time — to impose or encourage a different religious view, one with which you might not believe. 

As it is now — and as the Founders envisioned — government should not have such power at all.  That is precisely why our forefathers believed strongly in separation of church and state, even though many of them were themselves religious.  The role of government is to be religion-neutral, thereby permitting "Dobson Christianity" and "Publius Christianity" (not to mention other Christian views and non-Christian religious views) to flourish in society on an equal or equivalent parity.

If Bin Laden Strikes America Again, Blame Women

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Some advocacy pieces are so off-the-chart bizarre that they defy parody or counter-comment.  This article qualifies.  The thrust?  The failure of the Bush Administration to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora when we had the chance had nothing to do with the fact that he diverted troops from Afghanistan so that we could invade Iraq to find non-existent WMDs.  Nope, the failure to capture bin Laden was because we were placing women in the military.

So it’s your fault, ladies.

This Is Disconcerting

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Asteroid Earth’s gravity may lure deadly asteroid

A HUGE asteroid which is on a course to miss the Earth by a whisker in 2029 could go round its orbit again and score a direct hit a few years later.

Astronomers have calculated that the 1,000ft-wide asteroid called 2004 MN4 will pass by the Earth at a distance of between 15,000 and 25,000 miles — about a tenth of the distance between the Earth and the Moon and close enough to be seen with the naked eye.

Although they are sure that it will miss us, they are worried about the disturbance that such a close pass will give to the asteroid’s orbit. It might put 2004 MN4 on course for a collision in 2034 or a year or two later: the unpredictability of its behaviour means that the danger might not become apparent until it is too late.

Source