Day: May 9, 2005

LA.com

Arianna Huffington’s blog lives up to its hype. All the blogs that poked fun of it as it was gestating have stopped, in part because a lot of them are featured on the blogroll and will enjoy higher traffic because of it. Interesting to note that yesterday’s New York Times printed comments by Gawker Empire’s Nick Denton to the effect that blogging isn’t really the revolution it’s purported to be. The Huffington Post, which went live today, indicates that it is; its starpower and wealth of material push the genre forward a few steps. Blogging can no longer be thought of as the realm of snarky geeks and crackpots.

This post from Brad Hall and Julia Louis-Dreyfus is pretty funny:

Like most Americans, I had hoped that the Defense of Marriage Act would do just that: defend my marriage. Apparently not. Look around and you’ll see the gays getting gay-married all over the place, and, to quote, well, everyone: gay marriage destroys real marriage. Now, when I come home to my wife, I feel nothing. How could I? SHE COULD BE A MAN. Thanks a lot, gays. Thanks for rendering our vows obsolete. Thanks for illegitimizing our sons. Thanks for tearing asunder a great institution that has heretofore withstood Las Vegas, Elizabeth Taylor, Larry King and Britney Spears combined.

It is pretty interesting. Lots of short tasty bits. I understand why she’s positioning it as a blog but it’s really an online magazine like Slate or Salon.

Ken Hutcherson, right, is the former pro football player turned religious extremist who put Microsoft in a spin, reversing itself and then re-reversing itself, regarding legislation to ban discrimination against gays in the workplace. I happened to see him interviewed last week and I agree with this assessment of him by Connie Shultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Here’s what I find so scary about the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, the latest gay-bashing preacher in the news.

It’s not the clever way the Seattle-area minister bends the Bible to berate an entire group of his fellow human beings. He’s got plenty of company on that one.

It’s not his threat to start a national boycott against Microsoft if the company supported an anti-discrimination bill that included gays and lesbians. That was a boycott that would have failed if only Bill Gates and Co. hadn’t crumbled.

What I find most troubling about Hutcherson is the charm he brings with every blow to civil liberties. His wit and self-deprecatory humor make for real entertainment, and laughter is a great way to disguise the hate he’s peddling.

JUMP: Read the rest of the article.

I never thought it would be fun to be a Democrat in Florida again, but the headlines following the close of the state legislative session on Friday were pretty satisfying.

Florida Times Union (Jacksonville):

Governor, His Major Initiatives Left in Cold

This winter, Jeb Bush sent the Legislature a wish list of Medicaid reform, class-size amendment changes and school voucher expansion.

On Friday, legislators crumpled it up and threw it back…

Tallahassee Democrat:

Session Showed Gov. Bush Era Waning

Gov. Jeb Bush hopped the globe to monitor aid for tsunami victims in Asia and mourn Pope John Paul II in Vatican City, but it was a more humbling year at home.

Halfway through the next-to-last year of his second term, Bush no longer can crack a whip and get all fellow Republican lawmakers to follow…

Orlando Sentinel:

Legislators Cut Gov. Bush’s List Down to Size

Like his brother in the White House who is struggling to sell a Social Security overhaul to a reluctant Congress, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush might have reached too far during the just-completed state legislative session…

Miami Herald:

Rebuffs Reduce Gov. Bush’s Power

After a six-year reign as arguably the most powerful governor in state history, Jeb Bush met mortality last week at the hands of his fellow Republicans…

What these stories, and the session itself, showed is that a one-party system doesn’t automatically produce accord. Florida’s Republican governor couldn’t get his signature projects through the Republican State House or the Republican State Senate. And the Republican House and Senate couldn’t get many of their slam-dunks into each other’s baskets.

Why? My theory is that we have a one-party system in Florida, not because everyone thinks Republican, but because the GOP has done such a thorough job of selling the message that the only way to win here is to have the R-label. Hand in hand with that, stacking districts helped a lot too. So now a whole bunch of people who aren’t REALLY Republicans have little elephants on their lapels. And the Jebs of the world still don’t always get their way.

Here’s one that is a top candidate for the Brass Cajones World Class Chutzpah Award:

A Wall Street tycoon accused in the 1980s of cheating thousands of investors out of their savings in one of the biggest financial scandals in history now says the state of California cheated him. So he has launched a campaign to change the state tax code — retroactive to 1992 — in hopes of getting $5 million back.

The “tycoon” is Peter Ackerman who worked for Drexel Burnham Lambert, along with “Junk Bond King” Michael Miliken. As a result of the scandal, Miliken went to jail but Ackerman walked away with a fine and, reportedly, $500 million.

JUMP: Read the rest of the article.

The hopeful signs of democracy in the Middle East are not a consequence of the Bush administration’s unilateralism but a significant reversal of its policy, so says former Clinton official Nancy Soderberg via Alternet:

The positive developments of the last few months are indeed encouraging and are to be embraced. They are not, however, a consequence of the Bush administration’s harsh, unilateral foreign policy, but instead the result of a not-so subtle shift to a more realistic foreign policy favored by past presidents. It seems diplomacy—that much-maligned policy option—gets results.

For most of his first term, Bush was under the spell of the myth that, as a superpower, America could bend the world to its will, primarily on its own and through military means. The results of that muscle diplomacy are in. America is bearing the burden of rebuilding and securing Iraq essentially on its own, while Iran and North Korea have been pursuing their nuclear weapons programs unchecked. Because the administration has undermined myriad arms control conventions, weapons of mass destruction may be now more accessible to terrorists. Anti-Americanism has spiked to unprecedented heights, making the world less willing to act with us to share the superpower burden. Who could imagine student protestors in Tiananmen Square today building a replica of the Statue of Liberty as they did in May 1989?

While it has been loath to admit it, the Bush administration is quietly shifting back to the tough work of diplomacy. After the administration claimed America could protect itself on its own, and that it did not need “old Europe,” working in partnership is suddenly back in fashion. And it is getting results—not, as some have claimed because of events in Iraq, but rather because American diplomats are seeking once again to return the United States to its rightful role as a persuader, not just enforcer.