Life in the fog belt of San Francisco … a lovely summer day, and yet here, it’s not.
Month: July 2005
Santorum the flip-flopper
Why can’t Democrats get “flip flopper” to stick against Republicans?
I was reading a transcript of the Santorum / Stephanopolis interview today and started to wonder. After all, here’s a classic example of inconsistancy in a position. On the one hand, Senator Santorum says:
I believe my view is the view that
Friday Kitten Blogging
Allen and Edgar are going back to the SPCA tomorrow! We’ve had less than 2 weeks with them, but it’s been fun. Here’s Allen in the kitchen, getting ready to pounce on his offscreen brother:
Universal Democracy or Just Another Mess?
Washington Note guestblogger Leon Hadar called my attention to an interesting article in the NY Sun today. It’s about some language in an upcoming congressional bill called the ADVANCE Democracy Act that would, among other things, require the US diplomatic corps abroad to
draw up democracy transition plans for unfree regimes, with input from nonviolent opposition movements in the various countries.
It would also
allow the State Department to “use all instruments of United States influence to support, promote, and strengthen democratic principles, practices, and values in foreign countries.” It charges the CIA and Treasury Department with tracking the personal assets of dictators and their associates.
ADVANCE would require the secretary of state to approve an annual report designating nations as either democratic, undemocratic, or in transition.
This is one of those ideas that, if it were implemented by a competent government, is not objectionable. Promoting democracy and working with local organizations to help peacefully implement democracy in less-than-fully-democratic countries is a laudable goal. But a mandate like that in the hands of a self-serving bunch of incompetents who care more about the preservation of their own power and the interests of their buddies than about anything else — in other words, BushCo — it instead engenders feelings of concern and cynicism.
Do you really expect that if this becomes law, that the Bush administration would countenance a report officially designating their buddies in Saudi Arabia as undemocratic? If you do, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. But without impartiality, this act becomes just another way to politicize things like civil service promotions and foreign aid allocations. In other words, a big old mess.
I wasn’t always this cynical. It would be really nice if there were some flickers of hope on the horizon, but it’s a long time until the 2008 elections.
Liberal NIMBY-ism
Nathan Newman makes some excellent points about how liberals, too, can work against their own self-interest. In this case, by opposing efforts to build more local high-density housing in New York City:
while I understand the nostalgia for Brooklyn’s low-rise housing and it is lovely for those who can continue to live there, the reality is that blocking higher density there condemns others to homelessness and the rest to increasingly long commutes. And while quaint neighborhoods are preserved in Brooklyn, it means more people will be driven out into the suburbs to create more strip malls, SUVs, environmental degradation, and Republicans.
And don’t forget sucky commutes, too. The NYC area has some of the best commuter mass transit systems around but even so, trying to get to a job in Manhattan from the affordable-housing zones in New Jersey, Long Island, or further out is no picnic.
I used to live in a three-bedroom apartment in Soho. It was a sweet deal — the apartment had previously been the building superintendent’s, so it came into the market at the low end of the rent spectrum ($1200), and being rent-stabilized rent increases were less than $50 a year. Despite its being a sixth-floor walkup, I hung onto that place for a decade, knowing damn well I’d never find a deal like that again. I shudder to think of what that place is being rented for today – I would not at all be surprised to find that it’s been decontrolled and renting for $2600 or so.
At any rate, call me a hypocrite for supporting more housing out of my own self-interest, but I’m all for it.