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Via.

Given my enthusiasm for his election, I should comment on his downfall. Sad:

The cast of the scandal in Portland, Ore., has a certain ring to it: Sam Adams. Bob Ball. Beau Breedlove and his dog Lolita ... "Everyone has porn names!" says Mark Wiener with a laugh. "Until yesterday, it had never occurred to me that the worst offending name was mine." Wiener (pronounced Wee-ner) is one of Oregon's most influential political consultants and a former -- and now disheartened -- campaign adviser to the protagonist in this political soap opera. That would be Sam Adams, the new mayor of Portland and the first openly gay man to lead a major American city. Then there's Bob Ball, an openly gay local real estate developer who once had mayoral ambitions himself. In 2007, Ball hinted that Adams' mentoring relationship with a former legislative intern, Beau Breedlove (now 21), was, in fact, a sexual one that had begun when the young man was just 17.

My nephew in tow, I voted for Jim Martin in early voting today.

Blog for Democracy asks if we remember the Imperial Sugar case?

This was a Georgia industrial disaster that killed 14 people and injured over 40 in an explosion caused by unsafe conditions at a sugar plant.

Saxby Chambliss' response to this disaster was to attack a company whistleblower whose advice, if followed, may have helped prevent the disaster.

Chambliss has been subpoenaed in a civil case brought by the families of the victims, and in true Bushian style, he is refusing to answer the subpoena:

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington debunks Chambliss' claims that the Speech or Debate Clause prevents him from testifying.

Frank Rich is grateful that Janet Jackson did not bare both breasts:

On the first anniversary of the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction that shook the world, it's clear that just one was big enough to wreak havoc. The ensuing Washington indecency crusade has unleashed a wave of self-censorship on American television unrivaled since the McCarthy era, with everyone from the dying D-Day heroes in "Saving Private Ryan" to cuddly animated animals on daytime television getting the ax. Even NBC's presentation of the Olympics last summer, in which actors donned body suits to simulate "nude" ancient Greek statues, is currently under federal investigation.

Public television is now so fearful of crossing its government patrons that it is flirting with self-immolation. Having disowned lesbians in the children's show "Postcards From Buster" and stripped suspect language from "Prime Suspect" on "Masterpiece Theater," PBS is editing its Feb. 23 broadcast of "Dirty War," the HBO-BBC film about a terrorist attack, to remove a glimpse of female nudity in a scene depicting nuclear detoxification. Next thing you know they'll be snipping lascivious flesh out of a documentary about Auschwitz.

If you watched media coverage of the State of the Union speech you may have come away believing that those Democratic boos were unprecedented. That's what reports and pundits said. Media Matters for America has the quotes, and then proves them wrong by documenting the Republican heckling Clinton took in four State of the Union addresses.

I read of Chicago's Millenium Park when it opened and thought I'd like to visit. But New(Sub)urbanism says the park is "Chicago's most privatized public space" and points to the story of a photographer stopped from snapping pictures because he didn't have a permit.

A reporter looking into the incident was told: "The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist." Not a selling point.

UPDATE: a follow-up post clarifies, "The real reason for the city's shakedown is that the city has exclusive licensing rights for selling images of Millennium Park."

Apparently, the city does not want to endure competition from entrepreneurs who may go and photograph Millennium Park enhancements and place the images on postcards, t-shirts, etc... Some use of public space, huh?

I only became aware of Oregon's Measure 37 when I heard an ad on local radio hawking "How to" kits for bringing Measure 37-like initiatives to "your town." This is a very big deal here in Red America.

In his New Yorker review of Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Malcolm Gladwell suggests just where such actions might lead:

Supporters of the law spoke entirely in the language of political ideology. To them, the measure was a defense of property rights, preventing the state from unconstitutional "takings." ...The thing that got lost in the debate, however, was the land. In a rapidly growing state like Oregon, what, precisely, are the state's ecological strengths and vulnerabilities? What impact will changed land-use priorities have on water and soil and cropland and forest? One can imagine Diamond writing about the Measure 37 debate, and he wouldn't be very impressed by how seriously Oregonians wrestled with the problem of squaring their land-use rules with their values, because to him a society's environmental birthright is not best discussed in those terms. Rivers and streams and forests and soil are a biological resource. They are a tangible, finite thing, and societies collapse when they get so consumed with addressing the fine points of their history and culture and deeply held beliefs...that they forget that the pastureland is shrinking and the forest cover is gone.

Diamond looks at the Norse and Inuit colonies in Greenland. The Inuit survived, the Norse didn't. Why? Diamond thinks its because they clung to their Norwegian ways. They farmed and used the forests for fuel and construction. They didn't adapt to the land they lived on and so they stripped it bare. They clung to their cultural survival without concern for the biological. And in the end, they starved to death. Gladwell again:

The lesson of "Collapse" is that societies, as often as not, aren't murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death... To call Measure 37--and similar referendums that have been passed recently in other states--intellectually incoherent is to put it mildly. It might be that the reason your hundred-acre farm on a pristine hillside is worth millions to a developer is that it's on a pristine hillside: if everyone on that hillside could subdivide, and sell out to Target and Wal-Mart, then nobody's plot would be worth millions anymore. Will the voters of Oregon then pass Measure 38, allowing them to sue the state for compensation over damage to property values caused by Measure 37?

If a Measure 37 could happen in Oregon, where enlightened land-use restrictions successfully limited suburban sprawl and protected coastal habitats, it could happen in my town. And yours. That's what the ad on the radio promised. We best believe it's true.

Jerome Armstrong explains beautifully why Dean and Chris Bowers says it's time to celebrate, even as his commenters warn that he's jumping the gun. But it sure does look like victory is Dean's.

The President will tell us tonight about his plans for Social Security privatization. (There is no crisis. Really. Check it out.) Meanwhile, Medicare's a disaster. And what is the latest news there? The new Medicare prescription plan is going to cover sexual performance drugs such as Viagra. Some are not happy about this, mainly conservatives. Why not my fellow liberals? It looks like a sop to the Pharmaceuticals industry to me. Go get 'em Michael!

Charlie Peters' Tilting at Windmills thinks so:

My friend Jonathan Rowe, who lives in California, is puzzled that Democrats don't respond to being called “girly-men� by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Have they missed the issue of Vanity Fair with Arnold and Maria on the cover? In the credit box accompanying the photograph, we are told that the governor's “grooming products� are from Dior, his “hair products� by Bumble & Bumble, and his jacket by Prada.

For that matter, would a “real man� refuse to debate unless he gets the questions first? Or would he have had more cosmetic surgery, as one source put it, “than Joan Rivers�?

In the MyDD Cattle Call Dean's in the lead:

Dean secured the frontrunner position with his getting the endorsement from the entire delegation of Florida, with Maddox saying, "I am a Southern chairman of a Southern state, and I am perfectly comfortable with Howard Dean as DNC chair."

Reihan Salam at The American Scene says it "could be a big deal." A friend wrote to tell me of her Republican mother's favorable comments. The Moderate Voice calls it "an almost startling middle leaning stance" and links to many other bloggers' comments. From the NYTimes coverage:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday that the opposing sides in the divisive debate over abortion should find "common ground" to prevent unwanted pregnancies and ultimately reduce abortions, which she called a "sad, even tragic choice to many, many women."

Positioning for a presidential run? Everyone says so. I stand by what I said last week.

Last week I pointed favorably to Arnold's prison reform plan. This week I'm reminded he's got plenty of the Republicanisms in him that I don't like. To deal with California's budget crisis, he proposes cutting spending on the poor while preserving tax breaks for the well-off. What's worse, writes Kevin Drum:

Schwarzenegger actively created a huge part of the budget crisis himself. Just as George Bush seems to hope that tax cuts will create an artificial crisis atmosphere that allows him to pursue pet projects like Social Security privatization, Schwarzenegger campaigned on a pledge to cut the auto license fee. This slashed $3-4 billion in revenue, an amount that would go a very long way toward eliminating California's problem....

He campaigned on a promise never to cut education funding and went back on his word almost immediately. He campaigned on a promise to end "crazy deficit spending," but adopted Gray Davis's deficit spending plans almost verbatim within months. He's made some interesting proposals, and has demonstrated some genuine charisma and political talent, but in the end his only real tactic seems to be the same one George Bush loves so much: convincing the public that everything is a crisis and he's the only one who can deal with it.

Howard Dean's appearance yesterday on THIS WEEK affirms again my belief that he's the best candidate for DNC Chair. Among his comments:

That's why I'm running for DNC chair. Democrats hope that once in a while a John F. Kennedy or a Bill Clinton will come along and all of a sudden, aha. We can't do that. What the Republicans have is a better system than ours. Now, we made great strides in this election but the Republicans have 14,000 people on the ground in Ohio. We have to bring them in.

Now, the next time, through training and through money to the state parties and building up state parties through grassroots organizations, I want to have a system that's as good as the Republicans and the time after that I want to have a system that's better than the Republicans because the one thing that Republicans don't do is they don't empower their people on the ground. They, they give the orders from on high and then the masses go forth and do their bidding.

I think if you empower people on the ground to make their own decisions, the Democrats can win again. I'm interested in this because of the systems, not because of the policy.

I agree with the diagnosis and I agree with the proposed solution. If nothing else in the last campaign, he demonstrated he could organize and motivate. Let's let him do it again.

Earlier this month when House Democrats needed a Senator to force debate on the legitimacy of the presidential electoral votes (Fahrenheit 9/11 you will recall noted that no Senator would do this last time around), Barbara Boxer said yes. Then this week she took on Condoleezza Rice, in a tone many of us found highly appropriate. The New York Times has a profile.

1/25/05 UPDATE: DailyKos on "Boxer the new Wellstone"

There is no crisis. Really. Check it out.

Sponge Bob Square Pants. A secret agent in the recruitment of gays. Details in the New York Times.

I can't say I pay close attention to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he's doing some things that make him the kind of Republican I could support. This week, it's prisons. California has the nation's largest state prison system, in such sorry shape it's on the verge of a federal takeover. So who has he named to head the system? Jeanne Woodford, a reform-minded warden who believes in prevention, education and rehabilitation. From Tuesday's Morning Edition:

GONZALES: Jeanne Woodford knows what it's like to work her way up from the bottom. She joined the California prison system fresh out of college and came to work at San Quentin as a prison guard. Back then, in 1978, California, like the rest of the nation, was getting tough on crime. But Woodford remembers how the practice of locking up prisoners for fixed terms backfired.

Ms. JEANNE WOODFORD (Department of Corrections, California): And so we started to see more and more younger people coming into the prison who did not have the incentives to behave themself, and they were coming in with longer terms, they were coming in street gang members, so the violence quickly increased.

GONZALES: And with the violence came long periods of lockdowns, which choked off vocational training classes. Over time, college classes, provided at taxpayer expense, were eventually outlawed, and Woodford, working her way up the chain of command, was learning a lesson.

Ms. WOODFORD: My history at that particular prison led to my belief that if you're impacting that offender, the potential for impacting that offender's children and their family can stop the cycle of crime and stop victimization. And that really is true public safety.

The broken windows theory applied to prison reform. With no tax funding she turned to community and non-profit volunteers to build education and training programs. That impressed the governor. Schwarzenegger's overall reform plan, which creates a new Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to underscore the shift towards rehabilitation and prevention, has been met with substantial criticism. Time will tell. I'm just impressed to see that rehabilitation and prevention are part of one Republican's agenda.

Here is the concluding Part 2 of the Morning Edition series.

Monday's Washington Whispers piece about Hillary's brothers saying she's readying for a presidential run kicked up this week's Hillary talk. Lots of critics on the left; Chris Bowers answers them point by point. I'm reminded of another Michael Moore comment from his January 6 Today Show appearance:

COURIC: What about Hillary Clinton, do you think she has a chance?

Mr.MOORE: What--she's a star. Absolutely she has--absolutely she has a chance.

COURIC: Many people think she could not--even if she won the nomination could not win the election because she's so polarizing.

Mr. MOORE: I don't--well, talk about polarizing, how about George W. Bush? They don't worry about--they never ask themselves that question. `Geez, I don't know, should we run Bush again? He's kind of polarizing. A lot of people don't like him,' you know? It's like, you know, we--our side has got to knock that off. Hillary Clinton is beloved by millions of Americans. I'm not saying, you know, she should necessarily be the one. But, you know...

I voted for her in New York and she's doing, by most accounts, an outstanding job. I recall her working hard to get elected, running a smart campaign that won over conservative leaning upstate voters. If she wants to run, good for her. She's earned it. If she were to get the nomination, I'd vote for her.

Michael Moore was on the Today Show a couple weeks back (January 6). I thought he made a lot of sense when he asked:

Where's our Arnold? Why aren't we running our Arnold? Why do we continue to run these wonks? The American people--see the Republicans, as much as they berate Hollywood, actually they love Hollywood. In fact, they know that Americans love Hollywood, too, and that's why Republicans run people from Hollywood. Reagan, Arnold, Gopher from "The Love Boat." He was in Congress...Sonny Bono...Fred Thompson. They know that Americans love Hollywood. That's why they run people from Hollywood. And--and when the Democrats run stars: Bill Clinton, the rock star; John Kennedy, the movie star, they win. And when they run wonks, they lose. And they've got to start thinking about the people who connect to the average American out there, and who are really--you know, people who move the American public in--in a very visceral way...when we start running people that are beloved by the American public, we're going to win.

Let's start with the DNC Chair. Howard Dean is our star. Martin Frost is not.