Facebook: anonymity is for trolls

Julie Zhou of Facebook would like to rid the internet of anonymity:

Some may argue that denying Internet users the ability to post anonymously is a breach of their privacy and freedom of expression. But until the age of the Internet, anonymity was a rare thing. When someone spoke in public, his audience would naturally be able to see who was talking.

Others point out that there’s no way to truly rid the Internet of anonymity. After all, names and e-mail addresses can be faked. And in any case many commenters write things that are rude or inflammatory under their real names.

It's hardly a surprise that a product design manager from Facebook thinks anonymity is something we might all want to get rid of. After all, the company makes money selling personal information and has been notorious for it's lack of concern about it's member's privacy.

Still, it's hard to believe she hasn't heard that even today there are very real reasons for people to write anonymously. And she'll be happy to know that her concerns about anonymous trolls are shared by the governments of Iran, Egypt and China.

But anonymity was rare thing until recently? Has she never heard of Poor Richard? Or Publius?

Just vote already

"Vote" Image originally uploaded by Dean Terry under a Creative Commons license.

It's been a state for almost 50 years, Cokie

Photo of the Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery in Honolulu. Image by JPhilipson

I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii, and I know Hawaii is a state. But …

- Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs (aka "Cokie") Roberts, explaining why Barack Obama looks like an elitist for visiting an American state during an American election.

Cokie apparently believes that there are “real” Americans, and then there are a lot of other people who somehow ended up with the right to vote for our president.

Hawaii is a state. It’s people are Americans. Just because they don’t live like Cokie doesn’t make them some sort of exotic, foreign tribe.

The next president can't save us from Bush's power grab

Steve Clemons at The Washington Note suggests that anyone at an Q&A for McCain, Obama or Clinton should ask the following question:

Question One: Specifically, which powers of the Presidency that the Bush administration has acquired for itself would you roll back and give up?

That's a great question. Unfortunately, it falls into the same category as asking the son of a jewel thief which of his father's gems he'd give back. It implies that the decision is his, not the law's.

Speaking of disenfranchisement...

Who else remembered that there was a Republican primary in Pennsylvania today?

Quit whining and just pay for the damn election

Spare Change. Image originally uploaded by bullywhippet. (under creative commons license)

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Clinton supporter, told the Detroit Free Press that Clinton's victory in Ohio changes "the landscape a bit." She said it could open the door to a caucus, if it can be privately funded and both candidates agree.

[Florida Gov. Charlie] Crist told reporters at a news conference Tuesday that he does not support having another primary at taxpayer expense. He said he discussed the option with Sen. Bill Nelson, the state's senior Democrat. "He said the only way to consider the possibility of that is to have the Democratic National Committee pay for it," Crist said. The Florida Democratic Party said the state estimates the cost would be $25 million.

A revote in Michigan and Florida would be ideal, but for God's sake the states should find public funds for the election.

This isn't a charity raffle. Running elections is a government obligation and the only reason we're in this situation is that the elected leaders of Florida and Michigan flouted party rules and scheduled their elections ahead of the Super Tuesday contest. Crist and Granholm were active participants in that process. They gambled that putting their states ahead of other delegate rich contests would allow them to be kingmakers. They wouldn't have given a damn if the election had ended on January 29th - robbing voters in over 40 other states of having any say at all in the nomination. Now they're upset that they don't count.

And when you get down to it even $20-$30 million is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else they spend money on.

Here's Florida governor Crist's budget request for 2008 - which if I'm reading correctly comes out to about $69 billion.

And here's Michigan governor Granholm's request for 2009 - which totals almost $45 billion.

If it's worth being part of the process it's worth paying for. Stop acting pathetic.

Updated: Here's the inevitable outcome of the states being cheap:

As Rendell and Corzine modestly put it, "In the interest of providing assurance that the private funds necessary to finance a publicly administered election will indeed be available should the Michigan Legislature choose to proceed in this direction, we have taken the liberty of soliciting guarantors for such an effort."

Handled deftly, this might have been seen as an act of political altruism. Instead it smacks of an inside job. Rendell is a Clinton supporter. Corzine is a Clinton supporter. Granholm is a Clinton supporter. Perhaps coincidentally, the letter guaranteeing the money arrived on the day Clinton flew into the Michigan to ratchet up pressure on Obama and the legislature to support a new primary.

He who pays the piper calls the tune and you simply can't have backers of one campaign sponsoring an election.

The elections in Florida and Michigan are off and it's their own damn fault.

Just so long as I'm the dictator.

Robert Farley from LGM compares Obama's call for unity with those of W in 2000:

Bush is an outstanding example of a candidate whose centrist direction (at least in 2000; I think Bowers is right about 2004) had no noticeable impact on governing strategy.

Centrist direction?

Contrary to popular opinion, George Bush never ran as a moderate and anybody who bothered to listen to the man during the 2000 election knew that he wasn't a centrist. He was running as a compassionate conservative and if the term "compassionate" confused you, well he told you exactly what he meant by that, too. Here's how Myron Magnet explained it in the WSJ in 1999:

The poor need the larger society's moral support; they need to hear the message of personal responsibility and self-reliance, the optimistic assurance that if they try – as they must – they will make it. They need to know, too, that they can't blame "the system" for their own wrongdoing.

In short, poor people need a pep squad, not a handout. Quit complaining about racism or children being born into poverty. Re-stigmatize illegitimacy, shame unwed mothers, get tough on public school teachers and show the poor how irresponsible they're being by not getting off their lazy asses.

This definition of compassionate conservatism wasn't kept secret. It was repeated again and again during the run-up to the election. Where the government was going to be involved was in "faith based" initiatives - tearing down the wall between church and state.

And if that involved tearing up anti-discrimination laws? Well whatever works:

Some religious groups do, however, follow exclusionary policies, and these point up the inherent -- and constitutional -- difficulties of church-state partnerships. A week ago Friday, Governor Bush toured the Haven of Rest Ministries, a homeless shelter in Akron, Ohio. Two years ago, ministry officials told a Jewish businessman that he couldn't join the board, citing their rule of employing only born-again Christians.

During his visit, Mr. Bush maintained that under his plan Haven of Rest's programs would be eligible for Government funds -- even though groups that accept Federal money must comply with anti-discrimination laws.

The only reason this seemed "centrist" was because the Democrats felt the need to jump on the faith-based bandwagon themselves.

Bush and Gore have enthusiastically endorsed a provision of the 1996 welfare-reform bill called charitable choice, which allows faith-based organizations to administer welfare programs with public funds, as long as there are secular alternatives. And then there is the explosive issue of publicly financed vouchers for parochial and secular private schools, which all of the Republican candidates have embraced. Although Gore opposes vouchers, his Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, provisionally supports them.

No, George Bush was all about "tax cuts so help me God!", eliminating the right of consumers to sue corporations, and deregulation of industry (back when Enron's Ken Lay was considered the smartest kid on the block).

His solution to environmental problems? Self-policing:

Although state regulators had been considering mandatory restrictions on polluters, state documents indicate that Mr. Bush thought the approach should be voluntary and essentially asked industry leaders to draft such a proposal, which they did in private meetings with state officials two years ago. No environmental groups or other public interest groups were invited, and they only learned about the meetings early this year.

His plan to get health care to the uninsured? Tax credits.

Under the plan he introduced here, Americans who have no health care coverage and are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid could receive a tax credit of up to $1,000 an individual or $2,000 a family to cover 90 percent of the cost of insurance.

Good luck paying for insurance with that. Especially if you're one of those lazy welfare queens.

As for his views on civil liberties, "there ought to be limits to freedom" was provoked by a web site making fun of his campaign. Bush's campaign threatened legal action.

And if we hadn't been so busy chuckling that Bush failed a reporter's pop quiz, we might have worried that the one person he did recognize had just overthrown a democratically elected Prime Minister - and George Bush approved wholeheartedly.

Mr. Bush also offered an assessment of the situation in Pakistan, where Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in a coup d'etat last month.

Mr. Bush, failing to name the general, said, "It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country, and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."

So you can fault George Bush for a lot of things, but lying about his goals as president isn't one of them. He told us of his plans to privatize Social Security, to nominate Scalia type justices, to gut social services, to increase military spending and tear up pesky treaties. He was running on unity, not compromise. He intended to get Democrats to agree to his plans, not to find common ground. (And he has been quite successful getting them to sign on to every harebrained idea he had).

Hell, if you believed what the man was telling you at the time, you'd have gotten a pretty good preview of the next 8 years. He even dropped hints about the second Gulf war.

At the Republican debate here on Thursday and at a news conference in nearby Bedford this morning, George W. Bush said that if he was commander in chief, any discovery that Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, was building weapons of mass destruction would touch off a swift and punishing response.

Mr. Bush seemed to say he would "take him out," indicating that he would forcibly remove Mr. Hussein from power or worse. But Mr. Bush said in a telephone interview this afternoon that the phrase, easily misinterpreted because of his Texas drawl, was "take 'em out," meaning the weapons.

As for his idea of bipartisanship, his most famous quote:

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

...He said that to a bipartisan group of Congressional leaders, one month before taking the oath of office.

Clinton advocate comes out in favor of smoke filled rooms

Lanny Davis (former special counsel and spokesman for Bill and strong supporter of Hillary's) repeats the assertion that states Obama wins simply don't count.

DAVIS: She has a majority of the United States senators who have endorsed her. She won in California and in Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry's backyard. And the states that you add up that Barack Obama won and give him credit, Idaho, Utah and North Dakota are not exactly states that are ever going to vote Democratic as opposed to California and we have the two senators in Washington.

You really need to kill this meme now, Hillary, before a smart Obama strategist starts running an ad with titles like this:

Hillary Clinton thinks some states are insignificant. Is yours one of them?

Worse yet, Davis, writing for The Hill, now literally argues that smoke-filled rooms are better at choosing candidates than Democratic voters are.

That data showed that in primary elections, the turnout among Democrats was often well below 50 percent. And in caucus states, where voters had to show up at a particular time and place and wait up to several hours before voting, the turn out was often as small as 10%-20% or often much less.

We were also reminded that before these reforms, the "smoke-filled rooms" of Democratic Party leaders had led to the nomination and election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. Not bad.

It's no surprise that this man, who once sat on DNC Executive Committee, authored the WSJ editorial entitled Liberal McCarthyism (attacking Democrats for voting against his favorite in a primary).

The Democratic base already believes that the 2000 election was stolen and would be furious if they believed their own party cheated to deny them their pick for the nomination.

If her people keep making these arguments, Senator Clinton risks being labeled as the candidate who says to hell with the voters, I'll win anyway possible. (The fact that Obama is currently winning the popular vote as well doesn't help her case.)


Update: Here we go again. These people really aren't helping you Hillary.

A top strategist to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Saturday countered the recent claims of some prominent Democrats that party elders would be wrong to override the will of their constituents in their choice for the Democratic presidential nominee.

In a phone call with reporters, Harold M. Ickes, argued that the 796 so-called superdelegates who could decide the party’s White House nominee were as much or “potentially more in touch” with the issues important to voters than the delegates amassed by the candidates through state primaries and caucuses.

In other words, party insiders understand the desires of voters better than the voters themselves. (Really, why do we bother to vote at all?)

Why Michigan and Florida don't care about DNC threats

Vote Here. Image originally uploaded by cursedthing.

So the DNC attempted to halt the competition over who gets to vote first and ended up potentially alienating the voters in two must-win states in the process.

In August, the Democratic National Committee responded by stripping Florida of its convention delegates after the state scheduled its primary for Jan. 29. Yesterday in Vienna, the DNC's rules and bylaws committee issued the same penalty to Michigan for its Jan. 15 primary date.

If you're wondering why the DNC didn't short-circuit the problem by cracking down on Iowa and New Hampshire (whose insistence on being first is driving the race to the bottom), it's because Iowa and New Hampshire don't care about losing their delegates, they want to be kingmakers. These states not only demand that they go first, they demand that everyone else wait a week before voting. This way they are able to dictate the debate and compel the candidates to focus on local issues (like farm subsidies and small town "values") instead of federal ones.

Of course, every state thinks its own interests are the most important and the larger, more urban ones have been chafing at the idea that the list of candidates available to them has been culled by voters who have very different priorities.

So Michigan and Florida have taken the gamble. And does anyone believe that if Hillary Clinton wins those primaries by a 20-30 point margin the rest of us will even have Obama or Edwards to vote for come February 5th?

If they can decide the victor, they don't need any delegates.

Yes, Hugo Chavez is an autocrat

Here's a simple rule:

If you try to overthow the government in a military coup, disband the legislature, rewrite the Constitution, stack the courts, silence the media and politicize the military. Then you're an autocrat.

And it doesn't matter whether your name is Putin, Musharraf or Chavez.

h/t Matthew Yglesias

Remember, this is what we're fighting for in Iraq.

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.

Musharraf, you see, is a decider, and deciders decide in a democracy. Bush elaborated on this point during the interview:

we didn't necessarily agree with his decision, to impose emergency rule

He didn't necessarily disagree, either.

Let's face it, George Bush has supported Musharraf since he led a coup against the elected government of Pakistan 8 years ago. Musharraf has never been elected himself, and he is not a democrat.

He's had opposition leaders arrested, rivals exiled, had the country's constitution rewritten to his ends, censored the media, purged members of the Supreme Court for voting against him, placed them under house arrest, replaced them with his own lackeys and required those justices to sign an oath to military rule and to Musharraf himself. (All in the name of protecting the country against terrorists)

In other words, Musharraf is the president George Bush always dreamed he would be.

Anti-terror laws in Pakistan

Protesters in London demonstrating against Pakistan's "state of emergency". Image originally uploaded by Orhan

Not so great at catching actual terrorists, but very good for stifling dissent:

Another opposition figure contacted by Bhutto earlier in the week, cricket legend Imran Khan, was moved to Lahore's biggest prison early Thursday after being charged under anti-terror laws for protesting against emergency rule.

Musharraf said in a series of interviews that he would not consider quitting until the turmoil in the country was over, telling Sky News: "I am not a dictator, I want a democracy."

Anyone who thinks that we need to make a devil's bargain with Musharraf to avoid having the bomb fall into the hands of radicals should remember these points:

It was the Pakistani military, with the help of A.Q. Khan, that sold nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

It was the Pakistani military which backed the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11.

Musharraf signed a deal with the Taliban in September of 2006 that effectively gave them safe haven in Waziristan and has allowed them to relaunch attacks on Afghanistan. 2007 has been the most violent year in Afghanistan, since the 2001 invasion.

And while Musharraf has now disbanded his country's secular courts and turned his forces against protestors demanding a return to democracy, this is how the war against Pakistan's radical militants is going:

[I]n the last several days, the militants have extended their reach, capturing more territory in Pakistan’s settled areas and chasing away frightened policemen, local government officials said.

As inconspicuous as it might be in a nation of 160 million people, the takeover of the small Alpuri district headquarters this week was considered a particular embarrassment for General Musharraf. It showed how the militants could still thumb their noses at the Pakistani Army.

In fact, local officials and Western diplomats said, there is little evidence that the 12-day-old emergency decree has increased the government’s leverage in fighting the militants, or that General Musharraf has used the decree to take any extraordinary steps to combat them.

h/t John Cole

Who cares about planted questions?

"And I think this little flap in Iowa over did Hillary Clinton plant questions at her rallies, just is part of all that, who cares!" - Cokie Roberts on This Week

Who cares? Well, you're supposed to Cokie.

After 7 years of staged photo ops, invitation only town hall meetings, free-speech zones, columnists being paid to plant propaganda in their papers, not to mention the accusation that Washington's political journalists are nothing more than a pack of stenographers - well, you think you'd be a little sensitive to this sort of thing.

The only thing that prevents every politician from pulling these stunts is the fear of embarrassment.

George Bush has always supported the dictator of Pakistan

A lot of people are astonished that the man who overthrew the Pakistani government in a coup 8 years ago might not actually believe in democracy.

US scolds Musharraf but smothers talk of aid cuts

US President George W Bush today urged Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf to lift a state of emergency, quit as army chief, and hold elections soon - but left unclear whether US aid hung in the balance.

Asked what he would do if Musharraf spurns such advice, Bush replied: "All we can do is continue to work with the president, as well as others in the Pak government, to make it abundantly clear the position of the United States."

Now why would anyone think George Bush was going to suspend aid?

Here were his views in 1999, a year before George Bush was elected, 2 years before 9/11 changed everything and 3 weeks after Pervaiz Musharraf overthrew the elected government.

"Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan?" Hiller asked, inquiring about Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, who seized control of the country October 12.

Bush, in answering the question about the leader of Pakistan, also said: "The new Pakistani general, he's just been elected -- not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."

Musharraf is a military dictator. Let's not act surprised when he acts like one.

Red State, Blue State? Its a rich thing.

There's been a bit of discussion about these maps showing how the 2004 presidential election vote would have been decided if only the poorest or wealthiest voters in each state had been counted.



But really, all the information is in these plots from the same study.

There is no red-blue divide among the poorest voters and little among middle class. It's a rich thing.




The wealthiest voters in the poorest states are hard-core Republicans, and there's a nearly linear correlation between the wealth of a state and the party affiliation of the wealthiest voters in that state. So for all the pundits and campaign managers trying to figure out the difference between salt-of-the-earth midwestern farmers and godless city-slickers, you're wasting your time with the wrong demographic.

Couldn't you just keep quiet for another 9-10 years?

Apparently the militias in Iraq weren't a real problem until the Democrats got elected.

While debate over a war's merits -- and whether to withdraw -- is a sign of a healthy democracy, Iraq unfortunately highlights many of the difficulties a democracy faces in a long-term counterinsurgency or nation-building campaign. Such debate can be detrimental to the battle for perceptions. Having linked its future to an antiwar stance, the Democratic Congress has in effect told Iraqis that they are best off joining militias, because the dissolution of Iraq is only going to accelerate.

This is the same Democratic Congress that rubber stamped George Bush's last request for just under $100 billion dollars.

You might've thought that the threat of sectarian death squads was a bigger motivator for potential recruits.

Honestly, if this is the thinking of a man who bills himself as "a co-author of the military's counterinsurgency field manual" I'm not surprised that our efforts in Iraq are going so badly. We aren't failing in because people are debating it. We're failing because the people running it think it can be won with the best propaganda strategy.


h/t Matt Yglesias

Free Speechless Zones

Protecting the president from all criticism has been an obsession with this White House.

From the Presidential Advance Manual (stamped "Sensitive - Do Not Copy"):

The first step to keeping demonstrators out of events, the manual tells the president's event staff, is to encourage the Secret Service to "ask the local police department to designate a protest area...preferably not in view of the event site or the motorcade route."

Protest areas and "free speech zones" have no place in American society. Their only purpose is to protect the powerful and muzzle dissent.

Also in the document, we learn the true purpose of rally squads.

These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstators. The rally squad's task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA! USA! USA!).

As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site.

For large rallies... at least one squad should be 'roaming' throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems.

via Americablog

Couldn't we just get rid of the electoral college?

California Republicans, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger's lawyer are the latest in a string of partisans who would like to guarantee that their team wins the presidency regardless of the whims of the little people:

Instead of laboring in vain to turn California Red, a clever lawyer for the state Republican Party thought of a gimmicky shortcut. Thomas Hiltachk, who specializes in ballot referenda that try to fool people in the titles and fine print, is sponsoring a ballot initiative for the June 3, 2008, California primary (which now falls four months after the state's presidential primary). The Presidential Election Reform Act would award the state's electoral votes based on who wins each congressional district. Had this idea been in effect in 2004, Bush would have won 22 electoral votes from California, about the same number awarded the winners of states like Illinois or Pennsylvania. In practical terms, adopting the initiative would mean that the Democratic candidate would likely have to win both Ohio and Florida in 2008 (instead of one or the other) to be elected.

The strategy is a simple one. Take 40% of the electoral votes in states dominated by the opposition party, add 100% of the electoral votes in states dominated by your own party and suddenly you've got a system where an extremely unpopular candidate could win the presidency while losing by 10 or 20 million votes nationwide.

Partisans who cheer the effort when it works to their advantage are typically outraged when the other guy pulls the same stunt:

North Carolina appears headed to becoming the third state in the nation to abandon the winner-take-all method for awarding its electoral votes as the House tentatively agreed Thursday to shelf the method.

Republicans called the change a cheap way to give Democrats, who have been shut out in North Carolina since 1980, some electoral votes.

"This is clearly a partisan bill. There's no question about that," said Rep. Leo Daughtry, R-Johnston. "You've got to change the law to make it an advantage."

Not that Republicans wouldn't trade a few votes in North Carolina for a couple of dozen in California.

And of course, partisans like the idea of a national popular vote even less than the current system. Governor Schwarzenegger, who hasn't taken a position on his lawyer's scheme (and denies being involved personally) vetoed a bill that would have given California's sizeable electoral to the overall winner.

Let the real filibusters begin

A filibuster is an attempt to prolong debate, typically used by the minority to prevent passage of a bill with majority support. Best exemplified in the movie Mr. Smith goes to Washington in which an honest Senator battles against graft and corruption by taking to the well of the Senate and stands his ground until the corruption is exposed and his rivals defeated in shame.

It's hard to believe that just 2 years ago, the Republicans attempted to kill the filibuster entirely. They complained that the Democrats were abusing the system by denying a vote on 10 of Bush's 229 judicial nominees. Former majority leader Bill Frist invented the idea of the "nuclear option" to strip the minority of it's right to continue debate.

But times change. Mitch McConnell embraced the idea of the filibuster within days of the 2006 elections, after the Republicans lost both Houses of Congress. Since January, he's blocked votes over 40 times, on everything from funding renewable energy to implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations. No more talk of "up or down votes". Today he's all about minority rights .... well in the Senate, anyway.

So it's good to hear that Harry Reid now plans to start making Republicans take to the floor of the Senate if they don't want to cut off debate.

I'm guessing Senator McConnell isn't going to cut as sympathetic a figure as Jimmy Stewart while he's on the Senate floor arguing against ethics reform and increasing the minimum wage.

Ron Paul: restore Constitutional checks and balances

From Ron Paul's House web site:

Recently, the General Accounting Office studied nineteen instances where the President issued so-called “signing statements.” In such statements, the President essentially begins the process of interpreting legislation – up to and including declaring provisions unconstitutional—hence often refusing to enforce them.

The GAO study found that in nearly 1/3 of the cases studied, the administration failed to enforce the law as enacted.

The legislature should not yield its authority to the executive. Our constitutional republic demands that all branches of government understand and respect our system and jealously guard their own prerogatives.

In modern Washington nothing is more misunderstood, and less appreciated, than the genius of republicanism. Presidents issue signing statements that effectively “approve in part and reject in part,” laws of the land—even though there is no constitutional provision for such a process. In addition, Congress cedes its powers at the crucial moment when a decision on whether or not a war is to be fought will be made, only to then criticize the effort it could have used its powers to stop.