Intelligent Design — more reason to loathe the Smithsonian

As if Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small’s egregious violation of endangered species regulations, and his refusal to resign for it, aren’t enough reason for Smithsonian’s moral stock to be tanking, we now have the Smithsonian showing a Discovery Institute “documentary” for a paltry $16,000 donation like some cheap whore.

When asked whether the announcement on the Discovery Institute's Web site meant to imply that the museum supports the film and the event, (Discovery Institute President Bruce) Chapman replied:

“We are not implying in any sense that they endorsed the content, but they are co-sponsoring it, and we are delighted. We're not claiming anything more than that. They certainly didn't say, ‘We’re really warming up to intelligent design, and therefore we're going to sponsor this.’”

I repeat what I said over the Small non-resignation — the only way to get the Smithsonian’s attention is to threaten membership cancellations, or better yet, actually doing that, then letting them be on the dime.

In the wake of the Richard Sternberg fiasco over intelligent design, are folks at the Smithsonian really that clueless?

Kroger gets an environmental thumbs-up

I just discovered that my Kroger, at least, pays you 5 cents a bag for using your own bags at their store. Now, if we can get more stores to do this.

Was the filibuster compromise a Democratic win?

I don’t think it is a win; at best it’s a draw with a bit of a bump.

Here’s some of my random thoughts.

Ohio GOP Sen. Mike DeWine, one of the 14 compromisers, says he will have no hesitation in working to ban filibusters if he thinks Democrats are using them for non-extraordinary means.

Then he says: “We don't think we're going to get there.” Why not? Everybody is saying William G. Myers or Henry Saad will be filibustered or withdrawn. South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham was even saying one of the next three judges — Priscilla R. Owen, Janice Rogers Brown or William H. Pryor Jr. — will be voted down.

But, don’t you think Karl Rove’s calling Graham to the woodshed right now? You know Bush is not going to withdraw any nominees. So are Graham and five other Republican Senators actually going to vote against a Bush nominee?

Puhleeze. I’ve got some Lindsey Graham South Carolina desert to sell you in that case.

Besides, DeWine, didn’t promise they’d be voted down. He ust left the door open to a filibuster, and that on Saad or Myers, not one of the first three — and also left the door open to his vote to eliminate the filibuster if he thinks Democrats aren’t using it responsibly enough.

So, the “moderates” on the Democratic side have made their party hostage to however Republicans define good behavior.
At best, we have a cease-fire over nominees that have been in the confirmation pipeline for some time. After that, when we get to Supreme Court nomination time, who can say?

What if Bush and Rove get really Machiavellian, even to moderate Republicans, and renominate Robert Bork? Admittedly, that’s not likely, but given this White House, it’s not impossible, either.

Aside from the Bork scenario, given the vagaries of gerontology, etc. re SCOTUS, the question is: delayed until WHEN?

If it’s uncomfortably close to the 2006 general election season, then moderate GOPers might just make a visit up to the White House and insist Bush pull in his horns.

But, what if Rove pulls what the GOP in the Senate essentially did to LBJ in ’68, after letting Fortas wither on the vine?

If Rove/Bush simply say, “We’ll wait six months to make a nomination,” then it’s post-2006, but a hot potato, hand grenade, etc. for 2008 GOP primaries, in which case, Frist ain’t seen nothing yet from the Christian right.

Stay tuned, kids.

Newspapers doomed to die?

That’s a tentative diagnosis for major dailies that Kevin Drum makes over at Washington Monthly.

If it does happen, he says liberal/progressive bloggers such as yours truly will bear part of the blame for carping against the mainstream media.

First, let me say that the picture is not that bleak. Second, as far as legitimate complaints against seven-day dailies, from me at least, they are by no means restricted to coverage of major national and international political news, along with op-ed writing on such.

In big cities, alt-weekly newspapers are generally thriving. Their combination of snarkiness plus harder-hitting news and op-ed coverage of local news puts the local/metropolitan + op/ed staffs to shame.

And that's point one of my complaints. Here in Dallas, for example, I can get AP/Reuters/AFP news off Yahoo, Google, or whatever. But, I can't read about the Dallas City Council, Dallas County Commissioners Court, etc., NOR about the appointed commissions such as Planning and Zoning, etc., except in The Dallas Morning News or the alt-weekly Observer.

And the paid dailies, from my experience in other cities of reasonable size, such as St. Louis, Kansas City, Fort Worth, Flint, Mich., as well as Dallas, just plain suck at this. I don’t know about the biggies of the biggies, i.e., New York, L.A. and Washington, but to some degree, the bigger the daily, the worse it sucks at this, from my experience. The three just-mentioned cities have special angles on local news due to Washington as the seat of power, the finance industry in New York and ubiquitous Hollywood and TV land in L.A.

Frankly, I think if more dailies would recognize that this is a problem in their coverage, trim Washington bureaus as much as that may seem a loss of face, etc., and plow MORE into urban/suburban coverage -- including facing directly lingering white flight issues, etc., they would be much better papers and probably better-subscribed, too.

To a lesser degree, this is what suburban weeklies and semiweeklies do. And, to the degree they do it well (along with more in-depth coverage of local school district sports) their circulations are at least holding steady if not rising.

I am the editor of a suburban Dallas weekly. I’ve been here for more than five years, and have been the assistant managing editor of our five newspaper group for the past year as well.

We have better-income blacks and Hispanics, as well as some whites who aren't moving north to the “right” side of the Trinity moving to my part of suburban Dallas. To the degree they want to be locally involved, our circ numbers are picking up.

So, suburban papers aren’t dying, either.

As for what to do with the Internet, mid-sized six-days and small seven-days are going to a paid subscription model. I can’t believe that member dailies can’t work with the AP and Reuters, as well as those news agencies working with Yahoo, Google, etc., to set up some nominal pay system if they feel it is in all business parties’ best interest.

Of course, speaking of business, that’s part of the problem.

More than ever, the bottom line is the bottom line at major dailies. American Journalism Review had as its lead story in April the sad state of affairs here in Dallas at the News. Much of the problems were ultimately driven by bad decisions, bad numbers or both in advertising, marketing and circulation. Editorial has had its own problems on local/metro news, but they weren’t insurmountable.

Many of those decisions, in turn, are in a weird, sometimes in-sync, sometimes out-of-sync, dance with poor editorial decisions on local news coverage, and editorial/circulation decisions on zoned editions, the number of them, how much zoned coverage to provide and more.

Don’t just blame management for GM woes

Attaturk, on Atrios, bemoans the fall of workers’ financial power at GM.

Here’s the original Paul Krugman column that got him started.

Krugman says:

In 1968, when General Motors was a widely emulated icon of American business, many of its workers were lifetime employees. On average, they earned about $29,000 a year in today's dollars, a solidly middle-class income at the time. They also had generous health and retirement benefits.

I agree with much of his column, but let’s not romanticize GM — or the GM employee — of yesterday or today.

Today’s average GM employee earns a lot more than $29,000 in today's money. A lot more. (I used to live in Flint, Michigan, and did college contract teaching to UAW workers, so I know. I’ve also heard that the stories about “Monday cars” and “Friday cars,” especially in the GM of yore, are entirely true.)

I'm not blaming unions for getting what they can, and believe we need stronger unions in many cases.

But, in the case of the automotive Big Three, unions have in the past and continue to shoot themselves in the foot at times.

They, as well as management, oppose increases in the CAFE, for example.

So, when Hubbert’s Peak starts playing out, and then Big Three sales finish going into the Toyota Tank, the UAW can blame itself as well as management.

The First Amendment MUST be preserved against fundies

Kevin Drum appears to think progressives should be more compromising on issues such as state-sponsored religious displays, public prayers, and such on the grounds that 98 percent of the battle has already been won.

See the original Matt Yglesias post that got Kevin started here.

This is one of Kevin’s, and Matt Yglesias’, dumber ideas.

The fundies want to reverse that 2 percent and aren't in a mood to compromise. The “silent majority” is clueless on that and will be rolled as to what is acceptable on public religious displays if compromise is the name of the game.

When does idealism compromise with pragmatism, then?

I face this from a highly personal angle, too. My dad is, I mean was, a minister in the main conservative Lutheran denomination. His sister is a Lutheran parochial school teacher. Their one grandfather was a minister. My oldest brother is. My No. 2 brother is a music director and works at denominational headquarters in his day job. My brother-in-law is a minister, after a young sister said years ago she'd never marry one.

I said “was” of my dad because he died a week ago and I’ve played hypocrite for a week. HE KNEW, and so did his sister, and my sister, but none of my brothers, nor dad's second wife, nor most other people at the funeral did.

In most ways, I’m more absolutist on this than freedom of the press — and I’m a newspaper editor — precisely because the other side, the fundamentalist part of the “other side,” at least, is not in a compromising mood. It's not holding on to the “last 2 percent” of the school prayer battle, Kev, it's keeping that from being changed to 20-30 percent being lost again.

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Update, May 14:
Kevin continues to fight the battle with this post. Which leads to further response from me.

Religion in America has greatly evolved in the last 200 years. Many moderate to liberal Christians recognize the “Judeo” fig leaf within the phrase “Judeo-Christian heritage.” If Muslims don’t already outnumber Jews, they soon will. Can Hindus and Buddhists be that far behind?

So what then, Kev? Do we post verses from the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Pali Canon on courthouse walls?

Do you see any fundies raising their hands to vote for that one?

And no, don’t give me Scalia’s “civic religion” bullshit either.