OneMind

George W. Bush has succeeded in doing something to me that no other President in my lifetime has done: he’s convinced me that appealing to the White House to change course on any important issue is a worthless activity. This is a President who has proven he will ignore the advice, input, wishes, judgments and assessments of his constituents, the co-equal legislative branch of government, foreign allies, the United Nations, and apparently his own father. In his relentless pursuit of pure power, he is unequalled in American presidential history.

His latest move is to adopt a very Soviet-style approach to how federal agencies are managed. Under a new Executive Order he signed this week, all agencies will have a political appointee act as a designated gatekeeper on all new proposed regulations and policies. Many regulatory decisions will be subject to White House review before they can be released.

How It’s Supposed To Work:

Congress passes a law. The President signs the law. Executive Branch agencies with hired experts in the subject-matter write procedures and policy statements to carry out that law as Congress intended it.

How W Wants it to Work

Congress passes a law. The President signs the law, often accompanying that signature with a “signing statement” that essentially tells Congress that it’s a very nice little puppy and that he’ll do as he damn well pleases as far as enforcement of that law goes. Executive agencies convince the White House that they should in fact carry out the will of the Congress (or fail to convince as the case may be). Those agencies’ decisions about how to codify the law into practice are subject to veto by a purely political appointee with no expertise in the subject matter.

You decide what kind of government you’d like to live under.

Barry Bonds’ agent, Jeff Boris, has apparently already started the back-pedaling on his famous client’s brand-new contract with the San Francisco Giants.

The contract, which took an unusually long time to negotiate because of the slugger’s off-field legal problems, contains a provision that allows the team to void the deal if Bonds is indicted for any of several specified crimes. But Boris said those provisions of the contract are void because baseball’s collective-bargaining agreement would take precedence over the specific contract terms.

This is akin to George W. Bush’s “signing statements” in which he signs legislation he doesn’t like but reserves the right not to enforce it or to enforce it only partially.

It’s hardly surprising that Bonds or Boris would take that position. If Bonds is indeed indicted, then the issue will obviously end up being litigated. I guess it makes sense to Bonds to sign a deal with a provision he doesn’t like if his agent tells him it’s not enforceable anyway.

But the whole thing just smells bad, doesn’t it?

Well, the Giants and Barry Bonds finally put the final dots and crosses on the slugger’s new one-year deal today and announced it tonight. This means there’s a good chance Barry will become the all-time home run leader some time toward the middle of ths upcoming season, surpassing Hank Aaron’s total of 755.

Love him or hate him, support him or think he’s a juiced freak who shouldn’t be allowed to play, Bonds will be a good thing for the Giants if for no other reason than that a player who engenders such emotions is a great draw. Butts in seats mean money for the team. It’s just that simple, really.

Giants Owner Peter Magowan said there were a lot of details to iron out in the deal and clearly said the club had done some things to protect itself. That is presumably a reference to the issues of Bonds’ off-field problems with possible prosecution and an allegedly failed amphetamine test from the 2006 season.

I applaud the Giants. I love watching Barry. And if he does have some personal problems, I admire an employer who doesn’t turn his back on an employee just because of that.

There is an article in today’s San Jose Mercury News that says Jews are increasingly feeling anti-semitism from the liberal left. I was interested to see what the article said because as a liberal, I at least believe I am not remotely anti-Semitic. I should have been tipped off to the slant of the piece by the headline: “Unlikely source of racism spurs Jews”. At least the headline writer, if not the reporter, has already prejudged the actions described in the article as racist.

In interviews with a number of Jewish leaders in the article, however, I learned that many (but clearly not all) Jews consider those who question or criticize Israel’s government and its policies to be anti-Semites. So, too, are those who dare to challenge — as former President Jimmy Carter does in his new book — Israel’s right to behave on the international stage as it does. This is precisely the same logic that paints those of us who criticize our government’s foreign policy (if it can be called that) in Iraq as anti-American. And it’s just as big a tub of hogwash, to use a term re-popularized by our Veep.

The suggestion that the government of Israel is somehow a surrogate for all Jews everywhere so that criticizing it can be seen even remotely as anti-Semitic is dangerous. It attempts to equate the Israeli state with the Jewish faith. I have the utmost respect and admiration for the Jewish faith as I do for all faith and spiritual traditions. But the danger of letting a government become equated in peoples’ minds with a religion — a position our country’s founders assiduously avoided — is put in stark relief by the suggestion of anti-Semitic thought among those who find, as I do, the Israeli government to be a piratic, aggressive, violent one.

While I would not likely question Israel’s right to defend its artificially created but internationally recognized borders against nearby enemies (of which there are many, most of whom are pretty nasty and direct in their hatred of Israel), the pre-emptive way Israel goes about that “defense” often concerns me. It is the same type of foreign policy — that of the pre-emptive strike — engaged in by our current President against Iraq, the primary difference being that we had nothing to fear from Iraq but attacked them anyway.

As a liberal who is pro-peace, I cannot support or condone or even remain silent about Israel’s aggressiveness and its abysmal human rights record. But I refuse to accept the label of an anti-Semite because of it.

The Senate took its first step toward playing the role of bottleneck and spoiler today by refusing to pass a House bill raising the nation’s minimum wage for the first time in a decade.

The Republicans are insisting that a hike in the minimum wage be accompanied by tax breaks for the businesses affected by the increase. Though they pose it as an attempt to help “small business,” everyone knows the companies who benefit most from such tax breaks are fast-food chains and national retailers like Wal-Mart. It’s a stain on the American body politic that these elitists constantly take the side of the rich against the poor in this country. Few of them has ever had to do an honest day’s work in his or her life.

If this is bipartisanship, we’re in for a long and stagnant two years. All I can hope is that the voters will remember it was the GOP that blocked the legislation when it comes time to vote in 2008.

On my MyWay home page this morning, the usual list of sports scores is missing. Instead, there’s a little headline that says, “None of Your Teams Are Active.”

Apart from the grammatical error (“None…is” is proper), the news is disheartening and reminds me why I don’t like this time of year. Not being a fan of either hockey or basketball, the time from the date my teams are eliminated from the NFL playoffs until the start of spring training in late March is a real doldrum for me.

I’m SAD – Sports Absence Depressed.

But I’ll get over it.

While the Raiders are busy mucking up their own nest, the San Francisco 49ers snagged veteran Al Everest as their special teams coach for the coming season. Everest has 10 years of NFL experience with special teams.

He probably wouldn’t have taken the Raiders’ job either.

So the Oakland Raiders found a sucker to take the head coaching job that isn’t a head coaching job. That’s OK. The guy they found has never been a head coach. Never. But what do you expect? He’s only 31.

Lane Kiffin, USC’s offensive coordinator the past couple of seasons, took the job no coach in his right mind would take. He reportedly got $2 million/yr. on a three-year deal. The club has two option years.

Kiffin’s got good genes. His dad, Monte Kiffin, the legendary defensive coordinator of the Tampa Bay Bucs, has a good rep. Unfortunately, at least from what we can tell so far, Lane didn’t get those particular genes. Instead, he got a big dose of arrogance, at least according to press reports coming out of SoCal. The fan base there was highly critical of Kiffin’s game plans even though USC had a great season. May just be sour grapes.

Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Merucury News asked in his column today, “I wonder what happens the first time Kiffin asks Warren Sapp [who's 3 years older than the coach] to do something he doesn’t want to do.

All of this is made more humorous by the fact that Kiffin’s USC boss, Steve Sarkisian, turned down the Raiders’ job before they offered it to his No. 2. How much closer to the bottom of the barrel can we scrape?

To be fair (though I don’t know why I bother considering it’s Al Davis, a man to whom the word “fair” means “in my best interest and screw you”), Davis has a history of bringing in young coaches and having them turn out to be geniuses. John Madden and John Gruden come specifically to mind. I don’t see Kiffin in that league, but maybe Al sees something I don’t.

This is a good piece on Second Life, one that takes a fairly conservative, business-like look at the potential for 3D virtual world development.

If SL puts 3D Virtual Worlds at the same place as the Web was in 1993, the potential here is enormous. I’m going to have to figure out how to play in this space. Soon.

My friend Tony Seton over at Quality News Network (QNN) runs a daily radio show called America Back on Track. He interviews a wide range of folks (including from time to time yours truly) on a broad array of topics, as is befitting a veteran ABC journalist whose interests and passions are boundless.

On Friday this week he’s interviewing a journalist named Steve Pizzo, a self-described social liberal. Pizzo’s take on immigration reform, though, is decidedly not in line with the current Democratic Party’s thinking on the subject. He talks in his column “News For Real” about how the Neocons have Neoconned the Democrats into taking indefensible positions on the Iraq War and now on “comprehensive immigration reform” by backing them into corners from which rational escape appears impossible.

He makes some sobering points that all of us liberals who are too often knee-jerk in our reactions to issues that have the smell of race or peace about them need to read and ponder.

You can listen in on Tony’s guaratneed-to-be-interesting dialog with Pizzo Friday at noon Pacific, streaming live on QNN.