(WKW Note: Following the death of Christopher Hitchens, many have spoken about his support for the Iraq War, as well as his Vanity Fair story on waterboarding. I wrote this piece on July 3, 2008 to express the conflict I felt over these two issues.)

I don't know who dubbed me "dag's doomer" over the masthead last week, but I had to laugh because I think of doomers as those guys that are predicting an imminent meltdown of society (or its cheese) but will gladly sell gold, shotguns and freeze-dried food to all comers. We're in the time of year when radio stations replay the classic songs, tv stations replay the classic movies, newspapers tally celebrity deaths, and doomers tell us just how lucky we were this year but just how bad next year will be. I'm sure James Kunstler, Dr (Doom) Nouriel Roubini, et al, will not disappoint us in the doomsaying department, but let's face it, folks, things are already bad right now. As Joseph Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair:

It has now been almost five years since the bursting of the housing bubble, and four years since the onset of the recession. There are 6.6 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were four years ago. Some 23 million Americans who would like to work full-time cannot get a job. Almost half of those who are unemployed have been unemployed long-term. Wages are falling - the real income of a typical American household is now below the level it was in 1997.

Every few years, a group of mindless political operatives shriek loudly about how I, William K. Wolfrum, am a racist. This, my friends, is an exercise in futility, as I am obviously not a racist. Nonetheless, these hateful smear mongers continue to pursue these charges.

These charges are baseless, and come from words that appeared at “William K. Wolfrum Chronicles” years ago, such as:

“Opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions.”

Hey there, conservatives. I know a bunch of you have had a good ride bashing on gays in the military for most of the last twenty years. (If you're a conservative who hasn't, good for you. You can ignore the following advice, with my hearty compliments.) And I know those of you who've been doing the public hating also hate to give up a good thing. Now that gays are openly serving in the military, I understand that it feels like time to double down. The issue's always been a winner for you before. Why wouldn't it be a winner now?

Amanda Marcotte's quick reaction to Christopher Hitchens' passing was to post a pretty good headshot of him up at the Overrated White Dudes tumblr, a decision she explains in more detail here at Pandagon.  Elsewhere, she has argued (rightly, I think) that people who react to this by angrily crying "too soon" are taking the ridiculous position that Hitchens, a career bomb thrower who spoke

This week for The Daily, I wrote about the Obama administration's overruling the FDA and continuing to restrict over the counter sales of Plan B birth control pills to women under 17.  When I posted the news item on this site last week, some of you commented that Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius had legitimate health concerns about how Plan B might affect younger users.  I'm no longer convinced that such concerns are valid, or that they truly factored into Sebelius' decision

When I was a little girl during FDR's time, I remember people in my family talking in hushed, reverent tones about the President of the United States --  as if he were someone so special you mustn't use your normal, everyday voice.  I grew up thinking there was no one in our beloved country who could top the President when it came to being all-wise and all-caring.  I believed that there was something other-worldly, even God-like about Presidents, and I felt safe.

The race to the GOP nomination has very little to do with actually winning the Presidency, and much more to do with selling books. Just about every GOP contender has a new book, or books out, as well as other Republicans connected with the GOP race.

A quick rundown:

Newt Gingrich: “The Crater” & “A Nation Like No Other”

This morning blogger John Aravosis, over at AMERICAblog, wrote about blogging vs. journalism after finding an article from AP about a ruling against a Montana blogger who claimed protections as a journalist while fighting a defamation suit brought by a lawyer she called "a thug and a thief".

In America, various right wing elements have tried to paint the poor, and even the middle class, as moochers who take more from society than they pay back into the system.  This story is meant to counter the seemingly obvious observation that the wealthiest Americans benefit more from our collective system that anyone else.  There's a productive class (rich people) and a consuming class (everyone else) and the morally just have been rewarded while the rest of us learn to be like them.  That's how the fable goes, anyway.

While we argue about economics, candidates and option backs, political voices as disparate as revolutionary Anonymous (youtubing in a typical Guy Fawkes mask), the ACLU, right-wing Forbes Magazine, left-wing Mother Jones and the libertarian Reason Magazine are railing against two sections of the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Defense appropriations are nothing new, of course, but Sections 1031 and 1032 are said to allow, even require, military personnel to engage in domestic law enforcement—a violation of Posse Comitatus. Someone must be for those provisions, because each house of Congress has quietly passed the bill, and the Big Four (Levin, Graham, McCain and Sessions) are now working on a reconciliation to be sent to President Obama, who has the option of a veto. Some outlets claim he has vowed to veto it, but others claim he only wants to veto it because it doesn't provide enough secrecy.

As of this very moment, there are two men that are dominating the news – and both of them are just awful at their chosen professions. But amazingly enough, we are all witnessing mediocrity rise to incredible heights as a lousy NFL quarterback is leading his team to victories while a lousy politician is leading the race for the GOP nomination for President.

As Italy and Spain go tumbling after Greece into an abyss of insolvency, Germany has at last found the will to act boldly in defense of the European Union.

According to the New York Times, Chancellor Angela Merkel has launched a courageous effort to bail out Germany's struggling neighbors...with the International Monetary Fund's money.

Not that she's shirking responsibility. After all, Germany contributes a full six percent of the IMF pool.

And really, why should Germany be any more responsible for bailing out European debtors than the United States (17 percent) and the other 159 non-European members (60 percent). So Germany and Italy share the same currency, what of it?

Newt Gingrich is obsessed with the plight of poor kids these days. He's been all over the place talking about them, and I have to confess, the jollier he gets about his remedies for their plight, the more nervous I become.  It's an odd turn of events and one rife with suspicion.  It's Newt we're talking about.  Newt, who eats mean for breakfast and swallows the seeds.

How do you alleviate economic inequality in America? It's easy to complain about greed and extravagance but much more difficult to come up with practical policies that would make a real difference in the long run.

The default proposal these days is to increase tax rates on top income brackets, starting with an elimination of the Bush tax cuts. That may help a bit, but as you can see from the following graph, the trend toward income concentration did not begin with Bush's presidency, and it would take radical tax increases to get back to 1970s levels. The government would have to strip an additional 30 percent from the incomes of the top ten percent and somehow put that money into everyone else's pockets.

There has been much heated discussion in these pages over whether liberals should support President Obama in the 2012 elections or embrace an independent candidate. In the absence of any credible challenger, these debates have been largely hypothetical. That is about to change.

I am happy to introduce two exciting new candidates who have emerged from the political muck like avenging swamp monsters from outer space. What they lack in experience, charisma, good judgment, and the semblance of any political agenda, they more than make up for in the intangible quality that some call panache, some call chutzpah, and some aren't quite sure what to call. I give you Kat Nove and Jeni Decker.

Hedge Fund manager and former Goldman Sachs banker Leon Cooperman, as self-made a billionaire as any billionaire can be, released today a scathing public letter to Barack Obama. 

I read his letter and tried to keep an open mind, so hopefully if he's got an intern Googling for responses, he'll read my reply.

Dear Mr. Cooperman,

If you, as a self-described man of great wealth feel unfairly attacked and put upon by society and the government, how on Earth do you imagine that the rest of us, also all hard workers, feel?

The spirited discussion from my last post, as well as Wolfrum's takedown of thoughtless libertarianism and Another Trope's well thought out response to his critics, got me thinking about the use of force and police power in general.  I'm unlikely to break any new ground here, but if you'll all indulge me thinking out loud...

There are no great libertarian thinkers. Libertarianism is the absence of thought.

Lately, libertarianism has gained some weird popularity in the U.S. Sort of like Garbage Pail Kids did, but more offensive and less intellectual. Somehow, a growing group of maniacs has decided that things like paying taxes and making sure their handicapped grandma doesn’t die is an affront to their personal liberty.

This year we've decided to stay home for Thanksgiving.  Our nearest family is 350 miles away but every year but one (and now this one) we've managed to be together for this holiday.  We'll be seeing them all in three weeks or so for the Christmas holidays, but I'm missing them acutely today.