" Change Has Come ... For Animals "

TheNewRepublic.com
November 7, 2008


Tuesday's election was a watershed for a lot of people--Democrats, African Americans--but it was also an historic day for animals. Two major referenda passed, bringing unprecedented progress for animal welfare--and new influence for the animal welfare groups behind them.

In California, Proposition 2 mandates that confined animals must have enough space to "lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely." This effectively bans veal crates, chicken "battery cages," and pig "gestation crates," all common in livestock farms. The referendum, which passed with 63% of the vote, will affect an estimated twenty million farm animals, according to the Humane Society.

Massachusetts' Question 3, which passed by a slimmer 56%, will ban dog racing in the state. The state's two betting tracks, which race thousands of Greyhounds annually, must close by the end of 2009.

I spoke with Michael Markarian, Executive Vice President of the Humane Society of the United States, who said that such ballot measures, introduced in states where they are likely to pass, do much more than reform a single states' animal treatment laws. They are a message to American industry as a whole that considering animal welfare is increasingly within their economic self-interest. California agribusinesses, fearing a rise in operating costs, spent heavily to combat Proposition 2 and have nothing to show for it. Markarian is hoping that all animal-related businesses will draw the lesson that it is simply cheaper to improve animal treatment of their own accord, rather than risk a costly political fight they will probably lose.

It is a surprising strategy for groups like the Humane Society and People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals, which have traditionally made ethics, not economics, the centerpiece of their campaigns--but one that may yield substantial results for animals.

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"The Party At Florida's Five-Hour Voting Lines"

TheNewRepublic.com
November 3, 2008

Reader Kathryn Sheps of St. Petersburg, FL, writes:

I voted early on Sunday Nov. 2nd, the last day of early voting here in St
Petersburg, FL. We arrived to the polling place at 11:30 am, about a half-hour
before the office opened for the day. We expected that we would be there early,
and that Sunday Football might keep people away from the polls until later in
the afternoon. Well, we were wrong, a line had been forming since 7 in the
morning (again, the polling place didn't open until noon)!

It was an incredibly festive environment - people were laughing and chatting,
Obama volunteers were passing out bottled water, local candidates (mostly
Democratic candidates, I noticed), were shaking hands, thanking people for being
there to vote, talking about their platforms. Kids of all colors were playing
together on the courthouse lawn. A violinist with a small amplifier had staked
out a position, and was playing for the crowd. A couple, who had nearly left the
early voting lines the day before came back and brought a couple of hundred
pizzas down to the lines, to keep people from leaving the line up due to hunger.
The mood was light-hearted, fun and festive, despite the occasional rain
showers. I was wishing I had brought my camera. We finally got in to vote
at around 4pm. It was 4:30 by the time we had left the polling place. It was a
4.5-5 hour wait, and I'll remember it for the rest of my life.

Email viewfromthepolls@gmail.com to share your own story. And send photos!

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"The View From Your Polling Place"

TheNewRepublic.com
November 3, 2008


A lot of you are voting early this year--as many as 9.8 million ballots have already been cast in the 31 states that allow early voting in person. With the massive numbers of newly-registered voters, your local polling place could be quite a scene as early voting continues, and there's no telling what election day will bring.

We'd like to know what it looks like out there. Are people camping out for Georgia's four-hour lines? Did Florida's newly extended voting hours ameliorate voters, or is it getting unruly? We've set up a new feature we're calling "The View From Your Polling Place" as a way for you to share photos and stories from your local ballot stations.

When you head out to the polls, snap a photo and send it to us at viewfromthepolls@gmail.com. We'll post the most interesting, most unusual, and funniest right here on The Plank. Include any backstory, explanation, or anecdotes along with the photo for us to post as well.

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"TNR's Week In Review (Oct. 26 - Nov. 1)"

TheNewRepublic.com
October 31, 2008

• It's a little tense here with the election so close, and there've been a few in-house debates. Is divided government a good thing, or is it a total disaster? Does Bobby Jindal have a bright future as Republicans' 2012 nominee, or are his chances "basically nil"? Is an Obama victory inevitable, or still up in the air? On second thought, maybe it's just like 95% inevitable, unless that apparent inevitably risks a serious backlash that drives up Republican turnout. Now you see why we're stressing!
  
• One thing we can all agree on: Jon Chait's puppet show explaining the McCain-Palin feud is awesome.
  
• Beyond the presidential campaign: The bizarre anti-gay marriage campaign in California has put a friendly face on ugly ideas. And the Bush administration escalated the war on terror by invading Syria, with serious implications for the next administration.
  
• Another not-so-good week for Republicans. McCain's sloppy, ticket-dragging campaign infuriated local party leaders across the country. One of the last Northeastern Republicans in Congress told us how he was terrified of Rahm Emanuel, who maybe told him, "From one friend to another, we're going to spend a fucking three million dollars to defeat you." Some desperate Republicans are even pretending to be Democrats, to mixed effect. American Jews, long targeted by both parties, have finally (and decisively) thrown their support behind Obama.
  
• Not to be outdone by the Republicans, a few Democrats imploded, too. Like Pennsylvania Congressman Paul Kanjorski, notable for his impending defeat by Lou "Republican Obama" Barletta (also know as "America's Mayor" and "illegal-is-illegal"). Congressional veteran John Murtha got totally swift-boated, not that Democrats should bother missing him anyway.
  
• Here's hoping that things will be calmer a week from now, when Obama will have to start thinking about whether to say his middle name on Inauguration Day. At least the campaign reporters, who after two years on the trail have all but lost contact with the outside world, will finally get to come home.

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"The End Of Conservatism"

TheNewRepublic.com
October 27, 2008

This piece from the 1992 presidential campaign, by TNR senior editor John B. Judis, holds up remarkably well:

When conservatives repeatedly declare that George Bush's failures as president are the result of his having spurned their ideas and movement, they are harboring illusions born of their fleeting success under Ronald Reagan. In fact, the conservative movement that carried Reagan to victory barely exists any longer; it has dissipated into various cantankerous and confused factions; and the ideas associated with it have become obsolete, discredited, or heavily in dispute among conservatives themselves.

Judis explains that the very idea of a conservative movement is a sort of misnomer--that, in fact, Bush Sr. (and, we now know, Bush Jr.) never could have enjoyed the success that Reagan did.

Until the mid-1950s there was no common body of "conservative" political ideas or any movement that was called "conservative." Instead, conservatives and the right consisted of disconnected and often feuding factions that could claim few common causes.What has happened over the last five years is that American conservatives -- who created a coherent movement about thirty-five years ago and won national power in 1980 -- have slipped back into the chaos and impotence that prevailed before the mid-'50s. ...

What conservatives were discovering was that they had aligned themselves with a movement that was genuinely reactionary and that by its nature would dwindle rather than grow. ... As Bush enters his last political campaign, he has suffered as much from the conservatives' decline as they have from his.

Read the entire piece (and try to remember you're reading about George H.W. Bush and not his son) here.

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TNR.com’s Week In Review (Oct. 18-25)

TheNewRepublic.com
Oct. 24, 2008

• Not a good week for Republicans, beginning with Colin Powell's moving endorsement of Obama (although Powell doctrine experts saw it coming). North Carolina's senate race turned south for Republican Elizabeth Dole, whose opponent is a real Cinderella story. Republicans are nominating such total wingnuts in Congressional races that even dedicated conservatives are turned off. John McCain is losing in his own backyard. In fact, he's losing pretty much everywhere: Nate Silver gives him a 3.7% chance of winning.

• We debated Sarah Palin's future in the Republican Party: Is she already on her way to certain nomination in 2012, or has her disastrous performance made the Republican primary fundamentally unwinnable for her? She's certainly lost the Leon Wieseltier primary.

• More fallout from the recession: It might be kinda good for the environment, Bush handled the economy worse than Herbert Hoover, and "secret socialist" is the new "secret Muslim." Speaking of socialists, Brian Moore, presidential nominee for the Socialist Party USA, sits down for an interview and says things like, "We were stung temporarily by the Cold War and Stalinism."

• David Axelrod, self-described "keeper of the message," may have just learned how to conquer race in politics. In case there was any doubt, TNR officially endorsed Barack Obama for president, while Jeffrey Rosen warned us of a judicial apocalypse if McCain wins.

• Michael Crowley detailed the sloppy proliferation of polls, and Tim Marchman talked about baseball fans' sloppy distaste for LOOGIES.

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"World's Most Popular Evangelist"

TheNewRepublic.com
October 23, 2008

K.A. Paul, whom The New Republic dubbed "the world's most popular evangelist," endorsed Barack Obama for president yesterday.The Indian-born US resident, who worked as spirital advisor to Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor, and Slobodan Milosevic, among others, explained his endorsement:

Speaking from an evangelical perspective, the current administration, I believe, has delayed the second coming of Jesus. Since the Iraq war, missionaries have been forced out of many countries, their work unfinished. As it says in Matthew 24:14, 'the gospel will be preached in the whole world.' The Bush administration's Iraq war policy has been in direct contradiction to Matthew.

TNR Senior Editor Michelle Cottle's 2004 profile of Paul explains how a man with such incredible influence--Paul recounts his experience convincing the notoriously brutal Haitian revolutionary Guy Philippe to lay down his arms--can be so unknown in the United States. Paul's Houston-based Global Peace Initiative has gained him stature among evangelical leaders, who speak in awe of his popularity abroad:

By all accounts, Dr. Paul's overseas peace rallies are sights to behold. Most take place in Africa or India, where villagers stream in from around the countryside to see, as one Indian paper put it, "the mesmerizing evangelist," who has become a minor celebrity across much of both continents. A "small" rally is defined as an audience of 10,000 or 20,000. Large rallies stretch upward of a million. (GPI claims its largest was three million attendees at a 2001 event in Lagos, Nigeria.) Surrounding the speakers' podium, on which Paul is joined by local politicos and traveling dignitaries, bodies crowd together in a sea of humanity. "I hesitate to tell people how big these crowds are, because they can't comprehend it," says Texas oil billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, who served as co-chair of GPI until recently. Until you see the crowds yourself, you assume the numbers are inflated, agrees Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who traveled to India with Paul in January 2002. "But there were maybe seventy-five thousand, a hundred thousand," Huckabee says of the rally he attended. "I'm not sure I ever saw that many people except at a major football game."

Read more on what makes KA Paul such a fascinating--and controversial--global religious leader, and why he is so unknown in the US, here.

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