And no, I don't mean the rum drink.
Anyway.
Could someone please explain to me the current travel restrictions on Americans visiting Cuba?
And please, if you've a mind to, please read Steve Benen's thoughtful post over at the Daily Dish (congrats Andrew on your marriage!), and explain to me 1) why he's wrong and 2) why Hillary's satisfaction with the status quo makes any sense what-so-ever.
Lest you forget that GOP protestations of patriotism are limited to war at the expense of any other American values like, say, liberty, or the rule of law, it's now official: Republicans are against breast-feeding:
In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
Glenn Greenwald has the call on Bush's most dangerous speech to date regarding the impending (so the neo-cons hope) war with Iran.
After outlining the mendacities upon which Bush is building the case for war, Greenwald makes the scariest observation I've read:
The true danger here is that even if there would be marginally more political opposition to an attack on Iran than there was for an attack on Iraq -- and surely there would be, perhaps considerably more opposition -- those who favor an attack are still politically strong within the administration. And there simply are no factions which would oppose such an attack that are anywhere near strong enough to stop one. Who and where are they? What are the political factions which have sufficient political strength and who are willing to risk political capital to stop such a confrontation?
By stark and dispositive contrast, those who are pining for an attack on Iran -- from the Weekly Standard to the AEI and various generic warmongers of the Dick Cheney/National Review strain, as well as our most pious evangelical Christian warriors -- are zelaous adherents, True Believers. Bringing about a military confrontation with Iran has always been, and continues to be, their paramount priority.
Yesterday President Bush gave a speech to the American Legion in which he outlined his case against Iran.
I found the similarities between this speech and the rationales given in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to be as disquieting as they were border-line mendacious.
Too many Democratic leaders appear to feel that opposing the President's war-mongering will lead to charges that they are "weak" on defense.
Please let me assure you that I and many like me understand that strong defense does not require an unending series of needless wars and that we are prepared to fully support any politician brave enough to stand up and say so.
I hope to count you as such.
Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee released a report alleging that WH and DoJ officials engaged in illegal activity in its firings of the Gonzales 8 US attorneys.
From the Washington Post:
The report says that Congress's seven-month investigation into the firings raises "serious concerns" that senior White House and Justice Department aides involved in the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year may have obstructed justice and violated federal statutes that protect civil service employees, prohibit political retaliation against government officials and cover presidential records.
Of late, the trend in the political blogosphere has been towards group blogs and I have a theory as to why.
The Bush administration.
I know I've talked about this before, but I suspect BushCorp™'s myriad sins have simply left solo bloggers like your CaliBlogger too exhausted for proper outrage.
Torture.
Renditions.
Gitmo.
Abu Ghraib.
Illegal surveillance.
Katrina.
Global warming.
War in Iraq.
War in Afghanistan.
War in Iran.
"Justice" Department.
Alberto Gonzales.
Right wing Supreme Court.
And now, Scooter Libby.
Sigh.
I started this blog in order to express my rage and incredulity over the outcome of the '04 elections. At that time I couldn't bear the thought that my fellow citizens had really re-elected this idiot.
And in the intervening time I've done my level best to keep up, but, in the face of so much incompetence and corruption I'm frankly overwhelmed.
So, though I suppose that commuting the sentence of a convicted perjurer in a country where possessing an ounce of pot can land you in jail should put me in a proper lather, I find it does no such thing.
It just makes me feel tired.
So, for those of you seeking some proper outrage I can only recommend checking out a few of my brethren in the blogosphere:
Shaun Mullen:
It would have been one thing if the Libby commutation had been an aberration. But here is a man who as governor of Texas openly mocked a woman whom he had just put to death by pursing his lips and squeaking “please don’t kill me” after she had appealed to him for clemency.
As BushCorp™ hawks continue to push for war with Iran, no-one serves them so obsequiously as the press.
And especially guilty in this regard is the nation's "paper of record", the New York Times and this week's stenographer, Michael Gordon.
So, unsurprisingly, given their cheer leading for the fiasco in Iraq, the Times is now frontpaging more Dod dictation.
Read Glenn Greenwald for the gristly details.
Other than as yet another sign that Bush is now doomed to irrelevancy, the death of the immigration overhaul is not a good thing.
Yes, it was flawed. Among other things the proposed guest worker program, offering no avenue for permanent residence and citizenship, could have the effect of creating a permanent underclass similar to those troubling England and Europe as a source of radicalism bred from hopelessness.
But the failure to address and normalize the status of the purported 12 million undocumented workers currently residing in the US accomplishes much the same thing on a far vaster scale.
So, since it becomes ever clearer that the GOP represents the fraction of the US that is ever given to resentment and fear of the "other", the only possible solution is to elect Democrats.
But you probably already guessed that.
One of the enduring paradoxes of current American politics is the question of how, in the face of overwhelming evidence, George W. Bush can continue policies so widely viewed as destined for failure?
And even more exasperating, how can 29% of Americans still support him in that effort?
In his new book, now available to pre-order at Amazon, Salon contributor and CaliBlogger must-read, Glenn Greenwald, posits a fairly straightforward explanation:
At the heart of this process lies a binary moralistic view of the world, one which seeks to define every conflict and political challenge, both foreign and domestic, as a battle of Good versus Evil. The crux of this mindset is the continuous identification of an Enemy, one which embodies Evil and which must be stopped, typically destroyed, at all costs. No competing considerations, no rational arguments, no counter-balancing objectives, not even constraints of reality or resources, can compete with the moral imperative of this mission. The mission of destroying Evil trumps all.
And the converse then also falls comfortably into place: those who seek to destroy Evil -- whether it be America, or President Bush, or the right-wing political faction that has supported the Bush presidency -- are, by definition, the embodiment of Good. Thus, whatever steps they take, whatever instruments they employ in service of their mission, are intrinsically justifiable because, by definition, they are employed in service of the Good.
One of the worst failures leading up to the invasion of Iraq was the unwillingness of the nation's media to question BushCorp™ assertions about the need for war.
Especially egregious was the New York times whose front-page placement of stories by warmongers such as Judith Miller lent the prestige of the US' "paper of record" to the neo-con line of bullshit.
So, it is especially troubling that, despite its mea culpas on its Iraq coverage, the Times is doing it again, this time transcribing, and therefore giving credence to administration assertions about our next target, Iran:
Even beyond its nuclear program, Iran is emerging as an increasing source of trouble for the Bush administration by inflaming the insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and in Gaza, where it has provided military and financial support to the militant Islamic group Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip.
Note that the numerous claims here are presented not as assertions, not as arguments, but as facts. And they are not even accompanied by the qualification that these were asserted by the article's anonymous "administration officials." Rather, they are simply stated, by the Times itself, as unquestionable facts. And they are obviously inflammatory "facts," as they depict Iran as, more or less, at war with the U.S. in multiple countries, arming and funding groups directly at war with our military.
While most talk on the web concerned with possible third party candidates for the 2008 presidential election focuses on that dying species, the liberal Republican, mostly in the form of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, I'd suggest keeping an eye on another type of Republican altogether, once (and future?) Libertarian Ron Paul.
Why, you ask, does your CaliBlogger think the still obscure Texas congressman might make a flanking run at the presidency?
First, of course is that Paul's consistently libertarian views put him at odds with Bush's Republican party which is increasingly authoritarian, Christianist, and interventionist. Paul doesn't just mouth platitudes about small government, he actually believes that government has no business meddling in foreign countries, has no business spying on its own citizens, and has no business monitoring what people do in their bedrooms, and who with.
Secondly, Paul, unlike Ross Perot whose Reform Party was more personality cult than political organization, would presumably be running under the auspices of an existing party, the Libertarian.
And while small compared to the major parties, the Libertarian Party is the largest of US third parties, and most importantly, consistently shows the ability to put a candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.
Finally, perhaps because of his libertarian leanings, Ron Paul is an even rarer bird than the liberal Republican, a Republican with actual grassroots support.
While Republicans are typically funded through astroturf groups that are funded by just a few wealthy individuals or corporations, Paul is getting support and interest from that most democratic of modern amalgamations, the Internet. From the Washington Post:
Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times -- more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
No one's more surprised at this robust Web presence than Paul himself, a self-described "old-school," "pen-and-paper guy" who's serving his 10th congressional term and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president in 1988.
"To tell you the truth, I hadn't heard about this YouTube and all the other Internet sites until supporters started gathering in them," confessed Paul, 71, who said that he's raised about $100,000 after each of the three debates. Not bad considering that his campaign had less than $10,000 when his exploratory committee was formed in mid-February. "I tell you I've never raised money as efficiently as that, in all my years in Congress, and all I'm doing is speaking my mind."
One of the key features of BushCorp™ policy making is becoming increasingly apparent, its penchant for governance by unintended consequences.
In North Korea Bush's dissolution of Clinton era accords led to Pyonyang's unsupervised development of nuclear capability.
On the Gulf Coast, Bush's hack appointees combined with the Republican penchant for the privatization of government responsibilities led to the exacerbation of the devastation by Hurricane Katrina.
And in Iraq...well 'nuff said.
So Hamas' recent takeover of Gaza should really come as no surprise to anyone watching the unfolding of BushCorp™ policy in the area.
For a good overview of this sorry situation you might try this Washington Post article, but let me break it down for you.
First the US, typically, blindly backed Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza leaving a power vacuum in the area.
Then Bush, drunk on his own pro-democracy rhetoric, if not NA beer, encouraged Palestinian elections on the assumption that US backed Fatah, despite its record of incompetence and corruption (wonder how Bush missed that?) would win handily.
Funny thing though. Hamas, whose consistently anti-Israel rhetoric and behavior, as well as its more effective humanitarian activities (relative to Fatah anyway) makes it popular with the Palestinian street, won the election and took over the government. Hey, Hamas might be fundamentalist terrorists, but at least they get things done.
And, in an unsurprising betrayal of its pro-democracy rhetoric, rather than recognizing the need to talk to Palestine's democratically elected government, Bush organized a global effort to cut off support for Palestine in hopes of toppling the regime in favor of US backed Fatah.
Another funny story. It turns out that Palestinians, on seeing their already desperate plight worsened, apparently are focusing their hatred, not on their own elected government, but on Fatah, a group now seen not only as incompetent and corrupt, but also as a US/Israeli collaborator.
Oops.
You know, if five years ago you had asked me whether the Israeli/Palestinian conflict could get any more hopeless, I'd have been hard pressed to envision a situation worse than the cycle of violence which already gripped the region.
Then again, five years ago I didn't know then what I now now about Bush's bizarro Midas' touch.
President Bush has claimed that the only way we can lose in Iraq is if we leave.
But what if that assertion is no more accurate than any other assertion he makes?
What if the US Army, for all its might, stays in Iraq and is defeated none-the-less?
James Wolcott puts into words an idea that's been rattling around your CaliBlogger's brain for some time now:
On the op-ed pages and the pundit panels and in the presidential debates, the onus is put on those who advocate withdrawal, even wimpy, slow-mo, phased withdrawal. They're put on the defensive as the questions are posed, "What happens if the US withdraws? What would that do to American credibility? Are you prepared to take responsibility for a bloody aftermath?"
But the counter-question also needs to be asked:
"What happens if the US stays--and loses? How prepared are you to deal with that eventuality?"
Joe Lieberman (I-BushCorp™), fresh from his fact free fact-finding trip in Iraq, now has some sage and sober advice.
With the conquest of Iraq moving along swimmingly despite the continued efforts of a few bad apples, it's time to move on to our next conquest: Iran.
"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman said. "And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."
...
"We've said so publicly that the Iranians have a base in Iran at which they are training Iraqis who are coming in and killing Americans. By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers," Lieberman said. "Well, we can tell them we want them to stop that. But if there's any hope of the Iranians living according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them."
As the Bush administration continues its efforts to distract Americans from the disaster in Iraq by drumming up support for an attack on Iran, it's well to keep in mind some of the lessons from its previous efforts to manipulate a compliant media.
Today's case in point, an article by Robin Wright in to day's Washington Post breathlessly describing Iran's purported efforts to supply weapons to both Shia insurgent groups in Iran and the Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan. Just read the first paragraph and see if you can spot the problem:
Iran has increased arms shipments to both Iraq's Shiite extremists and Afghanistan's Taliban in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to pressure American and other Western troops operating in its two strategic neighbors, according to senior U.S. and European officials.
Iran has increased arms shipments to both Iraq's Shiite extremists and Afghanistan's Taliban in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to pressure American and other Western troops operating in its two strategic neighbors, according to senior U.S. and European officials.
For someone whose self-proclaimed mythology portrays himself as dedicated to his ideals to the point of obstinacy, President Bush has shown a remarkable ability to betray those ideals for political expediency.
This has been most clearly obvious in the support that an administration purportedly dedicated to spreading democracy shows for some of the worst tyrants in the world.
Take Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf...please.
(Sorry)
Musharraf has ruled Pakistan since 1999, when a military-led coup toppled the democratically elected civilian prime minister. The country is due for elections later this year, but Musharraf has said he wants the outgoing parliament to give him another five-year term before the public votes. He has also indicated he is reluctant to shed his role as head of the army, as the constitution requires.
If nothing else, the one thing the current administration is good at the memorable catch phrase.
But a good catch phrase doesn't make it true.
A case in point is the president's repeated assertion that "we're fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them here", or the equally catchy, and its equally misguided cousin, SecDef Gates', "It's important to defend this country on the extremists' 10-yard line, and not on our 10-yard line".
As witnessed by today's news of a home-grown plot to blow up the jet fuel lines to JFK airport, fighting the civil war in Iraq is hardly helping.
In fact I would call Iraq irrelevant to such plots except for this: it serves to further inflame and bolster the wills of those who hate American behavior both around the world and, as we see, here in the US.
You'll be reading the above headline on many an article today as we mark the 40th anniversary of the release of one of the greatest, and most talked about albums in pop music history, the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Talked about? How about obsessed over? From Rolling Stone:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time. From the title song's regal blasts of brass and fuzz guitar to the orchestral seizure and long, dying piano chord at the end of "A Day in the Life," the thirteen tracks on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are the pinnacle of the Beatles' eight years as recording artists. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were never more fearless and unified in their pursuit of magic and transcendence.
To remove Sgt. Pepper from the context in which it was originally released can only hurt it’s reputation. The Beatles put together albums full of stronger songs both before (Revolver) and after (Abbey Road) it’s release, but Sgt. Pepper has to be their masterpiece simply because nothing else approaches the ambitious, sweeping, sonic majesty of it all.
From the opening murmurs of an expectant crowd on the title track to the crashing piano chord at the end of ‘A Day in the Life’ thirty nine minutes later, the album pays tribute to almost every musical influence Paul McCartney ever had and John Lennon ever dreamed (from english dance hall on ‘When I’m 64′ to LSD hallucinations on ‘Lucky in the Sky with Diamonds’).
Calling it a ‘failed’ concept album (Lennon said they stopped caring about ‘Sgt. Pepper’ by track three), is missing the point. An album that should be taken as a whole, not a couple hit songs plus filler, was the point. And it was understood immediately, as Sgt. Pepper was the first album radio stations played in full.
The Beatles took everyone who ‘bought the ticket’ to places where popular music was never intended to go. A symphony for a young girl leaving home. Making the boredom of the morning a frantic mix of guitars and animals. An ode to a meter maid.
It was new and different, and because of that it was taken up as a representation of the social and political changes of the sixties, even though all it was and all it intended to be was a great set of tunes.
A hundred years from now, musicologists say, Beatles songs will be so well known that every child will learn them as nursery rhymes, and most people won't know who wrote them. They will have become sufficiently entrenched in popular culture that it will seem as if they've always existed, like "Oh! Susanna," "This Land Is Your Land" and "Frère Jacques."
During his Tuesday interview with Al Gore, Keith Olbermann referred to America's continued state of fear as "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder".
And while that might be somewhat overstating the thing, certainly the government and the MSM still seems, earnest in its attempts to keep the public looking over its collective shoulders (c.f. today's hysteria over the great TB scare).
Certainly though it does sometimes seem that, in addition to non-Texan hot sauce, the biggest import from NEW YORK CITY?! is the paranoid spirit behind its "See Something, Say Something" campaign.
For the latest expression of American PTSD (APTSD) we go to an innocent looking fax machine in Ashland, Mass. From the AP:
ASHLAND, Mass. --A faulty bank fax printed a message that was misinterpreted as a bomb threat Wednesday, leading authorities to evacuate more than a dozen neighboring businesses and a day care center.
The branch manager of the
Bank of America called police about 10 a.m. after receiving a fax containing images of a lit match and a bomb with a fuse, bank spokesman Ernesto Anguilla said.
In his op-ed in the WaPo Harold Meyerson succinctly sums up the futility of our occupation of Iraq:
We are fighting for a national government that is not national but sectarian, and has shown no capacity to govern. We are training Iraq's security forces to combat sectarian violence though those forces are thoroughly sectarian and have themselves engaged in large-scale sectarian violence. We are fighting for a nonsectarian, pluralistic Iraq, though whatever nonsectarian and pluralistic institutions existed before our invasion have long since been blasted out of existence. In the December 2005 parliamentary elections, the one nonsectarian party, which ran both Shiite and Sunni candidates, won just 8 percent of the vote.
With first quarter economic news dour at best, it's good to know that some American industries are thriving.
With my internet connection temporarily down, I had the distinct, um, pleasure, of getting my morning news fix from cable.
Apparently the nation is about to be hit by a devastating outbreak of untreatable tuberculosis, causing, judging from the wall to wall coverage, deaths in the millions.
Or not.
Amid all the breathless coverage bewailing how someone so infected could slip through the security dragnet that envelops the US (or, at least it seems, should), one quote seems to be missing:
"We believe that his degree of infectiousness is quite low," Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, told a news conference.
Your CaliBlogger's lived in Pasadena for going on four years now, which, by California standards, makes him a "native".
That being the case I feel obligated to engage in a wee bit of local boosterism.
Pasadena is well known for the parade and the bowl game, and is as well home to Caltech and JPL (sidenote: because of this latter, don't be surprised if you confront a loudmouth standing next to you in line at the Laemmle when he responds that yes, he is a rocket scientist thank you).
And for such a relatively small city (approximately 140,000) Pasadena has been birthplace or home to some remarkable individuals. Actress Sally (yes we really do like you) Field, cooking show grande dame Julia Child, and renowned director Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz) were born here.
Jackie Robinson moved here when he was 1 and graduated from Pasadena's John Muir High School before going on to break Major League Baseball's color barrier. And General George S. Patton was born in neighboring San Gabriel, his father serving as Pasadena's first City Attorney.
To this illustrious group we can now add a, perhaps, future president, Bill Richardson.
As it turns out Richardson, who formally announced his candidacy yesterday, was born at Pasadena's venerable Huntington Hospital. Not that he hung out for long. Joel Achenbach writes in the Washington Post:
The Constitution limits the presidency to people born in the United States. Richardson meets that provision only because his father sent his mother by train to California just before she went into labor. He was born in Pasadena, Calif. Then his mother took him promptly back to Mexico City.
"My father had a complex about not having been born in the United States," Richardson said. His father, son of a biologist who collected museum specimens, had been born on a boat heading to Nicaragua. "If my father didn't have this complex, I wouldn't be able to run for president. I wish I'd thanked him. One of the regrets I always have is that I never thanked him."
But Richardson's problem is that Latino voters don't know he's Latino. And although there's no guarantee that they will vote for him simply because of his ethnicity, his trailblazing endeavor would certainly bring him a much greater share of attention from the nation's fastest-growing minority community once they do find out.
So rather than an Iowa cornfield or a New Hampshire gymnasium, or even his home state, which has the largest percentage of Latino residents — 43% — he came to Los Angeles. California's earlier Feb. 5 primary has inflated the importance of the state's role in the nomination process, but the driving force behind Richardson's unusual announcement location is the growing role of Latino voters in American politics.
Unsurprisingly for a foreign policy whose main point of consistency is its subservience to the law of unintended consequences, the Iraq escalation surge may actually be working, sort of.
Ostensibly intended to give the Iraqi government breathing room (or at least vacation time) in which to seek the political compromises EVERYBODY recognizes to be necessary to a reasonably peaceful Iraq, the surge may be assisting one of the militias we are ostensibly battling.
But while the ineffectual government appears no closer to resolving the differences between the various factions in Iraq, another group is, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
From the Washington Post:
The 33-year-old populist is reaching out to a broad array of Sunni leaders, from politicians to insurgents, and purging extremist members of his Mahdi Army militia who target Sunnis. Sadr's political followers are distancing themselves from the fragile Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which is widely criticized as corrupt, inefficient and biased in favor of Iraq's majority Shiites. And moderates are taking up key roles in Sadr's movement, professing to be less anti-American and more nationalist as they seek to improve Sadr's image and position him in the middle of Iraq's ideological spectrum.
"We want to aim the guns against the occupation and al-Qaeda, not between Iraqis," Ahmed Shaibani, 37, a cleric who leads Sadr's newly formed reconciliation committee, said as he sat inside Sadr's heavily guarded compound here.
For the past few days I've been meaning to mention a must-read article by author and UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson, but with scandals and revelations about the Bush administration coming at an hour to hour clip it's been hard to find the time.
None the less, professor Johnson's analysis of the state of the nation and its place in the world is a must read for those who hold hope that the dream of America can yet be salvaged, though his prescription isn't easy:
I believe that there is only one solution to the crisis we face. The American people must make the decision to dismantle both the empire that has been created in their name and the huge (still growing) military establishment that undergirds it. It is a task at least comparable to that undertaken by the British government when, after World War II, it liquidated the British Empire. By doing so, Britain avoided the fate of the Roman Republic -- becoming a domestic tyranny and losing its democracy, as would have been required if it had continued to try to dominate much of the world by force.
Much like when Al Capone got sent up the river, not for murder or racketeering, but for tax evasion, key Iraq war designer and cheerleader Paul Wolfowitz gets the boot from the World Bank.
Too bad Wolfy won't have the opportunity to be further pilloried for his crimes in the run-up to the war in Iraq, but oh well, gone is gone.
By the way, as a public service to Democratic presidential candidates (and Republicans too, if they would only listen), a good response to the Jack Bauer terrorism question does exist:
What's wrong with your hypothetical response is that it's not emotionally satisfying at all; it's cliched and cerebral, like Dukakis' reaction when asked about how he would respond to news that his wife had been raped.
An emotionally satisfying answer would be 'No one under my command will torture enemy prisoners. Period. End of discussion' or 'Many Americans believe in the existence of the devil. Torture is pure evil, it is the devil's work, and I abhor and reject it.'
Two points on the GOP debate.
First, I find it incredible that the Fox audience, and the vast majority of MSM commentators, applauded Giuliani's take-down of Ron Paul for suggesting that al Qaeda's attacks were in some way a reaction to US policy in the mid-east.
The distance from reality that suggests is truly scary.
Further, I'm stunned at just how many people seem to be OK with torture. Not surprised mind you, I've always suspected that the lip service pay to freedom and the rule of law was about as deep as a yellow ribbon.
But for those of you who think American values has meaning beyond militarism, corporatism and gay-bashing, I recommend a couple of articles, yet again, exposing the damage torture does to both the tortured and the torturers.
Though I'm not a big believer in Evil since I think that minimizes the extent to which average people can commit acts that are themselves evil, Andrew Sullivan makes the case that torture is not only evil, but represents a threat to America which no terrorist could possibly match.
The evil of torture is therefore not just a moral one. It is a political one. A constitutional republic dedicated before everything to the protection of liberty cannot legalize torture and remain a constitutional republic. It imports into itself a tumor of pure tyranny. That tumor, we know from history, always always spreads, as it has spread in the US military these past shameful years. The fact that hefty proportions of US soldiers now support its use as a routine matter reveals how deep the rot has already gone. The fact that now a majority of Republican candidates proudly support such torture has rendered the GOP the party most inimical to liberty in America. When you combine torture's evil with the claims of the hard right that a president can ignore all laws and all treaties in wartime, and that "wartime" is now permanent, you have laid the ground for the abolition of the American experiment in self-government. Imagine another terror attack, with Rudy Giuliani as president, and a mandate to arrest and torture at will, with no need to follow or even address the rule of law. We would no longer be a republic. We would be in a protectorate of one man.
As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.
To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.
This has had disastrous consequences. Revelations of abuse feed what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was drafted under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, calls the "recuperative power" of the terrorist enemy.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its "recuperative power."
The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.
Interrogator: Sign ze papers old man.
Prisoner: I can not sign ze papers.
Interrogator: You must sign ze papers! Why will you not sign ze papers?!
Prisoner: Because you have broken both my hands!
[StolenAdapted from Cheech and Chong]
"The door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card," Comey told the spellbound senators. "They came over and stood by the bed." They wanted Ashcroft to sign off on an eavesdropping plan that Comey and others at the Justice Department had already called legally indefensible.
Ashcroft "lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter" -- that Comey was right. "And as he laid back down, he said, 'But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general. There is the attorney general.' And he pointed to me."
Gonzales and Card "did not acknowledge me," Comey testified. "They turned and walked from the room."
"I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man," Comey told the quiet chamber. His voice grew thick and he cleared his throat as he explained how he prepared to resign. "I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis."
You know it's odd, but when someone like Rev. Falwell dies, and even though I don't believe in them, I can't help but sometimes wish that heaven and hell truly did exist.
Just so that people like Mr. Falwell can reap the eternal reward they so richly deserve.
Why we fight?
In an article that encapsulates stuff you already knew about Iraq but never expressed in so many words McClatchy lays it out: Our soldiers are dying to maintain the current positions of Iraqi politicians who are incapable of compromise because they are too jealous of their own current status and the narrow interests of their own power base.
And be clear this is not just a Sunni vs. Shia thing, but is caused by the divisions within those groups as well as with the Kurdish Iraqis.
U.S. officials warn that the longer the impasse persists over laws on provincial elections and the distribution of Iraq’s oil wealth among Shiite Muslims, Kurds and Sunnis, the greater the risk that the surge of 30,000 more U.S. troops into Baghdad, which is intended to provide a security umbrella for political reforms, will be for naught.
Until the political feuding ends, “we are just maintaining the status quo,” said a U.S. military official who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
As I mentioned when I first heard of his death, I was, and remain, incapable of properly eulogizing one of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut.
I am, happily, quite capable of linking to interesting articles about him.
Case in point, this article from the Onion AV Club: 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
Enjoy.
Ever have a tune float around in your head for no apparent reason? Happens to me all the time. Sometimes for long periods of time.
In fact for most of this winter I've been walking around with the strains of California Dreamin' whisping about my brain.
Well, like all those brown leaves and gray skies, another thought keeps echoing in my mind, gosh its too bad Bill Richardson is stuck in the second tier of candidates 'cos, whatever his deficiencies as a campaigner, he'd sure make a good president.
I find it heartening that the governor has, at the very least, some very smart media people working for him.
And, as I've mentioned before, after 8 years of a know-nothing presidency, the country could really use a president who has a clue. Couldn't it?
So with no further ado, but with help from this new-fangled YouTube thingy, a couple more looks at Bill Richardson. (H/t Andrew Sullivan).
I find it heartening that the governor has, at the very least, some very smart media people working for him.
I just wanted to note an article in the Post by John M. Barry about the nation's still inadequate response to hurricane Katrina. His article should be read in full, but his main point is that much of the continued devastation still being faced by the gulf coast is the result of infrastructure changes (levees, canals) to the Mississippi river made for the benefit of the nation as a whole rather than to Louisiana in particular. That being the case, not only is it the nation's responsibility to amend these effects, but also it is the nation as a whole that will suffer if changes are not made (though certainly Louisiana will suffer most directly.
Like I said, read the article.
Also, in other Louisiana news, outgoing governor Kathleen Blanco expresses her outrage at the Federal government's continued foot-dragging response to the needs of Katarina's victims.
"It's all political," she began. "You know, this country's run on politics. But when a disaster comes that is not what you expect, you expect a human reaction, not a political reaction. And I will tell you, there's a void," Blanco drawled, "a total void of human response. And it's extremely discouraging as an American citizen. It makes me angry and extremely disappointed."
[snip]
The experience of securing that funding and trying to get access to it has not been pleasant. "I absolutely hated the idea of having to go to Washington, D.C., to deal with the last Congress, because their attitude was brutal," she said. "The old Congress made us feel like we were pretty stupid for standing in the way of the hurricane and that we were asking for far too much assistance.
"They ignored the fact that it wasn't the hurricane, per se, that caused our damage," Blanco explained in a forceful, yet measured, tone. "It was the failure, an engineering failure, of the federal levees that caused our enormous grief. If we had not had levee failures, people would have walked home, and today we would not even be sitting here talking about it." She did say the new Congress was "definitely more interested in trying to help us."
One of my new favoritist websites is Watching America which features translated articles from the foreign press.
The views the world press hold of the US can be eye-opening, alarming, refreshing, and, on occasion, amusing. From Al Anbat, Jordan:
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki fled before sitting down next to American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The reason given for his departure was the red see-through dress worn by a violinist who performed at dinner. The dress apparently offended the dignity of Mottaki, who is said to be a deeply religious politician. According to the media at Sharm al-Sheikh, this was the reason that there was no rapprochement or meeting between Mottaki and Rice.
We are not necessarily convinced by this explanation. We have followed carefully the mutually destructive war that has been raging between Washington and Tehran, and it must be said that if we were to accept this theory, one would have to conclude that mutual understanding between the United States and Iran will be impossible so long as there is an American Secretary of State who wears miniskirts … and who shows her legs and her bust to those sitting near her. Naturally, this would result in unequal negotiations between Rice and Mottaki because the Minister would be at a loss as his eyes wandered from her mind to her legs!!
So, Darth Cheney visited Iraq to urge lawmakers there to forgo their usual 2 month summer vacation.
"I'll be blunt: I told some of the Iraqis with whom I met that we are buying them [time] for political reconciliation, and that every day we buy it with American blood," [Defense Secretary Robert M.]Gates said at a Senate hearing Wednesday. "For this group to go out for two months, it would, in my opinion, be unacceptable."
As you may or may not know, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann has, over the last year or so, has become a go to news show for left wing moonbats across this great land of ours.
One of your CaliBlogger's favorite segments is the "Worst Person in the World" bit wherein Keith lists the most egregiously offensive words and actions from the day's news. Done with tongue firmly in cheek, as is much of Keith's show, "Worst Person in the World" frequently quotes noted wingnut figures such as Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and others of that ilk, using their own words against them.
The May 8th segment (link to video here) culminated in a quote from Fox "News" commentator Dick Morris. For those who might not be aware of Morris' history he provides ample evidence that, gender aside, hell hath no fury to match a political hack scorned.
(Morris, a former Clinton operative, resigned in disgrace after revelations that he let the prostitute with whom he was having an extra-marital affair, listen in on conversations between himself and president Clinton. Since which time he has become a vehement critic of the Clintons, and a go to guy when rightwing outfits like Fox need a Democrat to criticize Democrats or provide BushCorp with bi-partisan cover (for other examples of the type see Lieberman, Joe and Miller, Zell).)
If you watch the video, Keith is quoting from statements Morris made on the May 7th edition of Hannity & Colmes in a discussion of Al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri's recently released video about the war in Iraq, in which Zawahiri claims that Democratic efforts to withdraw US troops from Iraq would "deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap".
Morris' reaction? From News Hounds:
Staying in Iraq, Morris continued, "gives (Al Qaeda) the opportunity to kill more Americans which they really like." Morris made the dubious assertion that it's better to have Americans stay in Iraq because it's easier for terrorists to kill them there. "They don't have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans… And convenience is a big factor when you're a terrorist." [Emphasis mine-CK]
Commanders said that even with the ongoing increase in Iraq of tens of thousands of American troops, violence could increase in coming months, and some indicators in Baghdad suggest that is already happening.
Partial data on attacks gathered from five U.S. brigades operating in Baghdad showed that total attacks since the new strategy began in February were either steady or increasing. In some cases, certain kinds of attacks dipped as the U.S. troop increase began, only to begin rising again in recent weeks. Overall, "the number of attacks has stayed relatively constant" in Baghdad, said one U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by name.
The U.S. military commands that oversee Baghdad and Iraq as a whole have so far failed to meet requests to release current statistics on attack trends, with some U.S. officers voicing concern that the information would be skewed by critics to argue that the strategy is not working
One of the most intriguing aspects of the war in Iraq, aside from the misinformation which served as its raison d'etre and the incompetence with which its been run, has been its impact on the average citizen: zero.
Fought by an "all-volunteer" army (stop-loss aside) and financed by the national credit card of foreign debt, BushCorp™'s war of choice has had strikingly little impact on most US citizens.
But hidden though they have been, the costs of war are beginning to dawn on the American people, at least some of them.
And I don't mean that I believe my fellow Americans have come to a belated understanding of this geo-political disaster's ramifications for America's standing on the world stage.
What I mean is this (from McClatchy):
With much of their equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, state National Guards face profound shortages in responding to natural disasters, particularly as they get ready for the hurricane season, which begins June 1.
The Guard has been shipping gear to hurricane-prone states in an effort to ease concerns, but a large disaster affecting several states would tax the Guard's ability to respond, according to National Guard officials and government reports. Some deficiencies aren't correctable. The Texas National Guard's helicopters, for example, are in Iraq and can't be replaced easily.
The potential impact of the equipment shortages became apparent over the weekend when a tornado devastated Greensburg, Kan. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said Monday that the state's National Guard couldn't respond as quickly as it should have because much of its equipment is overseas. About 300 Kansas National Guardsmen have been sent to Greensburg.
"Fifty percent of our trucks are gone. Our front loaders are gone. We are missing Humvees that move people," Sebelius told NBC's "Today" show. "We can't borrow them from other states because their equipment is gone. It's a huge issue for states across the country to respond to disasters like this."
That problem is likely to worsen in the event of a major hurricane, which generally affects a much larger area than a tornado does. Guard officials in hurricane-prone states say they're ready, but only if they can get help from other states. That will slow critical response times, emergency managers say.
In interviews with McClatchy Newspapers, National Guard representatives in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi and Texas said they had at least 50 percent of the equipment they needed. Only North Carolina officials said they expected to have all the equipment they needed by June 1.
Those hurricane-prone states also benefit because most of their Guard units aren't currently in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Alabama is in the weakest position, with 4,000 of its 11,400 Air and Army National Guard deployed, or about to be, overseas. Total deployments for the other states total only about 2,000, state National Guard officers said.
Jesus' General has a very manly post up featuring a player and a great list of cover songs.
No it's not political, though, as always with the general with the songs all rate an 11 on the scale of absolute gender.
Check 'em out here.
And while you're at it drop a dime in the General's tip jar. Bandwidth ain't cheap.
How could I possibly pass up an article titled: Sweet Jesus I love Bill O'Reilly!?
I couldn't.
The LA times op-ed is Rosa Brooks' account of how her appearances on BillO's show landed her a job as a columnist at the Times.
You see, I am probably the only member of the Left-Wing Media who can truly say that I owe my career in punditry in part to O'Reilly.
Here's how it happened. Two years ago, I was not a member of the Left-Wing Media. I was just a lowly member of a somewhat different left-wing conspiracy, otherwise known as academia, from whence I wrote the occasional radical Op-Ed article, supported various far-left causes and strove ceaselessly to poison the minds of young Americans.
It was hard but rewarding work. Then one day, I got a call inviting me on to "The O'Reilly Factor" as live bait — excuse me, as a "guest." Because I was perhaps the only person in North America who had never actually seen the show, I foolishly agreed.
I emerged from the [first] experience bloody but still unbowed (we radical leftists are a scrappy lot, when we're not advocating surrender to terrorists). And I was invited back.
This time, I practiced beforehand with my overtired toddler. She'd shriek out meaningless invective, and I'd just keep talking calmly. It must have helped, because by my third O'Reilly appearance, I made it through with hardly a scratch. Bill, though, was spluttering madly.
The "topic" that third time was members of the "left-leaning press," such as Michael Kinsley, then-editorial page editor of The Times who — unlike Bill — failed to fully appreciate the terrorist threat (as evidenced by an unpatriotic desire to provide Guantanamo detainees with due process). Bill suggested that Kinsley might find pedagogical value in having his head chopped off by terrorists. I upbraided Bill for going soft and explained that I'd figured him more as a boiling-in-oil kind of guy. Bill appeared disconcerted and abashed and assured me that he, personally, would "never do that to Mr. Kinsley."
The Washington Post today reports on an Army study showing a lack of ethics as well as an increase in mental health problems among the soldiers fighting the futile war in Iraq.
More than one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq surveyed by the Army said they believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents, the Pentagon disclosed yesterday. Four in 10 said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow soldier.
In addition, about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily. "Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect," the Army report stated.
About 10 percent of the 1,767 troops in the official survey -- conducted in Iraq last fall -- reported that they had mistreated civilians in Iraq, such as kicking them or needlessly damaging their possessions.
"What it speaks to is the leadership that the military is providing, because they're not acting on those thoughts," she said. "They're not torturing the people."
A confession, I didn't watch the Republican debate last night.
I tried to, but I just couldn't, clicking off half way through Giuliani's first remark. I don't recall either the question or his answer, but I knew that moment that the next 90 minutes was going to be hell.
So, unlike all those rightwing parents out there who seem unable to do so, I clicked off the objectionable programming, opting instead for watching Anthony Bourdain snark his way through Malaysia (though truth be told, Mr. Bourdain was uncharacteristically unsnarky for this particular episode).
Now I realize that it's terribly intellectually dishonest of me not to give the opposition a chance to explain their positions on the myriad challenges facing our nation: how they would extricate us from the mess in Mesopotamia, how they would address our failing health care system, how they'd address the burgeoning potential disaster of global warming.
It turns out I needn't have bothered.
Apparently what I really missed was a 90-minute paean to Ronald Reagan, the last Republican anyone really liked.
From the Carpetbagger Report:
After any debate, the first and most natural question is “who won?” Last night, the winner was obvious: Ronald Reagan.
Look, I know Reagan is the only president of the 20th century that Republicans really like. And I know that the debate was being held at the Reagan Library in California. But over the course of 90 minutes, the candidates specifically referenced the 40th president 20 times. If you count more oblique references (Gilmore thanked “the president in whose name this library is named”), the number climbs to 25. If you include references to Reagan by debate moderator Chris Matthews, well, we get pretty close to triple digits.
Pasadena, Calif.[that's me]: Love your coverage Chris, love these chats. Six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room: Playing up Reagan seemed the obvious thing to do, but do you think any of these people have any clue as to how to deal with the, um, legacy being bequeathed to them by George W?
Chris Cillizza: It's a VERY fine line that all of these candidates have to walk.
On the one hand, expressing support for President Bush's surge in Iraq makes sense because most conservative Republicans -- those most likely to vote in primaries and caucuses -- still support the policy.
On the other, none of these candidates wants to be seen as the Bush heir in the race if they wind up becoming the nominee.
The challenge for every Republican candidate is to offer enough praise for Bush that it doesn't turn off those voters still supportive of the president while offering enough criticism of his policies that people know that they would follow a different course in the White House.
A VERY tough proposition.
