Wolverine Politics

Moving on....

2008-12-04T21:57:00.000-05:00

I've moved on to Wordpress, and while I'd tried an automatic redirect, Blogger got a little pissy about that, so I'm just providing the link to my new name and home.

The Random Opinionator.

I'll be talking about more than just politics there, and I hope you enjoy. It looks a lot better, too.

Yes. We. Did.

2008-11-05T07:39:00.003-05:00

"This is for real, this time I mean it..."--Motion City Soundtrack

I said it a little more explicitly on my MySpace and Facebook profiles, but we did it. Barack Obama, an African-American, is our new President. A young man with the blood of the world flowing through his veins, who traced a path through Kansas, Indonesia, Hawaii, Kenya, and Chicago is going to be the leader of the free world, and judging by the reaction of the world, it looks like our friends will be a lot friendlier again, and we probably made some new ones too.

I yelled for joy last night. I jumped up and down and yelled like I'd just won the Stanley Cup. But then I sat down, and it sunk in, and then I cried. For almost five minutes, I cried tears of joy and of relief. From four years ago, when I wrote that:

In probably 8 to 12 years, this guy could and should run for President. He has presence. He has compassion. He has energy. He has desire. He has the blood of America running through his veins, a mixed-race guy who has been breaking barriers. If there is going to be a black President, it'll be him.

So of course he announced his run a little over two years after I wrote that, and for two years, I sweated, I prayed, I donated and raised money for the first time in my life, I bugged the crap out of people to get out and vote, I rallied, I blogged, I emailed, I gave up time off to once again run a precinct on Election Day.

But last night, and still some this morning as I read the headlines and see the photos, I cried. We really did it. We really showed that we are a better people and nation, that we took the last step and elected an African-American our president. There was no Bradley Effect, in fact, Obama crushed the hell out of it, and if Georgia and North Carolina finish get their votes finalized, he might have taken four Southern states. Forty years after Dr. King's assassination, and 145 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, who would have imagined that a young black man would get the votes of Southerners in the numbers he did, that Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy, would vote for Barack Obama?

Dr. King had a dream, and tonight, his dream was fulfilled. This is for all who fought, all who died, all who fought against the tide and pushed forward to achieve equality for all. God Bless America, indeed.

This Is Why You're Losing

2008-09-08T08:44:00.002-04:00

Christ, they don't get it, do they?

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage. [snip]

The McCain campaign has filed letters of complaint to the news division about its coverage and openly tied MSNBC to it. Tension between the network and the campaign hit an apex the day Mr. McCain announced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. MSNBC had reported Friday morning that Ms. Palin’s plane was enroute to the announcement and she was likely the pick. But McCain campaign officials warned the network off, with one official going so far as to say that all of the candidates on the short list were on their way — which MSNBC then reported.

“The fact that it was reported in real time was very embarrassing,” said a senior MSNBC official. “We were told, ‘No, it’s not Sarah Palin and you don’t know who it is.’ ”

The bolded section says it all. McCain's campaign bitched and whined about how UNFAIR the coverage was, and then went out and deliberately played a dirty trick on MSNBC/NBC to humiliate them. NBC then decides it can't afford to have Olbermann and Matthews hosting, and puts toolbag David Gregory in the big boy's chair. You know why Fox succeeds? Because Democrats don't pull the same stunts with Fox, and because Fox has no morals on these matters. Fox sticks by its people, right or wrong.

Okay, yes, there were slanted moments, but that's cable news these days, and Olbermann's questioning, while pointed, is incisive and intelligent. Matthews has always been incendiary, so for McCain to be bitching about it now is just sour grapes, because Matthews was very praiseworthy of Palin, and it was the REPUBLICANS in Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan who ripped the idea of a Palin pick before it came official. Which, speaking of, Joe and Pat got as much speaking and airtime as Olbermann and Matthews during these conventions, and it was PAT BUCHANAN who called the Obama speech the best one he's ever heard at a convention.

This is part of McCain's bomb the media strategy. He's pulling Bush's dissent suppression card out of his deck and laying it on the table, hoping to stifle criticism, just like the false claims of sexism after the Palin firestorm hit. He's done a pretty good job of weathering it, mainly because the media is letting themselves be cowed. They need to hit back, and not stop asking tough questions, because Sarah Palin is so inexperienced it's not even funny. Lest we forget, she's also petty, vindictive, extreme right-wing, and an activist evangelical, who thinks we are on a mission from God in Iraq. Oh, yes, and she's a liar.

She lied about the Bridge to Nowhere, lied about how the Alaska state jet was sold, lied about her ties to the Alaskan Independence Party (and yes, even if just her husband was a registered member, that's a big deal, since they are secessionist), lied about earmarks, etc. You get the picture. It's not a pretty one for her.

Press digging into her, her background, her experience, her political beliefs, are not sexist or unfair. She is a cipher, an unknown, to most of America, and the American people deserve to know her, for better or worse, and the McCain camp is hiding her because they know that these questions are lying out there for her, and they don't want them asked.

Long story short, MSNBC, you let the Republicans roll you again. Good job. I hope you feel good about being played.

If Obama Is God...

2008-09-05T23:00:00.001-04:00

then Joe Biden is St. Peter. Talk about an ass-kicking today. I wanted to hug my screen watching this.

Sexism, Experience, and Elections

2008-09-05T00:20:00.000-04:00

2008 has been a very interesting year for elections, as it is the first year we've seen not one, but two female candidates involved in a race for the White House. Senator Hillary Clinton came oh-so-close to becoming the Democratic nominee, while Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, has been nominated by the Republicans for vice-president. In it, though, there have been some inconsistencies in the criticism about the media's treatment of these female candidates, and also, in the larger picture, a continuing debate about how much experience matters. I will tackle both of these subjects in this post.

The sexism issue has been blown out of proportion all year long, and sadly so. While complaining of a double standard in the media, both Senator Clinton and Gov. Palin are themselves creating a double standard, one which ties into politicians' longstanding gripes about media coverage of candidacies. When the media digs in deep, and runs waves of stories that give unflattering portraits of the truth behind the image that politicians are seeking to build, politicians always complain. However, both Sen. Clinton and Gov. Palin bump this up a notch by complaining of sexism in the media, of an old boys network. Never mind that many of these stories and interviews were done by female reporters, such as Campbell Brown, Katie Couric, Andrea Mitchell, etc. Never mind that both these woman made such strong cases for being treated with seriousness and then undermined it with their complaints.

Quite frankly, if Senator Clinton or Gov. Palin want equality, then they cannot use the excuse of sexism in the media for negative publicity. Men do not have that excuse to use, and plenty of male candidates took a beating this year, such as John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, and the like, all for different reasons (personal affairs, extremist ideas, robotic personalities, etc). The media is wont to attack whoever they feel is vulnerable at the time. When Sen. Clinton spoke of being under sniper fire in Tuzla, and video showed no such thing happening, she was rightly mocked for making an exaggerated claim. When Gov. Palin has spoke of rejecting the bridge to nowhere when contemporaneous evidence shows otherwise, the media has every right to call her on making a fictitious claim.

Doing this isn't sexist. Yet, when the heat was turned up, both these candidates turned to claims of sexism, and it does both women a disservice. There is no doubting that both Sen. Clinton and Gov. Palin are strong women, deserving of respect, achievers of high office. Why on earth, then, would they resort to a claim that widens the divide that they seek to bring together? Why claim sexism when all that does is make them look unequal, not up to the offices which they seek? If they want to be seen as equal, they cannot do that. Gov. Palin herself said as much in March, when she said:

She does herself a disservice to even mention it really. You've got to plow through that. You've got to know what you're getting into."

She [Palin] says "any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism...I think, man, that doesn't do us any good, women in politics, women in general, wanting to progress this country."

Gov. Palin had it right, but now her and the McCain campaign are hurting themselves by doing the same thing she rightly criticized Sen. Clinton for doing. She's right, it doesn't do good, and she should come out and say she doesn't agree with McCain's spokespeople for saying sexism is driving these stories. She should defend herself and women as ably as she did in that Newsweek interview I quoted. Gov. Palin showed on Wednesday she's capable of holding her own, and the McCain campaign didn't need to say it was sexist for the media to run the huge swath of stories they did.

Had they let Gov. Palin spend the weekend defending herself, they might've gotten a poll bounce out of it, because having her come out strong in front of the cameras instead of sending inept spokespeople onto CNN would've sent a signal that she doesn't need men to defend her, that she can defend herself, and that would have sent a strong signal to the Clinton supporters they are trying to court. By assenting to this, Palin hurt herself, and it is disappointing that she blew a chance to make a statement about equality that no one could've ignored.

As for experience, this has been one of those things that has been part and parcel of presidential campaigns since the beginning of our Republic. It's always been argued, especially so in our post-World War society. Nixon in 1960, Carter in 1980, Bush in 1988 and 1992, these are just a few examples where "experience" was the tagline.

But how much does it matter?

Right now, this is one of the big arguments between the McCain and Obama campaigns. Both Obama and Palin are short on experience nationally, while McCain and Joe Biden have a lot of it. Does it make that much of a difference?

Historically, we've had some fantastic presidents that were short on experience. Talk about inexperienced, Abraham Lincoln had a political resume shorter than Obama's, with only eight years in the Illinois Legislature, two years as a congressman, and a failed Senate campaign in 1852. Yet, by the sheer force of his intellect and will, he held together America in its darkest hour, with a Civil War rending the nation in two, and along with Generals Grant and Sherman, won the war before being fatally shot.

Harry Truman, with a short national resume, stepped into giant's shoes replacing Franklin Roosevelt in the midst of World War II, and managed the end of the war and the subsequent peace magnificently. He recognized Israel within 24 hours of its founding, he engineered the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, and he had the political courage to fire General Douglas MacArthur in the middle of the Korean War for insubordination when "Mac" was as popular as anyone.

Theodore Roosevelt had been Vice-President for a matter of months and New York's governor for only two years when he became President, and he reformed government, fought monopolies, built infrastructure (including the West Wing of the White House and remodeling the Executive Mansion), built our navy into the envy of the world, negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the process, created the national park system, heck, they named the teddy bear after him.

John Kennedy was tagged as inexperienced by Richard Nixon and Eleanor Roosevelt, yet he ran a bipartisan administration (several Eisenhower people served in his cabinet), strove for balanced budgets despite grave security threats, worked to bring about equality, appointed the first black to a Cabinet position, and brought an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis, a very dangerous point in our history, and did so without compromising our safety. Ronald Reagan was blasted as inexperienced and dangerous by Jimmy Carter, but he restored our military strength, got our economy out of the gutter, gave us our pride back, and was there to cash in when the Soviet Union started to crumble.

These are five examples of presidents whose "inexperience" turned out to not be a problem at all. Lincoln and Roosevelt did especially well (check out Mount Rushmore lately?) despite their inexperience. Experience may be important, but history bears out that it's not necessarily the most important thing. Obama does have one thing right: Judgment matters an awful lot. Ultimately, this fall, Americans may be concerned about experience, but if history is a guide, whose judgment they consider superior will determine the winner of this election.

No, She Doesn't, Tom

2008-09-04T09:41:00.002-04:00

Tom Shales was all over Sarah Palin's speech last night.

She proved herself in the great arena; that's what counts politically. Nobody could watch that speech and still consider her a joke, no matter how flimsy her credentials and qualifications may seem on paper. The joke, it seems, is on those who'd been laughing at her. Last night the laughing ended -- and the cheering began.

This was the most empty speech I've seen in a very long time.

Style points, yes. She got up there and put on the beauty queen act and threw red meat to the wolves in the audience. She made lots of jokes and took some NASTY swings at Obama (insulting community organizers? Really? They'll be organizing alright, organizing voters to vote for Obama this fall).

When it comes to substance, though, she has NONE. There was none of it in that speech, and none of it in her few appearances so far. Maybe 30 seconds to a minute even minutely focused on policy, and what was it? More drilling! "As someone who knows the North Slope, I know we've got plenty of oil to go around." That was a big applause line, but like all of her other lines, reality gets in the way. The current North Slope production is less than 900,000 barrels a day, according to a January 2008 DOE study of the area and its future production, with only an estimated six to seven billion barrels left in the fields. That will last until 2015, roughly.

If ANWR were opened, while it would lead to a tremendous amount of natural gas being opened up, DOE still estimates only an additional 36 billion barrels of oil being available. That. Is. Peanuts. So, plenty to go around? Eh, not so much.

Just like her Bridge to Nowhere claims, just like her earmark claims, just like most of her claims, the truth is FAR separated from them. She fires up the base, but she's going to turn everyone else off, because she is going to have to face tough questions, and she's going to get exposed for the empty vessel she is, all nasty rhetoric, no grasp of reality.

Furthermore, I wouldn't put down her guard yet. She's made lots of enemies in Alaska, and you know they're salivating at exposing her. She didn't get that "Sarah Barracuda" nickname for nothing. What we've seen this week is the tip of the iceberg, and as long as this election is about her, McCain will have no shot at winning.

Tom, the cheering only began inside the Xcel Center. The rest of the country was probably turned off by the nastiness, and most will still be offended at her miserable excuse for a resume.

O Is For Outstanding

2008-08-28T23:54:00.004-04:00

He did it.

Barack Obama went out in front of 75,000 people at Mile High Stadium/Invesco Field and stood tall, stared down the GOP talking points, and punched them right in the face.

This was the sort of tough, in-your-face, unabashedly proud liberalism that we haven't seen since John F. Kennedy. No triangulation, no ducking, no holding back. Barack Obama lined up George Bush and John McCain and hit them in their face with all the tired garbage we have been subjected to for eight years now.

"I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

You make a big election about small things."
"For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy -- give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is -- you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps -- even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America."
"And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She's the one who taught me about hard work. She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she's watching tonight, and that tonight is her night as well.

I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States."
"We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans -- Democrats and Republicans -- have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.
As commander in chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home."
"These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.

But what I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America -- they have served the United States of America.
So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first."

This was simply amazing. He wrote it himself. He sat down for weeks on end and worked at it, and then he went out and smacked the living hell out of Bush, McCain, and all the silly, squabbling, SMALL complaints from the GOP. "He's presumptious, he's speaking from the temple of Obama, he's a celebrity, he's not a POW, dammit!" is all we've gotten from these useless fucktards. We ducked these things in the past, but not tonight. Tonight Obama walked out there, took their arguments, and threw them right back in their face. "They make a big election about small things."

That line defined the GOP's methods of attack for twenty years now, and for the first time, somebody called them on it, and did it with a ridiculously large audience watching. There are a lot of Americans tonight who watched this speech and will wake up in the morning with a new outlook about the GOP, and it won't be a positive one. They got owned by the greatest speaker of our generation (sorry, Bill) and even Pat Buchanan loved the speech. It was that good.

To John McCain, I'd say watch your back, but Obama doesn't strike from behind. As he showed tonight, he walks up and punches you right in the face. There's 68 days to go. Get used to it.

Panic In Detroit

2008-08-07T11:10:00.002-04:00

Crossposted over at the American Princess.

Kwame's going to jail! Kwame's going to jail!

*breathless (pant, pant)*

Yes, it's a real holy hell day here in Detroit. Our dear mayor was hauled into court for a hearing on his bond after he violated it twice in the past week, once for a trip to Windsor that he didn't notify the court about and for his physical altercation with a process server trying to serve a subpoena on his friend Bobby Ferguson. Judge Ronald Giles decided he'd had enough and ordered Kwame's bond revoked and ordered him to the Wayne County jail for processing. At this time, the Kilpatrick attorneys are trying to get an emergency appeal after Giles flat-out rejected their request for a stay of his ruling.

Either way, at this moment, the City of Detroit is rudderless. The good news for city workers is that the city's layoff plan will probably be put on hold, since he can't exactly run the city from jail. Even better, this may finally be the last straw to either force the resignation of this disgrace of a public official or help Gov. Jenny quickly decide on moving his sizable tucchis out of office.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Update: Judge Thomas Jackson told Kilpatrick's attorneys that he will not hear their case until tomorrow, ensuring that hizzoner will be spending a night in jail.

What A Stupid Fucking Ad

2008-08-01T21:15:00.002-04:00

Sometimes profanity is necessary, especially when this sort of ignorant crap comes from the campaign of a man I used to respect.

The really funny thing about this? Just like the ad that criticized him for not spending time with the troops, using footage of him spending time with the troops, this might actually help Obama, because it shows a confident leader who has a ton of support, as opposed to the cranky old man who brings out 50 elderly people that need a sign to know when to applaud or cheer.

Obama Reaches Out To The World

2008-07-24T14:02:00.003-04:00

Wow.

Simply freaking wow.

It's hard to express how I felt about the just-concluded Obama speech in Berlin, Germany, but it's not hard to see the effect it had.

We've heard for years from the right-wing tools that Europe hates us, and that they're a bunch of cowards who will never fight, and having any sort of ties to Europe is bad, yadda yadda yadda.

Today demonstrated what a bunch of errant nonsense that is.

Obama came as an American, no more, no less, and he reminded both Europe and us that we have longstanding ties that go back sixty years, to the Berlin Airlift, where through our better nature and a supreme effort, we saved West Berlin from falling to the Soviets, and preserved freedom in a landlocked island. Forty years after that, the island was opened up, and freedom spread from it, as it does from all such ideas.

Freedom is not spread at the barrel of a gun. Freedom does not come from forcing it upon others. Freedom does not come from empty rhetoric. It comes from the yearning of people who want to be free and act upon those ideas. It comes from showing the best of human nature, and not reverting to its worst. It comes from reaching out your hand to take that of someone else's and together standing up for the common good. That is what freedom is.

In embracing the idea of a shared purpose for the common good, in reaching out our hand through his to the world, in acknowledging our faults and promising to do better, Barack Obama did what the president of this great nation should have done years ago. The acknowledgement of the crowd in Berlin said everything that needed to be said. It isn't America they hate, it isn't Americans that they hate. Their hate is for those who take hold of our nation and use it as a force for negative change, who use it for personal gain, who use our power to try and dictate to the world that they don't matter.

The world does matter, and Barack Obama is proving that. The rest of the world is practically begging us to elect this man, because they truly do want to work with us, because America at its best won the Cold War, and twice held the line against tyranny when it looked bleakest for the world during both World Wars. America at its best is capable of being a force for good, of being a force that can galvanize the world into being a more peaceful, tolerant place, a force that can stare down the evil that exists and lead a charge to end those who most threaten our shared security.

May God grant enough of us the wisdom to realize this and vote for true change, the sort of change that comes around rarely, the change that can truly change much of what is wrong with the world. There is great work to be done, but electing a great leader is a good place to start.

Holy Crap, George Will Got It Right

2008-06-17T12:16:00.000-04:00

On the restoration of habeas corpus:

The day after the Supreme Court ruled that detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus hearings, John McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Well.

Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep American citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps?

Did McCain's extravagant condemnation of the court's habeas ruling result from his reading the 126 pages of opinions and dissents? More likely, some clever ignoramus convinced him that this decision could make the Supreme Court -- meaning, which candidate would select the best judicial nominees -- a campaign issue.

There's more I could quote, but I'd probably be violating fair use at that point. Anyways...

The ruling by the courts was the right one. We have gone nearly seven years since detainees started being held extralegally at Guantanamo Bay. It has been about that long since I first wrote on the issue. I said then:

Currently, Mr. Ashcroft has detained over 600 people, whom we do not know their names, whether they are residents or not, anything except that they have been "detained." Usually being detained means they are held for 48 hours or so. In the case of our friend John, he has held them since September. In other words, that's 90 days.

By now, shouldn't we know whether we are holding terrorists or terrorist accessories? After three months, you'd think our intelligence and police agencies would have a clue as to what these people are or are not involved in. What Ashcroft has done violates the Constitution, which states a person cannot be held for more than a certain amount of time without charges filed against them. Yet no one seems to notice. Perhaps it is because we don't know anything about the detainees that keeps us from caring. Only a small portion of the country has spoken out about this travesty. [snip]

The results produced so far are results that a 13-year old could figure out. We are no closer to solving this case than we are to "discovering" whether anyone in this country aided and abetted the terrorists. I would venture that none of the over 600 people detained have any knowledge of the terrorist attacks or helped in them.

In a nation that fought a long war to establish its freedom and has maintained a continuous body of government since its creation, which is rare enough in history, we have the head of the Justice Department trying to enforce justice himself, when that is the responsibility of the courts.

It's sad we're still debating this after seven years. It's sad there are still people on the right who think this is perfectly alright. It's sad that the "law & order" party has no respect whatsoever for what the law clearly is. The Supreme Court, this President's Supreme Court (because it's his guy leading it), still struck him down again on the habeas issue, and the right-wing screamed as if they'd burned down the White House. Justice Scalia's dissent, particularly odious in its obvious threats and partisanship, reveals that he has shed any pretense of fairness in defense of an ideology that this nation has clearly rejected, and will do so again this fall.

America has stopped being scared. The Supreme Court stopped being scared. Even George Will, who normally makes me want to rip off my ears after a "This Week" appearance, gets it as right as he possibly could on this one, that habeas corpus is "the great writ of liberty" and that by the Court granting them this right, it doesn't guarantee their release, the approval of a hearing, or create any danger to us other than that they can challenge the totalitarian practice of indefinite imprisonment. Thank God for that.

The Conservative Dependence On Absolutism

2008-06-15T14:35:00.003-04:00

One of the most striking things I've noticed about conservatism/Republicanism over these past eight years (and, in many senses, the past thirty) is the consistent idea that the entire world is in black and white. Good and evil. There is no room for ambiguity, for debate, for the very idea that something may not be able to be debated in absolutes.

Even something like the Ten Commandments, for instance, something that religious Christian people of all stripes do their very best to adhere to, well, we are supposed to follow those strictures as absolutes. That is what God commanded in the Old Testament, no? And yet today many people who wear their faiths on their sleeves, such as our President, claim to follow such tenets, all while violating them.

"Thou shalt not kill"--except in self-defense, the death penalty, war, and so on. "Thou shalt not bear false witness"--except when deemed necessary by the liars themselves. Just a couple of examples of what you'd call moral relativism, except these are examples that don't apply to the party frequently accused of being the moral relativists: liberals. Instead, they apply to conservatives, who commit such acts with impunity, all while pointing fingers at us liberals, accusing us of being moral relativists.

I will not claim to be a member of a perfect political philosophy. Such claims are best left to the few remaining Communists in the world who have yet to see that their dogma long ago died. I will not claim that liberals are perfect people. If anything, we are too charitable in describing our flaws, but at least we are open about what is wrong with us. Getting a conservative to admit wrongdoing, even in situations where the evidence clearly demonstrates that wrongdoing occurred, is a battle of titanic proportions. It comes from a disease of always thinking one is right.

I won't claim that liberals have all the solutions, but after eight years of self-described conservatives running our government, after six years of complete Republican control of our government, from the Supreme Court to Congress to the White House, I can say that conservatives don't have the solutions. Six years of complete power, and we've managed to spend over half a trillion dollars on Iraq, watch gas prices go up 300%, witness our dollar sink below that of the Canadian dollar (a true low), see our infrastructure crumble, our worldwide respect decline, our allies abandon us, and our number one enemy still remains at large. We went from a budget surplus to a massive deficit, and the President continues to enable such deficits by refusing to adjust taxes on those who could afford to pay more and should be paying more, such as the oil companies, who are making record profits and get tax breaks all while reaping the benefits of $4/gallon gasoline.

Tell me, could we possible be any more screwed up than this? How can someone argue that conservative governance is better for this nation when six years of it produced these results? The best backing for an argument is results, and these results do not in any way back the argument.

Despite all this evidence to the contrary, conservatives today are still following the line of absolutism. Liberals are evil people who want to destroy your "values" (as if somehow liberals are completely without values...even if one were to buy the conservative argument on values, liberals would still have, in a literal sense, values, even if they weren't the "right" ones). Muslims are evil people who want to destroy America and its Christian heritage. The government should absolutely be able to spy on you with impunity, because that's the only thing that keeps us safe, and requiring any checks on that system puts us in harm's way. We must continue in Iraq, because that's where the bad guys are, and anyone who says otherwise is putting us in danger.

I could go on all day listing these arguments, but I believe that the point has already been made. It was crystallized by Bush's line right after the 9/11 attacks, when he said, "If you're not with us, then you are against us." You know who was the last leader to take such an absolutist stand? Kaiser Wilheim II, better known as the king of Germany in World War I. He uttered such a line in the war's prologue, in almost the exact words that Bush used (See Barbara Tuchman's excellent history, The Guns of August, for the quote). Is that the leader that the president wanted to emulate? The Kaiser lost that war, because he, too, took his eyes off the prize of France and Britain and poked America with a sharp stick, to his everlasting regret, much in the way that Bush stopped focusing on Afghanistan to go after Iraq, and neither is a success now.

Liberalism does have a downside, and that is we can sometimes argue something to death, but I'd rather have a good debate on an issue than just pull a gun from a holster and aim at the nearest perceived threat and start shooting on the premise that the target might be a danger, and that's good enough reason to attack. If they might attack us, then they are a danger, they are evil, they must be stopped, goes the conservative philosophy.

One great example of this philosophical battle is over the Israelis and the Palestinians. The conservative argument has consistently been that the Israelis are good and the Palestinians evil, even though the Israelis have been far from perfect in their handling of matters with the Palestinians. Liberals such as President Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin (a former hardliner), Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak all tried to make peace with the Palestinians. Conservatives such as Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon and President Bush kept the issue at arm's length and did very little, because in the black and white of their world, Yasser Arafat was evil, they were good, and good doesn't negotiate with evil, no matter what.

Now, a fair reading of the history of that region demonstrates that the Palestinians were just as much victim as the Israelis, and neither side wanted to compromise, much as the United Nations tried to do throughout 1946-1948, and the Israelis won, and in the absolutist view, the Palestinians became evil for attacking Israel, and Israel was the good guys, valiantly holding out against the evil Arabs. It's not quite that simple, and it never has been, but conservatives argue in simplistic terms, for reasons that are beyond my comprehension.

There are many more areas where this tendency extends itself out to, such as science, education, and sexual matters. I could write a whole series of posts if I were so inclined, but I feel that the subject matter has already been covered in sufficient detail as to render a rehashing unnecessary. Suffice it to say that in science, creationism=good and evolution=bad, global warming=lies and continuing with the status quo=good. In education, teaching diversity and tolerance=bad and teaching 1950's values=good, and in sexual matters, abstinence=good and any sex education that might actually educate someone in what to do if they decide to have sex=bad.

The world is what it is, not what we wish it to be, and if conservative wishes were ponies, America would be one gigantic stable of them. We do not have the ability to change human nature, we do not have the power to make all things as we wish, and we are unable to bend reality to suit our outlook on life. We can make changes, but all changes are gradual, and gradual steps are not based in absolutism. They are based on the idea that there are gray areas, that there is more than just black and white, good and evil, etc. in the byplay of our daily lives.

Absolutism, much as conservatives glorify it, is a whimsical fantasy in life. Saying it doesn't make it true, and the practice of it proved far harder for them to do than it was for them to say it. Conservatives delighted in their power, and were corrupted by it, and spoke in absolutes about the sheer evil of a Saddam Hussein while being complicit in their own dirty activities. They speak of the horror of a Taliban society, all while pushing their own version of a Taliban society upon us. They call us liberals evil and treasonous for daring to say that maybe, just maybe, our government and our nation aren't perfect, despite all evidence to the contracy. They have, in short, talked a great game while occasionally practicing what they preach, but they ultimately fail their own test, and they do so because absolutism is, again, a complete and utter fantasy.

There are a couple of absolutes in life. We will be born, we will die, and we will be judged by the Lord upon our deaths. Those are the only absolutes we can rely on, and the rest is gray areas, to be debated and worked out according to the greater good of the people whom those areas affect. The notion that absolutism stretches so much farther than this, that it can be a governing philosophy for a major political party, is as empty as many of those who push it as a model for good governance. It is the hallmark of failure.

I'm Just Saying....

2008-06-14T21:30:00.000-04:00

When it comes to handling our nation's economy, do you trust this guy, whose family ran up $225,000 in American Express debt while having the means to pay it off, or this guy, who managed to save nearly the same amount for the college trust funds of his children while having no credit card debt?

I'm just saying...

What Hillary Didn't Say In Her Tantrum Today

2008-02-23T22:39:00.001-05:00

Crossposted at the Obama website.

Lost in all the anger today from our side about Sen. Clinton's tirade against Sen. Obama is what she didn't say while she was comparing our candidate, the man of hope and change, to Satan, excuse me, Karl Rove.

Nothing in those flyers was wrong.

She supported NAFTA for years, in fact, her husband pushed for and signed the bill as President. There are penalties in her health-care plan under certain circumstances. She supported most-favored-nation status for China. All of the things our side has said are true, and she treated us as if we were the plague this morning, instead of explaining her positions.

Why would she do that? The answer is that her positions are indefensible. The answer is that she is now clearly losing this campaign, and instead of accepting her defeat, she is trying to blow the whole thing up in a moment of faked outrage. At this point, her actions serve to do nothing but destroy all of the hard work we have all put in to unite people. She is playing the 1990's political game in a 21st century campaign, and people aren't buying. Democrats have been turning out huge in "red states" for caucuses and primaries, voting for Sen. Obama, and she dismisses those states as meaningless because we supposedly have no shot in them in November. Tell me, Sen. Clinton, how does this build our party?

How do we become the party of the people if one of our top candidates is saying you don't count? How do we win elections when we automatically dismiss large swaths of our nation as unwinnable? How are you helping Democrats in any way with this vitriolic assault on a candidate that you told us all two days ago you were proud to share the stage with, right before you gave him the shiv and calling him the man who Xeroxed his change?

I told myself all along that, God forbid, if Sen. Obama lost, I would vote for Sen. Clinton in hopes of saving America from four more years of Republican leadership. After today's assault, I have a hard time seeing the difference between Sen. Clinton and Sen. McCain. I cannot accurately describe my anger, which is why I've left it out of this post, but I will answer my own questions.

The answer is we will NOT win with Sen. Clinton's style of campaigning. It strikes me as absurd that her husband did such a great job in his campaigns of bringing us hope that things would be better, that he won "red" states in both 1992 and 1996, and yet she gave up on them before this primary season started, absurdly so, given that Democratic primary turnout has destroyed Republican turnout, even in those supposedly unwinnable "red" states. That turnout has been driven by Barack Obama, by the message of hope, the message of change, the message of unity, the idea that we are united by greater things than political party, race, creed, gender. The Obama message resonates with us in 2008 the same way that Bobby Kennedy's message resonated forty years ago, a message that his assassination silenced for a time.

Today that message is back, and from Bobby Kennedy to Barack Obama, it is the same message. We are Americans, a diverse people, diverse in our creeds, our ethnicities, our races, united by our freedom, our desire for peace, our drive to make the world a better place and leave our children a future that is worth living. That is more powerful than fear, more powerful than a political party, more powerful than any military, more powerful than hate. It is a message that has brought to Sen. Obama's campaign people from all walks of life, Democrats, Republicans, independents, blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, Catholics, evangelicals, Jews, Muslims, everyone who is inspired by hope, inspired by real change, inspired by someone who possesses the ability to unite us and make a difference.

Sen. Clinton has spent her campaign saying she agrees with change, but her own actions show a complete inability to change her ways. She is not a bad person, or a bad Senator. Her final answer on Thursday showed that she has a good side to her personality, and I'd like to believe that is the real Hillary Clinton. Sadly, she has shown she's not good at losing, that she believed too much that she was the inevitable nominee, and she is trying to tear down the entire Democratic Party in her rage.

The best thing we can do is to win Texas and Ohio, and show her that it's time to drop out, and then she can go back to the Senate, where she has the ability, if properly focused, to be a leader for our agenda and to help drive it in the Senate, and a Majority Leader Clinton with a President Obama can do a lot of good. I hope she sees this, and I hope she realizes that "Yes We Can!" is what people want to hear this year, not "Yes We Can (but only in safe blue states)."

Courage Before Politics

2007-12-06T15:46:00.000-05:00

Today, we have become what we were some fifty years ago. Again.

Quite frankly, it is amazing that as a nation, we have learned so little from our mistakes. World War II was the lesson we didn't learn from World War I, namely, that we couldn't merely withdraw from the world and retreat to safety behind the two great oceans that flank us. Sadly, it is all too apparent that we only learned once from those mistakes.

Once again, everyone's patriotism is under question. Once again, the government is conducting secret surveillance on many everyday citizens. Once again, we have many demagogues in our Congress, yammering away about how great a political general is, and how dare anyone criticize his actions. Once again, too many of us live in fear because the Republican Party has done its best to make us fear, to induce terror in our hearts so they can win our votes by posturing and preening as the toughest kid on the block.

Fifty years ago, it was the great salvation of this nation that during a large part of these times, we had a President in Harry Truman who, by and large, stood up to fear, stood up to bullying, and consistently did his best to do the right thing despite the fact that he lost immense political power because of it. It is the greatest insult, in fact, to have President Bush compare himself to President Truman as a president who made the right calls, was vilified in his time, and later vindicated by history.

President Truman stood up on civil rights, when he was told it would cost him re-election. Truman stood up against a political general in Douglas MacArthur, despite the fact that Congress threatened his impeachment over the matter. Truman stood up to Joe McCarthy and his ilk and defended noble public servants such Dean Acheson and General George Marshall, both true patriots, who helped save the free world from Stalin with their hard work and excellent policy. Truman made tough decisions, the right decisions more often than not, regardless of their political impact. Truman campaigned in 1948 when everyone said he was going to lose and he kicked the Republicans' asses and the Democrats retook Congress because he went out there and told the truth about the Republicans. He exposed the Republican shell game of pretending to care about the farmer and the little guy while doing the bidding of corporate America.

It is the height of arrogance for this failed President, this wretched excuse for a leader, a man who encourages and partakes in the worst parts of the gutter politics that were Joe McCarthy's trademark, to compare himself in any way to a man like President Truman. He has stood up for nothing. He has not shown political courage, merely expediency. He has stayed steadfast behind his Iraq policy because he has nothing to lose. He cannot run again for office, so it doesn't matter to him. He has not stood up for civil rights, instead, he has routinely and actively worked to deny them to us. He has instilled fear in us as a tool of manipulation to win elections for his party, and just as Democrats did in 1960 as Eisenhower was leaving office, Democrats are again trying to, in large part, out-tough the Republicans.

One thing that we have not learned as a party is how to combat false fear. We have not learned how to stand up for ourselves against demagoguery. We have not demonstrated the courage as a mass to resist a President who fights to defend himself instead of the Constitution he swore an oath upon. In 1952, we let Adlai Stevenson, who bravely stood up and spoke the truth about Republican-generated fear and smears, be crushed by Dwight Eisenhower, a man who would not stand up for his own mentor, George Marshall, because it wasn't the politically smart thing to do. Even a man with Eisenhower's standing, with all the great service he'd rendered to his nation, muzzled himself in fear of the own fear politics generated by his fellow party members.

The reason Truman won in 1948 is because he did not show fear. He didn't show fear in the face of the Soviet blockade of Berlin. He didn't show fear in the face of possibly losing Greece, Turkey, and China to Communist influence. He didn't buckle when the Soviets instigated a coup in Czechoslovakia. He didn't run off and hide when polling showed that the Democratic Party was finished, that Thomas Dewey would crush him in the election, that he was destined to leave politics as a loser. Truman stood and fought for what was right, and he told the truth in plain language.

Instead of learning our lessons, we have ignored them. We need to start standing up again and showing courage, the real courage that Truman showed, that Stevenson showed, against the worst of the smears.

Today, real courage means Congress needs to start fighting for the 70% of people who want us to get out of Iraq, and not the 30% who are going down the path Bush has laid. Real courage means ignoring the smears and fear-mongering of Republican congressmen, and insisting that the administration both account for its spending of Iraq war funding and set a deadline to end this war now. Real courage means telling the truth to Americans from the presidential stump, instead of pretending that they know what we want to hear from endless polling, focus groups, etc. Every poll, every pundit, every newspaper thought Truman would get whipped in 1948, and instead he crushed Dewey because he spoke the truth. Polls are only as good as the people who do them, and many are now rigged to tell the candidate what they want to hear.

Real courage means restoring our rights to their pre-9/11 state, not in some blind obliviousness to the world around us, but rather in a statement of our principles. What does it say about America when we would blatantly and willingly sacrifice any principle we have regarding our freedom and the freedom of the world to try and ensure a degree of "safety" that is impossible to achieve, even in a police state? Hitler ran the most brutal police state around, yet he was nearly blown up in 1944 by an army colonel of his.

This president we have, along with his administration and his enablers in Congress, does not show courage, does not demonstrate strength. Rather, they are the class bullies, hollow shells of men, who believe that instilling fear is the only way to ensure their power, since without fear, they would be exposed for the cowards they are. Only a coward resorts to the sort of actions that the Republicans have taken, actions that are rooted in the past, fifty years ago. It takes a special kind of coward to insist that his strength comes from keeping us safe from the fear that he himself has instilled in us.

No, the President and the Republican Party did not attack us on 9/11. That came from another coward who hides in caves and attacks innocents to hide his weakness from us. Mr. Bush and the Republicans, though, have taken full advantage of the actions of one coward to disguise their own cowardice. They are scared of losing their power, scared of losing control, scared of people thinking on their own and looking for the truth, because the truth will not set the Republicans free. The truth, however, will set us, the American people, free from their fear, free from their smears, free from the idea that we somehow need to fundamentally change America because a coward attacked us. We made that mistake in World War II, where thousands of Japanese were locked up because of our fear after Pearl Harbor. That fear was baseless, as is the fear that if we don't let the government spy on us in all sorts of ways, then somebody else will blow up a building or crash a plane loaded with passengers into another high-rise or use a weapon of mass destruction.

America isn't just the place we live in. America is an idea, a belief that freedom, individual liberty and rights, hard work, and tolerance can thrive and endure as the ultimate security. We did not become the strongest nation in the world by having an oppressive government, rather, it came because we believed in and acted upon the very ideals that we were founded on. America today cries out for someone who will lead us from the darkness of fear that the Republican Party has once again created, as it did some fifty years ago. It is our great misfortune that we do not have a Harry Truman or a Theodore Roosevelt to lead us now, and it is our greatest wish that one of our presidential candidates will show us that sort of courageous leadership.

Jena

2007-09-25T04:37:00.000-04:00

Yes, I've been gone for quite some time, but this has me upset enough that I need to say something.

The case of the "Jena Six" has been one of the most well-known non-stories in a long time. The reason I use the term "non-story" is because until the march 48 hours ago, nobody really knew about this story, which features six black teenagers being charged as adults for attempted murder in the beating of a white student, and have been expelled from school. One of the six, Mychal Bell, had his conviction overturned by a state appellate court, which said that the charges far exceeded the incident itself, and that even charging him as an adult was uncalled for. This was a week ago. Bell is still in prison.

This entire case is disheartening in many ways, most of all in that racism is still alive and well in the South. The entire catalyst for this whole thing was the simple act of a black student deigning to sit under what was known as the "white kids tree" at Jena High School (and the sad thing is that kid felt he had to ask the principal for permission to sit there), and then the next day three nooses were hung from the tree.

What happened to those kids? They only got a three-day suspension. Harsh.

Moving on, further incidents included one of the "Jena Six," Robert Bailey, being punched in the face by a white student at a party, and a later incident where another white kid pulled a shotgun on Bailey, who then chased the white kid and took the gun away from him. Bailey was charged with theft of a firearm and robbery, while the white kid who pulled the gun and stuck it at Bailey....wasn't charged with anything.

One of the district attorneys in Jena addressed a school assembly which featured completely segregated seating by unspoken mutual consent, and upset at black students protesting the lack of charges against the white students who had been precipitating these events, said, "with one stroke of my pen, I can make your life disappear."

That same office is now prosecuting these black students.

Tell me, how can this really be anything but what it appears to be?

A "white kids tree." Nooses. Whites pulling guns on blacks and not getting in trouble for it. Blacks attacking a white kid and being charged with attempted murder, despite the fact that the beating victim was discharged the same day from the hospital and made it back to school that night to attend a class ring ceremony. The prosecutor claiming that the charges were justified because the black students' shoes were "weapons used with intent to kill." That's right, shoes. Could this get more absurd?

I don't condone the fact that six kids beat up on one, regardless of race. I can understand how much pent-up anger and frustration went into that beating, given that white students who committed more serious crimes were not charged or convicted of anything, save for the white kid who punched Bailey (he got probation). The fact that this facade of equality went on for so long is sickening. This is indeed separate justice, but it is not equal.

There were so many opportunities for the authorities in Jena to nip this in the bud. Expelling the white kids who hung the nooses would've been a good start, because the only way a black kid in the South would read that is as a terroristic threat, a death threat. Charging the black kid who acted in self-defense by disarming the white kid who stuck a shotgun in his face with theft of that very gun turns the justice system upon its head and escalated matters, when it was the white kid who pulled the gun who should have been charged. Letting a district attorney make the statement he did, directed solely at black students, gives me great pause as to the impartiality of that office.

I will be honest. In an area where blacks are only fifteen percent of the population, in a racially charged case such as this, I do not believe they will get a fair trial. The prior actions of the authorities demonstrate a clear bias in favor of white people over black people, and it is disgraceful that I am even having to write these words right now. My mother grew up in the South, and so I've heard the stories, I've seen the pictures, and I thought we were long past such gross inequities. I thought wrong. Racial inequality has yet to die, and six black students are learning that lesson as we speak.

Post 300!

2007-08-20T16:28:00.001-04:00

Yay for me!!!

Not that I get a cake or anything for it, but I suppose it's worth noting, despite the fact that I haven't put up anything in months. Now, go watch my right-wing friend the American Princess get combative Off The Record.

So you think you can change the world?

2007-05-08T04:23:00.000-04:00

There is no worse feeling than hopelessness. The feeling that no matter what you have done, how much you have done, how hard you have fought, worked, sweated and bled for something, that it's not going to make a difference.

Tonight, when I read that the David Obey plan was shot down in the Senate, that feeling started to nag at me, and has continued to do so for hours now.

For as much as our side has celebrated how ordinary people forced our government to quit fighting a war in Vietnam that we never should've engaged in in the first place, the fact is that it took 15 years to get our troops out of that country, at a cost that has continued to be felt until this day. Really, let's face it, by the time we were finally listened to as a people (and I wasn't alive back then, btw), we had lost so many soldiers, condemned so many of an incredible generation to a mind-numbing hell or horrific death.

Vietnam is a personal story to me because of my uncle, who continues to suffer the physical and mental health problems from his two tours there. I am undeniably proud of everything he did, but he was one of many who were betrayed by their government.

Today's soldiers are also facing a betrayal on so many levels that it seems obscene to even list them. For the first time in our history, we are sending severely injured soldiers back to combat. Those injuries are both mental and physical, but such is the state of our military that its leaders feel compelled to do so. And those who are lucky enough (if such a sickeningly ironic term can be used) to be discharged due to whatever misfortune they have befallen have to scratch, beg, and crawl for their justly earned benefits and medical care. The Walter Reed story, combined with the poor young man who killed himself because he didn't receive the mental health care he richly needed, illustrates this problem clearly.

Despite our highlighting of these many scandals, despite the public pressure we've put on our representatives, despite the president's record low job approval, the sad fact is that not a damn thing has changed. The level of soldiers in the cauldron of Iraq has risen. The medical care is just beginning to be fixed, and it's unlikely that it will happen as quickly as publicly promised. Withdrawal from Irqa before the end of the Bush presidency is highly unlikely (and I'm being charitable in putting it that way), and the next president will have to sort out this disaster.

Domestically, for all our howls and protests, Katrina victims are still suffering on a daily basis, many of them living in trailer ghettos, relegated to the backs of our minds. Have we changed their lives substantially, for all the wonderful, hard work we've put in? The answer, sadly, is no, we haven't changed the lives of too many people.

It is these things that give me this sick feeling that no matter what we do, unless we keep the Democratic congress and elect a Democratic president in 2008, that we won't really have changed a thing. Our efforts have done little to adjust the reality that exists today. I've felt for so long that ordinary people can change the world, and in certain cases I think it's possible still. But in our average, everyday political lives, the discourse and the reality have been so drastically altered by people who fear truth and rational discussion that we are either incapable of formenting true change or are unable to perceive that true change is occurring.

I don't mean to be depressing, but I need some hope right now that we really are going to make a difference and that we're still capable of changing the world, because I don't want to be the one who was around for the end of citizen democracy.

Enough.

2007-04-26T19:15:00.000-04:00

I had this thought, somewhere in my mind, that after the 2004 election, we'd never have to hear such phrases as, "If you vote for the Democratic candidate, the terrorists will strike again and you will die," or some formulation of that.

Apparently I was wrong, and the guy who said it was the guy I least expected to say it.

Shame on you, Rudy.

Shame on you for making such outlandish claims. Shame on you for spewing this same line that Democrats will not aggressively pursue terrorists. How many times are we going to be forced to listen to such utter, uninformed nonsense? How many times are we going to have our loyalty, our patriotism, our courage, our desire to beat the common enemy we all face?

Enough.

We have had six years of Republican governance, and for all the bluster in the world, we never caught Osama bin Laden (which is important both symbolically and substantially, considering he's the major source of al-Qaeda funding and its leader), we haven't yet settled Iraq after four years, we haven't even tried to make peace in other Middle Eastern nations, and North Korea and Iran have acquired nuclear technology which now poses a much more serious threat than a disarmed and cornered Saddam Hussein.

Wow. That's a record I'd want to run on.

Enough.

When the terrorists struck us here, on our shores, they did not attack Republicans or Democrats. They attacked Americans. Within mere months, though, the Republican party decided that this was the chance to broaden their grip on voters who were concerned with national security. And of course, everyone was concerned with national security, because we'd just had New York and D.C. blown up. So, Max Cleland, a veteran who left three limbs on the battlefield, has his image interspersed with bin Laden in a campaign commercial run by a guy who never served. You get an vote on the Iraq war brought before Congress right before the election, deliberately done so as to influence the election in people's minds. Andy Card said it himself in "Plan of Attack."

You get people who love their country and disagree with the president branded as traitors because they won't fall in line, when dissent is one of our most cherished rights and values. And you lie. You lie when you say Democrats didn't want Homeland Security when Democrats introduced the bill first and had it rejected by the President, who miraculously revived it, changed it, and then used it to brand Democrats as weak on terror. You lie when you say we're fighting in Iraq to stop the terrorists when they weren't even there until after we invaded! You lie when you portray calls for accountability as surrender. You lie when you say our rights aren't degraded, yet the power of the state to circumvent things like warrants is stronger than it has been in two generations. You lie when you say that you are the party of responsibility when you've run up the largest deficit ever and borrowed it all from nations that don't wish us well.

Most of all, you lie when you stand there, wag your finger, and declare that only Republicans can save us from terrorism. Defending America is not a partisan task. Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman led us ably and aptly through World War II. Abraham Lincoln's desire for a truly United States was the only thing between winning and losing the Civil War. Both parties are capable of leading a nation to success in a situation that demands it.

We are so tired, and I am so tired, of having to declare for the umpteenth time that I love my country, I love its people, I love its freedoms, and that I want it to succeed. That should NEVER be in question. Enough is enough. Disagreeing with the man in power is not un-American, in fact, it is the definition of the quintessential American, and that's a fact that is lost on the right. We are perfectly willing to work with anyone of any political leaning to better our nation, but we will not back down anymore. We're through compromising on our basic principles, principles that are uniquely American, the belief in the common good, the belief in civil rights, the belief that government is supposed to help you, not be your adversary, and the belief that America is comprised of people who love their nation and shouldn't have their dedication and love questioned, ever.

Enough.

Rudy, you should be ashamed of yourself.

crossposted at The American Princess. Go watch the fireworks.

Arrogant AND delusional

2007-03-28T15:53:00.000-04:00

The President has been on a rampage lately, stomping his feet and throwing a giant hissy fit because the Democrats in Congress, along with a few brave Republicans, are holding him to his words now, and setting in stone benchmarks and accountability for Iraqis for taking over.

Today, the fit became delusional.

"The clock is ticking for our troops in the field," he added. "If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible."

Yes, we do know who to hold responsible. Go look in the mirror, Mr. President. The face you see is who is going to be held responsible, because people now realize that you lie more transparently than any previous president. The Congress HAS passed a bill that funds the troops. You're just pissy because it requires you to act responsibly and that it actually helps the troops instead of just treating them as props for your daily heaping helping of bullshit. It's pretty obvious when we see you repeating yourself worse than you ever have in the past that you know you've lost, but you're posturing and chest-thumping and trying so desperately for people to tremble in the presence of the "decider."

The American people made a decision last fall, and that was to stop giving you so many chances to fuck things up without having to account for fucking up. Their decision has solidified over the past few months, yet you still act like it's 2002. Get over yourself, if you can, and accept the funding. You ought to consider yourself lucky they didn't just cut your ass off.

In defense of impeachment

2007-03-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

Crossposted at Daily Kos

There have been calls for the impeachment of President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney for years from the left. I had not been in that camp, because I felt that it would look too much like revenge or retaliation for the impeachment of President Clinton, let alone that the evidence seemed sketchy.

I can't say I feel the same way now.

Researching impeachment history in this nation, the two successful presidential impeachments and the one that was ended by President Nixon's resignation, the fact is that impeachments are political in nature. They were a legal/political solution given by the Founders, so that when a high official committed "high crimes and misdemeanors," they could be removed from office through a dignified process. In practice, though, the process only held a certain dignity during the Nixon impeachment process.

The first presidential impeachment was that of Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln's successor. Johnson was a Southerner who was not into the idea of a harsh Reconstruction, putting him at odds with the Radical Republicans in Congress. They responded to Johnson's obstinance by passing laws such as the Tenure of Office Act, which prevented a president from firing Cabinet officers without Senate approval, a clear violation of separation of powers. Despite this clear challenge, Johnson still would not yield and fired his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, whom the law had been written to protect. Following this incident, the House passed articles of impeachment which read like a laundry list of complaints against Johnson, with none of them showing any true merit. The Senate acquitted Johnson by a single vote, a vote that many historians agree helped preserve the importance of impeachment, since Johnson's removal would've occurred on purely political motivations, an event that would've been very damaging to our nation.

From that point, no president faced impeachment until Nixon in 1973. Nixon's impeachment proceeding was perhaps the ultimate nexus of legal and political charges. There is little doubt that Nixon broke the law, while he likely did not have prior knowledge of Watergate, instead of cutting loose his close advisers like Haldeman, Erlichman, and Mitchell, he chose to keep them close and cover up their involvement in Watergate, using the CIA and FBI heads as pawns. At the same time, the impeachment hearings ended up bringing out other charges that were eventually voted down, such as impeachment for impounding funds or for the incursion into Cambodia. Those were more politically motivated charges than the charges related to Watergate, and were rightly voted down.

Whether you were a Nixon fan or not, you could not argue that Congress was not extraordinarily fair to Nixon throughout the process. Even Nixon, when he met with the leadership from both parties before he resigned, praised all of them and told them he would miss working with them and the political scrimmaging that went on. He didn't call them unfair, because even he could admit that no one had denied him his right to defend himself, to face clear, concise charges, and to have fair hearings. The process worked, and the change of leadership was incredibly smooth and dignified. It was during those last days that Nixon showed amazing courage, even though he'd done some terrible things, and the man that was on display those last few days was the core behind a solid president who made some bad missteps along the way.

In 1998, after an election in which the American people demonstrated their support for President Clinton by giving him the first midterm victory for a second-term president since 1816, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton by a party-line vote for his actions surrounding the lawsuit filed against him by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. The vote was notable for the dramatics surrounding it involving the Speakership. Newt Gingrich resigned after the electoral defeat, and as Bob Livingston, (R-LA), the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, prepared to move into the slot, he was hit from two directions. The first was the allegations of marital infidelity on his part, which he would later acknowledge (and which had gotten Clinton into this mess in the first place) and the second was his own conscience. As described in Peter Baker's excellent book on the behind-the-scenes of the impeachment, The Breach, Livingston was in the Speaker's cloakroom when he almost decided to abort the proceedings and hold a censure vote. Between the pressure of his aide and the machinations of Majority Whip Tom DeLay (whom the book showed doing all sorts of things to keep impeachment alive, including borderline forgery of Livingston's and Gingrich's signatures), Livingston pressed on with impeachment, but decided to "set an example" and resign.

Before the Senate even took up the matter, they advised the House prosecutors to keep the trial short, as they had no chance of winning. Even Ted Stevens, the octogenerian Republican from Alaska, told the House Republicans they were wasting their time, demonstrating how strongly the partisan lines were drawn. Today's current red-blue divisions can be traced back to this trial, only the second to reach the Senate, and just as partisan as the first one. We all know the result of the trial. The Senate did not even have a majority of senators voting to declare Clinton guilty, in large part because the charges that the House voted to send to the Senate were the ones with the least factual basis to them. Democrats such as Dick Gephardt said as much after the voting was completed.

The Clinton impeachment was a confluence of the Johnson and Nixon impeachments. Where Johnson was impeached on pure politics, and Nixon faced impeachment on strong conspiracy charges, Clinton's behavior fell in the gray area between the two. Technically, he likely committed perjury in the Paula Jones case. The perjury committed, however, falls far short of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" the Founders envisioned. In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton writes, "The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law."

Clearly, the thought process demonstrates that "high crimes" fall in the category of grave damage to our nation's well-being. Clinton's lying about sex, while shameful, did no such grave damage. To be honest, he shouldn't have been on trial in the first place. The Supreme Court set a terrible precedent by allowing civil suits against a sitting president. The president may not be above the law, but it is very detrimental to the carrying out of his duties. Similarly, having Clinton testify before a grand jury was out of line as well. It was a spectacle which ultimately served no useful purpose. Leon Jaworski, the special prosecutor towards the end of the Nixon administration, rejected the idea of calling the president to testify before the Watergate grand jury, feeling that it both put the president at risk and would create an unseemly spectacle. No such respect existed for Clinton, and the office took a hit in stature that was unnecessary.

Ultimately, the proper result came in Clinton's acquittal. It also left us with more bad precedent on how to run an impeachment. The two impeachment trials we have had ended up following just as Hamilton predicted in Federalist #65. "A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt."

So, now that I've related the history of presidential impeachment, now we come to the case of our current president, George W. Bush. As with the Clinton case, arguments for and against his impeachment run very passionately. I will do my best to avoid histrionics and keep this to a dispassionate advocacy.

There are multiple reasons to impeach President Bush, but only a couple have what I would consider true merit.

*Violation of United States law- The President has openly admitted to violating the FISA act of 1978, which restricted the methods and usage of certain surveillance, as well as clearly defining who could be wiretapped without court approval. The domestic surveillance program, which includes reading of mail, warrantless phone tapping, and Internet spying, is a clear Constitutional violation, as well as a violation of United States statutes and of the Supreme Court's decision in
UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN, 407 U.S. 297; 92 S. Ct. 2125 (1972). The Court held in a unanimous opinion (six justices writing the majority opinion, the other two concurring, Rehnquist recused himself from the case) that the warrantless wiretapping of United States citizens within the borders of the nation was unconstitutional and therefore illegal. The majority opinion, delivered by Justice Powell, says, "It has been said that "the most basic function of any government is to provide for the security of the individual and of his property." Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 539 (1966) (WHITE, J., dissenting). And unless Government safeguards its own capacity to function and to preserve the security of its people, society itself could become so disordered that all rights and liberties would be endangered. As Chief Justice Hughes reminded us in Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 574 (1941):

"Civil liberties, as guaranteed by the Constitution, imply the existence of an organized society maintaining public order without which liberty itself would be lost in the excesses of unrestrained abuses."

But a recognition of these elementary truths does not make the employment by Government of electronic surveillance a welcome development -- even when employed with restraint and under judicial supervision. There is, understandably, a deep-seated uneasiness and apprehension that this capability will be used to intrude upon cherished privacy of law-abiding citizens. We look to the Bill of Rights to safeguard this privacy. Though physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed, its broader spirit now shields private speech from unreasonable surveillance. Katz v. United States, supra; Berger v. New York, supra; Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505 (1961). Our decision in Katz refused to lock the Fourth Amendment into instances of actual physical trespass. Rather, the Amendment governs "not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements . . . without any 'technical trespass under . . . local property law.'" Katz, supra, at 353. That decision implicitly recognized that the broad and unsuspected governmental incursions into conversational privacy which electronic surveillance entails necessitate the application of Fourth Amendment safeguards....These Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch. The Fourth Amendment does not contemplate the executive officers of Government as neutral and disinterested magistrates. Their duty and responsibility are to enforce the laws, to investigate, and to prosecute. Katz v. United States, supra, at 359-360 (DOUGLAS, J., concurring). But those charged with this investigative and prosecutorial duty should not be the sole judges of when to utilize constitutionally sensitive means in pursuing their tasks. The historical judgment, which the Fourth Amendment accepts, is that unreviewed executive discretion may yield too readily to pressures to obtain incriminating evidence and overlook potential invasions of privacy and protected speech."

This is the first, most clearest area where this administration has violated the law. That decision touched on the heart of these issues we face today, and it has not been contravened in any decision since. The President admits to wiretapping without warrant citizens of this nation who were party to international calls. The decision states that any effort at electronic surveillance on citizens must be preceded by a warrant. This violation went on unchecked for almost five years before the administration reversed course and decided to submit their cases to the court appointed by statute to handle these matters, the FISA court. If the administration truly believed that they were in the right, why the reversal? The only answer appears to be that Congress' leadership was now held by the opposing party, and such a move would preclude any investigation into the matter. The president hopes to avoid investigation and possible prosecution into these matters by returning the issue to where it should always have been.

*Abuse of executive branch power. The President has abused the power of the executive branch through his nearly 1,000 signing statements, which declare that he can ignore the law Congress just passed if he, and he alone, sees fit to, and with his usage of the recess appointment, which he has used not for second-tier positions or for true emergencies, but rather to fill appeals court positions, United Nations Ambassador, administrator of Customs and Immigration, and many more positions. Any candidate he placed before the Senate that was rejected either overtly or through a "pocket rejection," if you will, was appointed during a congressional recess. The Framers clearly did not allow for unchecked and unlimited use of this appointment power. They were clear in making the power an emergency one, necessary for the continued operation of the government. The President has not done so, instead, he has used the power to put politically acceptable people in these positions because he wants them there.

What is far more pernicious than the appointments are the signing statements. Historically, signing statements were used to convey how the law would be enforced, or to add a measure of approval to it. Today, they are the tool of choice for the president to carve exceptions into the laws, most noticably the anti-torture act that passed Congress last year. The President's signing statement read, "''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief." As Senator McCain explained on the floor of the Senate while the bill was being taken up, "For the information of my colleagues, the second amendment, which would be before the Senate for consideration at a different time, basically says that cruel and inhumane treatment will not be inflicted upon any prisoner, and we would adhere to the Geneva Conventions as well as other international agreements concerning the treatment of prisoners.

But on this issue it says this amendment would prohibit cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in the detention of the U.S. Government, and it is basically fairly straightforward and simple, as I read.

The Army Field Manual and its various editions have served America well, through wars against both regular and irregular foes. The manual embodies the values Americans have embraced for generations while preserving the ability of our interrogators to extract critical intelligence from ruthless foes. Never has this been more important than today in the midst of the war on terror.

I think we all agree to fight terrorism we must obtain intelligence. But we have to ensure that it is reliable and acquired in a way that is humane. To do otherwise not only offends our national morals but undermines our efforts to protect the Nation's security.

Abuse of prisoners harms--harms, not helps--us in the war on terror because inevitably these abuses become public. When they do, the cruel actions of a few darken the reputation of our honorable country in the eyes of millions. Mistreatment of our prisoners also endangers U.S. servicemembers who might be captured by the enemy--if not in this war, then in the next. "

Senator McCain's words indicate the meaning of Congress when they passed this bill, and the President's response is basically that he will do what he wishes. Consistently, the phrase "unitary executive" pops up in these statements, where the President declares that this or that act of Congress intrudes on his constitutional authority to regulate the "unitary executive" and therefore, he will take their law, which he signed, as simply being advisory and not carrying the force of law. He is declaring himself above the law, for it is Congress who passes the laws, who creates the laws, of this nation, through their powers granted in Article I of the Constitution.

Furthermore, the president routinely denies Congress the information that they are entitled to through the oversight process. Committee and subcommittee chairs will request and/or subpoena information from executive branch offices and are denied, typically on the excuse that the information is classified. This administration has classified virtually all of its behavior, even the day-to-day activities of the Department of Agriculture, for instance. With that overreaching use of classification, the administration is declaring that it is not subject to the law or congressional oversight. It is virtually impossible to receive information when it is put behind the wall of classification, and it unconstitutionally hinders the Congress from the discharge of their duties.

It is on the basis of these actions that the President has done substantial harm to our Constitution, and is in violation of his oath of office, which requires him to "protect, preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States." His actions have rendered his oath shattered, and have created a situation that will require years of work to repair. If the President can declare himself above the law, above the Congress, and fundamentally prevents a superior branch of government from undertaking some of their most basic duties, then they have rendered upon this nation of laws a massive wound that requires this most extreme action. If Congress can declare the actions of a President impeachable for his personal behavior, which did not substantially inflict harm upon this nation and its rule of law, then it has no choice but to determine that this president, who has committed high crimes against the very being of the Constitution, not only be impeached, but be convicted in the Senate and removed from office. If it does not, then it will have committed an equally grave offense.

Is someone trying to save friends of the Duke?

2007-01-14T04:07:00.000-05:00

U.S. Attorney of San Diego Carol Lam is apparently being forced out of her job. Lam's sins? Well, prosecuting Duke Cunningham and other local Republicans on corruption charges seems to have stirred up someone back in D.C., so much so that the FBI Special Agent in Charge of the San Diego office (SAC's are senior FBI agents chosen for their investigative and administrative prowess), told the San Diego Tribune: As for the reason for any pressure to resign, [Dan] Dzwilewski said: “I can't speak for what's behind all that, what's the driving force behind this or the rationale. I guarantee politics is involved.”

Dzwilewski declined to discuss Lam's demeanor during their conversations, her state of mind, when or if she will resign or her future plans.

“It will be a huge loss from my perspective,” Dzwilewski said."

Seems a smidge fishy, doesn't it? Her predecessors, including Chris La Bella, who worked with Ken Starr in the IC's office during Whitewater, said this is out of the ordinary, so why is she being tossed? Someone needs to provide some answers about this.

Why they gotta hate?

2006-12-28T05:20:00.000-05:00

Yeah, forgive me for the bad grammar, but there's a point.

I just finished reading a trashing of Dane Cook from three months ago in Salon. It's articles like this that help perpetuate the idea of the elitist liberal.

So what explains Cook's popularity? His comedy is most notable for what it lacks: a critique of the political climate (Dennis Miller, George Carlin, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher), a commentary on our culture (Chris Rock, David Chappelle), a slightly tweaked perspective (Ray Romano, Steven Wright, Jerry Seinfeld), outrageously dirty material (Eddie Murphy, Andrew Dice Clay), or just a goofy, oddball routine (Howie Mandel). Although his delivery can be chafingly smug, Cook doesn't present himself as anything special. He likes video games and chicks and sports and other general-purpose guy stuff. He's not particularly baffled by the world, or all that perceptive, or all that self-aware.

He's a little self-deprecating, a little bit cutesy and a little bit aggressive, but most important, he treats mundane experiences like they're huge revelations: Breakup sex is the best, right? Right! Sometimes you have to lie to get out of stuff you don't want to do. I know you've done it, too, bro!.....But Cook's is the sort of non-threatening humor that appeals to people who, when watching Jon Stewart or Jerry Seinfeld, don't feel like they're in on the joke. With Cook, you're always in on the joke. Even if you've never been in a bad relationship or had breakup sex, you can just flash that "SuFi" and you're part of the club.

The SuFi, in fact, embodies the appeal of Dane Cook. Short for "Superfinger," it arose from a skit about Cook's quest for an upgraded version of giving someone the finger -- with the thumb, middle finger and ring finger extended. The emptiness of the gesture sums up the frat-boy camaraderie among Cook's fans, and his popularity among college students. In college, after all, jokes aren't really jokes at all, they're just code words for shared experiences.

You know, I'm in on the joke when it's told by Stewart, Colbert, Carlin, any one of them. I'm intelligent, and so are many fans of Dane Cook. It's incredibly insulting to make it out to be that A: Dane Cook fans are dumb, B: college kids are dumb and unable to comprehend "real" humor, and C: that Cook himself is dumb.

Yes, I know, it's the writer's opinion, and yes, Tourgasm wasn't all that great, but his two CD's and his DVD's are really good. Tell me, what the hell is wrong with having a comedian who isn't being activist, who talks about REGULAR THINGS that we go through in our 18-25 years? What makes him smart is that he's carved out his own niche. Why should he be like everyone else? And how is Chris Rock (whom I also find very funny) that much smarter in his comedy? He talks about all sorts of things that don't require a lot of thought to understand. Just buy Roll With The New and you'll see.

The whole smug thing is just a parroting of what some other comedians have said. The funny thing is, the people bitching about him are people who never really made it as big stars. A little jealous, perhaps? And why are their complaints relayed practically word for word in this article by the writer without attribution? The whole thing just reeks.

This is why I don't read Salon much anymore: the elitism level is just too high for me.

I'm glad Jonah Goldberg writes for the L.A. Times

2006-12-16T17:27:00.001-05:00

Because I'd have a lot less to talk about if it wasn't for his hypocritical, hot-air filled writings.

Jonah thinks Iraq needs a dictator again:

I THINK ALL intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would be even better than an Iraqi Castro.

Wow, I guess that democracy thing went out the window. He's not even talking about it as an option now. Goldberg is going with rightist dictator over leftist dictator. What about the purple fingers? What about all those votes? Oh, they can't stop fighting each other and us? Well, guess we need to find a new dictator.

Not that he isn't already being cynical enough, but his premise that all patriotic Americans believe Iraq needs a new dictator is ridiculous. If we do that, then what was the point of fighting this war in the first place? "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," said the Who, and in Goldberg's case, they'd be right.

Goldberg is by and large dismissive of Pinochet's atrocious record. He gives us the ludicrous theory that Pinochet's brutality created democracy. What?

Gen. Pinochet seized a country coming apart at the seams. He too clamped down on civil liberties and the press. He too dispatched souls. Chile's official commission investigating his dictatorship found that Pinochet had 3,197 bodies in his column; 87% of them died in the two-week mini-civil war that attended his coup. Many more were tortured or forced to flee the country.

But on the plus side, Pinochet's abuses helped create a civil society. Once the initial bloodshed subsided, Chile was no prison. Pinochet built up democratic institutions and infrastructure. And by implementing free-market reforms, he lifted the Chilean people out of poverty. In 1988, he held a referendum and stepped down when the people voted him out.

That's kinda funny. America created a civil society without these abuses. So did Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan, for starters. Democracy can flourish without dictatorship early on. Then there is his claim that Chile was no prison. Yeah, go ask all those people who disappeared or were tortured if it was a prison. Dissent against Pinochet wasn't tolerated, so how could you possibly claim it wasn't a prison? Obviously, only if you're Jonah Goldberg.

Oh, yeah, Pinochet actually waited two years to relinquish his power.

This is a strawman argument, designed more to be a shot at Castro than actually be useful to Iraq. Because, let's be honest, there is no leftist/rightist fight in Iraq. It's the right versus the more right versus the extreme right. It's a religious fight. Castro is an atheistic, amoral Communist who, thank God, is about to knock off, and without his brutality around, Cuba has a shot at making it.

As for Iraq, well, this Goldberg suggestion is five days off of Jonathan Chait, he of the quasi-liberal New Republic and from the Times, wrote an op-ed calling for us to restore Saddam to power to stabilize Iraq. So, yes, boneheadedness is not partisan. Chait's idea was just as bad, if not worse (on second thought, it was worse, because we could be hundreds of thousands of lives in the plus column if we were going to keep the status quo).

Anyways, back to Goldberg. This is how he finishes:

Now, you might say: "This is unfair. This is a choice between two bad options." OK, true enough. But that's all we face in Iraq: bad options. When presented with such a predicament, the wise man chooses the more moral, or less immoral, path. The conservative defense of Pinochet was that he was the least-bad option; better the path of Pinochet than the path toward Castroism, which is where Chile was heading before the general seized power. Better, that is, for the United States and for Chileans.

I bring all this up because in the wake of Pinochet's death (and Jeane Kirkpatrick's), the old debate over conservative indulgence of Pinochet has elicited shrieking from many on the left claiming that any toleration of Pinochet was inherently immoral — their own tolerance of Castro notwithstanding.

Castro is tolerated because, quite frankly, we screwed up opportunities to take him out. Let me remind Goldberg that it was the liberal JFK and RFK who were the only ones to attempt to remove Castro since he took power in 1959. Granted, some of the ideas were farfetched, but at least they tried. No one has since. Everyone has tolerated him, not just liberals. I pointed out higher up that I'm glad he's on his way out, and I'm sure most every liberal would agree.

So, ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up for Jonah Goldberg, proud member of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists, and prince of the straw-man argument.

This is why the BCS sucks

2006-12-03T16:06:00.000-05:00

They haven't made the BCS picks yet, but I sense already Michigan is getting screwed.

Let's face it: College football is subjective to opinion. There are not hard measurements of a team's ability. Records mean very little. Polls, freaking polls, are what determines someone's placement in a national title picture.

It's about money, not competition. The NCAA does tournaments in all other sports and its lower-grade divisions, but not in D1 football. It is ridiculous. That's why Louisville was facing the Sun Bowl as an 11-1 team if Rutgers hadn't lost. Notre Dame is considered the bigger money team, even though Louisville had a better record.

And we come to Michigan. Florida gets to play an extra game, and moves up over Michigan. USC gets to play two games after the Big Ten season ends, which is clearly set up to favor USC making late moves in the polls. In short, Michigan gets punished for having played out its schedule on time.

Yes, I'm a Michigan grad, and I will have an internal bias. But it doesn't change the truth of the argument. If the Big Ten had a championship game, or if Michigan went to Hawaii or some other team to play a late-game, and won, they'd be second, not Florida. But they play Ohio State last, sit, and get knocked down in rankings because of it. I mean, USC was one win less than Michigan going into yesterday and was ranked higher.

And the argument that Michigan shouldn't be in a championship game because they didn't win their conference completely F'ing ignores the fact that they didn't win their conference because the #1 team is IN their conference. They lost by three points to the best team in the nation, and they were one penalty away from likely winning that game. They are taking a severe beating in the polls because they lost by a field goal to the nation's best team. A rematch is perfectly valid. Florida, who passed Michigan, struggled with Arkansas, a lower-ranked team, and were losing to them at one point.

Finally, if you look at the one team they lost to, Michigan only lost to the best team in the nation in a squeaker. No. 11 Auburn beat Florida by ten. End of argument. A win is a win, and it shouldn't be subjective to all this ridiculous crap.

This situation, more than ever, calls for a playoff. To further my point, a 10-2 LSU team is ranked ahead of 11-1 Louisville and 11-1 Wisconsin. The BCS is far too swayed by biases towards certain teams.

An easy playoff is this. Two bowl games on Jan. 1 or 2 feature 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3. The other two major bowls host other BCS teams via the normal process. On Jan. 8, the winners of the two matchups face for the national title. The BCS chairman, in fact, supports a system such as this. It's one extra game to play, but the BCS can pony up the extra travel money, the games take place when classes don't, so it doesn't affect the studies of the students either, and it would take care of a situation like this, where you have three 11-1 teams and a 12-0 team.

It's time for this biased system to be laid to rest. The BCS is about as bad as when Nebraska won the 1997 USA Today poll because Philip Fulmer was pissed at Michigan and downranked them out of the title, and Michigan won the AP Poll. It's time for this crap to end. Let the players decide who's the best in a fair competition.

Update: 5:00 p.m. PST: Waiting right now to hear the selections, and just finished reading another column saying that a team that didn't win its conference shouldn't play for the national championship. Yeah, Michigan didn't win the conference, Ohio frickin State is in it. Should a 10-2 Pac-10 team be in over an 11-1 second place Big Ten team for instance, just because they won their conference? That argument doesn't hold water.

Update 2: 5:10 p.m. PST: Well, it's Florida. I hope they get crushed the way that they did against Nebraska in 1996. Steve Spurrier went into that game having campaigned for the spot, and they lost 62-24. I hate Ohio State, but at this moment, I despise Florida more for getting a shot that they will probably blow mightily. Michigan would've been guaranteed to have a close game. Florida is hardly a guarantee given their past record against teams outside the SEC.

This year's most assbrained comment

2006-11-22T03:30:00.000-05:00

goes to Richard Cohen. Already covered at E&P and Obsidian Wings, I can't resist adding my own shot to this:

In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic.

Cohen was once a respected columnist. Now he's a fricking disgrace. What sort of human being can you be to say that? Yeah, violence is always so prudent and therapeutic, so he supported a war against people who didn't attack us. Fucking brilliant.

Mike and Al at it again

2006-11-19T03:37:00.000-05:00

No, I don't mean Michael Moore and Al Gore. I mean Michael Chertoff and Alberto Gonzales.

While Gonzo was off calling those who are against warrantless wiretapping a grave threat to the nation's security (which has been covered ad nauseum everywhere, so I'm not saying anything), Chertoff was saying that "international law is being used as a rhetorical weapon against us."

I've long since made my point clear on how I think the Bush administration disregards and ignores ideas like the law, but let's have some discourse on international law, shall we?

The concept of international law is to make certain crimes and actions universally forbidden, as well as to structure a basic legal system so common ground can be found between nations on everything from military issues to territorial waters to salvage operations. It is there to keep us safe from unending war, political battles, and unnecessary arguments.

The administration has, as in many domestic issues, unilaterally declared that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to those we've captured through various means throughout the world. The Geneva Conventions are one of the bedrocks of international law. And in Chertoff's speech, we get a real glimpse of the administration's feelings towards long-held international standards.

"Chertoff said the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Guantanamo prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan that required the United States to treat detainees under Geneva Conventions standards showed international law's entry into the U.S. domain."

The Supreme Court decision simply recognized what many of us have said already. As a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, which are treaties that have been ratified by the Senate, they are, by the Constitution, not international law imposing on us, but part of actual law. I quote Article VI of the Constitution: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

The Geneva Conventions are a set of treaties which the United States ratified on February 8, 1955, therefore making them part of domestic law. Mr. Chertoff, for a lawyer and a former appeals judge, really should know better. To say that international law is encroaching upon us, well, if we sign onto those laws and ratify them, we've made them part of our own domestic legal system, and therefore the Supreme Court was bound to consider Geneva as part of its framework in the Hamdan decision.

Look, not all international law applies to the situations we face. But when we sign onto to something and give our word as a nation, we are bound to honor it. How can people trust us to keep our word when we've forsaken the ABM Treaty (when Russia did not want to) and the Geneva Conventions. Things like international law may not mean much to the Bush administration, but how we adhere to such laws and handle these cases goes towards showing potential allies how much they can trust us, and it gives our enemies fodder to use against us. International law is important, and instead of ignoring and belitting it, we should be out front, setting an example for the world, showing them that we can win while playing by their rules.

"We'll succeed unless we quit."

2006-11-18T03:55:00.001-05:00

Most every blogger I read talking about that statement pretty much noted the irony of the President saying that in Vietnam, which marks the first time he's ever gone there, by the way. The men he defeated in 2000 and 2004 saw it through a gunsight. Anyways....

There's a bigger issue I have with that statement. Where he said it is irrelevant. The fact it was spoken in Vietnam just means that the Rove machine screwed up again, which is understandable coming right after a crushing defeat and six years of spinning everything. Clinton survived because he rotated out the spinners. Bush hasn't even handled that right, and it's costing him now.

The big issue with the statement, though, is the continued stubbornness it displays. The President is declaring that if only we stay forever, we'll win at some undetermined point in the future with victory defined by some vague statement. He might as well wish for a unicorn to appear in the Rose Garden.

America's problem with this war is largely stemming from the fact that he is so incredibly vague when asked to define victory and success. Standing down as they stand up sounds like musical chairs, not a victory plan. America voted for change in this election, largely based on Iraq. It was the same reason that Nixon won in 1968. America was sick of the LBJ undefined victory plan that never came to fruition. Bush hasn't put forth anything better than LBJ in 1967.

I've written often about the similarities between the two presidents, and this is just one of many. I don't think you'll find an American who doesn't want us to win in Iraq, but we all have different ideas of winning, and this president, who has put himself forth as the strong, decisive leader, has not given America anything solid to coalesce around. The president has constantly shifted ground on why we should be fighting in Iraq, with his only consistent explaination being the straw man argument about Saddam and al-Qaida.

The President had a great chance after the 2004 election to give us a clear strategy, a clear objective, a rallying point in Iraq. He failed that task miserably, and as the news out of Iraq got worse, support for the war plummeted. Bush has hit a 31% approval rating overall and on Iraq. That's territory he shouldn't want to be probing right now, and if he'd done his job two years ago, he wouldn't be here now.

And the "now," as it is, means working with his political enemies. It means trying to fix this thing instead of being a coward and handing it off to his successor. It means he stops acting like a politician and starts acting like a real leader. It means dropping the soundbites and speaking in plain language, telling us the whole truth, telling us what's gone wrong, what's gone right, and what victory really means. All we've gotten is hollow words. America said on November 7th that those words aren't enough anymore. They want actions. Is the President going to do it, or is he going to just wait this out, let more soldiers die, and hand it off to the next guy? I hope he understands this, but it's a dim hope. Six years has taught me that doing the right thing has too often been lost on this administration.

What Tuesday means

2006-11-13T02:04:00.000-05:00

I'm probably the last person to write this sort of post, but hopefully I can add some new insight to the discourse.

This election means that the idea of an unaccountable executive branch is once again dead. This election means that oversight will return and we will have answers to justified questions. This election means that reform can finally begin to take place. This election means that George Allen and Rick Santorum will no longer be presidential contenders. This election means that there is no permanent Republican majority, that the majority existed because of the politics of smear and fear. This election means that many new members of Congress are people who will not be bought, people like the Jon Testers, the Jim Webbs, the Patrick Murphys, the Tim Walzs, people who are not lifetime politicians, but instead farmers and combat veterans and teachers, people who know how real life goes.

This election means that opposing viewpoints will be heard. This election means that the American people will be protected better, because there will be true debate on issues. This election means that Congress will be the dominant branch of government once more, as our Founders intended. This election means that us here in the blogosphere do matter, because many of those we supported won their races. This election matters because the elected officials who help determine the future of our foreign and military policies will include many people who have served in uniform recently, such as Walz, Murphy, Joe Sestak, Chris Carney, Brian Lentz, and more.

This election means that this nation saw through the smears, the fear, and the lies that Republicans put forth the last two years. They weren't interested in Terri Schiavo's well-being, they were interested in the political gain (which backfired). They weren't interested in small government, because several of them took major bribes to increase government's size. They weren't interested in the average person, because they dodged TV cameras, reporters, liberal constitutents, and tough questions in general. They weren't interested in a culture of life, because they did very little to improve the quality of life for millions of Americans. They weren't interested in defending the Constitution they swore an oath to, because if they were, they would not have been the President's rubber stamp to gut civil liberties to keep us "safe."

This election was change. These new Congressmen are not conservatives. Some are moderates, but many of them are downright progressive, who believe in the progressive cause, and who will lead us into a new age.

Attempting to return

2006-11-13T01:57:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to have a little more time to post, so hopefully I'll be able to make this work, but we'll see. I read more than I write these days, but with a Democratic majority, I'll have much more to work with (I hope).

Anyways, see the post above this for my first shot at resurrecting what was once a decently trafficked blog.

Oh, for Christ's sake, get over it!

2006-10-24T03:04:00.000-04:00

I am sick and tired of the talk about Kenny Rogers allegedly cheating against the Cardinals (and the A's and the Yankees). If he was a cheater, how come they couldn't hit him for seven innings after he washed his hands?

It's like a corked bat. You hit worse afterwards. Except Rogers pitched the same with a clean hand as he did a dirty one. If he was cheating, the Cardinals would've been hitting him.

I think it's crap. I think this whole, drawn-out thing is crap. And as for the ESPN web crew pointing out every little inconsistency about what Rogers and everyone has said, well, under this sort of overbearing, relentless questioning in the face of no evidence, wouldn't you make little slips?

I think Kenny had dirt on his hand. I think since the umpires have absolved him of any wrongdoing, this needs to be dropped. It's out of hand and for no reason. The Yankees didn't complain. The A's didn't complain. Rogers has pitched great all season. He's on a roll now. He pitched seven innings after washing his hands and still kicked St. Louis' ass. They need to get over themselves at ESPN.

Of course he thinks they'll win

2006-10-22T22:07:00.000-04:00

It's just one more thing the president is delusional about.

A little Cincy cheer for Bush

2006-10-04T23:06:00.000-04:00

Yeah, the conservative 6th Court of Appeals reinstated the warrantless wiretapping program while the appeal is being formulated by the government. A three judge panel gave the go-ahead for it.

This is just going to give the righties another reason to call Judge Taylor a liberal who overstepped, even though she didn't. And it means that the administration is going to continue violating all of our rights....again.

The WSJ has lost all sense of decency

2006-10-02T23:02:00.000-04:00

when they write crap like this.

They call Foley gay when there's no evidence to the sort. They advocate quarantining gay Congressmen from male pages, as if somehow only gay people make advances at minors, and as if gay people can't control their libido.

They say this:

But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?

This is repulsive. How dare they paint millions of people with the brush of one bad actor? To use this predator's story as a reason to discriminate against all gays when, again, there has been no evidence to support the claim that Foley was gay, well, it's incredibly irresponsible, it's slander, and while I'll defend their right to say it, I will exercise my right to say they are bottom-feeding, intolerant, pandering, useless media whores, who take an otherwise respected newspaper and make it into a joke with their hideous, bigoted, slanderous opinion writing, and while they're at it, they lie like hell on a regular basis to suit some wacko theory that they came up with while sitting around the office and dreaming up ways to destroy any credibility they might possibly have.

They can all go to hell. I'm sure they'll fit in real well down there.

Update (10:33 pm, 10/3/06): Mark Foley's lawyer today declared Foley is a gay man. How nice. Despite the fact that Foley is now making this declaration, it still demonstrates nothing about the WSJ's bullshit theory. Being gay doesn't equal predator. To claim otherwise is to demonstrate a intellectual dishonesty, a moral compass with no needle, and just pure hatred. The now-deceased anti-gay gay mayor of Spokane, WA, Jim West, also preyed on teen boys online while hiding his orientation. Perhaps it's hiding one's true self that is making these men go after boys, not the fact that they are gay.

Oh, the unintended irony

2006-10-01T00:21:00.000-04:00

of Brian Williams showing up on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live and pretending to be the anchor for Weekend Update.

The lines between real and fake news continue to blur...

The saddest day

2006-09-29T00:55:00.000-04:00

Today, words are hard to come by. The Congress has legalized the use of torture for the first time in our nation's history. We have officially lost our way as a Republic. Washington's warning against the pernicious effects of political parties has come to pass. In a desperate bid to cling to power, the Republican Congress saved the president's ass today by passing his legislation, in effect immunizing him against his previous actions. Any bill that "bans" torture, yet lets the orderer of torture decide it, is no ban.

To top it off, 12 Democrats voted for this bill. Some of them are in safe seats and had no need. Others aren't, but a courageous stand is typically appreciated by voters. This isn't a Republican climate anymore, and those Democrats showed no guts. Here's the list of the twelve lacking in testicular fortitude:

Tom Carper (Del.)
Tim Johnson (S.D.)
Mary Landrieu (La.)
Frank Lautenberg (N.J.)
Bob Menendez (N.J)
Bill Nelson (Fla.)
Ben Nelson (Neb.)
Mark Pryor (Ark.)
Jay Rockefeller (W. Va.)
Ken Salazar (Co.)
Debbie Stabenow (Mich.)

Let's review. Carper, Lautenberg, Bill Nelson, and Rockefeller are all safe seats. Salazar, Stabenow, Bill Nelson, and Pryor are all pretty safe seats. Those eight votes sustain a filibuster, which would've led to some real debate and discussion on the issue.

But, no. They took a coward's way out and have damned this nation until such point where the Supreme Court declares this unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. If the Court does it, that is.

Let's face it, Democratic acquiesence in the face of withering attacks by Republicans are to blame for the situation we face. In 2002, Democrats backed down on Bush, and he ran them over, giving the GOP full control, a situation still existing to this day. Since then, this is what's happened:

Bills introduced to deny civil rights to a class of people
Bills introduced to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on certain issues.
Regressive, punitive bills against the middle and lower classes
Bills introduced and/or passed to deny voting rights to poor people

Hell, I could go on all day, but that's the basics of it.

And now the worst of all. A bill passed that legalizes torture, suspends habeas corpus, and allows the executive to determine the status of all individuals under the law.

Tonight, I grieve for our nation.

Tomorrow, it's back to work to elect people who know what America really stands for.

A horrifying tale of child abuse

2006-09-24T02:16:00.000-04:00

No matter your political stripe or beliefs on discipline, there is no way you cannot be horrified at this.

On torture

2006-09-20T00:52:00.000-04:00

Is George Bush president of the United States or is he the general secretary of the Soviet Union?

I never thought I would ask such a question about a president in our lifetime. Hell, in 2000, I thought at worst we'd deal with some demagoguery, but it wouldn't be too bad, because the Democrats had steadily gained back power in Congress, and more split government would ensue as battles over tax cuts, education, and religion in public places.

Then 9/11 happened, and life as I knew it hasn't been the same since.

We launched the first preemptive war in American history (which I regret supporting now). We're slowly giving up rights, violating the adages of our Founders. And worst of all, we're having a (somewhat) civil discussion about the most uncivil of acts: torture.

Euphemisms are just cute ways of evading saying that ugly word. But it is clear that the President of these United States, along with certain enablers in his party, supports the use of torture on terrorism "suspects." People we simply "suspect" are involved in terror. As reporting has shown, most people given up into custody were done so out of revenge or for money. Hardly a reliable way to judge someone's complicity.

And then there's the story from Afghanistan, almost dead on to what went on at Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo for that matter. A few bad apples? More like somebody poisoned the whole apple cart.

So what's a President to do? Well, he feigns concern over Abu Ghraib, doesn't punish anyone higher up the chain who had responsibility for that prison and the soldiers stationed there, like Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Then he goes and asks for authority from Congress to continue his torturing, and threatens our lives if he doesn't get our way. Let's repeat this. He explicitly said our lives will be in danger if we don't torture people.

The big problem with the Decider's™ arguement is, first of all, torture doesn't work. FBI agents have publicly said this. They would know, as they are experienced interrogators. Instead of experienced people, though, we have 21-year-old kids running these things, they're all hyped up, and they're going overboard because they're getting orders to go nuts with the people they're interrogating. They're torturing and either getting bad information, or they're getting nothing because they have innocent people, like the two guys killed at Bagram.

Secondly, we have ceded the moral high ground already. We've chased away our allies. We've shown our enemies we're willing to stoop to their levels (and, please, don't give me that beheading shit. What we've done is enough to lose our credibility.) Oh, yeah, we've put all of our operatives, our soldiers, all of them in harm's way for future wars. We've told the world we're willing to torture, and that our torture is permissible under the rewriting of Geneva that Jester McBusherson is screaming to have passed, so they now have free reign to go rewrite Geneva. This is the same damn way Bush sunk the ABM treaty with Russia, as if we really had a desperate need to scrap THAT.

Since the president seems to be completely fucking ignorant when it comes to the Constitution he swore to uphold, let alone common sense, here's some quick refreshing.

The Constitution says that treaties as signed are the law of the land. A treaty is language that all signatories agree to, including its interpretation. You, Mr. President, don't get to change it because you don't like it. Furthermore, have you thought about the consequences? I'm guessing not, because you never think ahead, and it gets you in trouble all the time.

I'm disturbed by the amount of people who still support you. I'm stunned that reasonable, rational people that I know are all in favor of your "Terrorist Surveillance Program," or your "enhanced interrogations." I'm sickened that you think this is what's best for your nation, after watching your father do the right thing, by and large, for years. You've seemed determined to do everything opposite of him. He sought combat, you evaded it. He built coalitions, you smashed alliances. He did what was best for his nation, you've done what's best for yourself. Mr. President, how do you look at your father, let alone look in the mirror at night?

We keep going down a dark road in this nation because not enough people stand up and say no. I don't care what the hell someone has done, to stoop to their level takes away our right to stand on the high ground. Torture is not justified, no matter what the level of crime involved. When we torture, we create martyrs, and the world believes they have a free pass to do the same to our soldiers and our agents. Why should they believe differently? If America, the bastion of democracy, tortures people, why shouldn't they?

The best way to handle a terrorist is to not treat him as such. We're going through all these unique ways of handling terrorists, and so they gain stature. They gain attention. They create terror. When this happens, we lose. We need to put them on trial whenever possible, charge them as mass murderers, and not mention the word terrorism. There are ways of taking power away from people, and killing them all isn't a successful strategy. We have to hit them on an intellectual level, because when we take away the martyrdom and glamour of terrorism, the terrorists have nothing left to fall back on, and their ideology starts to crumble.

It took time, patience, and a combination of strategies, but we defeated the greatest threats to mankind in the past. Those presidents thought about the consequences. They built alliances. They negotiated, and in the case of the Cold War, Reagan used a threatening posture, along with psychological warfare, to bring the Soviets to their knees.

Torture gets us nowhere. It's degrading. It puts us on the level of Third World nations. It is everything America is not, and our leader is ruining our reputation by standing behind a podium and screaming that we need to give him the right to torture so he can supposedly keep us safe from the bogeymen out there. He has yet to understand that what he is doing is making us less safe, but since he is a man who never takes responsibility for his actions, why should he care?

I have only one response: He swore an oath to God, and if he's a man of God as he claims, he's broken the oath, and he owes the American people the act of repairing his breaches.

"Who knows the definition of humiliating treatment?"

2006-09-17T23:42:00.000-04:00

Gee, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, since you are apparently one of the few people in the real world who doesn't know that answer (along with the rest of the Administration) let's look at some of these wonderful revelations from Gitmo.

Shackling a detainee so long he soiled himself, using his hair to mop the mess up, and then making him sit like that with no way to clean himself for three days. Hmmm.... pretty humiliating.

Having female soldiers strip your clothes off, put you in a human pyramid, taking pictures next to that pile that will end up on international television, that's humiliating.

Being forced to masturbate in front of a crowd of people....check.

Locked in cages smaller than people's walk-in closets, which happen to be outside, so therefore exposed to the elements....double check.

Getting your ass kicked just to show others not to get out of line....check again.

I could go on and on, but I think the point's been made. It's like when the band kid gets beat up and thrown into a trashcan in front of the whole school by the jocks from the football team. Every damn one of those people knows that kid was humiliated. I'm willing to even say it may be some of those band kids who are getting their revenge and using detainees to do it with. At least, they are certainly demonstrating the mindset.

How people who publicly proclaim their love of Jesus Christ over and over again can go up there and defend violating his central tenets as protecting us is beyond me. All I know is, hearing these people demonstrate this ugliest of hypocrisies makes me want to vomit on a regular basis.

They like to say us progressives are "godless," "hate religion," and are "secularists," but who is really demonstrating the tenets of the faith that Jesus taught us? Those who start needless wars and advocate torture, or those of us who fight for human rights, decency, and the rule of law?

It's kinda like Hadley's question. Everyone knows the answer, but not everyone admits it.

Olbermann vs. Bush (or right vs. might)

2006-09-12T00:13:00.000-04:00

and it wasn't even a contest.

Two views aired tonight. The first was President George W. Bush's address to the nation, which used new language to describe old thoughts. Bush was like Vanilla Ice ripping off Queen and David Bowie, except Vanilla was more entertaining. The second was Keith Olbermann, whom words cannot describe, so simply watch it here. What particularly insulted me, though, was that the President tried to tie Iraq to bin Laden right after saying that Iraq had nothing to do anything with 9/11. Let me quote the man himself:

On September the 11th, we learned that America must confront threats before they reach our shores; whether those threats come from terrorist networks or terrorist states.

I am often asked why we're in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat.

My administration, the Congress and the United Nations saw the threat.

BUSH: And, after 9/11, Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take.

The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.

And now the challenge is to help the Iraqi people build a democracy that fulfills the dreams of the nearly 12 million Iraqis who came out to vote in free elections last December.

Al Qaida and other extremists from across the world have come to Iraq to stop the rise of a free society in the heart of the Middle East. They have joined the remnants of Saddam's regime and other armed groups to foment sectarian violence and drive us out.

Our enemies in Iraq are tough and they are committed, but so are Iraqi and coalition forces. We are adapting to stay ahead of the enemy, and we are carrying out a clear plan to ensure that a democratic Iraq succeeds.

We are training Iraqi troops so they can defend their nation. We are helping Iraq's unity government grow in strength and serve its people. We will not leave until this work is done.

Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone.

They will not leave us alone. They will follow us.

The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.

Osama bin Laden calls this fight "The Third World War," and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America's defeat and disgrace forever.

If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened. They will gain a new safe haven. They will use Iraq's resources to fuel their extremist movement.

I don't recall bin Laden saying any of these things, and even if he has, what does it matter what he says? If the President hasn't noticed it yet, he takes the bait every time. He does the dirty work of the biggest mass murderer in our nation's history. Osama bin Laden may indeed hate our freedoms and want a Caliphate from the 14th century, but he could not possibly have done the damage that this administration has done to us in the world. On Sept. 12, 2001, the world rallied around us. Everyone was on our side. Bin Laden had caused everyone to realize their worst fears: that it could've been them.

Instead we half-assed the important battle, and threw all our attention into the battle that has now proven to have been unnecessary. Afghanistan, despite Bush's words tonight, is facing renewed Taliban attacks. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's statement recently to Congress that the Taliban is stronger in three of the four seasons of the year is not reassuring; quite simply, it's frightening. It means that twice this administration has declared Mission Accomplished, and twice has been wrong. Neither confict is ended, in fact, our commitment to Afghanistan may need to be upgraded again.

Iraq, meanwhile, is not going to follow us home. Al-Qaida may be in Iraq, but it's more for attention than it is a serious, follow us home, threat. In truth, it doesn't matter whether we are fighting them there or not. No matter what, they will be trying to attack us here again. If we hadn't gone to Iraq, though, and if this president hadn't become so wedded to the idea that being in the middle of a civil war somehow stopped Osama bin Laden from attacking us, we might be safer today. A negative doesn't prove a positive. No attacks in five years doesn't mean that this administration has truly done its job. Eight years transpired between WTC attacks one and two. And it's not like al-Qaida's been quiet, either. They've attacked in Madrid, in London, in Bali. They are alive and well, and they are alive and well in part because we failed in our mission. We failed to learn our lessons and take down terrorism.

For five years now, those of us who disagreed with the administration have been called everything from morally bankrupt to traitors and terrorist sympathizers. We have been slammed by people who have been so tied to the administration's ideology that they forgot their own. Conservatism lost its way in 2002. It stopped being about the ideas and became all about the power. It became a knockdown, dragout slugfest whose only goal was to further one man's vision of what America should be, and a perverse vision it has shown itself to be.

In five years, America has lost its way. We have become decadent empire. We have shown that fascistic ideas can exist on our own shores under the right conditions. We have validated Orwell's writings. America today is a nation whose leaders have sanctioned torture while denying their own words. It is a nation that has trashed hard-earned, long-lasting treaties with the rest of the world just to show it could. It is a nation that launched its first preemptive war with spin and falsehoods, toppling a dictator that certainly deserved his fall, but created a situation even worse by doing so.

The lesson all of us forgot after 9/11 is that this is our nation. This is not the nation of Bush. This is not the nation of Cheney. America is not here to satisfy their whims or glorify their half-victories. They are here to serve us. Government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, and it is our duty as true patriots to stand up and let our voices be heard. On 9/11, 40 brave Americans on Flight 93 won the first battle against the terrorists while the President who acts tough was base-hopping. There's a lesson in that for us. The least among us can make the biggest difference, and those highest can often be irrelevant.

9/11 was the opening in a clash of ideology. Unfortunately, the American ideology, which can win any battle, was benched for the mirror image of what we are fighting. America is freedom. It is tolerance. It is respect. It is welcoming. It is NOT partisanship. It is NOT theocracy. It is NOT one-party dominance. It is NOT torture. It is NOT warlike, and it is NOT about the unitary executive/dictatorial crap that this administration spews to justify its actions.

ON 9/11, 40 brave Americans took back their plane. It's now time for brave Americans to take back their nation.

Tribute, tribulations, and terror: Remembering 9/11

2006-09-11T00:17:00.000-04:00

It is difficult to write about this day. Every year there is a sense of dread as the date approaches, for a plane slamming into the World Trade Center was the first thing I saw that morning. I woke up, walked into the living room of my new apartment, and turned on the TV. I saw the plane hit and thought I was watching some movie. But as I flipped channels, I saw the same thing everywhere, and then I began to feel abject, gripping fear.

I called out my (ex)girlfriend, and we sat there and watched, holding each other and afraid to even leave the apartment. I decided I wasn't going to class, which turned out to be a good move, since most classes were canceled anyways. I called friends and we talked about what to do, which was basically to do nothing but sit tight and pray that everyone we knew was safe.

I have the images of the towers coming down burned into my memory: nothing could make that go away. I remember how my mom called me, scared to death because she couldn't leave work and check on my younger brothers and take them home. I ended up going to her house to wait for them to come home since their schools were supposedly going to let them go early (it turned out not to be true.) I told work we were going to be late, and my manager quite literally begged us to come in to work. In a sense, it's not like it mattered. We came in, but it was dead. It was slower than a holiday. Anyone who came in looked like a zombie, and all they could do was talk about what happened. People I worked with that were usually full of bluster were subdued. It was so surreal.

That night, I couldn't sleep, and it was a good week before I was functioning alright. I wrote a column the next week (unfortunately, the issue is missing right now from the paper's website), and for a scared 19-year-old, I'd like to think it was alright. I remember my friend and coworker Dan's quip from when he was called by his mom about the crash. She told him a plane crashed into the trade center, and he said, "What, the Gibraltar Trade Center (a Michigan swap meet type place)?" He wrote about that and then his feelings when it hit him. Two weeks later, seeing the tribute at the Mets game, hearing the Star-Spangled Banner, I wept. I wept so hard, and since then, it's hard to hear the national anthem without tears coming to my eyes because I will always see that day when I hear it.

Many of us dealt with things their own way. I kinda checked out that semester in terms of classes, and the classes that had relevance to what was going on were where I did good, and the classes that seemed unimportant I sucked at. I focused a lot of attention on preserving our liberties, criticizing the Arab roundups and indefinite detentions and the Patriot Act. And on my 20th birthday, one month later, I had several sobering reminders of how things had changed. Between my trip to New Orleans (read the below post for details) and my run across the border to Canada to celebrate, I dealt with the changes. I had m-16's right in front of me. I almost wasn't readmitted into the U.S. because we didn't have passports with us, and we hadn't known to bring them, because the changes weren't widely publicized in Detroit, where cross-border traffic is heavy. Eventually, though, life went on.

Five years later, the day has become a political tool. It's not even a national holiday yet, though it should be. It was our Pearl Harbor, our Kennedy assassination. We'll never forget where we were or what we were doing that day. Sadly, our political leaders have largely forgotten the spirit of the day, the meaning of the attack, and the lessons it should have taught us. We are not safer. We haven't bridged the divide with the world, instead, we've widened it. The only lesson we can and should take from this is that 9/11 isn't political. It isn't partisan. It isn't an excuse for personal agendas. 9/11 is, and can only be, in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "a day that will live in infamy." Although I doubt it, I hope that our leaders remember today that they stood together that day in a spirit that needs to be revived. When it comes to security, it's fine to debate ideas, but words like traitor and terrorist sympathizer are not acceptable. They don't fix the problem, they perpetuate it. It is five years later, and we are not nearly as safe as we should be. How is this acceptable? Quite frankly, it isn't, and our job as citizens is to remind our leaders that we find this behavior appalling, and that we demand better.

When it comes down to it, the only legacy of 9/11 should simply be: NEVER AGAIN. For that to happen, we have to make our leaders understand that what they've done is not enough, and they need to fix it, NOW.

I'm the train they call the city of New Orleans

2006-08-30T00:56:00.000-04:00

Crossposted at the American Princess

Five years ago, in the shadow of 9/11, just one month after that horrible day, myself and nine others boarded a Southwest flight for New Orleans for a journalism conference. It was, without a doubt, the most terrified I've ever been of taking a flight. The airports were still very empty, and when we arrived in New Orleans (after the three stops SWA is famous for), I was stunned at how quiet it seemed. Louis Armstrong Airport was quiet, everyone looking away from each other, and for the first time in my life, I came face to face with a soldier brandishing an M-16 rifle. It was incredibly sobering, a reminder that nothing would be the same.

To try and lift the mood, we got a limousine to take us to our hotel, which was the Superdome Hyatt. I remember taking the elevator up and down many times , looking right at the Dome and wondering what it was like in there. After Katrina hit, and they showed the waters flooding around the Dome, I wondered what happened to that Hyatt, to that 26th floor set of rooms we stayed in. At the time, its majesty was just part of the awe I had for New Orleans. When we hit the French Quarter that night, we were able to relax for the first time. It was amazing how one beautiful old place in the middle of a poverty-stricken city had the ability to wash away the thoughts of the worst tragedy this nation has endured.

I probably have never had more fun anywhere else in my life. We partied, the conference being a mere afterthought (we attended, but our thoughts were usually on the night coming up, not the seminars we were in), we laughed, we loved, we drank, we danced, and we ate fabulous food. We bought music at Virgin Records. I had breakfast at Cafe Du Monde, where the coffee and beignets were absolutely fabulous. We walked the Garden District and the Quarter, eating po'boys at an alley restaurant (the things in the Quarter just don't exist elsewhere), going to a sponsor's party at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., visiting a voodoo shop, buying a giant cigar from the Cigar Factory (where all the stogies are named after famous cigar smokers), and dancing on Bourbon Street with early Halloween revelers.

I wonder what happened to those people I met. The guy at the Cigar Factory, who had a small blowtorch for a lighter, and knew the leaf like Churchill himself. Our waiters and waitresses from the restaurants, including the guy who gave us the discount on hurricanes. The people running the small shops. The homeless man we gave money to. The limo driver who let some of us stand through the sunroof. Those were the people I thought of after Katrina. The places I went followed right behind.

I will go back one day. I pray the city finds its way and can be bigger and better. It may indeed depend on the people, but government does bear some role in the reconstruction, namely, fixing the levees to be better than Cat3 and small business loans or tax breaks for companies who bring work to New Orleans. And it needs to get on the oil companies to stop dredging the marshes on the Gulf. The natural hurricane barriers have been cut in half during the past fifty years by oil drilling, and had they not destroyed so much of the marshes, this whole Katrina conversation may never have happened. Levees won't matter if the marshes disappear.

One thing I do want to touch on, though, is the perception that the Ninth Ward was one big welfare handout. Being poor does not mean you don't work. Being able to return to home means nothing if they are uninhabitable. Having a house means nothing if you can't get to work. Only 17 percent of NOLA bus service is working, and these are people who depended on that service, because they didn't have cars of their own. Not everyone can do it on their own.

I hear the catcalls already. Why should the government do anything? It's not their responsibility. Others have come back and done it on their own.

I have one answer to that: the government failed to protect the citizens of New Orleans, through the terrible work done on the levees and the inconsistent funding of them, to the slow, inadequate response after the storm. Since government failed its citizens, the least it can do is repair the infrastructure. Contrary to the opinion expressed elsewhere, I'm sure many would respond positively to a helping hand. I'm not arguing for blind handouts. What I'm arguing for is the government to go to displaced residents and say, "We're willing to help rebuild your home and the city's infrastructure. In return, will you come back and work at (insert job here) to help rebuild the economy?" If they say yes, great. If they said no, then I would cease to feel for them. I don't think it's too much to ask, though, to have the government lend a helping hand in return for that person's commitment to help rebuild the city and make a positive contribution.

I love New Orleans. I love its contribution to our history, and its zest for life. I want it to succeed. To do that, though, it takes everyone, including our government, working together to make it happen.

What. A. Jerk.

2006-07-27T16:48:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Kos and Swing State Project for this.

Sen. Conrad Burns, apparently trying to do his best to lose this fall to Jon Tester, spent his weekend yelling at firefighters for doing a "poor job" of fighting wildfires.

That's funny, I don't see his Jack Abramoff bought-and-paid-for ass out there fighting the fires. I don't see him doing anything to help. These guys are risking their lives, and he's yelling at them for not doing enough.

Oh, not to mention the fact these guys flew all the way from Virginia to help people they don't know save their property by fighting these fires, well, it just makes Burns look like what he is: an ungrateful, arrogant, jackass.

GOP hypocrisy is running wild on you, brother!

2006-07-26T19:47:00.000-04:00

DNC chair Howard Dean today called Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki an "anti-Semite" for failing to denounce Hizballah and criticizing Israel only. Dean said, "The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah."

Dean's words, of course, were immediately criticized by Ken Mehlman, his counterpart at the RNC. They issued a statement saying, "It is incredibly troubling that Howard Dean would seek to score cheap political points by attacking the democratically elected prime minister of Iraq." Sen. John Warner, (R-VA), added, "I dismiss Howard Dean. Really, he's a disappointment, even to Democrats. I don't care to deal with that."

You know, I just have to say one thing myself. It's amazing how the Republicans are so eager to stand up for the "democratically elected" prime minister of Iraq, but are trying to starve, ignore, belittle, and attack the "democratically elected" prime minister of Palestine. Apparently, they only defend democratic elections they like. Iraq, the U.S. 2000 and 2004= yes. Palestine, Lebanon, Spain....not so much.

Does the intellectual dissonance hurt their heads, or are they too ignorant to know the difference?

The power of YouTube

2006-07-17T00:23:00.000-04:00

is amazing. Now we can even see what war is like for civilians during this Lebanon-Israel conflict.

And then, watching this, you feel a sense of sickness. What is it about the human race that we do a better job of teaching hate than we do teaching love, respect, and forgiveness? Little children, not knowing better, educated by madrassas, waving flags and celebrating that a terrorist group has just reopened the Lebanon War, which had ended in 2000. One of the ancient lands where Jesus' followers roamed has now become a hotbed for hate, destruction, and is apparently a place of no hope. Perpetual war has characterized the land where the Prince of Peace lived. They all fight in God's name, vowing to prove that one religion's interpretation of God is right, the others wrong, and they'll violate his commandments to show they're right.

The world needs to step in and stop this madness. And we need to show we're serious about the war on terror and help with these other groups, like Hizballah, in getting them run to ground. That means not necessarily killing them, but instead shutting down their resources. They've got medium-range missiles and rudimentary Predators. How in the hell did that happen? Regardless, we have to stop it before the whole region explodes in violence that'll make the world wars seem downright civil.

Bill Bennett's head explodes on national TV!

2006-07-06T00:23:00.000-04:00

And you can see the action here.

My favorite part is William Safire, crusty old Republican, basically telling Bennett he's full of crap. Bennett's reaction to Dana Priest is equally amusing.

Great job, Israel

2006-07-01T23:56:00.000-04:00

If you couldn't tell, or don't know me that well, I'm being sarcastic.

This is extraordinarily stupid:

Israeli aircraft fired missiles at the Palestinian prime minister's office early Sunday, just hours after a Palestinian official said the soldier whose abduction sent Israeli troops into Gaza is alive and in stable condition...

Israel continued to hold 64 Hamas leaders rounded up in the West Bank Thursday night. They include eight Cabinet ministers.

I said some time ago when Hamas was elected that we need to face reality. Democracy means other nations don't always choose the way they want, but if we believe in democracy and a peace process, it means dealing with this new government. They are who the people picked.

Apparently, Israel, and to a small extent, ourselves and much of the world don't take that viewpoint.

This isn't banality I'm putting forth, some mushy-headed tripe to surrender. Israel has a right to existence and a right to defend itself. Attacking the government of a nation that it is trying to negotiate peace with is so stupid as to defy all logic. Furthermore, to hold eight Cabinet ministers from that nation is even more stupid.

I admire Israel's concern for its kidnapped soldier, and if I were that soldier, I'd want my government doing anything it could. A move like this, though, is self-defeating. That soldier is likely going to end up dead now, because Israel just spat upon the Palestinians by attacking their first duly elected government in ten years directly. Any calls for peace, regardless of who issues them, are shot now.

I tend to take a Kissengerian view towards the world, if I were to describe it. We should try to be idealistic first, but it's not always possible, so barring that, we should do whatever is in our best interests. Israel is conducting this operation as if they are seeking familial revenge, and so the actions being taken are ultimately going to hurt the kidnapped soldier and their nation far more.

The cutting off of aid to Hamas was a major blunder. How can we win hearts and minds by starving the Palestinians? Why are we, in effect, punishing them for exercising their right to vote? Isn't that what we want in the Middle East, more democracy?

Democracy means you, as a nation, get to choose your leaders, and you shouldn't have to fear reprisal for doing so. You shouldn't have to face starvation, closure of necessary services, etc., because the world is pissed you didn't listen to them. How would we react if the world had shut off oil to us when Bush was reelected? Think we might be just a little upset? It's the same way everywhere else, people, and it's wrong.

We're being bullies in this case. Instead of cutting off aid immediately to the Palestinians, we instead should have made it conditional. The aid remains unless attacks start occuring again in Israel. If attacks commence, the aid is suspended until further notice. But, no, we just acted in the typical way we've acted for 50 years, and gotten the same result: right now Israel and Palestine are back at the 1948 positions.

Great job.

Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!

2006-06-23T18:58:00.000-04:00

My musical hero just became my political hero too.

Don't overreach, Barack

2006-06-18T02:19:00.000-04:00

My favorite senator, hell, my favorite politician, Barack Obama, is the subject of a Washington Post story today about his national appeal and the heavy requests on his time. The gist of the article is that Obama should consider running for president in 2008.

I love Obama, but I believe 2012 is his year, not 2008. Here's why.

First of all, he is so scant in national experience, and so lacking in executive experience, that to run so quickly for President would only hurt him. This is an extremely intelligent, gifted, and humorous man who would only be damaged by an early run. It would be far better of him to follow the Kennedy example and wait to be reelected to a second term in the Senate before going for the presidency. This gives him a chance to build his experience level, to have more meaningful involvement in legislation and national issues. Now, you have to start running two years before the actual election, giving Obama 18 months in the Senate, not nearly enough time to have an impact.

Furthermore, Obama is a true uniter, far beyond the meaning given that word by our current president. He doesn't seek to unite parties, he seeks to unite people, to break down the walls. As a mixed-race man with an odd name, he's dealt with a lot, and fought through it all. He has a natural grace with people one-on-one, as I saw recently on Conan O'Brien. His 2004 convention speech was magnificent, so much so that I wrote this:

In probably 8 to 12 years, this guy could and should run for President. He has presence. He has compassion. He has energy. He has desire. He has the blood of America running through his veins, a mixed-race guy who has been breaking barriers. If there is going to be a black President, it'll be him. I cannot wait to see what he does in the Senate, because I think he'll tear the house down. He's totally different from most politicians, because he isn't so much political as he is pragmatic.

I'm still impressed today. There is nothing this man can't do if he tries, but I simply believe he would be better off with more national experience, or he should run for Illinois governor in 2010 so he can have executive experience. Senators aren't great for presidential runs because they are usually older and long-winded (Dole, Kerry, Tsongas, etc.), but Obama would be an exception, like JFK, because of the force of his personality.

The article is a good read, and I'm happy to see the man get his attention, but as today marks Father's Day, I was even more excited to see the fact that he rejects Sunday appearances because that's his family day. That's the most important thing of all.

A death that the world celebrates

2006-06-08T06:10:00.000-04:00

That notorious terrorist and all-out bastard, Ahman al-Zarqawi, is dead. If I could, I'd dance on his grave. I do not hope he "rests in peace." He's been complicit in many, many deaths of innocents, and he's literally going to have hell to pay.

Why I've been gone from here

2006-05-30T21:58:00.000-04:00

It's like this:

I've been busy. I've been promoted at work. I've just gotten back from vacation. I've been posting at other sites.

Most of all, though, I just don't have the energy right now. I'm so tired of people not caring. I'm so tired of our rights and our liberties and our precedents and our Constitution being shredded, and we're too busy talking about Brangelina or Britney's inability to strap a child into its seat instead.

I know a lot of people don't have the blogosphere's focus on politics, and it's hard, because a lot of it is mundane, but shouldn't the government's blatant illegal spying piss off America a little more? There's no excuse for this crap. When Nixon was doing all this, the nation sat up and did something about it. They got mad. The Congress did something about it. They investigated.

Today, not so much. And it's just hard for me to keep going when no one seems to fucking care anymore, where we can turn into a neofascistic state, where the President declares he can ignore 220 years of law and NO ONE CARES!!

So, lately, I have no desire to put in as much work. Sometimes, I get motivated, and I post over at Kos, or at TAP when I want to stir up the right-wing. My latest Kos posts have gotten HUGE response, and that makes me feel alright. As for here, well, this is my own personal spot, and last year, it was doing well, but now it's gone downhill, and that just adds to my feeling that not many people care.

This site's going on hiatus for awhile now. I hope everyone still stops by and sees if anything is going on, but, mainly, I'll be over at Kos, where I get a lot of feedback and the feeling that it's not entirely hopeless, and sometimes at TAP, but I need some time to recharge because I just am tired of people not caring anymore. America is the greatest hope on Earth for free will, democracy, and civilization, and its own citizens don't give a damn that it's slipping away, and right now, I just can't deal with it on a daily basis.

See y'all later.

Voodoo economics, redux

2006-05-16T21:47:00.000-04:00

As Bruce Hornsby's song "The Way it Is" plays at work for the umpteenth time, I thought to myself about the homeless guy that opens his song, and how that applies to today

Republicans all praise Bush's economic policies as sound, that continued tax cuts will fix everything. It doesn't, especially when they are aimed wrong. The president and his party proclaim that dogged individualism will lead to success, but his policies only reach a small percentage of the economy.

The guy who lost his job in the Bush recession, lost his house and car, and now works at Wal-Mart is going to be scraping by. He's not going to be able to save, let alone afford health care or a car or a house. He'll be renting a low-income apartment, just getting along week to week. Those tax cuts aren't going to help his situation.

The rationale behind the cuts was that small business could go ahead and hire more employees and stimulate the economy. We've failed to see this happen, though. Small business is folding in many places. The main growth sector is big box retail, and an economy that becomes a boutique is a house of cards.

I first wrote about this over 18 months ago. Our main threat to national security is our economic situation. The Republican Party has aided and abetted the president in committing the largest economic treason since Warren Harding. By giving away manufacturing jobs, raw materials jobs, and technical jobs to nations overseas, by placing our debt in the hands of nations that are a potential future threat or are a current destabilizing influence on the world, they have done more to endanger our security than terrorists ever could.

But, you say, the President doesn't run these companies. It's not his fault.

Yes, it is.

The President could've given these companies incentives to not offshore. Instead of personal wealth tax breaks to CEO's, he could've rewarded small businesses who created jobs here. He could've rewarded companies who resisted offers of cheap labor overseas and kept jobs here. He could've at least, with these moves, slowed down the flood of jobs to India and China.

But he didn't.

Bad decisions seem to be the Decider's forte. Osama and Tora Bora, Iraq undermanned, continued tax cuts when our deficits are squeezing the economy into oblivion, Katrina reaction, sending overworked Guard troops to the Mexican border. I seriously cannot think of a president who has been this bad since at least Hoover.

We are heading for the late 70's and late 80's in terms of economic standing. An L.A. Times article today focuses on how those who plan to work longer to save more are getting forced early retirements, costing them much in pension benefits. This wasn't the case eight, ten years ago. It's a byproduct of the Bush economy, where no CEO gets left behind, and most Americans get run over.

Defining moments

2006-04-28T23:11:00.000-04:00

In all of our lifetimes, we experience some defining moments. The loss of a father, a extremely challenging and difficult time at work, marriage, the birth of your first child, and the list goes on. These are all things we go through as ordinary humans.

Then there are defining moments we face as a nation. The Revolution. The Civil War. Both World Wars. Vietnam. Desert Storm. 9/11.

In all of those conflicts, there were disagreements, but political differences were muted, moderated by the fact that presidents and congressmen knew there were larger stakes.

Except for 9/11.

We barely lasted six months through goodwill when the President (acting on the advice of Karl Rove), started interjecting politics into this conflict. Democrats introduced a Homeland Security department bill months before Bush even brought up the subject. Republicans rejected the idea until the President decided to introduce his own version, albeit without any worker protections. Democrats were then stuck in the position of voting for a bill that contained an outlandish position, or voting against it and risking political attack.

Make no mistake about it: the removal of worker protections was political. Worker protections may be overemphasized in government, but there is a certain degree necessary to protect bureaucrats from political pressure (as we have seen with Bolton's group at State). By interjecting this into a vital debate over security, the issue was politicized. But it didn't stop there.

Adding to this was the introduction of the Iraq issue to Congress in the heart of campaign season. This was such an obvious ploy to affect the elections that Andy Card freely admitted it to Bob Woodward in Plan of Attack when he said, "You don't introduce a new product in August. You do it in September or October." Democrats again were put between a rock and a hard place. Seeing how opposing Desert Storm had hurt some of their number (although, in my opinion, Desert Storm was as valid an intervention as they come), they were loath to oppose it, even if the evidence was shaky. As it turns out, Bush also withheld vital information in the intel he gave them, intel that might've kept Democrats from voting yes on the bill, and information that might have cooled the ardor of the public to go to war.

During that buildup, Bush also pushed away key potential allies. Mexico, a putative friend, declined to vote yes on the U.N. resolutions. France and Germany (admittedly, diffident at best about joining in) were nonetheless repulsed at the sudden push that Bush made. He wanted inspectors, he got them, and then insisted Saddam was lying when he made a weapons declaration that was free of WMD. We "knew" he had it, and so he's lying, let's end inspections and go in. We all bought it. I certainly bought it. I wrote a column
which showed my complete transition to believer. I admit that I wrote some things that may make me look like a hypocrite now. I look back at some of those words and wonder what I was thinking, but then I remember that I, like this nation, was manipulated. We were only told part of the story. Saddam's declaration appears to have been correct. He no longer possessed WMD.

Rolling Stone's cover asks the question, "The Worst President Ever?" I haven't read the article yet, but I do know Professor Wilentz is a very thorough researcher and historian, so for him to make the claim is astounding. Historians tend to be reluctant to issue such opinions. I do know this: This President has not even tried to work with Democrats since 9/11. He has made everything a battle over power. He has demonized them as traitors, giving aid and comfort to the enemy for daring to criticize him. He has helped poison the level of discourse in this nation. He refuses to admit error or change course when such course change is required. He stubbornly retains a Secretary of Defense who has redefined incompetent and pigheaded. Worst of all, he blew the greatest coalition in the history of mankind. Had we stuck to Afghanistan until it was finished, we would've retained virtually every nation on Earth as our ally. We enjoyed unprecedented support and sympathy after 9/11. Sadly, mistakenly, we wasted our goodwill fighting for a war that turned out to not be necessary. We further worsened the situation by not executing properly, not planning properly, and by making assumptions that clearly made an ass of us all.

None of this matters to the President. He's not affected by this at all. He's not affected by the fact that on the eve of the Iraq invasion, gas stood at an average of $1.49/gallon. Today, I paid $3.11, and that was the LOWEST price in most of L.A. county. Wasn't Iraq supposed to produce more oil after we 'liberated' them? They might've, but our security has been for beans because we sent about 1/3 of the necessary troops into Iraq based on some sort of 'plan' that looks like it was drawn up on the back of a comic book by two kids with no realistic idea of warfare, even in the technological age.

We are now facing a new defining moment. As Americans, we have a choice. We can vote for status quo in November, hoping that a thoroughly corrupted party that has forsaken the ideals of its modern leaders (Reagan and Goldwater) will find its way, or we can vote for the minority party, the party that has been kicked around for the past dozen years, and still is stuck showing timidity in an environment that demands decisiveness. To me, change is necessary, and the Republicans won't change because they would be admitting that they have been wrong about almost every single thing in the past four years. The Democrats will, at the least, restore balance to the seesaw of power, and force the President to demonstrate the bipartisanship that should've been done four years ago. It's something every president does. Reagan did it masterfully. There's a picture of Reagan cracking up a group of the powerful, including powerful Democrats. He charmed them. He worked with them on Social Security, giving it the footing it needed to continue succeeding. He repealed his tax cuts on the upper class when the economy tanked. Reagan did these things as governor of California as well, earning the respect of Democrats for sticking to his principles while demonstrating a grasp on reality. Bush does not do these things, and it is why when our defining moment came on 9/11, he became the first and only president to make the least of it.

Holy crap! Scotty's gone!

2006-04-19T06:58:00.000-04:00

Extra, extra! Read all about it! McClellan is OUT as White House press secretary!

Thank God. Although, I will miss him getting his ass kicked around everyday :-).

Party of personal responsibility?

2006-04-18T16:55:00.000-04:00

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The American Princess

One of the things the Republicans have claimed over the past few years is that they are the party of personal responsibility, that everyone should be able to take care of themselves without government help (i.e. Social Security “reform”, Medicaid cuts, etc.) and will do better by themselves with things such as Health Savings Accounts.

Yet, strangely enough, for a party that touts these things, the current incarnation of GOP leaders is strangely adept at not taking responsibility for their own actions. For instance, the GOP is blaming Democrats in new Spanish-language ads for making illegal immigration a felony, when it was House Judiciary Chairman (and Republican) James Sensenbrenner who introduced the bill, and the GOP House who passed it without Democratic votes. Yet, they take no responsibility for it. Strange, you'd think they'd be proud of what they did.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has poorly planned and managed the war in Iraq, causing many unnecessary deaths among our brave soldiers. There was no planning for a long war, let alone for the casualties and mental health issues coming from conflicts. My uncle served in Vietnam, and deals with his injuries, mental and physical, to this day. How come we weren’t prepared for that? Yet, Rumsfeld takes no responsibility for his actions, uttering that memorable blowoff phrase to a soldier, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you have.”

Funny, it seems that certain things can be planned for, and you just didn’t do it, Mr. Secretary. We are stuck being at war with the SecDef we have, not the one we wanted.

Former VP Chief of Staff, National Security Adviser, and all-around menace to White House society I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby refuses to take responsibility for lying to prosecutors and the grand jury. “I forgot,” he says. “I’m so busy in my job I can’t possibly be expected to remember what I did.” Strangely enough, though, he remembers the President giving him authorization to leak the rosy parts of the Iraq NIE to the press. Go figure.

Rick Santorum takes no responsibility for his actions in promoting the K Street Project these days, even though he proudly boasted of his work with lobbyists a couple of years ago. When the project showed its corruption, all of a sudden he can’t get away fast enough.

Pat Robertson utters crazy statements about Ariel Sharon, Hugo Chavez, and others on national television, then when everyone calls him a lunatic, he says, “I was misquoted,” or “I was set up.” So much for personal responsibility from one of its champions.

You see, I could go on all day. This is just another of the many cases where today's Republicans talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. Looking at the people who lead the party, though, are you surprised?

What have we come to in America

2006-04-16T01:01:00.000-04:00

when this sort of sadistic evil has come back?

I can't begin to describe my horror reading this article. This family will never forgive themselves for what happened, and the nightmare will never go away, either.

It has to be read to be believed, and I hope you don't get sick from it. I just wanted to cry, myself.

Damn

2006-04-14T08:35:00.000-04:00

West Point grads go on the attack against the Commander-in-Chief.

The inability to trust really has gotten that bad in America, where even the troops are feeling the need to go public against the President and Iraq. People who joined to fight the Taliban, and instead are getting sent to the boondoggle in Iraq.

Wow.

Update: Apparently the sportsmen have turned on the Dynamic Dicks too.

But, of course it's not THEIR fault

2006-04-14T08:29:00.000-04:00

Republicans, egg on their face after the immigration plan crashed and burned before the Senate recess, do what they do best: blame Democrats.

Not only has the President tried to single out Harry Reid for killing the plan, but the RNCC is taping commercials for the Hispanic population in the Southwest saying that Democrats are the ones pushing for the super-restrictive laws, which include making a felony of helping an illegal immigrant in need.

What? They aren't proud of their bill? They passed the law in the House, and then don't want credit for it? Could it be that the nation strongly disagrees with the felony provisions? Or is it that they lie so much that they can't stop lying?

This Republican Congress is a disgrace. Not all of the Republicans in it, because there are some wonderful Republicans that are part of that caucus, but the leadership is horrendously corrupt and deceitful, and they elevate racists like Tom Tancredo to prominence. What more needs to be said?

A sad tale

2006-04-12T09:20:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite hockey players ever, a cool regular guy who myself and my friends have played video games with and watched perform on stage, Darren McCarty, filed for bankruptcy yesterday.

I don't know what got Darren in such financial straits, but the gambling certainly didn't help. He has debts of about $250,000 to three casinos, and if he was already having financial issues, he should've handled those first. I hate to raise the possibility, because of how much I like him, but I think he may have replaced one addiction with another in this case.

Furthermore, he lost his whole contract buyout to his divorce, an Escalade sank in water, and a motor home caught fire and was destroyed. That's a lot of stuff to be losing. So, combine the bad luck with some bad business deals and you get bankruptcy. I sincerely hope that DMac gets this worked out, because he's a good guy and deserves a lot better.

What a tragedy

2006-04-11T08:47:00.000-04:00

Proof, the rapper from D12 whose role in Eminem's life was played by Mekhi Phifer in 8 Mile, was shot dead this morning at a club in Detroit.

The man had a lot of talent, and from the people I knew that knew him, he was a genuinely good guy who treated people well. Obviously, it'll be a while before details are known, but here's today's question to ponder: What is it about our society that causes us to destroy our best and brightest in such senseless acts of violence?

From the world of sports

2006-04-09T00:49:00.000-04:00

If you thought the NHL salary cap changes would hurt the Detroit Red Wings, well, you were wrong.

I've had to follow from afar, not being able to watch the games, but my God, they are playing some ridiculously good hockey, and I'm sad I haven't gotten to see some of this. Looking at everything, they've got to be favorites to win the Stanley Cup. Eight 20-goal scorers, the top defenseman in goal scoring, the top defenseman in points, unbelievable.

Go Wings!

Leaker-in-Chief

2006-04-08T08:20:00.000-04:00

I wanted to write this yesterday, fresh in my head, but yesterday turned into a non-computing day.

The President should resign. He stated over and over and over that he deplored these leaks of classified information to the press, has opened investigations into who leaked the info about the illegal domestic spying program, yet he's the guy who told Scooter Libby to leak the classified Iraq National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Libby testified to this himself in the grand jury, according to court filings.

In my mind, there is no doubt now that the President or Vice-President or both authorized Libby to leak the name of Valerie Plame. They were furious with Wilson and with Democratic criticism. They threatened Dick Durbin for talking about the same NIE that they leaked, and they were off the wall about Joe Wilson's claims.

The anger they directed was very Nixonian, and manifested itself in similar ways. The leaks are unforgivable, though. You cannot stand on a pedestal and decry leaking while doing it yourself. You cannot say a leak about a criminal action is itself criminal while leaking classified war information. You cannot claim any moral justification that because you are the President, that makes it different somehow. You cannot say with a straight face that your lies are not criminal and harmful to the United States but yet Bill Clinton's lies were, because his lies were under oath.

President George W. Bush, you cannot make these claims. You have been proven to have deliberately lied to the American people, you have abused the power of your office with your illegal spying program, and you have, by your actions, endangered not just the physical security of our nation, but its very foundations. I therefore call on you to resign, and if you do not resign, I call on Congress to open an immediate impeachment inquiry into your actions. This is the last straw. You cannot be trusted with our nation's security any longer, and you must go.

Anger, commence

2006-04-08T08:05:00.000-04:00

Since I read this article in the L.A. Times several days ago, I've been meaning to post about it, but hadn't had the time yet. Well, now I have the time, and I'm pissed.

The U.S. Army, after six months ago saying they would reimburse any soldier who spent their own money on body armor, has now outlawed any armor not given by the Army to the soldiers.

Currently, the Army is using Interceptor body armor, armor that by all accounts, has been failing miserably. Many soldiers spent their own money to buy a competing armor, Dragon Skin, which not only is demonstrated in testing to be superior, but is used by the Secret Service protecting the President. One wonders, then, why if it's good enough for the Presidential Detail, why does the Army insist upon calling inferior?

Previous media reports have linked the makers of Interceptor armor to financial stakes of several Pentagon officials. This sudden about-face on the issue makes it seem more likely that the drive to not switch to Dragon Skin when it has been proven to be superior in field testing is motivated by financial gain, a sickening and disturbing motivation.

Furthermore, Dragon Skin provides side armor protection, which the Interceptor armor does not. Just on that alone, the Dragon Skin is the more superior armor, but it also uses more flexible and durable components than the Interceptor, which has been shattering on impact, leaving soldiers who take one shot without protection if shot again.

This administration cares about the troops? Then let them get the same armor the President's bodyguards get, the best one available, not some piece of shit that is lining the pockets of Pentagon officials. Otherwise, the emptyness of the words will just continue to grow.

Are you kidding me?

2006-04-05T13:47:00.000-04:00

The definition of terrorism finds new lows, at home and abroad.

Ew.

2006-04-05T09:43:00.000-04:00

This man is disgusting. And he worked for DHS, and even used DHS phones in his efforts.

Ironic, considering this piece about DHS' anti-child porn operation. It's so great, but they couldn't catch a pedophile underneath their noses. It was a local sheriff who did it.

Wow, I say. Wow.

Update 2:02 p.m. (via AmericaBLOG and TPM, from the Tampa Tribune): So, apparently, the guy who used to run Operation Predator, the anti-child porn operation, got caught masturbating to a 16-year-old girl last month. Is ANYBODY doing background checks on these people?

Gone for good

2006-04-03T22:34:00.000-04:00

The Bugman withers on the election vine and decides to leave rather than get squashed.

While I'm glad to see that Nick Lampson will probably pick up this seat, it deprives Democrats of a high-profile target in the election season. This will be interesting how this affects the dynamics of the election.

Is this worthy of our time?

2006-04-03T13:09:00.000-04:00

A special report on the networks to simply announce that Zacarias Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty does not strike me as important. I'd simply guess they did it because the penalty phase was going so bad for the government. Either way, not a huge deal in my eyes.

Lovely

2006-03-31T10:17:00.000-05:00

So, Jonah Goldberg has joined in the Jill Carroll bashing parade. How about he tries spending three months held hostage himself? Oh, of course not. He's too much of a coward to even enlist to defend the war he championed for-fricking-ever. Him and Johnny, two peas in a Pod.

That woman has more courage in her right hand than anyone who pushed for Iraq. She went voluntarily to cover the story in a region where white women, or women period, don't get treated that great. She dealt with 82 days being held by radical Islamists. To bash her or get on her for Stockholm Syndrome is in poor taste right now.

And no, she is not Patty Hearst.

Oh, beauty

2006-03-31T09:57:00.000-05:00

The other day, Jack Abramoff was sentenced in Florida for his role in the casino fraud case, with his sentencing in federal court delayed because of his cooperation in naming people. Now, Tony Rudy, Tom DeLay's former chief of staff, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy for his part in the Abramoff scandal. The plea includes admitting that he got DeLay to kill a bill that would hurt Abramoff's clients in return for various gifts and favors. Out and out bribery, and the really nice thing about this? DeLay and Bob Ney now will have to face the fact that this plea will likely be entered into the record in DeLay's money-laundering trial and the impending criminal prosecution of Ney by the Justice Dept.

Oh, it's a wonderful day in the neighborhood. DeLay is in much hotter water today, and Ney is quaking in his boots as all the people around him, like Tom Noe and Abramoff, are getting indicted and/or convicted of crimes. Conrad Burns is running scared, trying like hell to shake Abramoff, but the local Montana press has been digging for months on end, and keep pulling up more skeletons. This looks like it's going to make ABSCAM look like a mudhole next to the tar pit that is Abramoff's operation.

And let's be clear. Abramoff did not bribe Democrats. He is a Republican who bribed Republicans for legislation. The Dorgan and Reid memes being spread by the GOP are crap. There is a susbstantial difference between taking money from people who had donated to them BEFORE Abramoff represented them and people who directly wrote or altered or killed legislation due to Abramoff bribes, especially since their interest came only AFTER the bribes had been passed out. Furthermore, only Republicans are being named in indictments by the Republican Justice Department. Only Republicans have been convicted of these bribery charges (Abramoff, Rudy, Duke Cunningham). Only Republicans keep popping up with dirty money (Katharine Harris, Virgil Goode, DeLay, Ney, Burns, Cunningham, et al.)

No matter what the GOP tries to say, this is a Republican problem, and they are not showing any seriousness about cleaning up. And, in fairness, some of California's Democrats are being weak on this too. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer voted against the independent ethics body in the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi seems to have lost her nerve when she pulled the Dems ethics report by Louise Slaughter off the Web once the GOP complained. I do give kudos to Barack Obama and (God, I never thought I'd say this) Chuck Grassley, who pushed for much tougher reforms.

The immigration situation

2006-03-30T09:20:00.000-05:00

The whole text of my comment from Emily's site re: immigration. She wrote that St. Aquinas would be on the side of the Sensenbrenners, basically. My response was this:

The problem with this debate is that it seems very race-based. No one's talking about securing the Canadian border and building walls there, even though THAT'S WHERE THE 9/11 GROUP CAME FROM.

Secondly, the point Hillary's trying to make, although she may be a poor messenger for it, is that Jesus didn't separate those in need based on law. He treated the adulteress and the prostitute the same as the common working person. Matthew 25: 35-36, "35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me."

That is what Cardinal Mahoney is saying. That is what many of us are saying.

Because if we ended the economic issues which created this problem, things would be a lot better. As long as vineyard and orchard owners and WalMart are willing to pay these people $4/hr. or pay them by each piece of fruit picked, illegal immigration will not stop, because $4/hr. beats the hell out of most jobs in Mexico, especially since THEY have started outsourcing.

These people risk their very lives to get here. Faced with death in unventilated trucks, by Minutemen and Border Guards, by Mexican drug gangs, they come.

Living in Southern California, I can tell you that as much as some people hate the illegals, this economy would cease to function without them. The blame isn't just on Mexico and Mexicans. It's on us for enabling it, for allowing the vineyards, the orchards, the WalMarts, to hire these people, pay them below minimum wage, and be the reason they get state help.

In all honesty, how many white people, how many of the critics, would be willing to work these godawful jobs under godawful conditions? These illegals don't have those pretentions. They will do anything for their family's well-being. Are they breaking a law? Yes, they are. So are their employers.

We have no right to demonize the illegals if we ourselves haven't cleaned up our act and showed that we are willing to work these jobs in the fields. I've NEVER seen a white, black, Asian, or Indian in those fields. They are all Hispanic out there, enduring the worst to try and support their family. This whole immigration debate is far too narrow, and will not stop the problem. The wall in Israel hasn't kept Palestinians from building ladders and scaling it. Walls are detrimental to a society, let alone our souls. The Cardinal, along with others, are following the lead of our Lord Jesus, ministering and caring for everyone, regardless of their status. Tell me, what is really so wrong about that? Legally wrong, morally right.

I'm for freedom of religion

2006-03-30T08:21:00.000-05:00

but, reading the things I'm hearing about the TomKat baby, I don't think I can really defend Scientology as religion. It really seems to veer onto the edge of being a cult. Carrying signs into the TomKat house to remind her to be quiet during childbirth so the child isn't traumatized. I mean, come on. I'm sure my mom, your mom, and a lot of moms out there screamed their ass off. My mom told me she almost broke my dad's hand and arm grabbing him so hard. Childbirth, from what I hear (being a guy, I am anatomically prevented from knowing what it feels like), hurts like hell, so I think screaming is justified.

Not to mention, Scientologists feel contact with non-Scientologists should be limited, which is real nice for Grandpa and Grandma, being kept away from their first grandchild. These guys also don't believe in anti-depressants (witness the Brooke Shields-Tom Cruise battle last year), think some guy named Xenu from another planet is responsible for human life, implanted memories of Jesus, Islam, etc., and reincarnation.

It is difficult to reconcile some of my favorite actors (John Travolta) being mixed up with this garbage. How does John live in the same town as me and yet seem to be on another planet? I don't know what's up with the Kool-Aid in Hollywood, but I sure as hell am not going to drink it.

P.S. You can call me intolerant if you want, but I never said they can't practice their beliefs. I think calling it a religion is a stretch, and I think they are out of their everloving minds to believe in this.

Thank God, she's free

2006-03-30T08:13:00.000-05:00

Jill Carroll was finally freed from captivity today, unharmed after three months of being held hostage by Iraqi insurgents/terrorists/fill-in-the-blank. And, in celebration of the moment, NRO's John Podheretz writes this.

John, in case you haven't followed this case or read up about Carroll, she wasn't forced to dress in moderate Muslim garb. She chose to do it to show respect for the Iraqis and for her own safety. The comment is in bad taste.

The end of an era

2006-03-28T13:14:00.000-05:00

In 24 hours, two more of the Reagan consieglieres have passed on. Caspar Weinberger died from pneumonia and Lyn Nofziger from cancer.

As a Reagan admirer, I want to send my condolences to both families, and hopefully they're all sitting around upstairs joking around and enjoying a better place.

Another waste of taxpayer dollars, brought to you by Texas

2006-03-27T13:32:00.000-05:00

Texas, the home state of Tom DeLay, George W. Bush, and other assorted jerks, has now passed a law to ban "sexy cheerleading."

There go the outfits, the routines, in fact, there goes cheerleading. Every cheerleading 16-year-old girl is pissed as hell now.

Unbelievable. Texas last in the nation in child care, health care, and quality of air (Houston) and instead of tackling these problems, they banned "sexy cheerleading."

For everyone in America, I simply must ask, WTF?

Gee, will he live up to his word?

2006-03-27T11:30:00.000-05:00

(via Daily Kos)

In January 2005, President Bush promised we'd leave Iraq if the elected Iraqi government asked us to. He qualified the statement by saying that he didn't think they would do that.

Today Iraq just told him to call his hand.

Iraq wants US to cede control after raid.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's ruling parties demanded U.S. forces cede control of security on Monday as the government launched an inquiry into a raid on a Shi'ite mosque complex that ministers said saw "cold blooded" killings by U.S.-led troops.

U.S. commanders rejected the charges and said their accusers faked evidence by moving bodies of gunmen killed fighting Iraqi troops in an office compound. It was not a mosque, they said.

As Shi'ite militiamen fulminated over Sunday's deaths of at least 16 people in Baghdad, an al Qaeda-led group said it staged one of the bloodiest Sunni insurgent attacks in months. A suicide bomber killed 40 Iraqi army recruits in northern Iraq.

So, George, in 2004 you hailed Iyad Allawi as a good guy to listen to because he said what you wanted to hear. In 2006, you dismiss him because he says Iraq is in the beginning of a civil war. In 2005, you say we'll leave Iraq if the government asks. Well, the Shiites control the Iraqi government, and the prime minister's press secretary said they want us to give up security (meaning, LEAVE). Are we going to listen, and if we don't, are Iraqi security forces going to be ordered to attack us? What then? We'll become the aggressors, and draw ALL of the heat.

They want us gone. Their prime minister sent his press guy out to say it. That wasn't an accident. It's time to go, and if we stay, then it'll be clear that Bush doesn't give a damn about keeping his word, about our security, or about what the Iraqis want.

Ah, it's the PRESS who are losing the war

2006-03-27T09:15:00.000-05:00

So says the Bushites, who are desperate to find an excuse for their incompetent mismanagement of a conflict that was supposed to end in weeks, and is now getting worse after three years.

The scary thing is, I can't believe it's been three frickin' years.

Look, the press is not to blame. In fact, they are far more courageous than those blinded-by-the-light fools that have never faced danger in their lives and sit in comfortable houses or studios and who think it's all good and dandy and if more positive stories were on the news then we'd be winning the war, the same war we've allegedly been winning for three years. If we've been winning so long, how come it's not over?

Jake Tapper talked about the story he ran on a television producer, a real feel-good deal, who was killed by insurgents after the story aired. A CBS reporter in Baghdad said that the CPA begged them to not run some of the good stories they found because it would endanger the people who'd be the subject of these pieces. It's a mix of straw-man and hypocritical arguments to blame the press. On one hand, they're to blame for not running feel-good pieces on a frickin' war zone and on the other hand, they don't want them to run those pieces because they don't want to jeopardize the safety of these Iraqis.

There are only two conclusions that can be drawn from this. Either the administration and the military is deliberately doing this to find a scapegoat for their miserable and spectacular failure in Iraq, or the administration isn't at all listening to the "military commanders" that Bush is so fond of talking about whenever timetables or troop levels come up. In both cases, the behavior is so disgusting as to be completely nauseating. In the first case, they would be using "security concerns" to push a political agenda (again) and in the second case, they're not only lying, they're jeopardizing the war effort by ignoring the people on the ground. It's that top-down ignorance of the ground troops that was one of the real reasons we lost Vietnam, not because "squishy liberals" protested or Cronkite turned on it.

If this war is being lost, it is because of the record-setting depths being plumbed by the most incompetent war administration in American history. If this war is being lost, it's because we never once did the right thing when the situation demanded it (more troops, leaving the Iraqi Army intact, not paying former regime workers, etc.). If this war is being lost, it's because we refused to bring in more worldwide help. If this war is being lost, it's because we attacked for reasons that were proven false. If this war is being lost, it is not the fault of liberals, the media, Democratic congressmen, or war critics. If this war is being lost, the only blame that can be factually placed (and I know facts are anathema to the Bush crew), it is the fault of the President of the United States, who signed off on decisions being made by the people he hired, and who has the power to demand change, but has not. This president and his administration is losing the war, and no amount of spin can save him from that reality.

High-speed is back in my house

2006-03-25T02:31:00.000-05:00

I got DSL! YAY!!!!! Now I can be productive again. YAY!!!!

Dying for Christianity?

2006-03-25T00:02:00.000-05:00

I think this Rahman case in Afghanistan is one of those things that transcends politics, because from Daily Kos to Malkin, everyone is pissed about this guy facing execution for converting from Islam to Christianity. A belief in God is a belief in God. The Koran has David and Saul in it, just like the Torah and the Bible. They all speak of Solomon, Abraham, Joseph, etc. Allah=Yahweh=God. Period, end of discussion.

We were supposed to have liberated Afghanistan. We were supposed to have liberated Iraq. If that's the case, then why are Taliban-style cases being brought before courts? Why does this seem like the Who in "Won't Get Fooled Again," when Roger Daltrey sings, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,"?

It's just discouraging to read these things, y'know? I hope to God Karzai stands up to the extremists and finds a way to save this guy from being whacked. It would be incredibly disturbing and hurtful to our TRUE battlefield in the war on terror, let alone our effort to keep Afghanistan from failing. We need this mission to be successful, and actions such as this seem to tell Americans that our efforts don't matter, they don't want democracy like we do. I'm not saying that's true, because I think people do want democracy, but religion (as we keep proving here) trumps secular shared beliefs, and in this story, we find the lesson for everything that's wrong with today's GOP majority.

Too quick on the trigger?

2006-03-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

Ed Schultz first brought this to my attention on his show the other day, and now that I've heard the audio, I feel bad for Dave Lenihan. The guy was talking fast about SecState Condi Rice, said the word "coon" (and it's likely, as fast as he was going, that he meant to say some other word), and immediately, in milliseconds, apologized for it. Yet, twenty minutes later, the CEO of the station got on the air, apologized, and announced Lenihan's firing.

You know, I'm not a big fan of conservative talk radio (and some liberal talk radio is guilty of some of the same things conservatives do), but this guy shouldn't have lost his job. It was a bad slip of the tongue, corrected and apologized for immediately, and compared to Bill Bennett's monologue on aborting black babies and reducing the crime rate, it was nothing.

I might take some heat for it, but I gotta say, this guy should be reinstated. I don't think he could've acted any better than not having said the word at all, and now he's jobless for talking too fast, in essence. It's just a shame. Maybe Condi could step in and ask the CEO to rehire him. This was just overreacting, instead of the underreaction to Bennett's twisted thoughts.

Update (3/26/06)- Lenihan told the Miami Herald that he meant to say "coup" and not "coon," a perfectly logical, reasonable explaination, which Rice accepted without hesitation, forgiving Lenihan. Now, is this station going to admit it was way too quick to fire him and apologize and reinstate him? The poor guy made a fricking mistake. Let him have his livelihood back.

Damn, that was fast

2006-03-24T13:19:00.000-05:00

Red Ben is gone. The serial plagarist lasted all of THREE DAYS before it caught up with him, and he "resigned" from the Post and they are launching an investigation. So much for bloggers being crazy people who need to be separated from the media. In this case, we all did a better job THAN the media.

Here's the statement from washingtonpost.com's editor, Jim Brady:

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.

Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.

We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the the practice of journalism.

We also remain committed to representing a broad spectrum of ideas and ideologies in our Opinions area.

Good riddance, I say. Now, next time they make a blogger hire, they need to hire one of each side, and vet them first. My vote is for Atrios, James Wolcott or Glenn Greenwald versus anyone from NRO or Emily.

Red Ben, noted plagarist

2006-03-24T09:27:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post, destined to sink to the depths being discovered by the New York Times, hired Redstate's cofounder Ben Domenech this week to be their new "Red America" blogger. Of course, logic would dictate a "Blue America" blogger being hired, right? Wrong.

Of course, the fact they hired Domenech shows a complete lack of disregard for their own cherished principles. In 1981, when Janet Cooke was discovered to have both plagarized and made crap up, the Post did its own investigation, fired her, and published a mea culpa. They did so with enormous speed.

This week, the Post decided plagarism wasn't such a big deal anymore. Even when the guy they hired once plagarized from a front-page Post story, along with a P.J. O'Rourke book, Salon.com, the Dallas Morning News, IMDB (the internet movie database), and from Cox News Service during his time with NRO. And it only took people a day to find that. What will come up in a week's time?

Of course, stealing and cheating is a way of life for today's Republicans, isn't it?

Simply, a must read

2006-03-21T11:54:00.000-05:00

Robert Fisk of Britain's Independent, writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the dependence of the press upon government officials.

When is enough enough?

2006-03-19T02:35:00.000-05:00

Christianity is the majority religion in this nation. Washington, D.C. is full of politicians and bureaucrats who are all Christians. So why is it Republican politicians still claim the need to bring Christ to D.C.? Why is it that they claim that we don't have enough God in our lives?

You know, the last time I checked, government was here to make the trains run on time, keep us safe from our enemies, and provide for the common welfare. Nowhere in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or the Federalist Papers did I read that it was the duty of government to bring Christ to us. I believe, in fact, that is the job of our religious leaders.

We constantly are having this wasteful debate over what the limits of the separation of church and state are. There are so many things that are necessary to our common welfare. And the argument that Emily posed in response to my sex toys post, that if the people want it, then that's what the legislators should focus on, well, the majority of people aren't clamoring for more talk of Christ in D.C. They want to see us find a way to get Iraq policy right. They want their health care system fixed. They want the roads in better shape. They want the jobs situation improved. Those are the things they want.

It is the legislators, especially those on the Republican side, so devoid of new ideas because all the ones they've had in the past six years of dominance have, by and large, been mediocre in their success, who create the religion issue as a distraction to keep people from thinking about the real problems. The religious right is upset because a ban on gay marraige hasn't been Constitutionalized, but is that REALLY the most pressing problem we have going on? Is putting the Ten Commandments back in schools REALLY a major issue? Shouldn't creationism, which is a religious belief and not a scientific one, be kept in philosophy class and out of biology class?

This is no longer 1950. We have substantial populations of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. We can't pretend we are still a Christian-only nation, where the presence of the Ten Commandments in a public school wouldn't upset anyone. It simply doesn't work anymore. Our forefathers came to this continent in search of religious freedom, to practice as they wished, and now we have politicians whose stated goal is to force Christian beliefs back into the public sphere.

This sort of behavior is detrimental to our national soul. The funny thing is that Great Britain, for instance, has a state church and yet has less issues over religion than we do. Their scientific and theological leaders believe we are hindering our progress as a nation by fighting these issues over and over again.

I am religious. I am still practicing Lent, for instance, despite the fact I am a "dissident Catholic." I believe in God, and I believe religion is an important force in our personal lives. There is a point, however, where religion must be separated from public policy, because public policy has to be formulated for all people. We cannot make our policy decisions based on who lives where. It puts us in a political Tower of Babel situation, where everyone starts speaking differently and no one can understand each other.

We are pulling apart at the seams over the fervor of government officials who put religion first. Putting religion up front is fine in one's personal life, and even in their public life, but it is only acceptable until the point where they are in charge of representing everyone, and not everyone is Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist, etc. That is the point where the line has to be drawn, so that we aren't breaking the First, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which forbids discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion. The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The Fifteenth Amendment reads, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The Nineteenth Amendment reads, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

Since then, the Supreme Court and lower courts have frequently upheld that the voting clause extended to other aspects of life as well. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 further codified those decisions into law. Yet the conservatives rage on about the need to put Christianity into our public institutions.

We should all keep in mind that as wonderful as religion is, wars over religion are the fiercest and most violent. The English and the Irish, the Crusades, Muslims and the Jews, etc. When wars are fought over religion, the outcomes are very bloody. Religion is such a powerful tool, with the ability to work wonders in the world. But any tool with that power has the capacity for great evil, too. Witness al Qaeda, the Taliban, Saudi Arabia. They show us how that capacity can go very wrong.

This continued battle needs to be brought to an end. The only purposes this fight between those who wish religion to stop outside the halls of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court and those who wish their particular religion to have more public dominance serves are those of our sworn terrorist enemies. Because, while I hate to play this card, let's face it. A nation divided, with leaders trying to force Christianity as our guiding principle, only helps a group like al Qaeda draw more to their cause. It becomes not a fight of freedom vs. theocratic dictatorship, or a fight between peace and terror, but instead a fight of Christianity vs. Islam, the fight that is on our enemies' terms. Because while we, as Americans, do not talk much of the Crusades or think much of them, since we didn't exist in the 13th century, it is to this day a major issue in the Mideast. We can call that living in the past, but facts are facts, and we are playing the game on someone else's terms when we have these fights with each other.

This is why elections matter. This is why paying attention matters. This is why being engaged matters. Religious issues are at the forefront of politics because the religious right has been the only group truly engaged in government, while so many have tuned out. When only one group is talking, it creates a vacuum, and that vacuum is proving quite dangerous for the future survival of our nation.

So, the question I posed at the top, "When is enough enough?", well, it is enough when we've reached this point, where religious issues are taking up the majority of our time as a nation, and our infrastructure, security and common welfare have taken a backseat to debates that are best argued on a local level, in our churches, synagogues, mosques, schools, city councils, and town halls. It is now enough.

Update 9:41 AM, 3/20/06: Right there, proving my point, is Fred Barnes, who writes that the Republican agenda when they return from vacation today will be to push a constitutional amendment banning gay marraige, a bill banning human-animal cloning, a bill to make federal the parental notification law about abortion, a bill allowing more public expression of religion, legislation to bar the courts from deciding constitutional issues (a decidedly unconservative and unconstitutional bill), and finally this gem: a bill that would require doctors to "consider fetal pain" before performing an abortion.

The Republican Party: doing its best to inspire religious extremism at home and "freedom" abroad.

Let's do some comparing, shall we?

2006-03-15T09:11:00.000-05:00

1998: President Clinton admits lying in civil deposition about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Later, we attack Osama bin Laden's training camps in retaliation for embassy bombings. Critics cry "Wag the Dog"-a reference to starting a war to deflect attention from sex scandal. In December, as we attack Iraq for violating weapons inspection rules, cry gets louder. Impeachment proceedings on the floor of the House begin as attacks continue on.
1999: Senators from both parties put forth a censure measure, but it fails despite some bipartisan support. Senators also vote on conviction for impeachment as we head to war in Kosovo.
2001-06: Any criticism of President loudly decried by Republicans and cowed media as "treasonous," "unpatriotic," and "aiding the enemy." Censure resolution leads Wayne Allard (R-WY) to call Russ Feingold (D-WI) a traitor who is aiding the enemy with this resolution.

Apparently, it's only treasonous, unpatriotic, and helpful to the enemy when a Republican president (whose approval ratings, I might add, are HALF of what Clinton's were during the Lewinsky incident) is in office. Accountability? That's only for Democratic presidents. Rule of law? That's only for Democratic presidents.

The man is at 34 FREAKING PERCENT. He's not trustworthy, he's doing a horrible job handling Iraq, he's delusional about progress when the death toll keeps rising. You can't tell us things are getting better when more and more people DIE. 87 in 24 hours, mainly execution style. The Iraq government admits death squads are infiltrating the groups WE ARE TRAINING.

Let's be clear: President Bush deserves far more than a censure for this incompetence. It is this rigid dogma that he and Republicans are professing that is losing the war. The inflexibility to admit a screwup and move to fix it is astonishing, and it is the soldiers, the people he supposedly cares so much about, who are paying the price in blood. I talked to a Marine recently who said that this wasn't what he signed up to do. He joined to fight the Taliban. His trust was violated by this president, who adds to that by cutting VA benefits in the next budget.

Congress was willing to remove Clinton over lying about sex in a situation where he was set up (Read Woodward's Shadow for information on how that happened), yet Bush has done far more harm to the nation's vitality, and Republicans say he should be left unscathed.

Hypocrisy must be one of those "values" they trumpet so eagerly in campaign years.

From the files labeled "truly bizarre"

2006-03-15T08:46:00.000-05:00

Hat tip: Stephanie Miller

When you've thought you've seen it all, well, you haven't.

This morning, I heard that Dog Condoms, Inc. was recalling its product voluntarily due to unacceptable failure rates. Yes, that's right, dog condoms.

Besides the obvious question of who is buying these things, isn't there a mechanical issue in putting the thing on? The dog can't do it themselves, and whenever the dog is having intercourse, he sure isn't around his or her owner.

The weirdness of America knows no bounds.

Washington state and pharmacist rights

2006-03-15T01:06:00.000-05:00

So, Washington state looks like it may be the next state to pass a "conscience clause" for pharmacists over the objections of Gov. Christine Gregoire. Lovely.

Since evangelical pharmacists want special rights, does that mean they'll step aside so homosexuals can have their "special rights?"

Oh, wait, I forgot. Only the far right gets special treatment. No other minority group is worthy in their eyes.

For previous thoughts on this, go here and here.

As if he doesn't have enough trouble

2006-03-11T00:32:00.000-05:00

President Bush's domestic policy adviser and former Homeland Security deputy Claude Allen gets arrested for stealing from retailers. This is a man who until last month worked for the President of the United States and was so petty that he stole from Target. He abruptly quit on Feb. 9, pulling a Safavian so he wasn't arrested while still on staff at the White House.

This is so unbelievably stupid that it only could come from this adminstration.

Republicans wasting our time, again

2006-03-09T13:26:00.000-05:00

Tennessee. The Volunteer State. It's currently beset by the "Tennessee Waltz" investigation into corrupt legislators, a poor health care system, rampant obesity, and a lower average death age than most every state.

So, what are legislators doing to combat these various ills?

They're banning the sale and use of sex toys.

Let's keep in mind, there are exceptions in this law. Exceptions for doctors and psychiatrists to prescribe them for patients, exceptions for college classes to study them, and exceptions for school libraries (WTF?).

First of all, this ban won't work. It's called the Internet, people, or just taking a drive over state lines. Secondly, how do you enforce such a ludicrous ban? This is a violation of Griswold, because it goes into the bedroom once again and attempts to regulate such private behavior.

Most importantly, though, it's going to be reviled by many (and let me tell you, sex toy use, like porn, is not for those among the minor few. It's huge, whether you like it or not) and it's a complete waste of our time and money. With all these problems, once again Republicans are trying to stir up a "moral issue" while ignoring the real moral issue, the issue of lives. Letting people die because we wasted time on banning sex toys instead of fixing a broken health care system is the real immorality here.

ARGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!

2006-03-05T23:04:00.000-05:00

I typically try to stay levelheaded about the latest news. But I'm an emotional person, and it's hard to not get pissed when you're watching your country that you love fall deeper into the abyss that the Founders fought so hard to prevent.

Example A: The White House decides to intimidate reporters into stopping their reporting about the "national security" issues surrounding warrantless, illegal wiretapping, severely flawed and manipulated intelligence (and I say manipulated because we evidently bit hard on forged documents sold by an Italian intelligence official), and the Plame outing.

Example B: Bill Frist, enraged that Jay Rockefeller has enough votes from Democrats AND Republicans (because Republicans have to be involved for anything to pass) to begin an investigation into the depths of the wiretapping, tells Harry Reid (thanks, Glenn) that he may just unilaterally change the intellience committee's fundamental rules for the first time since the committee's inception post-Church investigation, making the committee just like the other, more partisan committees. Once again, party politics trumps everything, including our security, our rights, Congress' constitutional role as the oversight body, etc.

President Washington said in his farewell, "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."

Does this sound familiar? Kind of like politics today. The people elected an all-Republican government, who in turn have abdicated their responsibility and their oaths so they can seek security in the form of President Bush. Bush, meanwhile, is doing is best to give us that more formal, permanent despotism. When an anti-torture law is signed into being, followed by a claim that x, y, and z are exempt and/or the law can be broken because the President says so, despotism is being formalized. When people are wiretapped without a warrant, even when a warrant can be retroactively granted, despotism is being formalized. When Congress abdicates its responsibility, and makes laws and rules based on what is best for the party and its leader instead of what is best for the nation, despotism is being formalized.

Because, in the end, I am not Democrat or Republican. I am American, and I want my leaders to do their damn job and follow their oaths. Back during Iran-Contra, even Reagan's chief of staff, Howard Baker, said that the senior Democrats were not being adversarial, and would make agreements with the White House. For instance, they wouldn't bring up impeachment unless a witness brought it up. They worked with the White House to knock down an article making all sorts of claims about Oliver North's actions.

In contrast, ten years later, the Republicans tore Clinton apart over sex.

Those Democrats were patriots. The senator who voted not to convict Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial was a patriot. The congressmen who stood up against Joe McCarthy were patriots. And for everything awful that Richard Nixon did, he was a patriot. He made us more secure with his opening to China. He created the EPA. He fought for other legislation that would make him fairly liberal by today's standards. He didn't try to make religion an issue, telling his advisors in 1960 that he did NOT want to use JFK's Catholicism against him, when he was urged to do so. He did have honor in him, and anyone who reads The Final Days should come out of that book with enormous sympathy for the man.

George W. Bush and today's GOP leaders are devoid of true patriotism. They practice the patriotism of emotion, anger and blind faith. They equate religion with government, when the two should keep a safe distance from each other. They do whatever they think is right, regardless of what the laws say. Their actions open the door to that despotism that Washington so feared from party politics. Because once a precedent is begun, if it is won, anyone can use it in the future, and those who fought for it now might very well suffer deeply later on. That is why that Pandora's box should never be opened, because how do you contain it once it's out?

The War on Terror may be won in safety from those who seek to harm us from overseas, but it is lost in that al-Qaida has forced us to change as a society. It is lost in that our government saw fit to toss away our liberties, our rights, for temporary safety from one enemy. What happens when someone else attacks? Do we go to martial law? Hell, Bush has said he'd use martial law if bird flu broke out here in America in large numbers. What would stop him from doing so otherwise?

Republicans (including some friends of mine) call these thoughts hysterical, far-fetched, unlikely, and moonbatty. But ten years ago, who would've thought we'd have a law called the Patriot Act which RESTRICTS liberties? Who would've thought a President would have had millions of communications intercepted without a warrant from a court? Who would've thought a President would threaten the use of the military to combat an illness? Who would've thought we'd invade a nation preemptively?

Most of us, ten years ago, couldn't have imagined any of this. The battles were domestic, and even six, seven years ago, we were prosperous and peaceful, and the biggest issue was blowjobs in the Oval Office. And for every Republican who said Clinton failed to preven 9/11, let's remember that the Republican Congress refused to fund Clinton's antiterror efforts or pass his initiatives to combat it. Orrin Hatch said after the first WTC bombing and Oklahoma City that existing laws were enough to catch terrorists. Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, Hatch, and others said after the embassy bombings that our retaliation was Clinton trying to "wag the dog" and get attention off Monica.

The documents are there to prove that Clinton wanted to do much more to get bin Laden, but Republicans in Congress, so filled with hatred for Clinton, did not give him what he wanted. But Bush, being a Republican, gets everything he wants, and if he doesn't, he takes it and Congress shuts up. The double standard is alarming for the future of our national security. And when anyone talks about how bad Bush is, they get tagged as "unpatriotic," "treasonous," and "too angry." At least in this case, the anger is far more justified than it was against Clinton. He lied about sex.

Bush lied about not knowing about the levees could be breached before Hurricane Katrina hit, he lied about his wiretapping program, he lied about torture (because cases keep leaking out about torture by Americans even though he keeps saying America doesn't torture anyone). I won't say he lied about Iraq, but he certainly misled by withholding a lot of information from Congress and letting them draw a false conclusion.

The Founders' fears are coming true, and I wonder if by the time we hit our 300th anniversary as a nation whether we will even still be the democracy we spent the first 200-something as. And no, that's not being shrill, moonbatty, or crazy. It is an entirely logical conclusion based on who holds our debt, how our laws are slowly being turned against individual rights, and how our President is claiming supreme power over Congress, whom the Constitution clearly vests the top power to. We are a nation of checks and balances, and politicians are putting party about law, eroding those checks and balances, and turning us into the despot nation we fight against overseas. The irony might be funny if it wasn't so scary.

Update (11:08 p.m.)-Turns out the courts are joining in this formalizing of despotism, putting us at risk. The amount of sealed dockets in federal court cases has doubled in the last two years. From the article:

"When the sentences are sealed, that's a con on the community," said Lexi Christ, a Washington defense lawyer for a man acquitted in a crack cocaine case. "Cooperating witnesses are pleading guilty to six or seven murders, and the jury doesn't know they'll be sitting on the Metro (subway) next to them a year later. It's a really, really ugly system...."

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press found the U.S. District Court here has 469 criminal cases, from 2001-2005, that are listed by this court's electronic docket as "no such case." An AP survey over a shorter period found similar numbers here and got oral acknowledgment from the clerk's office that the missing electronic docket numbers corresponded to sealed cases. However, these figures include an unknown number of sealed indictments that will be made public if arrests are made.
"That's horrifying," said Loyola's [Laurie] Levenson. "When I was a prosecutor from 1981 to 1989, I never heard of secret dockets."

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a public trial, a right that is being shortchanged more and more as we go on in this decade. Now even judges are participating in taking away our rights, and scarily, perhaps even making us less secure.

"No one could've anticipated the breach of the levees"

2006-03-02T00:37:00.000-05:00

Except the National Hurricane Center, FEMA, and apparently, President Bush too.

They all made that declaration following the disaster that was Katrina and the disaster that was the response to said event. They made it seem as if they were truly surprised by what happened....except that videotape the AP acquired today shows otherwise. They were informed, and still the President went on vacation and got a guitar from a country musician and did photo ops and talked about Medicare here in Southern California before he got his ass in gear and went back to leading. Meanwhile, people drowned.

I think my rant of months ago, while rather vile in its comtempt, is validated by what this tape shows. The breach of the levees was anticipated and considered imminent...but we've all seen how this President judges imminent threats. Attacked the WRONG threat in Iraq, while the big one in Iran is much closer to nuclear weapons. Did not act even close to quickly on the infamous Aug. 6, 2001 PDB which said Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States. This is how he acts on these sorts of things.

It is clear the President, AGAIN, lied to the American people, to Congress, and to the citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The question is, will he ever be held responsible for it?

This just isn't going to help Bush

2006-02-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

Not only has he just tanked to 34% approval (largely on the heels of the ports flap) but now the troops want to go home .

U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006

Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”
While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment

An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq “immediately,” while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay “as long as they are needed.”

I think we need to admit we've blown it, and we need to get relief for our troops. A successful Iraq is everyone's concern, and if the rest of the world can't see that, then we may need to let them work it out themselves. I've felt we do have a responsibility to them, but they are regressing in their ability to handle matters themselves, and that means they might be tanking and leaning on us to do their work. Something has to change, because "stay the course" has driven us and Iraq over the cliff.

Bill O'Reilly...for it before he was against it

2006-02-23T06:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, he says Iraq has "too many crazies for us to manage, and we should hand things over to the Iraqis and leave as soon as possible." Two months ago, those of us advocating beginning withdrawal, or just leaving period, were "pinheads ...the type of people who thought Hitler wasn't such a bad guy before World War II." Two months ago, sir, I thought you were a lying, bloviating jerkface. Today, I think you're an ignorant jackass.

As Olbermann would say, Bill O'Reilly, once again the worst person in the world.

Yesterday he defended the port sale

2006-02-22T12:13:00.000-05:00

today he knows nothing about it.

Tell me, will the real President Bush please stand up? This is embarrassing.

BTW, it turns out the administration broke the law (as if that's a surprise anymore) and did not complete the mandated 45-day investigation as to whether this sale would harm national security. Furthermore, if there was a unanimous vote by CFIUS, then how come board member Donald Rumsfeld knew nothing about the sale until it was announced?

I smell a poor cover-up here in a sale engineered by a select few in the White House. And lashing out at reporters and everyone else (which includes the Senate Majority Leader and House Speaker) who says this is an awful deal and needs further investigation, for being racist is a stupid move. This isn't racism. The UAE was home ground for terrorists, and half their royal family has dined with Osama bin Laden. Dubai World Ports, the purchasing company, their CEO reports directly to the royal family. Tell me, how does this keep us SAFE?!?!?! This is more like unlocking all the doors, leaving the keys in the car ignition, and saying, "Everything will be alright. Nobody will take my car."

Our leader has lost his marbles. His behavior scares me. I used to think he was manipulative and not as stupid as so many make him out to be. Now I worry he's bipolar, with a side of paranoia. He's far too willing to sacrifice individual rights, but no business should ever face adversity. He smacks down anyone who criticizes his handling of any part of our wars as basically treasonous, yet this port deal does more to hurt our security than any words ever could. What is going on here? Can somebody explain the logic?

Trouble in Iraq

2006-02-22T12:04:00.000-05:00

When it's gone far enough that Sunnis blew up a 1,200 year-old mosque, and risk going to hell (because it is a sin to attack any place of holy worship), then we have ourselves a real problem here, especially since reprisals were carried out against Sunni mosques before Ayatollah Al-Sistani called for a week of mourning and no reprisals against other mosques.

Sure, we had enough troops when we went in. Sure, Iraqi soldiers are making great progress. That's why leaders are calling for religious militias to take on the security role. We need to face it....this thing is going straight to hell, and we need to get the Saudis or some other Sunni nation to talk with these people and get them to settle down, and see if Iran wouldn't be willing to peacefully talk with the Shiites and get them to calm down. This thing is spinning out of control, and U.S. soldiers could be facing a very deadly situation soon. I've gone from worried to all-out scared. A 1,200 year-old mosque gone, and we're likely to get blamed for not protecting it.

Why Israel and America are mishandling Hamas

2006-02-21T10:31:00.000-05:00

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Hamas winning elections in Palestine was one of our bigger nightmares. The approach being taken by Israel, and by extension, the United States, is not a good position.

Because of years of corruption, the Palestinian territories are decrepit, run-down, and filled with despair. Yasser Arafat's back and forth battle with conservatives such as Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon broke down the Oslo accords, and the stealing of millions by old Fatah leaders left the Palestinian people vulnerable. In steps Hamas.

Once known simply as a terrorist organization, Hamas has broadened its horizons in the past decade. They have become like the IRA, a social organization, a political organization, and a paramilitary organization make up the ranks. Hamas won elections because of what they did on the social level.

Where the Palestinian Authority failed, they stepped up. They built schools, hospitals, businesses. They took care of Palestinians, all while indoctrinating them with their vision of what Palestine should be. With Arafat alive, they were the spoilers, never able to run for office, but with him dead, they could run for office and they did. They won big.

Now Hamas has the weight of years of promises to keep. They are in charge now. The responsibility is with them, and they see this, and I think that their leaders are trying to move ground some so they aren't cut off like Arafat was. They haven't sent a bomber into Israel in over a year now. Their prime minister-designate said they are willing to acknowledge the existence of Israel and accept a split Palestine, an unprecedented move.

However, Israel's Cabinet has voted to cut off all tax revenue due to the Palestinians to, in effect, punish them for exercising their democratic rights. We are not pressuring Israel to change their minds on this. In a related issue, Iraq's prime minister ripped us a new one for warning them about sectarian government, saying that Iraqis know what's best for them, not Americans.

If we are to acheive peace, we cannot achieve it from telling everyone what to do, who to vote for, and cutting them off from needed funds if they elect someone we don't like. Those actions will breed radicalism.

It's quite simple. When Palestinians realize, and they will, that they are paying taxes to Israel, and they are having those funds impounded over who they elected with their democratic rights, they will rise up in a way that Israel will only be able to put down with the most massive show of force, which will set off a reaction in the Arab world that we do not want to see happen.

Currently, the Mohammed cartoons are still being held up as reason for people to act like jackasses in the Middle East. Can you imagine what a massive, West Bank or Gaza-wide protest would look like, since it would invariably be followed by massive fighting between Israeli security forces and unarmed protestors throwing stones? Worldwide revulsion, followed by allies of ours calling for war, freeing of Palestinians, etc. And because of Iraq, we can't even help the Israelis if things go to hell. We don't have the forces.

It is far better for everyone, and far safer, if we engage in diplomacy and give the Palestinians aid. They voted for Hamas because Hamas, whether we like it or not, were the only ones to do anything for them for years, and you vote for the guys who take care of you. We talk with them, open a dialogue. They aren't just a terrorist group anymore. They are a government, and we can't just sit here, ignore it, and hope it goes away. This administration has mishandled Mideast policy for a while now, not to mention plain ignoring diplomacy. We never went to war with the Soviet Union, because we instead filtered in positive information about America, about freedom, about democracy, and the Soviet Union was done in ultimately by rising expectations. The British and Irish are slowly achieving peace, but not because either side won a military victory, but because of diplomacy engineered by President Clinton and George Mitchell.

We can turn people away from Hamas and terrorism, but we can't do it by taking food off the table of the millions who live in Gaza or the West Bank. If we stand by and let Israel do this, we are allowing the likely destruction of any chance of peace the region may ever have. In the early 1960's, we pushed Kruschchev hard, and we ended up with even worse Soviet leaders like Brehznev and Andropov. If we push the Palestinians too hard, we're going to make a bad situation an absolute disaster.

And before Sean Hannity calls me "weak on national security" and Ann Coulter calls me "a terrorist coddler who thinks we should give them therapy," I must simply say that I think the actions of Hamas are, by and large, a disgrace to their religion and their countrymen. However, we must act pragmatically in this situation. We are hypocritical if we want to "spread democracy" but then cut off a nation if they don't vote the way we want. If they vote the way we, another nation, tells them, then we aren't being true to the spirit of democracy. How would we like it if King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia told us how to vote, and then cut off our oil if we didn't go along? We'd be mad as hell about it, and rightfully so. Tell me, what makes us right to do the same?

If we allow this to go on, we will lose everything we have given the lives of our soldiers for. We must not let our emotions get in the way of reality, and we can achieve the same goals in a far less confrontational way.

For all you dittoheads

2006-02-21T09:20:00.000-05:00

perhaps you should read this.

Thanks to BiPM at DailyKos for the link.

L.A. Times exposes consumer protection gutting in budget

2006-02-19T16:08:00.000-05:00

As I read the L.A. Times this morning over my meal break at work (I had an early shift), I saw a story that stunned me yet again.

Industries get quiet protection from lawsuits

See, it turns out that hidden in the budget is lawsuit immunity for all sorts of industries if they agree to add government mandated safety features. This means that if they screw it up, do it on the cheap, or if those measures fail, they cannot be held accountable.

Here's the lede from the story:

Near sunrise on a summer morning in 2001, Patrick Parker of Childress, Texas, swerved to avoid a deer and rolled his pickup truck.

The roof of the Ford F-250 crumpled, and Parker didn't stand a chance. His neck broke and, at 37, he was paralyzed from the chest down. He sued, and Ford Motor Co. settled for an undisclosed amount.

"You can imagine what happens when you're belted in and the roof comes down even with the door," Parker said. "Your options are death or quadriplegia."

Parker's case and hundreds like it are behind a beefed-up roof safety standard proposed in August by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But safety regulators tucked into the proposed rule something vehicle makers have long desired: protection from future roof-crush lawsuits like the one Parker filed.

The surprise move seeking legal protection for automakers is one in a series of recent steps by federal agencies to shield leading industries from state regulation and civil lawsuits on the grounds that they conflict with federal authority.

Some of these efforts are already facing court challenges. However, through arcane regulatory actions and legal opinions, the Bush administration is providing industries with an unprecedented degree of protection at the expense of an individual's right to sue and a state's right to regulate.

In other moves by the administration:

The highway safety agency, a branch of the Department of Transportation, is backing auto industry efforts to stop California and other states from regulating tailpipe emissions they link to global warming. The agency said last summer that any such rule would be a backdoor attempt by states to encroach on federal authority to set mileage standards, and should be preempted.

The Justice Department helped industry groups overturn a pollution-control rule in Southern California that would have required cleaner-running buses, garbage trucks and other fleet vehicles.

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has repeatedly sided with national banks to fend off enforcement of consumer protection laws passed by California, New York and other states. The agency argued that it had sole authority to regulate national banks, preempting state restrictions.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a legal opinion last month asserting that FDA-approved labels should give pharmaceutical firms broad immunity from most types of lawsuits. The agency previously had filed briefs seeking dismissal of various cases against drug companies and medical-device manufacturers.

This means, for all of my fellow Californians out there, our smoggy asses can't get no relief now because the government is moving to end all smog control regulations, therefore ruining our local ecology as the problem worsens, massively increasing lung cancer and asthma cases (mine has been pretty bad lately), and probably creating our own ozone hole, right above L.A. All for a buck, right?

Furthermore, states should have the right to regulate these issues. Montana or Wyoming doesn't have smog issues. L.A. does. So do other big cities. Therefore, we have a need to more strictly regulate emissions here than they do in Big Sky country.

Emissions control has nothing to do with mileage standards. California isn't trying to override CAFE standards. Californians just want to breathe easier, and I mean that literally. Smog is awful, and it's killing us, and of course, el president estupido is just checking the wallets of his buddies.

And pharmaceutical companies, already raking in money hand over fist, getting protection because they were FDA-approved? So, the FDA misses something, and we're just SOL? What if the FDA is bribed or pressured? After Abramoff, can we just trust government officials? These people torpedoed Plan B for OTC use on religious grounds, despite the objections of the scientific (i.e. reality-based) group saying it was a perfectly safe drug to dispense. It's not like the FDA is truly independent anymore, not under the Bushies.

And states can't regulate banks now either? If a bank rips you off or uses predatory lending practices, a state can't look out for your interests? Tell me, what kind of rules do these sound like? Are these conservative rules, or corporate money going in pockets rules? And no, I don't trust a lot of this Congress to look out for us, because they passed the biggest sham to consumer rights in a long time with the bankruptcy bill last year.

Conservatives want a smaller federal government, and this isn't it. This is the federal government stomping all over states, something the 1994 GOP recoiled at. That GOP is gone, replaced by a bunch of corrupt fools, and it's Democrats in the West and South who picked up the mantle of states' rights, and it's Democrats who can reform this travesty. Corporations get tax breaks from here to Mars because of offshore havens. One building in Grand Cayman has over 16,000 corporations registered there to avoid U.S. taxes, and they deserve protection? No. The government should first focus on holding these "Benedict Arnolds" (to steal a Kerry phrase </shudder>) responsible for dodging the taxes they owe from money made off of America. They should not be getting more protection from the government, because they've been ripping it off.

But, wait. We're in Bush's America, and corporations rule! </snark>

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not at least irritated by this, then you simply don't care about the quality of your life in twenty years. I tell you, Republicans either don't know or bury their heads in the sand at the direction their party is taking them. Our economy is going to tank if we don't fix it, and with corporate giveaways abound, no fix appears imminent on the horizon. This is just one more reason why Democrats must retake Congress this year.

Your time is gonna come...

2006-02-16T08:18:00.000-05:00

when George Will is smacking you around:

And if, as some administration supporters say, amending the 1978 act to meet today's exigencies would have given America's enemies dangerous information about our capabilities and intentions, surely FISA and the Patriot Act were both informative. Intelligence professionals reportedly say that the behavior of suspected terrorists has changed since Dec. 15, when the New York Times revealed the NSA surveillance. But surely America's enemies have assumed that our technologically sophisticated nation has been trying, in ways known and unknown, to eavesdrop on them.
Besides, terrorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration's argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the "sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs." That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution's plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of all presidential powers . Those powers do not include deciding that a law -- FISA, for example -- is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

Yes, indeedy. It's good to have a prominent conservative saying what so many of us have been saying, that the president is not the big dog, it's Congress. Read the whole column, it's a gem, and it's very coherent in showing the fallacy of the administration's argument.

Hackett's out

2006-02-14T00:13:00.000-05:00

And a sad day it is. The Democratic leadership really mishandled this one. They wanted him to drop down to a House race like Bryan Lentz did, but they pressured the outspoken Hackett in a way that he didn't appreciate, and he's dropping out of 2006 altogether, which is terrible. He didn't want to run the House race again because he gave his word to the other candidates he wouldn't, and that apparently means a lot to him.

I hope he reconsiders, and I hope the other Democrats in the race step aside voluntarily and urge him to run. He is a real hero, unlike the wannabes on the GOP side of the aisle, like Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, etc. It would be a shame to lose someone of his integrity.

Greenwald layeth the smacketh down

2006-02-13T09:22:00.000-05:00

Glenn Greenwald, clearly emerging as one of the most intelligent and thorough critics of the Bushican Party.

Read this, then this.