The Watch

New Deal on Television Watch

2009-02-12T15:10:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I was writing to defend the New Deal, to show that it did bring the US out of the Depression, and that in any case, spending for WWII (which is often cited as the actual end of the Depression) was also Keynesian. Keynesian stimulus (getting money into the hands of the lower classes, often while hiring them to do useful things by the government, the employer of last resort), is thus doubly proven to be effective. I was pleased to see this week that there was some support for that thesis on the airwaves (where the New Deal is almost never defended). The first was by Rachel Maddow, the smartest television host on today. At about the 3 minute mark in this video, Rachel shows that the New Deal really did work to arrest and turn around the Depression. She doesn’t make the connection that spending on WWII was Keynesian, though. That connection is made here by Jonathan Alter, who also shows the rare ability to just come right out and state that a Republican is talking nonsense. It’s good to see this narrative finally making an appearance. Is it too much to hope that Democrats will now start to tell it?

The Shock Watch, Part 3

2009-02-12T15:01:00.001-05:00

We’ve seen that unregulated capitalism enriches the already rich and leads inevitably towards feudalism, with the wealth concentrated at the top of the economic ladder, followed by economic collapse. The corporatists in this country have been following a strategy to achieve this for the last 30 years, using flag-waving, gay-bashing, and abortion as cover, all the while delaying the inevitable collapse by pumping money into a series of economic bubbles to create the illusion of prosperity while moving as much money out of the lower classes’ pockets as they can before the fall.

In fact, the powerful forces of corporations and the rich in this country have turned our federal government into an agency which, instead of moving money back down the ladder, actually moves money into the hands of the already wealthy, at ever greater speeds, in ever greater amounts. This policy means economic disaster for the country, and for many years the traditional Republicans in the party were frightened to go down that path. Witness: Reagan’s “biggest tax cut” in the early 1980s, which was the corporatist’s first big venture into being economically irresponsible in modern times. They were, instead of continuing to fund the redistribution of money, going to keep their money and let it “trickle down” against the natural flow of money upwards. The predictable economic downtown followed immediately, and the Reagan administration, spooked, ordered the largest tax increase up until that time to right matters. But the GOP has learned to embrace irresponsibility, cutting more and more taxes, generating huge federal debt, strangling the federal government’s ability to move money to the lower classes.

We are now on the brink of a terrible economic crash, with essentially only two options: one path includes government taking back on the mantle of redistribution, taking money from the wealthy and putting it back into the lower classes. The other, which at first seems unthinkable, is to go in exactly the opposite direction. Let’s take a closer look at those two options.

In the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the start of the Great Depression, Hoover’s response was essentially to do nothing. The idea of the government employing people, of giving money to people in need, was anathema to the business class, of which he was part. The country’s response was to elect Franklin Roosevelt, who halted and then reversed the effects of the depression by getting money into the hands of people who needed it – widows and orphans, the maimed, the blind, the elderly. He created Social Security. He employed thousands of the unemployed to repair and build the country’s infrastructure, bringing electricity to rural areas, roads, bridges, trails, buildings. He made the humane move, using government to get people through hard economic times and in essence saving capitalism from its own inevitable end, in feudalism and most likely, revolution.

FDR’s solution was to create MORE social spending, more safety net, more help for people.

Amazingly, though, in many countries around the world, the exact opposite approach has been used; when other economies have gotten in trouble, the response has been to REMOVE the social safety net, to get rid of the minimum wage, to destroy organized labor, to sell off public resources to private interests, to lift regulations and to move towards much more unfettered and brutal pure capitalism.

In those countries, their right-wing regimes have had to use violence and even torture to keep their populaces in line, for of course instead of relieving their pain, they have increased it. These measures have taken various names, including “economic shock therapy” and “strong medicine”. And they have worked out just peachily for the already rich, the multinational corporations, and the politicians willing to front for those interests. Those histories are summarized in Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine.

So, this country faces a certain binary choice: in the face of economic collapse, and that is surely what we are facing, will we INCREASE social spending, regulation, and the safety net, or will we DECREASE it?

INCREASING the government’s response to the crisis is surely the path of sanity. That way would keep this country from becoming a third-world shithole, and it seems to be Obama’s stated objective. Most of America would probably back this path (if our citizenry were educated better and not propagandized), and most experts with a slice of sanity or humanity back it.

DECREASING the government’s response is now being proposed, though, by the GOP. They are on the floor of Congress, spinning tales about how the New Deal didn’t work. They are trying to make the federal government, which has already been turned into an instrument for funneling more and more money to the already rich (witness: Bush’s tax cuts, the incredible boondoggle in Iraq with its “missing” trillions, the blatant and outright theft by the rich that is TARP - - is anyone objecting to those?), even more so with MORE tax cuts. They are already saying that gee, since everything is so bad, we are going to have to cut Social Security and Medicare because people need to “sacrifice”.

Other bad signs for this country going down the sane path are:

1) There has been a constant propagandizing against New Deal type spending ever since the New Deal, to the point where many Americans have a dog-whistle negative response to anything called “socialism”.

2) There is no sign that the anti-corporatist sentiment in this country has any real power at all. Sure, we can elect a nominally populist President to preside over a bankrupt nation about to go up in flames, but there is zero sign that that President or any of the members of Congress, can stop the looting of the treasury or strengthen our safety net. They are incapable of even prosecuting corporatist war crimes.

3) It is clear that the entire GOP and about half of the Democratic party are on board the corporatist money train, and those that aren’t have been spied on by our NSA for at least the last eight years and are either vulnerable to or already under extortion and control.

4) The corporatists have been quietly preparing for the inevitable popular uprising which will follow the crash and the “shock therapy”. They have gutted Posse Comitatus, created new crowd control weapons including microwave and robotic weapons, tested American’s knowledge of and commitment to their civil liberties and found them almost non-existent (Jose Padilla, a US citizen, was held without charges and tortured into insanity with nary a peep from the citizenry), and set up a surveillance system that captures virtually all communication. When the uprising comes, they will be ready.

5) Our national media is completely on board with the corporatist program. For example, every time things start to get tough in this country, our media elite start asking whether we shouldn’t start gutting Social Security. Duh! That is exactly the opposite of the right thing to do.

6) Even though some Democrats in Congress talk a pretty good game, the party leadership is completely feckless, weak, and frightened. They “allow” themselves to be outmaneuvered constantly by the GOP, even when Republicans are in extreme minority. True populist victories are few and far between.

7) The most ominous sign of our country’s coming economic demise is the appointment of Larry Summers as the head of the National Economic Council under Obama. Summers and Robert Rubin worked towards deregulation of the financial industry under Clinton, and Summers as the head of the World Bank, shepherded the economic shock therapy in Russia as the Soviet Union fell apart. That really worked out well for the people of Russia:

It was also the year that Summers, and his Harvard protégé Andrei Schleifer (who worked with Summers on the Lithuania economic transformation), began their catastrophic "rescue" of Russia's crisis-ridden economy. It's a complicated story involving corruption, cronyism and economic devastation. But by the end of the 1990s, Russia's GDP had collapsed by more than 60 percent, its population was suffering the worst death-to-birth ratio of any industrialized nation in the twentieth century, and the financial markets that Summers and Schleifer helped create had collapsed in what was then the world's biggest debt default ever. The result was the rise of Vladmir Putin and a national aversion to free markets and anything associated with Western liberalism.

Summers, and Geithner, who are cut from the same Chicago-school, Milton Friedman-ite cloth, will surely engineer the dissolution of our social safety net in the next few years.

8) Our only hope for some kind of economic upturn in the immediate future is that Obama and the one or two Democrats who understand what is going on can wrest some dollars out of the hands of the rich and give them to the poor. And I don’t see that happening. The redistributionist argument is not even being made, let alone defended, and the ever increasing wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful make their money that much harder to get at. The idea that the mighty CEOs would except even the smallest tax increase, even to help out their fellow Americans, seems almost laughable.

Shock Watch, part 2

2009-02-10T10:28:00.001-05:00

Unregulated capitalism rapidly concentrates wealth into the hands of a small, powerful minority, which is why one of the most important functions of a government is to move money back down the Wicked Witch of the West’s hourglass. This is done either directly, with payments to people who cannot exchange their labor for income (the aged, the sick, the orphaned, the widowed, the recently unemployed – these payments also have the salutary effect of - usually – preventing people from literally dying of need), or indirectly, by enacting and enforcing labor regulations that move enough money back down into the pockets of the lower classes.

There are, however, people in this country that lay awake at night, awash in a feverish sweat, afraid that some of their money is going to find its way into the pocket of a poor person someday. They have seen the government moving the sand back down to the bottom of the hourglass, and they don’t like it. Some of it was once, after all, their sand. And even though the government redistribution keeps the whole system going and flowing, they’ve decided that they’d like to keep their money and try feudalism for a change.

They have used their political power, which is considerable because of their wealth, to cut taxes for people at the top. They attack and weaken labor laws, they weaken the department of labor, they fight raising the minimum wage, they try to ship jobs overseas, where they can again dictate the wages. They begin dismantling the safety net, by trying to lower Social Security payments, or raising the retirement age. They try to limit Medicare because it “costs too much” (which is doubly evilly ironic because this same class of people keeps the rest of us locked into the most expensive medical system on earth) They cut unemployment benefits. They try to weaken the power of the government in general, by starving it of money and by buying up all of the bribable public servants until there are very few left who understand/care about the government’s important redistributive function. In short, they do everything the Republican party (and about half of the Democratic party) has been doing for the last 30 years.

This creates two distinct problems, though. The first is the problem of perception. Because their policies will ultimately result in feudalism and economic collapse, and because our capitalist system is grafted onto a democracy where the people have some indirect control over the policies we follow, the corporatist polices have had to be sold to the public with one of the most dazzling and thorough PR campaigns ever waged. Dressing up raw, ugly, and destructive greed is not easy. But the steps have been fairly obvious. First, they play up tax cuts as if everyone in the country is getting something great, when most people see an insignificant change while the rich get huge cuts. But that charade only goes so far. The real trick has been to fan anti-government sentiment by linking the government to social policies that deal with real world issues, but that make people squeamish. So, for example, they rail against abortion. And gay rights. And treating people with other cultures and languages like people. And gun control. And they wrap themselves in the bible and the flag, and sell their suicidal policies to the masses. They have been largely successful in getting people to sell out their own economic interests in exchange for Neanderthal social values. This is the thesis for What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank’s book, which is currently being turned into a movie. They have also created negative feelings towards unions, liberals, diplomacy, even human rights through propaganda, all for the ultimate goal of stopping the government from redistributing wealth. It’s working like a charm.

The second problem corporatist policies create is the actual economic collapse. It’s obvious to people like Alan Greenspan that without the government moving money back down the chain, this country will soon collapse, and then all of their hard PR work will be exposed for the fraud it is. And so what they have done is to delay the inevitable. The wealthy have used their new found surpluses to create bubbles: first the dot com bubble, then through manipulation of interest rates and deregulation of lending practices, the housing bubble. All this maneuvering has delayed the inevitable economic collapse, by creating the illusion of growing wealth, by allowing people to take the money out of their homes and use it to continue to push money up to the top of the hourglass. The business powers have figured out ever more ways for people to get themselves into debt to continue the economic flow of money up the chain. But we are coming to the end of that. People are maxed out on their credit cards, and have taken all of the money out of their houses. And their incomes are dropping away by the thousands. The economic engine is grinding to a halt, and without money coming from the top down to the lower classes, we will have achieved the ultimate goal: feudalism and economic collapse.

Next: the current crisis, and our prospects for getting out of it

Shock Watch

2009-02-09T09:27:00.001-05:00

There is a huge problem with capitalism, and it is this: like the Wicked Witch of the West’s hourglass, the money in capitalism flows up, from the people who don’t have much of it to the people who already have a lot of it. This suits the “haves” just fine, of course, because they become richer and more powerful over time, but it isn’t good for the system overall because of two negative consequences: first, people with little money run out of it quickly, and people with no money are a huge problem. Secondly, the money soon stops flowing and you have economic collapse. When the music stops you are left with a feudalistic society; money and power concentrated in the hands of a few overlords, with serfdom for the rest of us.

So, unfettered capitalism leads to people with no money and economic collapse. That unhappy outcome is as old as capitalism itself, and so humans, being clever little monkeys, have put on our thinking caps and devised ways to avoid it.

What do we do about people with no money? For one thing, we promote the social virtue of people living within their means. People running themselves into penury do nobody much good, and so we encourage people to save, to budget, to scrimp, to be careful, to plan for education and retirement costs, to earn, and to take care of themselves. When people run out of money or are in danger of doing so, we have set up systems to provide it for them so they can take care of their basic needs: aid to widows and orphans, Social Security, unemployment benefits, bankruptcy, Medicare and Medicaid, disability, food stamps. All of these systems provide a safety net for people who are unable to exchange their labor for money sufficiently, including but not limited to people who cannot do so because of their age or illness or sudden loss of employment.

The other thing that we do to keep economic collapse at bay is to slow down the rate at which money flows upward by making sure that it goes from the haves to the have-nots at a sufficient rate. So the government enforces things like the 40-hour work week, overtime rules, the minimum wage, and other labor laws including support for unions, which ensure that the captains of industry reward work enough to get money back down to the bottom, to keep the system flowing.

In a capitalistic society, therefore, one of the government’s most important jobs is to take money from the top of the hourglass and put it back on the bottom, either directly through progressive taxation to support the safety net, or indirectly by forcing capital to exchange enough money for labor. It takes from the rich to give to the poor (where have I heard that before?), but the upside is that people aren’t rioting in the streets, we have a generally good standard of living, and (most) people don’t live in economic slavery.

Rich people hate that. A fair chunk of their income (and in some cases their wealth) is taken by the government to give to needy people, and many of them are forced – horrors – to pay living wages to their employees. Shortsightedly, many of them don’t see the benefit of living in a society where the government intermediates on behalf of the have-nots. What is worse is that we have designed our corporations to behave like sociopathic rich people on steroids. And as corporate power has grown, the rich have been eying and opting for feudalism and economic collapse. We are in another Gilded Age, and they just might get it.

For corporations and some rich people (for convenience, let’s call this mindset “corporatist”), feudalism and economic collapse aren’t bad things to be avoided, but rather features. The government can be starved into impotence, the safety net can be taken apart, and the less wealthy will then have to rely on the largess and good will of the rich. Of course, the great unwashed won’t be happy about this, but the corporatists will also have private armies and crowd-controlling weapons, so there is nothing to worry about. And what’s left of the government can be used to serve them as well.

Next: implementing the plan so far

Supply Side Voodoo Watch

2009-02-03T17:29:00.003-05:00

This essay by Thom Hartmann is the best explanation I've found for the budget/deficit/politics situation in this country in the last 30 years. (Emphases mine)

Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years

by Thom Hartmann

This weekend, House Republican leader John Boehner played out the role of Jude Wanniski on NBC's "Meet The Press."

Odds are you've never heard of Jude, but without him Reagan never would have become a "successful" president, Republicans never would have taken control of the House or Senate, Bill Clinton never would have been impeached, and neither George Bush would have been president.

When Barry Goldwater went down to ignominious defeat in 1964, most Republicans felt doomed (among them the then-28-year-old Wanniski). Goldwater himself, although uncomfortable with the rising religious right within his own party and the calls for more intrusion in people's bedrooms, was a diehard fan of Herbert Hoover's economic worldview.

In Hoover's world (and virtually all the Republicans since reconstruction with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt), market fundamentalism was a virtual religion. Economists from Ludwig von Mises to Friedrich Hayek to Milton Friedman had preached that government could only make a mess of things economic, and the world of finance should be left to the Big Boys – the Masters of the Universe, as they sometimes called themselves – who ruled Wall Street and international finance.

Hoover enthusiastically followed the advice of his Treasury Secretary, multimillionaire Andrew Mellon, who said in 1931: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down... enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people."

Thus, the Republican mantra was: "Lower taxes, reduce the size of government, and balance the budget."

The only problem with this ideology from the Hooverite perspective was that the Democrats always seemed like the bestowers of gifts, while the Republicans were seen by the American people as the stingy Scrooges, bent on making the lives of working people harder all the while making richer the very richest. This, Republican strategists since 1930 knew, was no way to win elections.

Which was why the most successful Republican of the 20th century up to that time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been quite happy with a top income tax rate on millionaires of 91 percent. As he wrote to his brother Edgar Eisenhower in a personal letter on November 8, 1954:

"[T]o attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon 'moderation' in government.

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt [you possibly know his background], a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Goldwater, however, rejected the "liberalism" of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and other "moderates" within his own party. Extremism in defense of liberty was no vice, he famously told the 1964 nominating convention, and moderation was no virtue. And it doomed him and his party.

And so after Goldwater's defeat, the Republicans were again lost in the wilderness just as after Hoover's disastrous presidency. Even four years later when Richard Nixon beat LBJ in 1968 [sic - Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey in 1968, thanks Jeff M.], Nixon wasn't willing to embrace the economic conservatism of Goldwater and the economic true believers in the Republican Party. And Jerry Ford wasn't, in their opinions, much better. If Nixon and Ford believed in economic conservatism, they were afraid to practice it for fear of dooming their party to another forty years in the electoral wilderness.

By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their "big government" projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn't seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.

Everybody understood at the time that economies are driven by demand. People with good jobs have money in their pockets, and want to use it to buy things. The job of the business community is to either determine or drive that demand to their particular goods, and when they're successful at meeting the demand then factories get built, more people become employed to make more products, and those newly-employed people have a paycheck that further increases demand.

Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase – "supply side economics" – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn't because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.

At the same time, Arthur Laffer was taking that equation a step further. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up!

Neither concept made any sense – and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies – but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness.

Ronald Reagan was the first national Republican politician to suggest that he could cut taxes on rich people and businesses, that those tax cuts would cause them to take their surplus money and build factories or import large quantities of cheap stuff from low-labor countries, and that the more stuff there was supplying the economy the faster it would grow. George Herbert Walker Bush – like most Republicans of the time – was horrified. Ronald Reagan was suggesting "Voodoo Economics," said Bush in the primary campaign, and Wanniski's supply-side and Laffer's tax-cut theories would throw the nation into such deep debt that we'd ultimately crash into another Republican Great Depression.

But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell supply-side economics. In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his "Two Santa Clauses" theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next thirty years.

Democrats, he said, had been able to be "Santa Clauses" by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people's taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. The rich, in turn, would use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And that growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.

There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.

When Reagan rolled out Supply Side Economics in the early 80s, dramatically cutting taxes while exploding (mostly military) spending, there was a moment when it seemed to Wanniski and Laffer that all was lost. The budget deficit exploded and the country fell into a deep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and Republicans nationwide held their collective breath. But David Stockman came up with a great new theory about what was going on – they were "starving the beast" of government by running up such huge deficits that Democrats would never, ever in the future be able to talk again about national health care or improving Social Security – and this so pleased Alan Greenspan, the Fed Chairman, that he opened the spigots of the Fed, dropping interest rates and buying government bonds, producing a nice, healthy goose to the economy. Greenspan further counseled Reagan to dramatically increase taxes on people earning under $37,800 a year by increasing the Social Security (FICA/payroll) tax, and then let the government borrow those newfound hundreds of billions of dollars off-the-books to make the deficit look better than it was.

Reagan, Greenspan, Winniski, and Laffer took the federal budget deficit from under a trillion dollars in 1980 to almost three trillion by 1988, and back then a dollar could buy far more than it buys today. They and George HW Bush ran up more debt in eight years than every president in history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined. Surely this would both starve the beast and force the Democrats to make the politically suicidal move of becoming deficit hawks.

And that's just how it turned out. Bill Clinton, who had run on an FDR-like platform of a "new covenant" with the American people that would strengthen the institutions of the New Deal, strengthen labor, and institute a national health care system, found himself in a box. A few weeks before his inauguration, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin sat him down and told him the facts of life: he was going to have to raise taxes and cut the size of government. Clinton took their advice to heart, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and cut numerous programs, declaring an "end to welfare as we know it" and, in his second inaugural address, an "end to the era of big government." He was the anti-Santa Claus, and the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as Republican politicians campaigned on a platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases.

Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton by 1999, Winniski wrote a gloating memo that said, in part: "We of course should be indebted to Art Laffer for all time for his Curve... But as the primary political theoretician of the supply-side camp, I began arguing for the 'Two Santa Claus Theory' in 1974. If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts..."

Ed Crane, president of the Libertarian CATO Institute, noted in a memo that year: "When Jack Kemp, Newt Gingich, Vin Weber, Connie Mack and the rest discovered Jude Wanniski and Art Laffer, they thought they'd died and gone to heaven. In supply-side economics they found a philosophy that gave them a free pass out of the debate over the proper role of government. Just cut taxes and grow the economy: government will shrink as a percentage of GDP, even if you don't cut spending. That's why you rarely, if ever, heard Kemp or Gingrich call for spending cuts, much less the elimination of programs and departments."

George W. Bush embraced the Two Santa Claus Theory with gusto, ramming through huge tax cuts – particularly a cut to a maximum 15 percent income tax rate on people like himself who made their principle income from sitting around the pool waiting for their dividend or capital gains checks to arrive in the mail – and blowing out federal spending. Bush even out-spent Reagan, which nobody had ever thought would again be possible.

And it all seemed to be going so well, just as it did in the early 1920s when a series of three consecutive Republican presidents cut income taxes on the uber-rich from over 70 percent to under 30 percent. In 1929, pretty much everybody realized that instead of building factories with all that extra money, the rich had been pouring it into the stock market, inflating a bubble that – like an inexorable law of nature – would have to burst. But the people who remembered that lesson were mostly all dead by 2005, when Jude Wanniski died and George Gilder celebrated the Reagan/Bush supply-side-created bubble economies in a Wall Street Journal eulogy:

"...Jude's charismatic focus on the tax on capital gains redeemed the fiscal policies of four administrations. ... [T]he capital-gains tax has come erratically but inexorably down -- while the market capitalization of U.S. equities has risen from roughly a third of global market cap to close to half. These many trillions in new entrepreneurial wealth are a true warrant of the worth of his impact. Unbound by zero-sum economics, Jude forged the golden gift of a profound and passionate argument that the establishments of the mold must finally give way to the powers of the mind. He audaciously defied all the Buffetteers of the trade gap, the moldy figs of the Phillips Curve, the chic traders in money and principle, even the stultifying pillows of the Nobel Prize."

In reality, his tax cuts did what they have always done over the past 100 years – they initiated a bubble economy that would let the very rich skim the cream off the top just before the ceiling crashed in on working people.

The Republicans got what they wanted from Wanniski's work. They held power for thirty years, made themselves trillions of dollars, cut organized labor's representation in the workplace from around 25 percent when Reagan came into office to around 8 of the non-governmental workforce today, and left such a massive deficit that some misguided "conservative" Democrats are again clamoring to shoot Santa with working-class tax hikes and entitlement program cuts.

And now Boehner, McCain, Brooks, and the whole crowd are again clamoring to be recognized as the ones who will out-Santa Claus the Democrats. You'd think after all the damage they've done that David Gregory would have simply laughed Boehner off the program – much as the American people did to the Republicans in the last election – although Gregory is far too much a gentleman for that. Instead, he merely looked incredulous; it was enough.

The Two Santa Claus theory isn't dead, as we can see from today's Republican rhetoric. Hopefully, though, reality will continue to sink in with the American people and the massive fraud perpetrated by Wanniski, Reagan, Laffer, Graham, Bush(s), and all their "conservative" enablers will be seen for what it was and is. And the Obama administration can get about the business of repairing the damage and recovering the stolen assets of these cheap hustlers.

Defending the New Deal Watch

2009-01-29T13:38:00.000-05:00

After the Great Depression, a large portion of our population understood that FDR’s policies of government spending to stimulate the economy actually worked. It was Keynesian economics, in which the government in times of economic downturn becomes the employer of last resort. FDR created programs to put people to work, building infrastructure (dams, roads, electric power plants and grids) and doing just about every other damn thing under the sun. Painting murals. Maintaining hiking paths. Halting soil erosion.

From the beginning, the business and moneyed interests in this country hated the New Deal and its works programs. They began and continue to this day to employ a disinformation campaign that has left the current American public of today not knowing if the New Deal was a good thing. This ignorance never would have worked on the public in the 40s and 50s, when people understood exactly what the stakes were to Hoover’s “continue to do nothing” strategy (there are still idiots in the same mode today). They understood because FDR explained it to them. He told them that his programs were going to end the Depression, and that his opponents had done nothing and didn’t care about them. How horribly rude and partisan his speeches seem in today’s climate, when merely giving the GOP the richly deserved blame for the financial crisis gives our media the vapors.

Any analysis of economic health from the era shows that the recovery was slow, but after a few years the economy was back about where it was when the downturn began during Hoover’s administration. But the economy didn’t start to boom until WWII. The difference was that before the war, FDR didn’t have the political capital to really spend and employ his way out of the Depression the way he wanted to. His opponents watered down his spending proposals, demanded that he try to balance the budget, hindered him. When it comes to killing people, though, no expense is too large for the US of A. (and, to be fair, Japan and Germany did present a real risk to our nation and to our European allies). Once in the war, the government could deficit spend to its heart’s content, put people to work, etc. And it worked like magic.

Today people say “the New Deal didn’t work” or they say that the New Deal failed and it was only WWII that worked to really end the Depression. I’ve even heard people say that FDR’s policies actually prolonged the Depression and that Hoover’s “do nothing” strategy would have worked faster. But the proof is in the pudding: the government employing people on a massive scale really boosts the economy.

But, I hear you object, that was the war, not the New Deal. Pretending that there is some qualitative difference to war spending and other stimulative spending is the real fallacy.

Corporatists and conservatives weep and gnash their teeth about the government paying people to paint murals or build roads (in the current go-round, the GOP has objected strenuously to money for the Park Service to maintain the National Mall). And so they pretend to scrutinize every penny to judge its stimulative effect. The truth is, anything that employs someone to do anything is stimulative, and highly so.

In the Keynesian spending to fight WWII, we employed a huge number of people to build battleships, fighters and bombers, munitions, aircraft carriers, supplies,etc. And where did all of that stuff go? Most of it is at the bottom of the sea, rusting and poisoning the environment. Yet, the stimulative effect was very high. We could have had people building ships and sending them to the bottom of the sea ourselves in the absence of Japan, and it would have had the same effect. What’s the difference? Just that in the case of making weapons everyone can see that it is a smart thing to do when you have an enemy.

So, you can employ people to do anything and boost the economy doing it if you employ enough of them. The smart thing is to have them do something useful, or beautiful, or necessary, or leaving you with something valuable afterwards, like a greatly improved infrastructure. But WHAT they do isn’t what boosts the economy, as the GOP wise men who rub their chins now like they know something would like to pretend. Only THAT they do it, and get paid, and get that money circulating.

My advice for the Obama team? Fashion a bill that employs a huge number of people, spending a vast amount of money on our infrastructure, and EXPLAIN what you are doing to the American people, so that they aren’t left wondering if more tax cuts (god forbid) would have been better.

Waiting for Presidential Jujitsu Watch

2009-01-29T12:49:00.001-05:00

Well, Obama managed to pull it off and get himself elected despite having to run against a clearly mentally inferior Republican, a disadvantage which defeated both Gore and Kerry. Hooray USA. It seems that a small group of Democrats decided to actually pay attention to how campaigns could be won and lost, used a lot of very smart media buys, innovated in fundraising, followed Howard Dean's gameplan for competing in all fifty states, and had an incredibly disciplined candidate who was excellent at framing - something that Republicans have traditionally been very good at and Democrats not so much. Obama's team was incredibly savvy about the media. Here, for example, is a great analysis of a truly inspired move by our new WhiteHouse spokesman against raging idiot Sean Hannity.

So, ok, Obama's people know how to campaign, which is totally great and unexpected in a group of Democrats. But what about governing? As George W. Bush tragically demonstrated, winning elections and governing competently are two entirely different things. And the track record of Democrats in fighting evil and incompetence is not reassuring. The Democratic leaders in the Congress are terrible, full of the most cowardly, unprincipled, puling wretches who couldn’t be bothered to defend the law, the Constitution, or our freedoms if their livelihoods depended on it. They continually make choices that are not only bad policy but bad politics. The way they act is a continual source of shock, outrage, and disappointment to their base. It’s like trying to fight Darth Vader with a limp lasagna noodle. There are only a few, such as Marcy Kaptur, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold, and Bernie Sanders (who isn’t a Democrat, of course) who break through the nod-and-wink charade of pretending free market capitalists are not the lying thieves they have proved themselves to be.

Any student of recent politics knows that the GOP excels at being very effective in opposition. Here's what they do: they demand and demand and demand compromise on legislation, which the Democrats always give in to, always too much and too early. Then, when the legislation has been made completely ineffective, they vote against it anyway. This is exactly what they are doing with the stimulus bill. A recent piece by the Rude Pundit puts it this way:

We don't know what Barack Obama actually said to Republican members of Congress in his closed-door meetings with them yesterday regarding his stimulus plan. But we do know one thing for sure: it accomplished nothing. This is the way it's gonna go, and if you've paid attention at all, you know the steps: Obama will concede shit and Republicans will ask for more (even though they already got more tax cuts than anyone fucking needs), Obama will concede more shit and Republicans will ask for more (even though they're gonna get the family planning funding taken out), Obama will concede more shit and Republicans will ask for more, and then when the vote comes, Republicans will vote against it, saying that no one listened to them and fuck that Obama for lying about bipartisanship. Yet the legislation will have passed in a watered down form from the deep infrastructure and other spending so desperately needed to, you know, create jobs, which will, you know, create taxable income, which will, you know, help actually pay for shit some day.

Now, long after the thieving horses have left the barn, they are closing the barn door. In a pattern repeated many times in history, a regime that tortured people and spied on their own citizens has left, leaving a popular new regime saddled with debt and a bunch of Chicago School economic advisors to forbid them from doing anything useful about it. This happened in Poland, in South Africa, in Russia, in country after country in South America . . . and now it is happening here, right on schedule. Read “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein, if you haven’t already.

We await evidence that the Obama team is just as smart about governing the GOP as they were at campaigning against them. The only effective way to approach this stimulus bill is to devise it with no compromises, to make it an actually effective bill, to reject yet more tax breaks, and to pass it without the GOP. Obama doesn’t need them.

Tomorrow, how we know that stimulus spending actually works.

Lieberman Watch

2008-11-09T17:16:00.002-05:00

Holy Joe Lieberman is in deep do-do. After betraying the Democrats and actively campaigning for John McCain, the Democrats can do whatever they want to him.

The Republicans purportedly want him to caucus with them, but won’t give him the minority leadership role in any committees. (And I doubt very much that they really like him. No one likes a mealy mouthed turncoat.) And even if he caucuses with them, it’s not like he’s going to go all anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-democrat. He votes with Democrats most of the time, with the bizarre exception of the Iraq war. So, even if he caucuses with the repubs, he will tend to vote against the repubs most of the time.

I think the Democrats should strip away all leadership roles. After all, he’s not a Democrat any more and he didn’t support the party when they needed him – in fact, he supported the Republican instead of the Democrat. And he showed Obama no respect and blatantly lied about Obama – despite the fact that Obama endorsed Lieberman during Lieberman’s own primary. Holy Joe took a dump in his own shorts; now he should be made to wear them.

-John Locke

Shame Watch

2008-11-07T22:20:00.002-05:00

OK. So I know no one reads this blog, and I know that no one really cares what I think, but I am using this opportunity to vent my extreme frustration and anger at California voters. On Tuesday, Californians were given the opportunity to vote on several propositions. It now appears that Californians have voted to write discrimination INTO the California Constitution.

Proposition 8 was a very simple proposition – “Only a marriage between a man and a woman is legal or valid in California.” This is exactly the same language as Proposition 22, which in 2000 illegally modified California law to preclude same-sex unions (this language was ruled unconstitutional in the spring of 2008 by the California Supreme Court). So, less than six months after the California Supreme Court ruled that the laws that precluded same-sex couples from marrying was unconstitutional, a proposition to change the Constitution to allow discrimination against same-sex couples was approved by the voters.

Compared to the 11 other propositions on the ballot – one of which was 22 pages long in dense, six-point font – this one was so simple that the summary of the proposition was as short as the actual legal language. Proponents had deceptively wanted to call it the “California Marriage Protection Act”, but the California Attorney General re-wrote the title to more accurately reflect its content: “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment”. So there is really no doubt what Californians voted for. They voted to write discrimination INTO the fucking California Constitution.

Without hyperbole, no Proposition could be more vulgar or offensive or hateful. The Constitution is intended to protect the rights of all Californians, so writing discrimination INTO the Constitution is clearly an affront to both the letter and the spirit of the document.

Though the majority of votes for the proposition came from white Californians, I am deeply saddened by the role that other minorities played in the passage of Prop 8. Polling indicates that 71% of African Americans and more than 60% of Latinos voted for the proposition. Of all the people who might understand what discrimination really means, one would think African Americans and Hispanics would; these are the people who have been repeatedly marginalized and discriminated against by society. Yet African Americans and Hispanics turned out in droves to discriminate against a smaller minority. Does being a minority mean that it’s okay to pick on another minority??? SHAME ON YOU! Jesus.

Literally – Jesus. With respect to Prop 8, the role of churches – the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church – is truly atrocious. Together they funded most of the pro-Prop -8 ads. Over $35 million was contributed by the religious right to pay for misleading ads for Prop 8. Imagine what good $35 million could have been used for! Homeless people could have been given shelter, hungry people could have been fed... Instead, the $35 million was used to take a cheap shot at a vulnerable minority. SHAME ON YOU, MORMON AND CATHOLIC CHURCHES! When did Jesus ever condemn homosexuality??? Quite simply, religious people who voted for Prop 8 are a fraud and a pox upon society. Bigots and homophobes all. If there is a hell, I hope you rot/fry/decay in it with your petty hates for ever and ever, amen.

So, faced with a number of propositions, what did Californians do? A plurality of Californians demonstrated that they are bigots and assholes and voted to give rights and protections to chickens via Prop 2 and strip rights from gays and lesbians via Prop 8.

Nice. REALLY FUCKING NICE. SHAME ON YOU, CALIFORNIANS!

-John Locke

Palin Watch III

2008-09-01T22:22:00.002-04:00

See! Abstinence-only sex-ed really works... some of the time, anyway!

Living proof is offered by Ms. Sarah Palin, who, as we all know, runs a staunchly conservative state and household, and who offers her family up as the pinnacle of religiousity and moral uprightitudiness!

Democrats noted, before and after today's announcement, that Palin took a hard line on a question in 2006 from the conservative Eagle Forum Alaska:

Q: Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?

SP: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.

As we found out today, religious-based abstinence-only sex-ed really works, except when unmarried teens have sex -- and then it don't work so good.

Ms. Palin's decision to place her unmarried pregnant daughter in the limelight by accepting the VP position on McOld's ticket further emphasizes her firm commitment to her family. "I'm going to make a very difficult situation that much worse for my daughter," Ms. Palin stated. "The whole world will now know that my daughter got knocked-up by a boy named after a popular brand of jeans! And since we still have the right to bear arms, the whole world is now invited to her shotgun weddin'!"

So far, however, the mainstream media is not picking up on the scandals and is certainly not questioning McUnstable's judgment...

The fact that this woman deliberately had an amniocentesis, found out her child has Downs, and then decided to have the child anyway (when 90% of women who find this out decide to abort) makes me fear this woman as either a TrueBeliever (which is very scary) or so politically motivated that she would decide to have a severely retarded child in order to further her political career (which I suspect is the case, and which scares me even more)... Can you spell right-to-life-martyr?

-John Locke

Palin Watch II

2008-09-01T22:19:00.002-04:00

Palin's even worse than I thought!

She was mayor of Wasilla, a town of only 6500... people. Wow. And she has been governor for just over one and a half years! Double wow.

With a resume like that, who needs experience? The repubs are already pointing to the fact that she's been in charge of Alaska's National Guard. Really? How many guards is she in charge of? 10 or 11? And what state emergencies has she mobilized them for?

Alaska wasn't even a state when John McCain was born! It has one area code and has only 626,932 people in the state! The city of Chicago has four times as many people as the entire state of Alaska.

When asked what kind of experience Palin has, McCain prominently mentioned her involvement in the PTA. Holy crap! The woman is a triple threat! Brand new governor of a very unpopulated state, mayor of a town of 6500, and member of the PTA. Look out Washington! Here comes Palin!!!

-John Locke

Palin Watch

2008-09-01T22:17:00.001-04:00

Whew! I was worried McCain would choose a real right wing nutter who looks presidential (like Mittens Romney). Instead he picked a real right wing nutter, but one who is unknown and who has only two years of experience as governor of one of the least populous states in the nation).

I guess this is his gambit to win over the disaffected Hillary fans. Fortunately, this choice can only weaken Grampa McAngry's criticism of Obama... If McAngry thinks that Obama has insufficient experience, how would whatshername compare? How many times has SHE been to Iraq and Afghanistan? How many times has she ever left the country (or even the state)? How can she be considered ready for being just a heart-beat away from the presidency?

I would be more worried if McSame had chosen Condi Rice -- although she has been entangled in all of Bush's fiascoes, she seems to escaped most of the blame... A quasi-moderate like Ridge would also have been problematic.

I think the dems should go after Palin hard. What a strange choice. Perhaps Palin reminds McOld of his great great great granddaughter from his first marriage?

-John Locke

Statue of Liberty Watch

2008-08-01T20:49:00.003-04:00

This article regarding the US Federal Government intimidating illegal aliens caught my attention:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/24immig.html?partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

It's nice to see the entire weight of the entire US Federal Government used to intimidate and threaten illegal aliens who haven't committed violent crimes and who don't pose a threat to anyone. Setting up temporary courthouses at the National Cattle Congress, shackling their hands and feet, processing suspects in groups of 10, giving them each access to 1/30th of a lawyer, threatening them with two years of hard felony time in prison for working in a sweatshop to feed their families... What a sight that must have been to behold!

I especially like how it was more important to intimidate, indict, convict, and sentence the workers than to punish the corporation that felt it was acceptable to force their workers to work in a meatpacking plant in unsafe conditions for 14 hours a day. Can you imagine working in a country where you don't speak the language; you're working in horrid conditions so you can send money back to your family in say Guatemala; then you get arrested, and instead of merely being deported, you're given the choice of jail time or more jail time...

What a great society we live in! Reminds me of a quote on the Statue of Liberty!Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Oh, wait...

-John Locke

American Automobile Makers Watch

2008-08-01T20:23:00.002-04:00

Remember when American car manufacturers pooh-poohed the idea of fuel efficient vehicles and opposed increases in fuel efficiency requirements?

Remember when they opposed hybrids and fuel cell cars and instead focused on massive SUVS, vans, and trucks that get only 10 to 16 mpg?

Remember when they pulled a fast-one on the American people and called SUVs, vans, and pickups “light trucks” to avoid complying with fuel efficiency requirements?

Remember when they advertised these massive vehicles, portraying the heroic American sitting behind the wheel, saying “F#ck the environment, F#ck the rest of the world, I can drive whatever the hell I want because I’m an American”?

Remember when they stated that they preferred the free market to encourage fuel efficiency?

Well, they have now gotten what they asked for and what they so richly deserve!

See the recent headlines below:

GM Loses $15.5 Billion in Quarter
and
Ford Posts Loss of $8.7 Billion on Asset Woes

Now that is the free market talking! Go suck an egg, Ford and GM -- you guys have played a major role in ruining our country and making us reliant on fossil fuels. You are now getting exactly what you deserve.

-John Locke

Humanist Web Watch

2008-06-07T19:42:00.003-04:00

Some links of interest to humanists. There are many more of these, but I thought these were very good representatives.

Nova special on the Dover, PA evolution vs. intelligent design trial
part 1 of 12 (~120 minutes total)

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
part 1 of 5 (~50 minutes total)

Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil (titled by the BBC)
Episode 1, part 1 of 5 (~50 minutes total)(includes his famous run-in with Ted Haggard)
Episode 2, part 1 of 5 (~50 minutes total)

Richard Dawkins, Enemies of Reason
Episode 1, part 1 of 5 (~50 minutes total)
Episode 2, part 1 of 5 (~50 minutes total)

Sam Harris debates Rabbi David Wolpe
Part 1 of 11 (~110 minutes total)

Christopher Hitchens, speaking in Seattle as part of his “God is Not Great” book tour, 2007
Part 1 of 8 (~75 minutes total)

Bill Hicks, “It’s Just a Ride”
(~ 2 minutes)

Julia Sweeney, early version of “Letting Go of God”
Part 1 of 4 (~36 minutes total)

James Randi exposes James Hydrick
(18 minutes)

James Randi exposes spoon-bender Uri Geller, psychic surgeons, faith healer Peter Popoff
(14 minutes)

Richard Dawkins, talk in Lynchburg, VA in 2006
Part 1 of 2 (~107 minutes total)
Part 2 of 2

Richard Dawkins at 2005 TED talks: The Strangeness of Science
(~23 minutes)

Michael Shermer at 2006 TED meeting: Why People Believe Strange Things
(~14 minutes)

Michael Shermer Decodes the Bible Code
(~ 6 minutes)

Carl Sagan on the mysterious universe and religion
(~2 minutes)

Michael Shermer on Firewalking
(~7 minutes)

Carl Sagan on “The Demon-Haunted World”
Part 1 of 4 (~40 minutes total)

Jesus Camp, documentary about religious indoctrination
Part 1 of 9 (~87 minutes total)

Richard Dawkins: Break the Science Barrier
Part 1 of 6 (~50 minutes)

Pat Condell: What’s good about religion?
(~6 minutes)

Bart Ehrman discusses ”Misquoting Jesus“ at Stanford
Part 1 of 10: (~100 minutes total)

Richard Dawkins at 2002 TED meeting: An Athiest’s Call to Arms
(~31 minutes)

Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss discussion at Stanford
Part 1 of 12 (~116 minutes total)

James Randi explains homeopathy
(~14 minutes)

Penn & Teller: Bullshit: Talking to the Dead
Part 1 of 3 (~26 minutes total)

For the Bible Tells Me So - an incredibly moving, informative, movie about religion and homosexuality
Part 1 of 11 (~120 minutes total - be careful, there are subparts to this)

Friends of God - a clip from an HBO documentary about religious fundamentalists
(~7 minutes)

---------------------------
Also: Left Behind, an incredibly erudite, hilarious, page-by-page deconstruction of the warped theology, poor authorship, and lack of logic in “Left Behind”, by blogger Fred Clark (the Slacktivist).

Bart Ehrman Fresh Air Interview on theodicy, February 2008
(~48 minutes)

PZ Myers’ blog Pharyngula

Huckabee's-Positions-Are-Extreme Watch

2008-02-17T18:06:00.003-05:00

Given that Mr. Huckabee appears to be a very engaging and likeable individual (as opposed to McCain, who appears unstable and very erratic), I have listed below some of the Huckster's positions on major issues that I find offensive:

Evolution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Cc8t3Zd5E - Huckabee raises his hand when asked who does not believe in evolution.

"I think the state ought to give students exposure to all points of view, including... the theories of the basis of those who believe in creationism."

Perfect, just what we need -- another fundamentalist president who can't remember that there should be a Wall of Separation between church and state...

Stem Cell Research:
"I am opposed to research on embryonic stem cells."

Great. If elected, you will be the bastard who will help ensure millions of people remain sick and dying.

Taxes:
"I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes".

Come on. Puhlease! Get real! A sales tax to fund the entire Federal budget would have to be massive, would be incredibly regressive, would dramatically and adversely affect the poor, and further widen the disparity between the haves and have-nots in this country.

Separation of Church and State:
"I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ... I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

Again, a fundamentalist president is not something that we need. At all. Ever. Separation of church and state is not just a platitude - it's real and needs to be enforced.

Judges:
"I firmly believe that the Constitution must be interpreted according to its original meaningm and flatly reject the notion of a 'living Constitution'... As president I will appoint justices and judges who not only share my judicial philosophy (e.g., Chief Justice John Robers, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Samuel Alito), but who also have established themselves within the conservative legal community as faithful adherents of originalism and textualism."

Great. So really, what you are saying is in your opinion, it would be perfectly appropriate to reinstate laws that support miscegenation , laws that support slavery, laws that keep women and minorities from voting, laws that infringe on personal privacy, and laws that restrict sexual conduct among consenting adults -- all because there is no basis in the original Constitution for those rights???

And citing Clarence Thomas as an admirable Justice is really rich, given that Thomas is so intellectually lazy, he rarely asks questions of the petitioners and rarely writes his own opinion. I guess Huckabee is so smart, he can tell Thomas is a great Justice by the way he sits on the bench...

More War:
"I will expand the army and increase the defense budget."

Cool. With spiraling deficits and two on-going (and ultimately unsuccessful and never-ending)wars, we definitely can afford that!

Death Penalty:
"I believe there is a place for the dealth penalty...

"You know, one of the toughest challenges that I ever faced as a governor was carrying out the death penalty. I did it more than any other governor ever had to do it in my state."

"Interestingly enough, if there was ever an occasion for someone to have argued against the death penalty, I think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, 'This is an unjust punishment and I deserve clemency'."

What a swell argument in support of the death penalty! How about a more appropriate quote - like "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone"... How's that for being silent on the death penalty, you idiot???

And speaking of being silent on the issues, when did Jesus EVER condemn gay people (see below)?

Gay Marriage:
I support and have consistently supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman."

God, I sooooo wish you were gay. That would be ironic - imagine the hypocrisy of being a fundamentalist Christian Republican who is gay... Oh, wait...

Gay Rights:
"Homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we know it can pose a dangerous public risk."

Actually, I think you and McCain pose the "dangerous public risk".

Iraq:
"Setting a timetable for withdrawal is a mistake."

100 More Years! 1,000 More Years! 10,000 More Years! With Huckster (and McCain and the rest of the Republicans), the sky is the limit!!!

Iran:
"Be prepared, first, to put your sights on the American vessel. And then be prepared that the next thing you see will be the gates of Hell, because that is exactly what you will see after that."

Wow. Nothing like a little rhetoric to help in negotiating with a foreign power, right?

Guns:
"I consistently opposed banning assault weapons and opposed the Brady Bill... I was the first Governor in the county to have a concealed handgun license."

Now that IS cool. If more people are armed, definitely there will be fewer gun-killings, right?

Immigration:
"I oppose and will never allow amnesty. I oppose giving driver's licenses to illegals .I will appoint judges who will uphold the law, not side with the ACLU against cities like Hazelton, Pennsylvania, which are trying to protect the economic well-being, physical safety, and quality of life of their citizens."

You @sshole. Most of us Americans are descended from illegal immigrants (after all, who else wiped out the Native Americans?). Show a little Christian compassion. Just a little. Please?

Cuba:
"I will oppose any efforts to lift trade and travel restritctions on the Cuban dictatorship..."

Perfect. Burying your head in the sand and ensuring that the existing embargo -- which has worked so well to force regime change and help the Cuban people -- will continue is a great "strategery".

Health Care:
"We don't need universal health care mandated by federal edict."

You know, you're absolutely right, Huckster. The current system is working just great. Free market has brought health insurance and healthcare to all... All except the poor and a lot of the middle class, that is.

With positions like those, it is easy to see why the fundamentalist Republicans in this country find The Huckster so appealing!

-John Locke

God-Bless-Our-Allies Watch

2007-11-11T21:01:00.000-05:00

God bless our allies! Allies like Pakistan, who stands with us as a beacon of democracy against the terrorists! Allies like General Musharraf, who has sworn that although he took power in a military coup, he loves democracy and will do anything to protect it! Well, maybe not so much.

On November 3, “the Moosh,” as President Boosh likes to call him, declared martial law and suspended the Pakistani Constitution. He shut down the radio and television stations. He put his political opponents under house arrest. Blaming the judiciary for hampering the battle against terrorists, he disbanded Pakistan’s Supreme Court -- which was about to rule whether his win in the recent election was legal -- and put judges loyal to him in the replacement court.

The Moosh also amended an Army law so that civilians can be charged in courts martial. He has also declared that martial law will continue indefinitely, likely until after the “fair-and-free” elections sometime in the future.

The Moosh has declared that as soon as the new Supreme Court -- the one he installed and filled with his own lackeys -- validates his victory and declares him President, he is more than willing to restore democracy and become President.

“I had to take a drastic step to save the democratic process,” the Moosh proclaimed. Yes --- he had to destroy democracy in order to save it.

And where is OUR fearless leader, denouncing Musharraf for suspending of Pakistan’s Constitution, denouncing the bunch of lackeys appointed to a fake Supreme Court, and calling for all Pakistanis to rise up against the dictator so that Pakistan can become a democracy??? Pretty damn silent is where. A few press conferences, a single phone call to the Moosh, expressing support, and that’s about it…

So much for supporting Democracy and Freedom in the Middle East! You see, we only support democracy when it is convenient... And right now, it's not so convenient.

-John Locke

Just-Another-Giant-Step-Towards-Fascism Watch

2007-11-11T18:24:00.000-05:00

Note that this post could also be entitled “If –Americans-Believe-This, The-Terrorists-Have-Won Watch”

Donald M. Kerr, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, has opined that it is time for Americans to change their definition of privacy. Mr. Kerr claims that privacy can no longer mean anonymity. Instead, it should mean that the government and businesses have access to your private communications and financial information but that they should properly safeguard it.

Holy shit, people! What Mr. Kerr is proposing IS 1984. It IS The Handmaid’s Tale. It IS A Brave New World. It IS Fahrenheit 451. It IS a nightmare of obscene proportions!

Mr. Kerr is advocating that the benevolent US government see all and know all but somehow not act on what it knows or sees unless it deems your thoughts or actions to be inappropriate. This is a giant step towards fascism and a giant step towards a one-party system. After all, how could a minority party function if the majority party had all relevant information about its opponents?

For example, imagine if the government, controlled by the Democratic party, KNEW which Republicans were cheating on their wives, KNEW which Republicans were secretly gay, KNEW which Republicans are pedophiles… and had the phone calls, the emails, the letters, the photos, and the video to prove it. If that were the case, a LOT of Republicans would be exposed as cheaters, liars, and criminals. I think it would be safe to say that the Republican party wouldn’t last more than a few months.

EVERYONE has something to hide. Something you wouldn’t want your neighbors to know. Something you wouldn’t want your friends to know. Something you wouldn't want your employer to know. And if the government has that information and can use it against you, suddenly, you love the government; you love Big Brother.

The Boosh Administration is more than stupid and corrupt. More than incompetent and vile. The Boosh Administration is evil, and unless we are very careful, the evil will have us all.

-John Locke

Naomi Wolf discusses airport detentions, legal torture, and Blackwater

2007-11-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

Published at Huffington Post:

I have argued that in the closing stages of a `fascist shift', events cascade. I am hearing about them, even across the globe. Here in Australia I hear from the nation's best-know feminist activist, and former adviser to Paul Keating, Anne Summers, who was also at the time this took place Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International. Summers was detained by armed agents for FIVE HOURS each way in LAX on her way to and from the annual meeting of the board of Greenpeace International in Mexico, and her green card was taken away from her. `I want to call a lawyer', she told TSA agents. `Ma'am, you do not have a right to call an attorney,' they replied. `You have not entered the United States.'

Apparently a section of LAX just beyond the security line is asserted to be `not in the United States' -- though it is squarely inside the airport -- so the laws of the US do not apply. (This assertion, by the way, should alarm any US citizen who is aware of how the White House argued that Guantanamo is not `in the United States' - is a legal no-man's land -- so the laws of the US do not apply.) Toward the end of her second five-hour detention she asked, `Why am I being detained?' `Lady, this is not detention,' the TSA agent told her. `Detention is when I take you to the cells out back and lock you up.'

Last week in Boston, while attending Bioneers by the Bay, I heard that one of the speakers for our event, an environmentalist named Gunter Pauli, was going to miss the time of his scheduled speech; he had been physically taken OFF THE PLANE by TSA agents and had to take a much later flight. More chillingly, the camerawoman doing my interview said that another well-known environmental writer found that his girlfriend was effectively `disappeared' for three days as she sought to enter the US from Canada. Lisa Fithian, an anti-globalization activist, was denied entry across the Canadian border in 2001 and was offered the choice of turning back or being arrested.

A friend emails me a story from USA Today about a 24-year-old college graduate who testified before Congress about her family of immigrants and the difficulties they face; shortly afterward, the entire family was arrested by immigration agents. Another online piece reports that Blackwater is setting up operations along the US/Mexico border and an insightful post on Daily Kos describes how the TSA list will revert from the airlines to the management of the Department of Homeland Security shortly and that by February we may well face the need to apply to the State for permission to travel. If this proposed regulation goes through, we will move from 1931 to about 1934--when the borders started to close-- with the stroke of a pen. Jews in America have hardwired into their DNA a sense of the distinction between those who got out before the borders closed and those who waited a moment too long.

Why should Congress impeach and prosecute this instant, not waiting till February? Why should this impeachment and prosecution be solidly bipartisan? After February it is the leaders on both sides of the aisle -- and the people writing these essays -- who are at most risk of being turned back at the border. People who can't leave in a police state are effectively silenced. And history shows that Republicans are at the exact same risk as Democrats of being violently silenced once liberties are lost. I am reading about IBM's close, profitable involvement with Nazi Germany -- much akin to Prescott Bush's well-documented close and profitable involvement with Nazi Germany through German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen. Right up to the top of the solidly Nazi hierarchy of the IBM affiliate, corporate executives were terrified of taking a wrong step in the eyes of the Party: `There are concentration camps', they would whisper to their US backers. The teenage son of one solid Nazi ally was taken hostage when he resisted Party orders. So alignment with the regime in a police state offers no ultimate protection.

Let us think like business consultants analyzing the decisions of a business that claims it is going to close its door in just a year. What kinds of decisions is it making? Here is a quiz, if you still doubt that we need to shift our thinking and recognize what appears to be 'a paper coup.':

- Is building a US Embassy in Baghdad the size of eighty football fields and at a cost of well more than half a BILLION dollars evidence of short- or long-term thinking?

- These walls would crumble if the next legitimate president independently ends the war. How about defending and expanding the basis for FISA violations at this late stage -- after all, these folks will be gone in a year?

- How about the decision to fight so hard for a US attorney who will defend the view that the President is above the law?

- Why would that matter so much in an administration folding its tents?

- Why the rush to establish Guantanamo as a permanent part of the landscape and even seek money at one point to double its size -- if the next President, a truly independent Republican or Democrat, might just close it down?

- Why the push to expand a war that makes no military or popular sense, rush through military tribunals that the next President might just disband, and, by the way, drum up a fresh new World War III?

- Do the neo-cons advising Giuliani look like a fresh page for an independent, transparent election or an ideological continuity of government in themselves?

- Do these look like the short-term tactics of a fading administration -- or the institutional strategic bases for some kind of new long-term beginning?

- Why work so hard to make sure that the man who defended the infamous "enemy combatant" concept will be the new Attorney General?

Increasingly, reputable figures are starting to talk about `a coup.' Jim Hightower notes in an important essay, "Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?," that a coup is defined in the dictionary as a sudden forced change in the form of government. (He also spells out the basis for a rigorously modeled impeachment and criminal prosecution.) Daniel Ellsberg's much-emailed speech on recent events notes that, in his view, a `coup' has already taken place. Ron Rosenbaum speculates in an essay on Slate about the reasons the Bush administration is withholding even from members of Congress its plans for Continuity of Government in an emergency -- noting that those worrying about a coup are no longer so marginal. Frank Rich notes the parallels between ourselves and the Good Germans. And Congress belatedly realizes as if waking from a drugged sleep that it might not be okay for the Attorney General to say the President need not obey the law. Congress may realize why Mukasey CAN'T say that `waterboarding is torture' -- the minute he does so he has laid the grounds for Bush, Cheney and any number of CIA and Blackwater interrogators to be tried and convicted for war crimes. They are so keenly aware that what they have been doing is criminal that laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 have been drafted specifically to protect them and the torturers and murderers they have directed from criminal prosecution. That is why insisting that Mukasey say that waterboarding is torture is, in spite of the alarming apparent defection of Feinstein and Schumer, an important tactic and even the perfect opening for the impeachment bid that Kucinich is bringing on November 6th to be followed by Congressional investigations into possible criminality.

This is the "Blackwater Tactical Weekly." (Yes, Blackwater has its own weekly e-newsletter.) Look at "Islamist protest in N.Y. - 'Mushroom cloud on way'" -- it is reasonable to speculate that Blackwater is focusing on becoming more active domestically in managing domestic protests and rallies. (Regarding this particular rally, note the repetition of the White House `Mushroom Cloud' sound-bite and other signs bearing current White House talking points, that are attributed to alleged Muslim protesters in New York City. The US has a long history of using agents provocateurs -- people dressed as those they are targeting, who pose as conveying a more violent or threatening message than that of the real group itself or who commit acts of violence to stigmatize the group. The Cointelpro program of the 1970's discredited many rallies in this way. An alleged or infiltrated violent, threatening Muslim rally would be the perfect defensible trigger for a Blackwater response.)

See also that Blackwater may be exploring the management of private flights in US airports because of a threat or `threat' to private aircraft. ("Extremists may target private US planes: TSA.") This entry point to the air travel system would seem defensible -- after all Blackwater personnel do in fact guard airports around the world, for example in Bosnia. The danger is that a bleeding of Blackwater into US airport security in general would affect a coup in essence -- quite quickly and serenely -- even as a coup in fact need not be declared. It is a short step from managing private plane and private airport security to aiding the TSA -- which is a branch of Homeland Security -- and Homeland Security and Blackwater have already worked in alliance with one another in New Orleans. A TSA agent blogged about having signed up for Blackwater -- at ten thousand a month, which is a lot more than TSA agents make now and a real incentive -- but I have no evidence of reverse movement. The White House recently announced that the Watch List and No-Fly List together have 775,000 citizens and that they are adding 20,000 A MONTH. This trend on both sides, if not confronted, points to an easy slide to a paramilitarized domestic flight experience in the US and a routine aggressive searching of hundreds of thousands of citizens, the growth being exponential enough so that being aggressively searched could easily soon become a common experience at airports. Nothing at present prevents Blackwater agents from being deployed to help or replace the TSA domestically. Or from being deployed at the next New York City rally such as the one that is being featured on their website. And airports being the lifeline of freedom, if you are scared to fly or can be bullied, interrogated, tasered or worse when flying, you are no longer free. History shows that there is no easy retroactive movement toward a free society once travel is truly restricted.

The Mukasey hesitation on torture is our cue to call a halt to these crimes. (By the way, strapping victims to boards to prepare them for torture was common at Buchenwald.)

Congress must ask:

- What is torture?
- Has it happened?
- Who ordered it?
- How high up the chain of command does this go?
- And what does our system of laws say about such crimes and those who commit them?

If it takes hearings and possible prosecutions to restore the rule of law and maintain a free society, then it is past time for the hearings to begin.

AT&T Whistleblower on retroactive immunity

2007-11-08T10:01:00.000-05:00

From TPMmuckraker:

Earlier today we flagged that Mark Klein, who uncovered a secret surveillance room run by the NSA while employed as a San Francisco-based technician for AT&T, is in Washington to lobby against granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies. In an interview this afternoon, Klein explained why he traveled all the way from San Francisco to lobby Senators about the issue: if the immunity provision passes, Americans may never know how extensive the surveillance program was -- or how deeply their privacy may have been invaded.

"The president has not presented this truthfully," said Klein, a 62-year old retiree. "He said it was about a few people making calls to the Mideast. But I know this physical equipment. It copies everything. There's no selection of anything, at all -- the splitter copies entire data streams from the internet, phone conversations, e-mail, web-browsing. Everything."

What Klein unearthed -- you can read it here -- points to a nearly unbounded surveillance program. Its very location in San Francisco suggests that the program was "massively domestic" in its focus, he said. "If they really meant what they say about only wanting international stuff, you wouldn't want it in San Francisco or Atlanta. You'd want to be closer to the border where the lines come in from the ocean so you pick up international calls. You only do it in San Francisco if you want domestic stuff. The location of this stuff contradicts their story."

That's what's at stake in the telecom immunity provision, Klein believes. If the surveillance-related lawsuits are invalidated by a provision in the intelligence-committee-passed FISA bill, then the extent of the program -- at least between 2001 and 2006 -- will remain the exclusive purview of the Bush administration, the communications firms and the handful of Senators selected to review legal justifications for the program. "These are not babes in woods. They knew what they were doing," Klein said. "The violation of the Constitution is where they split off -- where the splitter splits off full copies of a datastream, and connects to other companies' internet stuff, like Sprint or GlobalCrossing. They don’t want people to understand that. They want to portray it like the president does, that it's a handful of international phone calls. That's the soundbite, and that’s not true. It affects millions of people domestically."

Klein has been public with his insider account for nearly two years, with precious little publicity to show for it, thanks to the relative paucity of national media in San Francisco. Coming to Washington might have changed that: his day was packed with press calls and face time with at least a half-dozen Congressional staffers, mostly from Democratic Senators Joe Biden, Sheldon Whitehouse and Barbara Boxer. Press attention and one-on-ones in the corridors of power might be nice, he said, but it's not enough. "I'm not impressed by people with speeches pretending to be on your side," he said. "I want to see votes. In our favor."

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the surveillance bill tomorrow.

Bush-Taking-Lessons-From-Musharraf Watch

2007-11-05T22:31:00.000-05:00

This wasn't a real article on the web, but it could be, given the lack of appetite the Boosh administration has for reining-in their friend, dictator-turned-evil-dictator Musharraf (after all, what's better for the region -- democracy or brutal dictatorship?):

Boosh Vows to Learn Lesson From Musharraf

Taking a super-duper-harsh stance, Preident Bush's top national security aides said U.S. financial backing for Pakistan will likely go uninterrupted despite Musharraf's recent declaration of a state of "emergency".

Pakistan has received billions of dollars in aid and bribes since Musharraf threw his lackluster support behind the U.S.-led war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"We believe that the best path for Pakistan is to eventually return to a weakened but quasi-constitutional path and then to hold elections sometime in the distant future," said Rice, who then promised that Musharraf will still receive our money really no matter what he does.

Musharraf reiterated to foreign ambassadors Monday that he was committed to a long-term transition to democracy, as long as he gets to stay in power. "As long as I stay in power, we will eventually have a democracy!" he exclaimed. He then went on a long diatribe against "activist judges" who -- incredibly enough -- seek to enforce the country's Constitution. Under a state of emergency, parliamentary elections scheduled for January could be pushed back a year, a decade, or possibly more, according to the government.

Bush administration officials are reportedly looking on with keen interest, and are studying whether or not a state of emergency could be used in a similar fashion here in the US.

"I like it," stated one senior administrative source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, "It's simple and effective. By blaming terrorists, we can suspend the Constitution, all the while claiming that we're protecting the public. The public, being stupid, will believe pretty much whatever we tell them, particularly if it involves terrorists. We've been kicking this idea around for a couple of years now, and based on Musharraf's success, it looks like it could work as well or better in the US."

Unsuprisingly, the idea has already gained a number of converts among the populace. "I love President Bush" declared one ardent enthusiast, "Why not declare martial law here now, even without an emergency? Then we could have four more decades under our Beloved Leader". Joe Lieberman then went on to question how anyone who does not have anything to hide would be afraid of an all-powerful executive branch...

Yeah, you laugh in disbelief now, but just wait until an "emergency" happens in the US around the time of elections.

-John Locke

Republican in Democratic Clothing Watch

2007-11-04T16:54:00.000-05:00

Senator Feinstein recently voted to move Judge Leslie Southwick's nomination to the 5th Circuit US Court of Appeals out of committee and onto the Senate floor. Ms. Feinstein cast the deciding vote and was immediately saluted by numerous Republicans for her "aye" vote. In 2001, Mr. Southwick ruled that it was appropriate to strip a lesbian mother of her child, implying that homosexuality is choice and stating that had the mother made a different "choice", she might have kept her child. That's really what we need in our appeals court system: more Republican appointees with a bent for homophobia and racism. Shame on you, Leslie Southwick, and shame on you, Dianne Feinstein!

Not that she cares a rat's ass for what I believe is important, but here's what I wrote to her:

Dear Senator Feinstein:

I am extremely disappointed in your vote to move Judge Leslie Southwick's nomination out of committee and onto the floor of the Senate for a confirmation vote. Mr. Southwick's prior rulings indicate that he is both a homophobe and a racist. The fact that you would support President Bush's nomination of a person like that defies belief. You ought to be ashamed.

Sincerely,
John Locke

Stupid Republican Representative Watch II

2007-11-03T21:32:00.000-04:00

Still catching up on all my most recent letters to my "representatives". This one I wrote in August to my stupid Republican representative, who absolutely LOVES Boosh's War and spouts all of the typical Republican talkingpoints about how great the war is going and how great the war is in general... I got a form letter back from him that spouted a lot of nonsense about how Iraq is critical to winning the "War on Terrah".

Dear Congressman XXXX:

This email is to formally ask you to support “cutting and running” in Iraq. I honestly don’t care what you call it, but you need to bring our troops home now.

Why anyone would trust the Bush administration to do anything, much less prosecute a war or give an honest appraisal of how that war is going, is beyond me. The Bush administration lied us into the war and the Bush administration has mismanaged the war so badly that it really couldn’t be any worse if they had planned it to catastrophically fail. With the war costing us about 100 US soldiers and $12 billion every month, I for one am not willing to see another soldier die or spend another dollar in a war that has absolutely nothing with the war on terror, has cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives, and has radicalized the world against us. Our involvement in World War II didn’t even last this long. President Bush recently compared Iraq with Vietnam; he is right, but in a way he did not intend. Iraq is a quagmire which we cannot win; we can throw as many troops and as much of our national resources at it as we want, but we cannot win because the Iraqi people do not want us there. Instead of focusing on Afghanistan (where the real fight is), we are wasting soldiers and resources in a civil war where both sides view us as targets. The Bush administration cannot be trusted to give an honest report to Congress or to be honest with the American people. Please get us out of Iraq now.

Please note that the American public is not going to be fooled by the current sleight-of-hand proposal being floated by the Bush administration – that of promising a limited troop reduction sometime possibly maybe perhaps in the next six months. I look forward to seeing you vote immediately against any more funding of the troops and will take great pleasure in voting against you in the next election if you don’t.

Sincerely,

John Locke

Spineless Democrat Watch II

2007-11-03T21:25:00.000-04:00

I am catching up on all the letters I've sent to my "representatives" over the past few months... This is an email I sent in August to Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House) and Harry Reid (Senate Majority "Leader") when I found out that the Spineless Democrats had caved at the last minute and given the Boosh everything he wanted and more in terms of unlimited and unchecked executive power:

Dear XXXXX:

I cannot tell you how shocked, disgusted, and disappointed I was to find out that the spineless "Democrat" party had voted to give President Bush and the executive branch MORE power. I've come to expect that from the Republicans, but not the Democrats. There is no one on this planet who less deserves this kind of blind trust than President Bush -- who has repeatedly shown that he is not worthy of any trust whatsoever. The executive branch does not need more power. Any wiretapping should be done with a warrant and with strong court oversight. Allowing Bush to wiretap without a warrant is stupid; and as the FISA court determined, illegal and unconstitutional. Don't shortsell the Constitution. Don't surrender our civil liberties to the Republican fearmongers. For the love of all that is good in America, please stand up and perform your sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. Please dismantle this unsurpassed infringement on civil liberties, provide a system of checks and balances, and thereby protect Americans. If you don't, the terrorists will have won.

Sincerely,

John Locke

Mukasey-Is-A-Tool Watch

2007-11-03T21:20:00.000-04:00

This is a letter I sent on Friday to Senators Feingold, Feinstein, and Schumer. Just after I sent it, Feinstein and Schumer announced that they were spineless crapweasels and would be voting for Boosh's Tool, Michael Mukasey...

Dear Senator XXXXX:

I am writing to urge you to vote against the current nominee for US Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, in committee.

If Mr. Mukasey cannot determine whether or not waterboarding is torture, he is simply not qualified to act as Attorney General. Waterboarding has been widely recognized as torture since the Spanish Inquisition. Without a doubt, waterboarding is torture and must be condemned.

If Mr. Mukasey is refusing to answer the question in a straightforward manner because it might lead to prosecutions and convictions of Bush Administration officials, then he has demonstrated his unwillingness to be independent from the Bush Administration. After the fiasco of Alberto Gonzales, America needs an honest, independent Attorney General.

The US cannot be party to any further torturing of prisoners, no matter how heinous the suspected or alleged crimes. Please vote against Mr. Mukasey in committee and do not allow his nomination to reach the full Senate.

Sincerely,
John Locke

Stupid Republican Representative Watch

2007-11-03T21:15:00.000-04:00

This is the email I recently sent to my stupid Republican representative, who voted against SCHIP the first time (and who I have no doubt will vote against it again and again and again, all the time, making up more and more stupid reasons why he voted against it):

Dear Representative XXXXX:

I was pleased to see that the Democrats have revised the SCHIP bill to address most if not all of your concerns (including the illegal immigrants issue and the adult coverage issue, about which you seemed so concerned in your October letter to me). Consequently, I look forward to seeing you vote "yes" on the upcoming SCHIP vote today!

-John Locke

Spineless Democrat Watch

2007-11-03T21:10:00.000-04:00

This is a letter I wrote to Nancy Pelosi on September 11, 2007 regarding Boosh's War. Obviously, I was (and am) very upset at the lack of motivation on the part of the Democrats. Cowards!

Dear Madame Speaker:

The Bush/Petraeus proposal of letting the surge continue until maybe, possibly, perhaps the summer of next year is simply not acceptable. I am not willing to see another US soldier die or pay another single tax dollar so that George Bush can foist his monumental and catastrophic Iraq quagmire on the next President. I can see through this tactic. My family can see through it. My friends can see through it. And I believe that the American public can see through it.

Please do not fund the war anymore. PERIOD. Stop paying for the war and force George Bush's hand and get our troops out of Iraq now.

I'm tired of you guys and the American public being played like a fiddle. Bush has lied and lied and lied and lied and lied. The "mission" was "accomplished" years ago. The insurgency was in its "final throes" years ago. The surge was only going to last a "couple of months" and was designed to help the Iraqis "stand up as we stand down". Now, the President and Petraeus state that the surge will continue until next summer, at which time, we will be back where we were in November 2006. This is intolerable. I can't tell you how angry this makes me. The President and his henchmen are treating the American public like idiots.

GET US OUT OF IRAQ NOW. CUT OFF ALL FUNDING UNTIL YOU GET A MANDATORY TIMELINE FOR WITHDRAWAL!!! DO NOT CAVE IN TO THE PRESIDENT. YOU HAVE THE VOTES. JUST DO IT.

Sincerely,
John Locke

In Which Godwin's Law is Invoked

2007-10-25T14:57:00.000-04:00

Nancy Pelosi is Making Sense Watch

What if Nancy Pelosi is right? We all know that Pelosi's arguments about "not having enough votes" to stop war funding is bogus. What she is implicitly saying is that she doesn't think it would be good for Congressional Democrats to stop war funding. Is she right? Most of the people here assume that if Congressional Democrats stopped war funding, the public would respond very positively, with approval ratings, money, etc.

But one thing that has proven true over and over again is that the Democrats cannot outsmart or stand up to the GOP's Outrage Machine. Anything fed into the Outrage Machine is used as a cudgel to exact ritual humiliation of the Democrats. They even have to apologize for speaking the truth! (See Durbin on the American Gulag, Stark on the President's amusement, etc.)

In order for ending war funding to be a good thing for congressional Democrats, they would have to do two things: cut the funds, and also outsmart the GOP's Outrage Machine. Since Nancy knows they could never pull off the second part, she knows that blocking war funding would be a bad thing for congressional Democrats. Thus she doesn't something which would be bad for herself.

See, it all makes sense. /sarcasm

Closing America Society Watch

Naomi Wolf has another interview about her book The End of America. Much of the content is similar to the talk I posted before, but it if you missed that, don’t miss this one. This is probably the most important subject for political action currently, the systematic closing of our society.

The GOP Fainting Couch Watch

Digby posts this essay entitled The Art of the Hissy Fit, which describes how the Democratic Party is controlled through Ritual Humiliation.

I first noticed the right's successful use of phony sanctimony and faux outrage back in the 90's when well-known conservative players like Gingrich and Livingston pretended to be offended at the president's extramarital affair and were repeatedly and tiresomely "upset" about fund-raising practices they all practiced themselves. The idea of these powerful and corrupt adulterers being personally upset by White House coffees and naughty sexual behavior was laughable.

But they did it, oh how they did it, and it often succeeded in changing the dialogue and tittilating the media into a frenzy of breathless tabloid coverage.

In fact, they became so good at the tactic that they now rely on it as their first choice to control the political dialogue when it becomes uncomfortable and put the Democrats on the defensive whenever they are winning the day. Perhaps the best example during the Bush years would be the completely cynical and over-the-top reaction to Senator Paul Wellstone's memorial rally in 2002 in the last couple of weeks leading up to the election.

On to Iran Watch

Flynt Leverett, who is in a position to know, tells us about the march to war with Iran, and how the US threw out many overtures for better relations with Iran six years ago.

The Wit and Wisdom of Dumbya Watch

One of the great things about having all of the government’s records behind walls of secrecy is that Bush can just lie about anything at all. A couple of days ago he made the false claim that we can either have torture or terrorist deaths. But, typical of Dim Son, he couldn’t even get his threats right:

In this new war, the enemy conspires in secret -- and often the only source of information on what the terrorists are planning is the terrorists themselves. So we established a program at the Central Intelligence Agency to question key terrorist leaders and operatives captured in the war on terror. This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us stop a number of attacks -- including a plot to strike the U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, a plot to hijack a passenger plane and fly it into Library Tower in Los Angeles, California, or a plot to fly passenger planes into Heathrow Airport and buildings into downtown London.

Despite the record of success, and despite the fact that our professionals use lawful techniques, the CIA program has come under renewed criticism in recent weeks. Those who oppose this vital tool in the war on terror need to answer a simple question: Which of the attacks I have just described would they prefer we had not stopped? Without this program, our intelligence community believes that al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. This CIA program has saved lives -- it is vital to the security of the American people.

Flying “passenger planes into Heathrow Airport”? That would sound scary, if hundreds of planes didn’t do that every day. Flying “buildings into downtown London”? Again, that would scare me if buildings could fly. Smarter figureheads, please.

Devil’s Dictionary Watch

H. L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun (26 July 1920):

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.' The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Roy Zimmerman Watch

Mr. Zimmerman and his guitar will entertain you with his songs “Dick Cheney”, “Defenders of Marriage”, “The War on Terror”, and “Chickenhawk”. Wonderful stuff, served up by an exquisite musician. As a bonus, enjoy “Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual” which features the lyric “swallow the syllogism”.

Crystal Ball Watch

Here is Gore Vidal, in an interview from July 2002, gazing into the future:

Q: And yet Americans seem quite susceptible to a sort of jingoistic "enemy-of-the-month club" coming out of Washington. You say millions of Americans hate the federal government. But something like 75 percent of Americans say they support George W. Bush, especially on the issue of the war.

A: I hope you don't believe those figures. Don't you know how the polls are rigged? It's simple. After 9/11 the country was really shocked and terrified. (Bush) does a little war dance and talks about evil axis and all the countries he's going to go after. And how long it is all going to take, he says with a happy smile, because it means billions and trillions for the Pentagon and for his oil friends. And it means curtailing our liberties, so this is all very thrilling for him. He's right out there reacting, bombing Afghanistan. Well, he might as well have been bombing Denmark. Denmark had nothing to do with 9/11. And neither did Afghanistan, at least the Afghanis didn't.

So the question is still asked, are you standing tall with the president? Are you standing with him as he defends us?

Eventually, they will figure it out.

Q: They being who? The American people?

A: Yeah, the American people. They are asked these quick questions. Do you approve of him? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, he blew up all those funny-sounding cities over there.

That doesn't mean they like him. Mark my words. He will leave office the most unpopular president in history. The junta has done too much wreckage.

They were suspiciously very ready with the Patriot Act as soon as we were hit. Ready to lift habeas corpus, due process, the attorney-client privilege. They were ready. Which means they have already got their police state. Just take a plane anywhere today and you are in the hands of an arbitrary police state.

Q: Don't you want to have that kind of protection when you fly?

A: It's one thing to be careful, and we certainly want airplanes to be careful against terrorist attacks. But this is joy for them, for the federal government. Now they've got everybody, because everybody flies.

Scary Iran, just in time for Halloween

2007-10-24T11:26:00.000-04:00

Phantom Menace Watch

So Bush and Cheney are doing a lot of saber-rattling right now, and it is clear that they want to start a war with Iran. The arguments are all depressingly familiar to people who paid attention during the run up to war with Iraq. In both cases, we have a lie repeated so many times that it becomes “truthy”: for Iraq, that Saddam had beyond-conventional weapons, for Iran that they are busy killing American servicemen in Iraq. They have produced zero evidence for this yet it is repeated over and over by their minions in the press. (Even if it were true, who could blame Iran? After all, we overthrew their democratically elected leader Mossadegh in 1953 and installed a brutal dictator, and then, throughout Reagan’s term, supplied Saddam with weapons to kill them with during the Iran-Iraq war.) And in both cases, we have an existential threat pounded into us: either Iraq or Iran is going to blow us up!

Now this news:

George W. Bush on Tuesday said a missile defence system was urgently needed to protect the US and Europe from Iran, warning that Tehran could have the capability to strike the US and Europe with ballistic missiles within eight years.

Never mind the mind-blowing wastefulness, stupidity, and complete ineffectiveness of “missile defence systems”. I have news for Bush: there are thousands of nuclear weapons that pose much greater dangers for the US that exist TODAY, which we are doing nothing constructive about. Nukes are in the hands of Pakistan, China, Russia, India, North Korea, and Israel. All of which I’m much more concerned with than Iranian nukes in the future. Absolutely nothing is being done about Russia’s nuclear materials and warheads as far as I can tell, and the danger of them being sold off in Russia’s new wild west economy is much greater than any problem from Iran, you idiot. Russia has 16,000 total nuclear warheads, nearly 6,000 of which are still active and probably pointed at us. Nukes in Iranian hands are no more, and quite possibly much less, threatening to us than those in Pakistan. And certainly nukes “within eight years” are not something to get your panties in a twist over.

Here’s the kicker: An invasion of Iran will make our relations with Russia and China much worse, as Russia and China both depend on Iranian oil and have interests there. So, an attack on Iran is, on the face of it, simply suicidal for the US. China will destroy our economy by ceasing to buy our debt, if it comes to it, and that will be the end of the US, both economically and as a world power. Keep up the saber-rattling, you jackasses.

Every Sperm is Sacred Watch

Like every good Bush appointee, Susan Orr does not believe in what she has been put in charge of. In this case, family planning programs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

In a 2000 Weekly Standard article, Orr railed against requiring health insurance plans to cover contraceptives. “It’s not about choice,” said Orr. “It’s not about health care. It’s about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death.”

That’s the spirit! The war against sex for pleasure continues unabated. More thrilling quotes at the link.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat Watch

By now, we know the familiar pattern: The Bush/Cheney complex is caught doing something completely illegal, from wiretapping without warrants to torturing prisoners to holding citizens without access to a lawyer. They deny it at first, then admit it and claim it is only for our own good. The Democrats express “concern”. They begin to issue subpoenas which are ignored to investigate. Russ Feingold proposes legislation that would reiterate that their current activity is really, really illegal. A huge legislative fight develops, with Republicans warning of dire, deadly consequences unless the administration can break the law with impunity. Some compromise bill is reached and sent to the President, who signs it with his fingers crossed and files a signing statement saying he intends to ignore it. The lawbreaking continues while new scandals come to light, and nothing ever changes . . .

Shock Redux Watch

In Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine, she picks out one pattern in recent history that has been repeated many times, and seems sure to happen in this country as well. In Poland, in South Africa, in Argentina, in Bolivia . . . in every country where a corrupt, totalitarian government is replaced by a people-powered movement that promises and hopes to actually use the power of government to help its citizens, the new government finds that it cannot. The stories are incredibly depressing. In each case, the corrupt government runs up large debts, often with a large proportion of the amount it’s spending concurrently ending up in Swiss bank accounts. Then, the people rise up and take back their countries. But the IMF and the World Bank won’t let them out of the debts incurred by their predecessors, and won’t give them any aid until they accept a raft of conditions that amount to corporatism run wild: a free market economy with no safety nets for workers, no investment in the people of the country. If the newly formed governments try to spend any money to help their people, by providing them healthcare or welfare or social security or wage guarantees or protective tariffs for local businesses, the markets devalue their currency and send their economies into freefall. In each of these countries, the reformers are forced to give in and open their countries up to pillage by multinational corporations, which buy up their resources, exploit their workers, and generally make life miserable.

Now we have our own totalitarian government which is running up huge debt. If we, the people, ever manage to take control of our government again, will we be able to preserve our protections for workers, or our social security? Not likely.

Third Rail Watch

John Edwards has just touched one of American politics' unmentionable third rails. Like Howard Dean before him, who promised to do something about the corrosive effects of media consolidation, Edwards just signaled that his campaign cannot possibly succeed. He announced that he would fight against wasteful, runaway spending at the Pentagon. And in the middle of the War on Terra, too. Doesn't he know that we have to make the World Safe For Freedom by ridding it of IslamoCommuFascism?

Conservative Idiots Watch

This week’s bumper crop.

Our Closing Society

2007-10-19T10:10:00.000-04:00

Creating a Closed Society Watch

Naomi Wolf’s book The End of America is interesting not because it claims that America is already a fascist state. That kind of hyperbole always draws out (probably deserved) ridicule. Rather, what she claims is that there are ten clear steps that a society takes when the people in charge are trying to make it a closed, totalitarian society, that they are remarkably similar in all such societies, whether left-wing or right-wing, and that the process is easy to spot. Here are the steps she highlights which the United States has already taken: Invoking a terrifying internal and external enemy, creating a gulag, developing a paramilitary group of thugs, setting up an internal surveillance system, harassing citizens’ groups, controlling the press, targeting key individuals, and equating dissent with treason. The other two steps are engaging in arbitrary detention and release, which I don’t think has happened yet except to non-citizens and Jose Padilla, and suspending the rule of law. Though of course they have suspended the rule of law for themselves already, this step won’t be fully implemented until the next big terror attack/natural disaster/plague, so it’s only a matter of time.

Recently, Ms. Wolf gave an address at the University of Washington. This is a 48-minute speech, including why she wrote the book, details about the historical aspects of the ten steps and how they apply to today’s America, and her recommendation on what we need to do to stop it. Her research indicates that it will not be enough to legislate against Cheney and Bush. They must be impeached, tried, and put behind bars. If you have a few minutes, please watch this presentation. It is chilling and extremely important.

Let’s Invade Iran! Watch

Josh Marshall is one of the best investigative journalists working today, and though he originally supported the invasion of Iraq (having been led down that path by Kenneth Pollack’s tragically flawed book Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, among other arguments), he has since more than made up for that error by committing real journalism. He continues his very important weblog, Talking Points Memo, and has gathered a muckraking staff of investigators who write at TPM Muckraker. He has also taken to creating small video news and analysis broadcasts, under the name TPM Media, which are some of the smartest and most informative out there. Josh has been out front on a number of stories which manage to evade the presstitutes, and was instrumental in bringing to light and sustaining the story of the firing of the US attorneys in swing states.

Last week, Josh and his team took at look at Rudy Giuliani’s foreign policy advisors, all four of whom want the US to invade Iran post haste. So, if Giuliani gets elected (and he seems to be the designated successor right now), the question won’t be whether we attack Iran, but how many hours we should wait. Truly frightening.

Shift and Puzzle Watch

If you’ve ever read the C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, you may have noticed how much Bush and Cheney (or perhaps Rove) resemble the pair Puzzle the Donkey and Shift the Ape in the seventh book, The Last Battle. In that book, the power-hungry ape dresses an ignorant (but good-hearted – here the analogy breaks down) donkey in the heroic/godlike skin of a lion and passes him off as the leonine deity Aslan. As Puzzle mouths the words of Shift’s speeches to the frightened animals of Narnia, they create an authoritarian state where the ape lives corruptly off of the animals’ sacrifice and labor, betrays the animals to a foreign power, and creates a world-ending war. Lewis’ allegory had to do with both the notion of the antichrist and the rise of the totalitarian axis powers. The book was written over fifty years ago.

Playing with Impeachment Watch

Noticing how the media just about wet themselves with the thought of Bush’s Evildoer’s Deck of Cards, some enterprising souls have created Impeach Bush cards, detailing over 52 reasons why Bush should be impeached. Send a pack to Nancy Pelosi today!

The Military Industrial Surveillance Complex

2007-10-16T23:40:00.000-04:00

I’ve Got Good News and Bad News Watch

First, some good news for a change. A group of rich Bush critics are considering funding a group of investigative journalists to actually perform, you know, real journalism in this country. Imagine that! They are expected to be able to draw from a huge pool of incredibly talented, out-of-work investigative people who have all lost their jobs (or lost interest in their jobs) in the Outrage or Titillation world of new media. You get just one guess as to whether the right wing bloviators (including George Will, Fred Barnes, Bill O’Reilly, Brit Hume, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Neil Cavuto, Mort Kondracke, Charles Krauthammer, Tim Russert, Tucker Carlson, Steve Doocy, Ann Coulter, Michael Medved – the list seems endless, and those are just the assholes!) will consider this new nonprofit group, named Pro Publica, part of the “liberal media”.

Clearly, Pro Publica is a great idea, and one which is way past due. One absolutely clear sign that it is a fantastically good sign is that Rush Limbaugh has already hyperventilated his fat heart into a frenzy thinking about investigative journalists who can’t be bought off or intimidated. His rather unique tack was to decry their “arrogance” for daring to criticize powerful people, as if they were any better than them. And then, he tried to intimidate them himself:

And we said, "You know what? We're going to find out where your kids go to school. We're going to find out who you knocked up in high school. We're going to find out what drugs you used. We're going to find out where you go to drink and do -- we're gonna find out how you paid for your house. We're going to do -- and we're going to do exact . . . But nobody does that to these people. Nobody does it to them. And that would be so much fun. But I'd need to be wearing body armor every day. Oh, no question, these people are playing for keeps.

Nothing seems to scare the Bloated One like the thought of journalists who aren’t tamed, gelded, and in “the club”. Let’s hope there are plenty of them in the future.

The bad news, reported this week by the ACLU, is that the Department of Defense has been abusing the powers granted to it by the PATRIOT act (which of course it and the Justice Department swore up and down that they would never do when Bushco wanted to get the Patriot Act renewed) to spy on American citizens without warrants and with intimidation of those they got the information from in hundreds, thousands, and probably hundreds of thousands of occasions. So, not only is the NSA spying on us. Not only is the Justice Department spying on us. But the Pentagon is spying on us. And we know how ethical they are. Keith Olbermann and legal scholar Jonathan Turley discuss this latest government invasion into our lives.

Something Banal This Way Comes Watch

Everyone loves to quote “the medium is the message” from communications theorist Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan meant that when human intercommunication occurred largely through the printed word, and when the barrier to entry to publishing your own work was relatively low, the conversation was more interactive and ideas were allowed to compete based on their merits. In contrast, television, for which the barriers to entry are huge and controlled by just a few powerful interests, is a one-way medium. The message of print is “let’s all engage in an exchange of ideas”, whereas the message of television is “sit there and shut up and we’ll tell you what to think”. Gore explores these differences in some detail in The Assault on Reason, and also offers his hope that the internet, with a low barrier to entry, can bring back a vigorous, merit- and idea-based public conversation. It certainly does seem to be the case that before the printing press, political and religious orthodoxy were strictly enforced, followed by the wild heterodoxy of the salons and the broadsheets of the enlightenment, followed by increasingly enforced orthodoxy as radio and television grew to dominance. The increased influence of atheism and progressive politics these days do seem to owe some thanks to the net. Let’s hope that influence grows.

One of my favorite authors when I was a teenager was Ray Bradbury, and I’ll never forget the two very sharp criticisms he made of television in his stories. Rather than just rail against the medium for making us stupid (and obedient), he demonstrated its corrosive power, first in the political observations of the wife of his protagonist in Fahrenheit 451 (the implied sexism of the scene is somewhat mitigated by making the heroine in the story extraordinarily erudite):

Mildred sat a moment and then, seeing that Montag was still in the doorway, clapped her hands. “Lets talk politics, to please Guy!”
“Sounds fine”, said Mrs. Bowles. “I voted last election, same as everyone, and I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest looking men ever became president.”
“Oh, but the man they ran against him!”
“He wasn’t much, was he? Kind of small and homely and he didn’t shave too close or comb his hair very well.”
“What possessed the ‘Outs’ to run him? You just don’t go running a little short man like that against a tall man. Besides – he mumbled. Half the time I couldn’t hear a word he said. And the words I did hear I didn’t understand!”
“Fat, too, and didn’t dress to hide it. No wonder the landslide was for Winston Noble. Even their names helped. Compare Winston Noble to Hubert Hoag for ten seconds and can almost figure the results.”
“Damn it!” cried Montag. “What do you know about Hoag and Noble!”
“Why, they were right in that parlor wall, not six months ago. One was always picking his nose; it drove me wild.”
“Well, Mr. Montag,” said Mrs. Phelps, “do you want us to vote for a man like that?”

and also in his chilling short short story, the Pedestrian, about a man who pays the price for preferring a walk to the television.

The Case for Impeachment Watch

David Swanson, an anti-war and pro-impeachment activist, is behind some of the most important websites in chronicling the abuses of the maladministration and in opposing them, including AfterDowningStreet.org, Democrats.com, and impeachpac.org. One of the best speeches I’ve ever seen regarding the subject of impeachment was delivered by Swanson with heart, reason, and passion. If you only watch one speech detailing the reasons Bush and Cheney need to be impeached this year, make it this one.

Reverse Robin Hood

2007-10-16T11:42:00.000-04:00

Alan “The Con” Greenspan Watch

You may remember when I discussed Alan Greenspan, and how he had raised payroll taxes on working class people in the 80's to save Social Security, and then came back a few years ago to try to scaremonger us all into giving up our Social Security and stampede trillions of dollars into Wall Streets funds. It seems that Tom Tomorrow, in the attachment, also remembers that. It should be remembered, but rarely is mentioned in polite discussion between corporate members of the television chatterati, that Greenspan is a Randroid, a disciple who sat at the feet of that wellspring of charisma and human kindness, Ayn Rand. (You can bask in Ms. Rand’s creepy brand of charisma here, if you choose. See what everyone is talking about!) Having read several of Rand’s books in the last twenty years, it is still hard to understand what is so seemingly attractive her philosophy for so many people. It seems to break down into 1) if you’ve ever needed help with anything in your life, you are a piece of crap and deserve to die, and 2) what is good for me is Good. It’s hard to think of a more stunted, inhumane “philosophy”, and the fact that someone who was so taken by her writing that he actually modified his life to learn more from her was given an extremely powerful post in which to effect the nation’s monetary policies is horrifying beyond words. The fact that the media never seemed to pick up on the fact that this might be a bad thing is stunning. More about Andrea Mitchell’s husband below.

Outrage Machine Watch

The media consists primarily of an “outrage machine”, which responds to right-wing hyperventilation, and a titillation machine, which feeds America’s celebrity jones until the next right-wing outrage comes along. Things which are, in the context of the big picture, not really that big a deal are fed into the outrage machine, and they become generally regarded as true and outrageous. And often, things which are truly dangerous and horrible are not fed into the outrage machine, and therefore, vanish without a ripple into the world of things-which-are-true-but-which-no-one-knows-about-because-they-were-never-discussed-on-the-TeeVee.

Several pairs of events illustrate this effect. Clinton carrying on and lying about a rather mild and sad affair? Outrage Galore! Outrageous Maximus! The End of America! Chimpy knowingly lying about requiring warrants but actually illegally listening in to the phone calls and emails of his political opponents? Crickets. Gore (falsely) accused of taking too much credit for uncovering Love Canal? His Sanity is called into Question! Dozens of members of the Bush administration flouting congressional subpoenas investigating their criminal activities? Yawn . . . slow news day. Wealthy Democratic contributors sleeping over in the WhiteHouse? Outrage is an understatement. America establishing a gulag system and routinely torturing even our own citizens? Nothing to see here, move along.

That’s how the game is played, and in a way it is easy to see how our top Democratic officeholders have just about given up the game. They can’t generate any outrage of their own – none that makes it to the general public, anyway, and if they try the GOP will just drum up false outrage based on lies if they have to. And being outraged is so tiring . . . Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have now stated so many times and so firmly that they will not, now or in the future, consider impeaching Cheneyco and Bushco, that it’s clear that this misadministration has their complete consent to do whatever they freaking feel like. And that is a true outrage.

BlackWater: Hearts and Minds Watch

One rather surprising development in this war is the extensive use of mercenaries. Like torture, this just seems a priori like a bad idea all around. Their loyalty, training, and behavior are not nearly as reliable as US servicemen, and with questionable accountability and rampant corruption, they are as bad a set of representatives for America to the country we have conquered and are pillaging as any I can think of. Recently, several developments concerning the firm BlackWater (though there are many others) have brought this problem to light. It was reported in one particular incident that BlackWater mercenaries drew guns on US servicemen, disarmed them and forced them to lie down. Jeremy Scahill has done extensive research on BlackWater and their CEO Erik Prince. And another report details why BlackWater mercenaries are such an evil presence in Iraq. But don’t worry! Our Commander-in-Chief is fully aware of the issues and knows just how mercenaries fit into our plan! Asked an intelligent question about whether Iraqi or American or indeed any law at all governed the actions of mercenaries in Iraq, His Dimness replied, “Huh? Garsh, I don’t know anything about that. Next question?”. So, clearly, there is nothing to worry about here.

While we are on the subject of hearts and minds, here is a cheerful report about “baiting” Iraqis with equipment, and then shooting them when they pick the equipment up. That kind of quick, judge-jury-executioner-type justice is sure to make the Iraqi people love us for centuries to come!

More Shock Watch

Another thesis in Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, is that there are parallels between dismantling a person’s mind, which the CIA discovered how to do by funding a Montreal psychologist’s research into electroshock, sensory deprivation, and psychoactive drugs in the 60’s and which was used with CIA supervision throughout Latin America for decades, and the dismantling of a society’s self-protection. In both cases, the dignity and self-preservation of the subject are attacked and removed, followed by leaving them open to abuse by their captors. And this kind of torture is used hand in hand with authoritarian suppression in societies that are being laid waste to by rapacious capitalism. The goal is to remove or terrorize union organizers, social progressives, and activists, so that the exploitation is not hampered by the completely irrelevant will of the nation’s population.

America was given, and miserably failed, a test of its own strength of self-protection in the case of Jose Padilla. He was accused in the press of crimes he never ended up being charged with, held for years without access to his family or to a lawyer, and subjected to having his mind destroyed by the techniques of the CIA. After reading the first chapter of the Shock Doctrine, and then seeing pictures of Padilla in sensory-deprivation gear as he was moved around and reading descriptions of his torture, it was clear that his treatment was meant to test the waters of our tolerance for having these procedures used on our fellow citizens. But the torture of Jose Padilla was never fed into the corporate Outrage Machine, and so has passed into our history largely unnoted.

You can watch Naomi Klein debate Mr. Greenspan and also see her discussion of the Shock Doctrine on BookTV.

The Shock Doctrine

2007-10-15T19:43:00.000-04:00

American Renewal and Restoration Watch

Now that President-in-exile Gore has won an Emmy, an Oscar (or rather his producers did), and the Nobel Peace Prize, and has yet to definitively disavow that he is running for the nomination, the question still remains: is he running or isn’t he? He has said that he didn’t see the need to run in such a long pre-election campaign, but he needs to get his name on some ballots between now and when the primaries start happening, and some of those deadlines are coming up in the next couple of weeks. So maybe he isn’t really running. On the other hand, there are these three brief videos, posted just yesterday, on Gore’s current.com website. They are obviously position statements, to restore the fourth amendment, to pull out of Iraq, and for single payer universal health care. Why would he post them if he were not running? And note how he continues to campaign directly to the citizenry, doing an end run around the press corpse. Nicely done, Mr. President.

9/11 Changed Everything Watch

If the claims of Joe Nacchio, who is the former CEO of Qwest, the only large telecom business which apparently did not go right along with the administration’s warrantless eavesdropping scheme, are true, then not only did this administration begin illegally spying on the population (including Democratic politicians, political activists, and journalists) almost immediately upon arriving in office, at least seven months before September 11th, but that spying program failed to stop both the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks. So, this story takes away both of the bogus justifications for such gross lawbreaking: that it could help stop terrorist attacks, and that it was necessary after 9/11.

Two Naomis Watch

Two brilliant women who both happen to be named Naomi have excellent, important books out right now. The first is Naomi Wolf, whose book The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, was foreshadowed by this article in which she described the ten warning signs of an authoritarian takeover of a government. Her message is urgent and timely. You can watch Ms. Wolf discuss her book with Stephen Colbert, and while you are at it, see Colbert’s Daily Show feature “So, You’re Living in a Police State”. Wolf wrote a short piece recently describing some of her experiences on her book tour, and her call to action against authoritarian government trends.

The second Naomi is Naomi Klein, who has written what I think is probably the most important book in the last 40 years. It is called the Shock Doctrine, and I’m about 2/3 of the way through it right now. Her thesis is that there is a group of people who really do believe that the world would be a better place (for them) if people were valued only as much as they created profit for corporations. These people have been instrumental in the multinational corporation pillage of countries starting with Chile’s Pinochet government. These people, disciples of Milton Friedman’s University of Chicago school of economics, always favor completely unfettered capitalism over democracy. And they are in charge of the IMF, the WTO, and other organizations that use debt as a club to force democracies to privatize their assests and destroy worker protections and social programs. The first part of the book is a recent history, starting in the mid 1960s, of the reforms in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Poland, South Africa, Russia, Indonesia, and the meltdown of the Asian markets in Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea in the last decade. Everywhere these ubercapitalists go, they spread economic destruction, death, misery, and repression of the people, coupled with authoritarian strongmen. After reading the first part of the book, seeing the same pattern emerging again and again, you begin to realize that what is going on in Iraq is just part of the same pattern. In fact, it becomes inevitable after knowing the histories of these other countries. Iraq has been opened up, not for democracy, but for capitalism, and the worst kind of corrupt, horrible, Hobbesian capitalism at that. An extremely erudite, crystallizing book. You can read Jane Smiley’s review of the book, or see Klein discussing her ideas in a brief, or a longer, format. If you read only one book this year, you should read more books! Actually, read this one if you get a chance. Here’s an excellent article on the “neoliberal” school of Friedmanite economists, as well.

Top Ten Idiots Watch

Check out this week’s Top Ten list at Democratic Underground.

#5 Blackwater

In Idiots 309 I noted that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Naturally) had been out and about defending the mercenaries of Blackwater after they allegedly massacred 17 Iraqi civilians. Issa argued that an attack on Blackwater is essentially an attack on General Bringing Sexy Back Petraeus, and obviously we can't have that.

I wonder how Issa feels about Blackwater after this news was reported last week?
The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV.

No, wait, don't tell me... wondering whether mercenaries should go around disarming U.S. soldiers and making them lie on the ground at gunpoint is an attack on General Petraeus.

Just don't call it torture

2007-10-08T16:05:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you have to almost feel sorry for the evil hacks who have sold their souls to be a part of this monstrous regime. Last week, an article in the New York Times revealed that Bush had re-authorized torturing prisoners.

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda, President Bush for the first time acknowledged the C.I.A.’s secret jails and ordered their inmates moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. halted its use of waterboarding, or pouring water over a bound prisoner’s cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.

But in July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the C.I.A. again is holding prisoners in “black sites” overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Mr. Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel.

This has produced, as you might imagine, some delightfully depressing interviews, with Bush and some of his lower-level toadies having to answer questions about what constitutes torture and whether “we” do it in some of the best Newspeak ever. Their message can best be summed up as: “The United States doesn’t torture (this is repeated over and over so that the mouth-breathers know to repeat it). What the U.S. does do is enhanced interrogation techniques, but only until our ~~victims~~ guests cooperate. And they’ve given us really useful information! And we can’t possibly talk about this”.

Among your choices of embarrassing, Porky Pig-like, stammering interviews of Bush administration officials trying to explain how they are only torturing people for our good, just like a Daddy keeping us safe at night, is this one with Bush:

There's been a lot of talk in the newspapers and on TV about a program that I put in motion to detain and question terrorists and extremists. I have put this program in place for a reason, and that is to better protect the American people. And when we find somebody who may have information regarding an -- a potential attack on America, you bet we're going to detain them, and you bet we're going to question them -- because the American people expect us to find out information -- actionable intelligence so we can help protect them. That's our job.
Secondly, this government does not torture people. You know, we stick to U.S. law and our international obligations.
Thirdly, there are highly trained professionals questioning these extremists and terrorists. In other words, we got professionals who are trained in this kind of work to get information that will protect the American people. And by the way, we have gotten information from these high-value detainees that have helped protect you.

And finally, the techniques that we use have been fully disclosed to appropriate members of the United States Congress. The American people expect their government to take action to protect them from further attack. And that's exactly what this government is doing, and that's exactly what we'll continue to do.

Also, here’s Fran Townsend, a Whitehouse Homeland Security Advisor, trying to “explain” the policy on CNN (her segment starts at about the 5 minute mark):

TOWNSEND: Now, Wolf, obviously I'm not going to talk about each individual and specific technique that we used. The director of Central Intelligence has talked to members of both Intelligence Committees in the House and the Senate. He -- what he did was he understood this was not just a legal question, but there was a policy issue and there's a political willingness question.Frankly, Wolf, if Americans are killed because we fail to do the hard things, the American people would have the absolute right to ask us why.

BLITZER: Well, let me -- let me rephrase the question. Without confirming that you are actually doing those things, but those things, as described in the "New York Times" today, if someone were doing those things, would that be torture?

TOWNSEND: Wolf, we adhere to the -- to the law. And the president has made clear his expectation that we will do that. No one has ever suggested that, say, Miranda or the Army field manual went to the limits that were legally permissible. The constitution does that, which is why we seek legal opinions from the office of legal counsel.But we don't talk about the specific techniques...

Finally, two performances by Dana Perino, being questioned more and more pointedly by the whitehouse press corpse, as they try to follow the illogic of the administration’s position.

Q Dana, I went back and read the 2004 memo --
MS. PERINO: Did you get through the whole thing?
Q -- or tried to get through it. I was looking for a definition of "torture," because we know that in 2002 you defined it a certain way, and then the 2004 memo was intended to redefine it, or to, I believe, broaden the definition of "torture." And I wasn't sure if I came up with the definition. I saw language that said, "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Is that the definition from --
MS. PERINO: I don't have the document with me, so let me decline on that. But what I will tell you is that -- you might not have gotten to the parts -- the footnotes of that document, in which it says that it's their legal conclusion that in the analysis in looking at the earlier memo that their legal justification that the -- that it would have been the same, that there wasn't anything going on between 2002 and 2004 that they would have considered to be outside of the bounds of U.S. law. That's one part of it. As to the -- I would just have to refer you to the Department of Justice. It's a very complicated legal matter.

All righty then!

What has become plainly obvious from all of this hemming and hawing is that 1) the United States does torture, 2) we don’t do it to get information 3) we do do it to intimidate people by letting it be known that it can be done to them (e.g. Jose Padilla) 4) our methods are illegal and the administration knows they are illegal and 5) they are doing everything in their power to keep them under wraps.

America. Smell the Freedom.

Truth in Military Advertising

2007-10-08T10:54:00.000-04:00

An ad which shows what a military recruiting commercial might look like if they included a list of disclaimers at the end, like pharmaceutical advertising. One possible problem is "rational thought".

Irony poisoning

2007-10-08T10:34:00.000-04:00

Please read the following quote from the Decider-in-Chief, and try not to overload your circuits:

"I don't want you reading my personal stuff," he admitted, adding: "There has got to be a certain sense of privacy. You know, you're entitled to how I make decisions. And you're entitled to ask questions, which I answer. I don't think you're entitled to be able to read my mail between my daughters and me." (emphasis mine)

Hypocrisy much? But then, Republicans are the masters of inflicting on others what they themselves avoid. Remember, It's OK If You Are a Republican (IOKIYAR). You can watch the Chimpster work himself into a lather and make this incredibly, mind-blowingly un-self-ware statement about his email privacy here.

Freedom isn't free. Yeah, there's a hefty f*ing fee.

2007-08-06T11:19:00.000-04:00

This weekend I was visiting with an informal group of people from my hometown. The subject of red light cameras and police cameras on public streets came up, and someone noted that the British didn’t seem to mind police cameras being everywhere, covering most of London’s streets and public places. Someone else said that that was because of their recent history with Irish terrorists, and then a gentleman from my father’s generation said he couldn’t figure out all of the people who were fighting for civil liberties, like the ACLU; that freedoms needed to ebb and flow in response to the particular dangers of the times, and that freedoms were no good to you if you are dead.

I was really struck by what he said, because he had served in the military and is an intelligent person, and because I respect him. It saddened me a person like that could be so wrong. I presume that like everyone else in this country, he thinks that what the military does is “fight for our freedoms” or “fight to keep us free” or “sacrifice for liberty”. And that “fighting for freedom” is a good thing. In fact, accepting physical danger to preserve or advance the cause of American freedom is held up as one of the great virtues of our society . . . but only as long as it is done as military service. Given that basic military storyline, let us count the ways that this dangerous mindset does disservices to our society.

First of all, his statement dishonored the millions of American military war dead, veterans, and those serving currently. Apparently, even after all of those people give of themselves, sometimes to the ultimate sacrifice of their lives, in order to preserve and advance our freedom, we should give up those freedoms at the drop of a hat. We should open our lives completely to be surveilled upon, to be eavesdropped on, to be recorded. We should give up all of our privacy, and even our right not to be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged with a crime. We should give up our right to be protected from search and seizure without probable cause. And we should do all of this because we are scared. So, thanks for all the sacrifice, GIs! Thanks for bleeding to death on the fields of France and the deserts of Africa and the jungles of Vietnam. We’ll just throw those liberties you were fighting for away, because we are scared. What a dishonor to their sacrifice.

Second, what he said dishonored the ACLU and other “civil liberties nuts”. If standing up for American freedoms is really a good thing, then why would using legal means to preserve freedom be worse than killing, or dying, to preserve those same rights and freedoms? Our liberties need to be protected not only on battlefields but in courtrooms, classrooms, and in our discourse as well. If a group of lawyers protects my right of habeas corpus, am I supposed to be less grateful to them than a group of soldiers who are protecting habeas corpus by protecting the country from invasion? (And conversely, how am I not to be contemptuous of a group of politicians who want to take that freedom away?) As for physical bravery, I think even being an ACLU lawyer must involve some of that, as they are scapegoated by daddy-state-loving authoritarian brownshirts constantly. How many ACLU lawyers feel, if they were threatened with physical harm by a mouth-breathing Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh listener, that they would be protected by the rest of society? At least the bravery of military people is (theoretically, in words) appreciated.

Third, his statement dishonors the American people, many of whom would accept greater physical risk to preserve our freedoms. My feeling is that whoever might be gunning for us can’t get us all, and in the meantime I don’t want the government listening to my phone calls. If someone who is fighting to preserve our freedoms (in the courts or the halls of government) dies in a terrorist attack, how different is their sacrifice than that of a soldier who is killed on the battlefield? If exposing yourself to danger to preserve our freedom is such a great thing, then why can’t all of American citizens see that exposing themselves to a danger with a very very small likelihood (being harmed in a terrorist attack) in order to preserve our freedoms is a no-brainer? There are balances between freedoms and public order and safety that we constantly make, of course, such as having laws constraining our behavior and police forces to back them up. But the freedoms we are now sacrificing on the altar of our irrational fears are those supposedly given to us in the Constitution. The founding fathers didn’t give me the right to speed or to play my stereo loudly at night and wake the neighbors . . . but they explicitly protected me from blanket search, seizure, torture, and indefinite imprisonment. I can’t be 100% sure, but I think that Jefferson and Madison would have preferred for us to protect our liberty and not be such quaking cowards.

Fourth, what he said displayed an incredible ignorance of how our system is designed to work. The President and the entire executive branch are given the job of protecting and upholding the Constitution, not protecting the physical safety of the citizens. We expect the government to do that as well, but only within the rules set forth in the Constitution. Protecting us constitutionally can be challenging sometimes; it probably requires much more vigilance, dedication, and energy than just putting a camera on all of us 24 hours a day and recording all of our phone conversations and emails. But that is the job, and only people who are up to the challenge should apply.

Fifth, implicit in his argument is the assumption that the federal government did NOT have the means to properly protect us before they started abridging our constitutional rights. This is just ignorance, but without it one is left with the sobering conclusion that our government DID have the means to prevent 9/11, but simply failed to do so. And most people won’t let their minds go there. But that conclusion is incredibly obvious, from the myriad warnings that the Justice Department got prior to the attacks, to the PDB that was delivered to the “Western Whitehouse” while Dim Son was on his first month-long vacation, there were plenty of people that knew something was up. We know of no warnings to airlines or chemical plants or nuclear plants for heightened alertness, no directives coming down from Ashcroft or Rice to gather what we know about Al Qaeda agents in this country, no meetings of Cheney’s anti-terrorism taskforce before 9/11/2001. And when you think of the previously vast and scary surveillance which was already legal under FISA: all foreign-to-domestic conversations could be monitored, with up to 36 hours to obtain a warrant post facto, with only the approval of a few judges on a completely secret court with no other oversight . . . with tools like that, it is hard to understand how the Cheney administration felt the need to break the FISA law continuously since 2001, or how they could possibly need LESS constraints on their surveillance.

Sixth, implicit in his argument is that a more surveilled society is a safer one. Quite apart from the observation that even while the Cheney administration has been stripping us of our constitutional rights they have simultaneously been fearmongering us about what great danger we are in from being attacked again by “shadowy islamofascists”, these kinds of unfettered invasions of our privacy make us less safe in numerous ways. For example, it is easy to prove with a simple mathematical model that trying to data-mine a large population for a small sub-population (potential terrorists) creates many more false positives than the system can deal with. Chasing down all of these false leads dilutes our criminal justice resources, as is evident in stories that describe the FBI having to investigate thousands of normal American citizens in response to the leads generated by the NSA wiretapping. It also leaves us open to damage from blackmail, because we have politicians in charge of our security measures, politicians on our security committees, politicians making appointments to FISA courts. Now, if those politicians are Republican homophobes, odds are they are having gay sex. If those politicians are Republican family-values sermonizers, odds are they are being diapered and having wild sex with numerous prostitutes. If those politicians are otherwise run-of-the-mill politicians, odds are they are having extramarital sex. And the evidence for all of this career-ending extracurricular activity is being recorded in their phone calls, their emails, their letters, their car trips, their credit card activity. Which leaves every single one of them vulnerable to blackmail by anyone with access to those records. What if the Soviets or the Chinese or the “Islamofascists” get control of someone at the NSA, or someone who takes care of the NSA’s computers? They could get access to very important, damaging, sensitive material, especially from the hypocritical morality-spouting sexual libertines in the GOP. Finally, this surveillance puts us in danger of not being able to change our government when we want to. The beauty of a democratic republic is that if we don’t like the people in the government, we can vote them out. But this unfettered listening-in allows the government to know every move their political opponents are making, and to counter it with foreknowledge. That is a very real danger.

Seventh, about the British. While the British government seems just as pleased as punch to turn London into 1984, there are lots of writings from British citizens who are less sanguine about it. And, let’s not forget that the Irish terrorists were funded in large part by donations from Irish Americans. We should keep that in mind when we get all het up about countries that “support terrorism”. Also, it is instructive that although the danger of Irish terrorism in London seems to have abated, there doesn’t seem to be any hurry to remove the cameras. Though my father’s friend wanted our freedoms to expand and contract in response to the current situation, my fear is that losing freedom is more like a ratchet: that you can give up more and more freedoms to the government, and you will rarely get them back without a real fight.

Unfortunately, all of this is just l’esprit d’escalier that has occurred to me as I’ve been working through his statement since then. I couldn’t think of a respectful, non-confrontational way to answer him at the time, and so kept silent. That was my failure – to let those kinds of bad ideas go unchallenged. His failure is not thinking through the consequences of his beliefs.

In Which We Stand on the Brink

2007-07-25T00:08:00.000-04:00

The Path Cheney Chooses Watch

We stand poised on the edge of a razor, at a fork in the road, at one of the most important crossroads for our country since its inception. Down the first path lies an end to the Cheney regency government for our child emperor on January 20, 2009; the beginning of the restoration of hopefully more normal relationships with the rest of the world, the beginning of a return to the rule of law for our government. Down the second path lies something quite entirely different: a continuation of the current regime, justified by suspension of elections in response to some deadly event on U.S. soil, which will be pinned on Islamic extremists but blamed on people who dissent against the current administration.

I know this is beginning to sound like the ravings of some kind of conspiracy nut, but bear with me for a few minutes. There are several things that we know about the last six years, and together with a bit of logic we may see that the second path is not only possible, but perhaps even probable.

What are these things that we know?

We know that the intelligence community was extremely alert to terror threats in the summer of 2001 (to the point that administration officials stopped flying commercial in favor of private planes).

We know that Bush himself was warned in no uncertain terms about the plans for an attack, in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US”.

We know that no one in the administration, certainly not Bush or Cheney or Rice, did a single thing, based on these warnings, to prevent these attacks (or we’d have heard about it by now).

We know that the massive PATRIOT act, far from being written up in a deliberative process in response to the September 11 attacks, had already been prepared prior to the attacks.

We know that Cheney has set up a “shadow government” which is ready to take over from our actual government in the event of a terrorist attack. Its location is unknown, and it seems clear that it is populated by Republicans only. Note that in the initial Washington Post description of this planned coup, the Dauphin is even described as having a chance to survive the attack and give orders himself!

Known internally as the COG, for "continuity of government," the administration-in-waiting is an unannounced complement to the acknowledged absence of Vice President Cheney from Washington for much of the past five months. Cheney's survival ensures constitutional succession, one official said, but "he can't run the country by himself." With a core group of federal managers alongside him, Cheney -- or President Bush, if available -- has the means to give effect to his orders.

We know that this administration has secretly, and then when discovered boldly, asserted the right to monitor and record every phone conversation, email, and even paper mail correspondence of all US citizens, without warrants, without oversight, without limits. This kind of data mining is most likely next to useless for actually stopping attacks. But it has given them access to all of the communication of every Democratic politician in the country, every journalist, every administration critic, every Presidential candidate, every top businessman. The potential for blackmail and abuse of this information is overwhelming. We are asked to believe that even though Karl Rove could have monitored every conversation of John Kerry and every one of his top advisors in 2004, that he refrained. This administration hasn’t even had to put the denial of that implication on the record, because the press corpse has never even asked them the question.

We know that they have eliminated the right of habeas corpus, and although Democrats are currently trying to get it restored, it remains, as of this writing, dead.

We know that Bush thinks he can nullify any law by attaching a “signing statement” to it.

We know that with his recent executive order, Bush has eliminated the due process protection for people who “pose a risk” of committing an act of violence in order to “undermine efforts” in Iraq.

We know that Cheney has just asserted that once his administration claims “executive privilege”, neither the judicial or legislative branch has any power to enforce subpoenas: the executive is free to break any and all laws at will.

We know that Americans now accept, and that this administration engages in, torture.

We know that right-wingers are salivating at the thought of another big showy terrorist attack against Americans, because to their mind that will justify more powergrabs by Cheney.

We know that Michael Chertoff just knows, deep down in his gut, that we are going to be attacked again, maybe during the summer.

We have just learned that the Department of Justice has given the Office of the Vice President access to information regarding ongoing Justice Department investigations. There is no doubt in my mind that Cheney directly meddled in ongoing investigations, including the Valerie Wilson outing investigation.

And we know that, just recently, a Democratic member of the House Homeland Security Committee asked to review the government’s plan for government continuity after a terrorist attack, and was denied.

As a member of the U.S. House on the Homeland Security Committee, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure "bubbleroom" in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.

On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED.

"I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio says.
…
"Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right," DeFazio said.

Given all of the things that we know, is it really plausible to believe that Cheney is now just going to hand the reins of government over to a Democratic president? That Karl Rove is going to accept that all of his phone conversations and emails could be monitored by agents of a Democratic administration for the next four to eight years? That they are going to leave even the remotest possibility of any of their current crimes seeing the light of day while they are still alive to be prosecuted? I just find that the most implausible kind of thinking.

The dominoes are all in place for our current system of government to fall. All it would take is for this administration to let their vigilance slip, allowing an attack on US soil and the “COG” takes over. The worst part is that it isn’t citizens like you and me who will decide which of the two paths we take. It is Dick Cheney himself. His finger is on the first domino.

Impeachment Watch

Many people argue that impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney is a stupid thing to do, because even if impeachment was achieved in the House of Representatives, the Senate would never have enough votes to remove them from office. Here is why impeachment should be done anyway: According to John Dean, who knows some things about impeachment, Bush and Cheney cannot assert executive privilege over items in an investigation against them. All of the dirty, illegal, underhanded, and unconstitutional crap that they have been pulling since this all started would be subject to subpoenas that could not be ignored. Regardless of the outcome of the trial in the Senate, an impeachment in the House would finally allow the people of this country to get at the bottom of the crimes being committed. And who knows? The atrocities they uncover might even lead to some of the bedwetting Republican senators to change their votes.

Frog Boiling Watch

Glenn Greenwald analyzes the administration’s claim to be above contempt charges from Congess in much more depth. He also notes that by allowing previous atrocities to stand, we are tacitly inviting worse ones:

There is nothing new here. As has long been known, this administration believes themselves to reside above and beyond the reach of the law. What else would they need to do in order to make that as clear as can be? They got caught red-handed committing multiple felonies -- by eavesdropping on Americans in precisely the way the law we enacted 30 years ago prohibited -- and they not only admitted it, but vowed to continue to break our laws, and asserted the right to do so. And nothing happened.

This latest assertion of power -- to literally block U.S. Attorneys from prosecuting executive branch employees -- is but another reflection of the lawlessness prevailing in our country, not a new revelation. We know the administration breaks laws with impunity and believes it can. That is no longer in question. The only real question is what, if anything, we are willing to do about that.

Yes, it is true that, as various Democratic statements are claiming, this theory poses a constitutional crisis since, yet again, the President declares the other two branches of government impotent and himself omnipotent. But we have had such a crisis for the last five years. We have just chosen to ignore it, to acquiesce to it, to allow it to fester.

There is no magic force that is going to descend from the sky and strike with lighting at George Bush and Dick Cheney for so flagrantly subverting our constitutional order. The Founders created various checks for confronting tyrannical abuses of power, but they have to be activated by political will and the courage to confront it. That has been lacking. Hence, they have seized omnipotent powers with impunity.

At this point, the blame rests not with the Bush administration. They have long made clear what they believe and, especially, what they are. They have been rubbing in our faces for several years the fact that they believe they can ignore the law and do what they want because nobody is willing to do anything about it. Thus far, they have been right, and the blame rests with those who have acquiesced to it.

In which the atrocities come thicker and faster

2007-07-23T17:14:00.001-04:00

Criminalizing Dissent Watch

David Neiwart at the blog Orcinus is one of the most important journalists at work today. His past work on hate crimes and the psychology behind them, on scapegoating and Japanese internment, on the tyranny of the majority against a minority, on proto-fascism and violence and right wing authoritarianism, makes him one of the most important and authoritative voices on the web concerning this country’s slow decent into darkness.

Neiwart’s co-blogger Sara Robinson has taken a look at that Executive Order that we saw last week, the one that seemed to make it legal for the President to take away your property if you “undermine efforts” to have Iraq become a land flowing with peace and honey. This executive order looks like it could be justified as being written to confiscate the property of “terraists” who are at work in Iraq. But there is certainly nothing in it that exempts American citizens. Robinson comments:

This government has now asserted -- without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress -- its right to take away our houses, cars, savings accounts, the stuff of our lives, on the say-so of the President and his Treasury Secretary. They are not kidding. What we do here, what I am doing right now (unless I choose my words very carefully) is being done in defiance of the Law According to George Bush.

For the past four and a half years, Dave has carefully and thoughtfully argued that there's a difference between proto-fascism -- the sprouts that are present in the garden, but have not yet borne flower or fruit -- and the real thing.

When the President can take away your life's savings without due process, under authority of a law no people's legislature ever approved, for simply disagreeing with his policies and publicly stating your intentions to do something about them, we are treading so close to that line that it's hard to tell whether we're actually over it.

And, worse, we've reached the point where these outrages seem to occur weekly -- bigger and more blatant every time, but by now we've seen so many so often that we're inured. We don't even know where to start fighting. In any other administration we've ever had, this one act on its own would be an impeachable offense. In this one, it's just another drop in an overflowing bucket.

She then quotes from Milton Mayer’s book “They Thought They Were Free”, in which Mayer describes how, as long as each successive outrage is just incrementally worse than the last, and the populace doesn’t have a history of protesting each step, that protest never comes. The “frog cooked in slowly heating water” analogy comes to mind. If I had a dollar for every “this (insert Bush administration atrocity) will be the thing that finally gets people marching in the street” email or post I’ve read in the last six years, I would be rich indeed. But Mayer’s description seems to indicate that having not protested the first steps (the PATRIOT act, for example), we can’t really expect Americans to ever protest, until:

The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

Robinson concludes:

The America that would accept this kind of edict in silence is not the America that we grew up in. Something has changed. We are poised to accept this like we've accepted every other insult. It's hard to imagine that, even when bloggers and other dissenters start losing their property, that there will be tens of thousands in the streets to protect us. As long as the forms are still there, and the system continues to do what it must to sustain itself, we will simply be collateral damage.

If we accept the forcible removal of our property without due process, forcible removal of our lives will not be far behind. And there are people eager to accomplish this: according to Barna Research, there are about 50 million hardcore fundamentalists who have been eagerly awaiting the day, training and planning and praying for the chance to do just that -- to take out their frustrations on the liberal traitors whom they have been taught to believe are responsible for everything that's wrong with their lives. They believe, in their bones, we have stabbed God's America in the back; and they are out for vengeance. This is the edict that will provide "legal" support and justification for their first tentative steps toward mob rule.

Are we there yet? Not quite. But Bush has just put the capstone on the doorway leading to the coming fascist state. Whether your own B clause is a passport or a gun, it's probably time to make sure both are in good working order.

Unchecked Authoritarians Watch

Speaking of ever-increasing atrocities, the Whitehouse has declared that as long as it keeps repeating “executive privilege”, then Congress can never hold them in contempt for not obeying Congressional subpoenas. From a Washington Post article:

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

"A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn't be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, added: "It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys."

So, if the executive branch commits a crime, and the Congress tries to investigate it by issuing subpoenas for witnesses and documents, and the executive branch tells Congress to go Cheney itself, the Congress would need a US attorney to bring contempt citations forward. The Bush administration has pulled this little conjuring trick: not only have they fired all the US attorneys who aren’t “loyal Bushies”, but they’ve now forbid any member of the Justice Department from bringing those charges forward.

Therefore, according to Cheney, Congress has no power whatsoever over the executive. Our Emperor is about to dissolve the Roman Senate. This is an atrocity, again along the sliding scales of atrocities we find ourselves on. There are quotes in the article from a number of professors and Democratic senators, all protesting this latest power grab by an executive holding itself COMPLETELY above the law, untouchable in all that it does. But that will be the extent of it. As the quote from Milton Mayer above shows, while this move would have been unthinkable 3 or 4 years ago, now it is just one more atrocity which will be allowed by a sleeping populace and a gelded Congress.

Here’s a footnote about how the sins of our past come back to haunt us. The Post article mentions that contempt charges can only be brought on behalf of Congress by the US attorney in Washington DC. The only precedent for something like this is during the Reagan administration, in 1982 during the Gorsuch-EPA scandal, when Anne Gorsuch refused to turn over documents to Congress and the Washington DC US attorney declined to pursue contempt charges. That attorney? Fred Fielding, now a Whitehouse counsel. He was aided in his strategy by John Roberts, who is now our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. So, you can imagine how well this will go for the interests of the people if it ever gets to the SCOTUS. The water is simmering, little froggy.

Top Ten Conservative Idiots Watch

I highly recommend this week’s TTCI at Democratic Underground, which features not 10, not 20, not 25, but 30 Conservative Idiots, a bumper crop. Number one on the list? George W. Bush:

The key judgments of the new National Intelligence estimate were released last week. In a nutshell, Al Qaeda has apparently "regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" and will "leverage the contacts and capabilities" it has gained since the U.S. invaded Iraq. That's Al Qaeda in Pakistan, by the way, since according to Baghdad reporter Michael Ware "al-Qaeda would be lucky to make up 3 percent of the insurgency" in Iraq.

But pay no attention to all that! Our Great Leader thinks that a resurgent Al Qaeda outside of Iraq is nothing to worry about, and announced last week that, "Al-Qaida would have been a heck of a lot stronger today had we not stayed on the offensive." Er, right. And maybe if you'd gone on the offensive against Osama Bin Laden instead of instead Saddam Hussein, it would all be over by now.

So to the few remaining Bush supporters out there: given the fact that George W. Bush seems to have failed to prevent Al Qaeda from regaining strength, which of the following do you think represents reality?

a) The president has spent five years pursuing wrong-headed policies which have directly damaged our national security, weakened our defense capability, and threatened our safety, or

b) The world works like the Dukes of Hazzard, where the U.S. plays bumbling but lovable Roscoe P. Coltrane who week after week manages to show up just as those terroristic Dukes are getting away.

I mean, do you really think that George W. Bush is doing the absolute best job he can, but those pesky terrorists are always just one step ahead of him? If you honestly don't believe Commander Guy bears any responsibility for making the world a more dangerous place, fair enough - but in that case you must believe that try as he might, he simply isn't quite as competent as the terrorists. Either way, don't we deserve a president who'll be more competent than the terrorists? Could we at least try to rise to that level, for fuck's sake?

Warmongering Redux Watch

The cartoon at the top is a This Modern World that describes the very serious way our news media gets us into wars.

Talking tough

2007-07-20T09:50:00.000-04:00

How to Talk to a Republican, If You Must Watch

Diane Rehm’s public radio talk show is both interesting and frustrating. Her guests are often people you really wish to hear from, top-level politicians and journalists. But, because her show lives within the beltway, you often hear these people repeating the same tired, tainted, gelded “conventional wisdom” that somehow always manages to favor the corporate line.

A clinical psychologist whom Rehm interviewed on her show last week has recently quantified what progressive bloggers, pollsters in the GOP, people at Democratic Underground, the Daily Kos, and the population at large have known for quite some time: that people vote with their hearts and their heads. The importance of emotional engagement appears to be lost only on one group of people: top Democratic politicians. They present superior policy positions, and then wait passively for the votes to come rolling in. Ha ha. One of the reasons I supported Howard Dean so enthusiastically in the 2004 primaries, is that he really seemed to understand how to speak to Democrats’ heads AND hearts. (I think Kucinich is rather good at this too.)

The psychologist, Drew Westen, has written a book titled “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation“ in which he cites his own frustration with Democratic politicians and describes how they should actually talk and engage the populace with their message. He claims that several important politicians, including Bill Clinton, have read his book and reviewed it favorably, and that he is being courted by several of the Democratic presidential candidates. Towards the end of the show, he is asked to give examples of the kinds of language he thinks would have been most effective against Kerry’s SwiftBoat problems:

…southerners are characterized, particularly southern males, by what’s called by anthropologists a “culture of honor”, where if someone dishonors you, if someone speaks to your face ill of you and you don’t respond, you’ve been shamed. And you know, 200 years ago that would have lead to a duel. And here is this man who is a war veteran, he’s being run against with a story that he’s going to be weak on terrorism, he’s going to be weak on national defense. Someone punches him. What does he do? He says nothing. He waits three weeks and then he sends his female campaign manager out to write a letter to the campaign manager of Bush, imploring him, ‘Please take it down’. Boy, if you want to send a meta-message about what you’ll do if America’s attacked, he sure sent a powerful meta-message, and he could have done it very differently. . . At that particular point, I would have suggested that Kerry get right out on television immediately and say, “President Bush, for you, a man who dodged the draft, who did nothing but protect the borders of Louisiana, while being a staunch advocate of the Vietnam War, who called your daddy up and said ‘get me out of this!’ when you got the call, ‘please, send some Texas millworker in my place to get shot at’, and who managed to pull those strings, for you to say to me, a war veteran with the shrapnel still in my leg, that I don’t deserve the Purple Hearts that I earned and to put on a campaign ad like that that shows that I don’t deserve my Purple Hearts! Every veteran in the United States, you have just affronted. What you’ve done . . . and, and to do this in the middle of a war when we have boots on the ground, what do you think this says to our soldiers in Iraq or in Afghanistan who are fighting bravely, who are taking bullets right now, that someone someday is going to come back and make fun of their Purple Hearts? How can you have the moral authority now to be the commander-in-chief?”

Concerning Gore’s mistakes in 2000, Westen points out:

Here is a guy who is running against a man who had spent most of his life with his liquor cabinet better stacked than his bookshelves. He is a guy who had been investigated by his own father’s SEC for insider trading. He had handed his entire state over to polluters to such an extent that his Crawford Ranch - he couldn’t actually fish at the rivers in it, he had to stock it with man-made lakes because he had allowed the polluters to pollute it so badly that he couldn’t fish on his own ranch. Who had put to death a woman who was, like him, a born-again Christian, who for sixteen years had lived as a model prisoner, this was Karla Faye Tucker? When, I think it was Tucker Carlson actually, who asked him, “what were her final words to you when she pleaded for clemency?”, he pursed his lips and said “Oh, please, please, save me!”. That that wasn’t on ads that people saw over and over and over, with a president that was running as a “compassionate conservative”, that is absolutely malpractice by both the consultants and the strategists and by the candidates themselves.

Obviously, Westen doesn’t suffer from the severe politeness of our usual candidates. I’m glad he’s getting on board and that his research is being used, but his conclusions and framing have been obvious and available for free on the internet at progressive blogs for years (starting with the dear departed Media Whores Online). I urge you to listen to the show (on the same page, you’ll find a fascinating discussion on Iraq including Wesley Clark and “Surge” architect Kimberly Kagan, who pulls an audio deer-in-the-headlight act as she tries to spew the GOP talking points in front of Clark and Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, who don’t let her get away with her spin). Westen is fascinating, and he’s right. But I would point out that he sounds exactly like Digby and Atrios and all of the others who have been trying to wake the Democrats up for so long. Why don’t the Democrats get this? Is it because they don’t really have the courage of their convictions? That they know that they are also bought and paid for by corporations, and can’t get their dander up on behalf of the people?

Let’s hope that now that an academic has published this (blindingly obvious to everyone but the Democratic leadership) thesis, the party begins to find its fighting voice and soul again.

The Horrors of Unchecked Capitalism Watch

If you’ve read either of Al Franken’s last two books, or have been following the Jack Abramoff scandal, then you will be familiar with the Mariana Islands. These islands were taken over by the United States from Japan in World War II. Free market fundamentalists like Tom Delay have fought hard to keep government regulations of industry out of the Marianas, stating that the islands are a “perfect Petri dish of capitalism”. He has been so pleased with the slime that has been cultured in this Petri dish that he told the governor “You are a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we’re trying to do in America in leading the world in the free-market system”.

So, what kind of regulation-free utopia do Delay and the GOP want to “do in America”? Well, I won’t tease you with the answer to that because the results of little to no regulation of industry are easily predicted. Left unfettered by such stupid concerns as the American minimum wage or even human rights, the Marianas have become a prison for thousands of workers, mostly women, imported from Asia in economic slavery, forced to work in sweatshops under horrible conditions (and still allowed to put “Made in the USA!” on the clothing), forced into sexual slavery, forced to have abortions when the natural results of sexual tourism occur. Child labor and child prostitution are also rampant. Essentially, workers are extremely abused at the hands of their corporate exploiters. Industries in the Marianas were among Jack Abramoff’s biggest clients, and he, Delay, John Doolittle, Richard Pombo, Bob Ney, a whole host of other GOP legislators have worked for years to keep conditions there unchanged, all the while taking “junkets” to the islands on the taxpayers’ dime to inspect and praise the “paradise” they created there. The irony of the “pro-life” GOP leadership working fist and glove with a sex industry that forces women to have abortions should not be lost either. It seems that Republicans are pleased either to force women to bear children or to force them to have abortions – as long as women have no say in it, they seem to be happy.

The elections of 2006 have potentially broken the GOP hold over legislation to mitigate this horror. The good news is that Democrats in the Senate are now trying to create immigration rules for the Marianas which could break the system of indentured servitude that has been created there. Let’s hope they find their way forward.

Career-Protection-Induced Temporary Amnesia/Lobotomy Watch

Upton Sinclair noted that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it”. Television pundits have recently been proving his point brilliantly. There are very clearly areas of thought and speculation which are verboten for anyone on the airwaves, owned and operated largely by military contractors, to enter. If someone brings up one of these “outside the bubble” ideas on their show, these gelded TV personalities can be seen to freeze and blink vacantly, suffering from the rapid onset of a lacuna of thought brought on by contemplating where such a discussion might lead. I call this phenomenon Career-Protection-Induced Temporary Amnesia/Lobotomy, or CaPITAL for short. Appropriately enough, many sufferers of CaPITAL work inside the beltway, where the chatter of Washington DC cocktail parties informs their sense of boundaries for what may or may not be spoken of in “polite” company.

CaPITAL is most noticeable by the viewing audience when someone says something on a television show that is patently true on its face, yet the host of the show fails to be able to grasp the blindingly obvious because they are not allowed to. Some examples:

1) Chris Matthews interviews anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. He asks her to answer the unfathomable: “Why do you think President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, the other hawks in this administration, why do you think they took us to war?” By now, the answer to that is obvious. The benefits of this war are fourfold: control of Iraq’s oil, regional hegemony in the Middle East, domestic political control (as you shout down your opponents by reminding them that we are “at war”), and war profiteering by the military industrial complex. Sheehan gives a great, cogent answer which touches on most of these points, ending with “It’s for the war profiteers and that’s why wars are usually waged.” Matthews is suddenly afflicted with CaPITAL. His face goes blank, he starts blinking rapidly, and his eyes start shifting left and right as he searches for a way to pretend she isn’t exactly right. “You believe that this was . . . this war was fought, because people in the Whitehouse decided to make some money for their pals in business – you really believe that?” Chris stammers out.

2) It is obvious to the least conspiracy-minded among us that Bush commuted Libby’s prison sentence to buy his cooperation in protecting Cheney and Bush. They were both complicit in creating the conspiracy to out Valerie Wilson as an undercover CIA agent. Just as Bush’s father pardoned Weinberger when Cap made it clear that he wouldn’t spend one day in jail to protect Poppy’s ass in the Iran Contra investigations, Bush commuted Libby’s sentence to keep him quiet. In this discussion between George Stephanopoulos and John Conyers, when Conyers states the obvious, Steph needs to stop Conyers and have him clarify what he is saying, in an incredulous voice with a dumb, blank, CaPITAL-stricken look on his face, as if he can’t believe anyone would think this way.

CONYERS: But what we have here — and I think we should put it on the table right at the beginning — is that the suspicion was that if Mr. Libby went to prison, he might further implicate other people in the White House, and that there was some kind of relationship here that does not exist in any of President Clinton’s pardons, nor, according to those that we’ve talked to — and this is why we’re doing the hearings — is that it’s never existed before, ever.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So it’s really…
CONYERS: We’ve never had…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me stop you there, because you seem to be suggesting that President Bush commuted Mr. Libby’s sentence in order to keep him quiet.

Duh, George.

3) Chris Matthews again, this time interviewing a representative from the International Association of Firefighters, an organization which is extremely pissed off at Rudy Giuliani. They claim that they were allowed to search for the remains of their co-workers in the debris pile after 9/11 only until $230 in gold and silver from the Bank of Nova Scotia was recovered from Ground Zero. The following day, again according to the firefighters, recovery efforts were abandoned. Now, emotions were running high at Ground Zero. Certainly recovery efforts did have to end at some point, at the very least with regard to the health of the survivors. But if the timing did happen this way, it certainly makes it appear that Giuliani was only letting the firefighters dig through the rubble until they recovered the precious metals, and that that was what was important to him. Matthews, who has a huge man-crush on Giuliani because he perceives the bald, lisping, Nosferatu-visaged politician as tough, a real “street fighter”, cannot grasp what the man is saying. CaPITAL strikes him again and again, as he repeatedly asks “What do you mean, I don’t get this. What is the connection between finding $200 million dollars in gold and stopping the search for bodies?” “Well, explain that because I can’t figure that connection out. What is the connection?” “Oooh oh, you’re saying he only kept the search going long enough to get the gold.” Yes, Chris, you CaPITAL-addled fool. That is what he’s saying.

In Which the Gravy Train is Finally Threatened

2007-07-19T13:48:00.000-04:00

Power of the Majority Watch

Republicans like to say that “elections have consequences” and moaned and complained in the Senate when Democrats wouldn’t let them have an “up or down vote”. Remember that? Now that they are in the minority, the GOP in the senate has been telling Harry Reid that they will filibuster everything that comes up. In fact, they tried to institute a standing threat of filibuster, requiring 60 votes to bring any measure relating to Iraq to a vote in the Senate. This obstructionism was way too easy for these lazy louts. And Harry Reid finally made them work for it a little bit. He called their bluff and actually made them filibuster overnight. Of course, the Democrats gave in after one day (of course!), but at least they made it more obvious to the country that the GOP really owned this war. The amendment in question was a toothless proposition that would have recommended that El Presidente change the strategy in Iraq and start withdrawing forces sometime in the future, certainly nothing either useful or even very controversial. After all, lots of Republicans, even Senators, have been complaining about Bush’s strategy and suggesting that we should begin to get out, most notably Dick Lugar and Pete Domenici recently. Suprisingly, the GOP caucus held together on the vote to keep the amendment from being voted on. Only four Republicans, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Chuck Hagel, and Gordon Smith, voted to allow the amendment to be brought to the floor. So, even though some Republicans sometimes talk as if they had a brain, they are too scared to ever vote against Dick Cheney. I guess they don’t want any US weaponized anthrax in their mailbox.

What was more surprising was Reid’s next move. He pulled the Defense Authorization bill off the floor, meaning that the voluminous flow of money into the pockets of the military-industrial complex will stop after September 30th. Finally, a Democratic majority in the Senate begins to mean something. With the sweet river of unrestrained war profiteering money under a small bit of threat, the American death industry sent out its fully-bought-and-paid-for puppets to whine and complain about the poor military, and how this was going to “hurt the troops”. I wonder if we’ll continue to fall for that tired BS? This, combined with the new commission to investigate war profiteering being assembled, should make the death merchants take notice. My prediction is that they will force Holy Joe Lieberman to stop caucusing with the Democrats very soon.

The Handmaid’s Tale Watch

One step in the mafia-like takeover of America by theocrats described in Margaret Atwood’s excellent novel was the government seizing the assets of its political enemies. Though it’s been fifteen years or more since I read it, I still remember how frightened for the protagonists I felt when she described how they went to an ATM to retrieve some cash, and their bank account had been wiped out.

Now, thanks to CheneyCo, we may be one step closer to that wonderful dystopian scenario. In an executive order issued on Tuesday, Bush seems to claim the right to seize all of the assets of anyone who “pose(s) a significant risk of committing an act or acts of violence that have the purpose of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq”, or anyone who does any business with such a person. Given the way that protestors of the Iraq War are portrayed as harming our mission in Iraq, and given that you don’t have to actually commit an act of violence, it seems to me that this gives the President the right to seize the property of anyone who he thinks might protest the war. I’m certainly no lawyer, so I’d love to have some other opinions on that.

That’s a Lot of Lies Watch

This very excellent video compilation of all of the lies and manipulations of the Cheney regime should be seen by everyone. Pass it on!

It’s an Ideology, not a Strategery Watch

Glenn Greenwald highlights the fact that Bush’s decision to stay in Iraq has nothing to do with thinking critically about American interests or realistic assessments of the situation on the ground, but rather is based on a religion-like “faith” that this is the right thing to do, with no self-examination or any other kind of examination. This is one of the reasons that people of “faith” should not necessarily be at the reins of power – especially the kind of faith that grows from not being intellectually curious, from requiring feelings of security by listening to the voice of authority, from needing a daddy figure to tell them that everything will be all right if they just believe. You can’t change that kind of a person’s mind. An excerpt:

This is something Establishment Washington and the media simply refuses to digest. The way we show "respect for religion and people of faith" is by never questioning the specific prongs of the belief system and/or the role it plays in their public decision-making. Instead, these Wise Elite Opinion-makers continue to believe -- long after any rational person could -- that Bush is susceptible to Washington Wise Man persuasion, or to political pressure, or to the constraints of resources. That simply is not how Bush works. He believes he is supported by a much higher authority and as long as he acts in accordance with that, nothing can or should stop him.

That is why -- even in the aftermath of a shattering midterm election defeat for his party and the wrist-slapping of the Wise, Bipartisan Consensus Baker-Hamilton Report -- Bush not only stayed in Iraq but announced we would escalate. And nothing stopped him. He could not have cared any less about those standard Washington influences or even the limits of reality.

And if Bush believes -- as he almost certainly does -- that a military confrontation with Iran is necessary, nothing will stop him there either, no matter how many solemn David Broder columns and Fred Hiatt editorials or public opinion polls oppose it.

Shafting Retarded Kids – For Politics! Watch

In this interview, the former Surgeon General describes how he was told he couldn’t attend a Special Olympics event because the Kennedy family is very involved with the Special Olympics. How petty can they be? We are only starting to plumb those depths. He says he eventually attended the event on his own dime. One wishes that all of these brave Republicans who hate the regime while they work for it, would find the courage to do the right thing while they were still in office. I’m lookin’ at you, Colin Powell.

Now They’re Just Blatantly Breaking the Law Watch

Harriet Miers has, for a second time, rejected a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee. She reasons that since Bush is claiming executive privilege concerning the US Attorneys General matter, she doesn’t have to show up. Unfortunately for her (and you’d think a one-time nominee for the Supreme Court would know this *snark*), that isn’t how things work. You have to show up when Congress subpoenas you, and THEN you may claim executive privilege or the fifth amendment or that you can’t remember anything that has happened since 1972. But, YOU HAVE TO SHOW UP. She is in blatant violation of the law. And the press corpse yawns on.

Predicting the Future Watch

Bush keeps claiming that if we leave Iraq, “the terra’ists will gitcha”! It’s not really clear what he means by “fight them over here”, in that for the money we spend to defend our country, and the extraordinary power we give to law enforcement for protecting us, we should be pretty safe if everyone is doing their jobs (like they apparently weren’t concerning September 11th).

Interestingly, there is a way that grown ups try to actually predict things like: what would happen if we leave Iraq? They use modeling, in scenarios like war games or weather prediction. It turns out the DoD has war gammed our withdrawal from Iraq, and they predict a lot of violence and a de facto partitioning of Iraq into three countries. What they don’t find is Al Qaeda taking over Iraq or using it as a base to attack the US, or Iran benefiting greatly from it. Though an awful scenario, the DoD report supports withdrawal as one of the least bad courses for us to take. Keith Olbermann interviews “Fiasco” author Thomas Ricks on these findings.

College-Aged Chickenhawks Watch

Max Blumenthal is a young man who, in addition to excellent writing, rather bravely infiltrates and videotapes Republican events. In this excellent episode, he interviews BushBots at the College Republican National Convention. They spout logic-challenged GOP talking points effortlessly, and point to bum knees to explain why they aren’t in the 130 degree heat of Baghdad this summer. Thoroughly recommended for fulfilling your daily allowance of smug, ignorant, overprivileged, hypocritical asshattery.

Impeachment, it's not just for breakfast anymore

2007-07-16T16:38:00.000-04:00

Endless War Watch

Here is a trailer for a film that is set to premier on July 27th, titled “No End in Sight”, that looks like it will expose just how disastrous the execution of the Iraq war has been. Again, since Bush and Cheney seem just as pleased as they can be with the way Iraq has turned out, we must assume that this is what they had in mind all along.

Modest Proposal Watch

The blogger Jon Swift examines the conservatives’ hopes for another terrorist attack, and notes that they really, really are hoping for another one. Because then, we’ll all get “serious” about the War on Terra and support the Chimpmaster General again. Right. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone to actually blame the GOP for taking away all of our rights and STILL not protecting us from a future attack. Trading liberty for safety, anyone?

Impeachment Watch

Bill Moyers hosted an excellent discussion between conservative Bruce Fein and liberal John Nichols on Friday, in which both of them argued very eloquently on the absolute need of this republic to impeach Cheney and Bush. I couldn’t agree more. Every time a Republican administration gets away with treason, they pardon themselves and we are reassured that if we just let them get away with it, they won’t make any fuss and everyone in Washington will be comfortable and the nation needs to “heal” and there is too much partisan rancor. Meanwhile, the perpetrators only learn that they should continue to do this time and again, and they keep coming back to government. Cheney and Rumsfeld learned this from the Ford Nixon pardons; Negroponte, Poindexter, Abrams, Bush Jr., Powell, and Cheney learned it again from the Bush I pardons of the Iran Contra conspirators; now neocons everywhere will learn the same lesson (commit crimes and pardon, commit crimes and pardon) from the Libby commutation and the flurry of pardons which will no doubt happen in January 2009. This is one of the most cogent and correct presentations I’ve seen on television in the last 20 years, and it is no surprise that Moyers is the host.

Also on the subject of impeachment, this short article from After Downing Street points out that we don’t need any more lengthy investigations before deciding to impeach, especially for Cheney. The author notes that

Their crimes stand open on the table before us. Their lies about Iraqi ties to al Qaeda are on videotape and in writing, and they continue to make them to this day. Their claims about Iraqi weapons have been shown in every detail to have been, not mistakes, but lies. Their threats to Iran are on videotape. Bush being warned about Katrina and claiming he was not are on videotape. Bush lying about illegal spying and later confessing to it are on videotape. A federal court has ruled that spying to be a felony. The Supreme Court has ruled Bush and Cheney's system of detentions unconstitutional. Torture, openly advocated for by Bush and Cheney and their staffs, is documented by victims, witnesses, and public photographs. Torture was always illegal and has been repeatedly recriminalized under Bush and Cheney. Bush has reversed laws with signing statements. Those statements are posted on the White House website, and a GAO report found that with 30 percent of Bush's signing statements in which he announces his right to break laws, he has in fact proceeded to break those laws. For these and many other offenses, no investigation is needed because no better evidence is even conceivable. And rather than taking three months, the impeachment of Cheney or Bush could be completed in a day.

Stonewalling Watch

Here is another clip of Rove aide Sara Taylor at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings from last week. In this excerpt, Taylor repeatedly tells Patrick Leahy that Bush had nothing to do with the fired US attorneys, was never in a discussion or a meeting about them. Finally, Leahy lowers the boom and reminds her that if that is indeed the case, then Bush’s claim of executive privilege on this matter has been completely undercut by her testimony. Sorry, little Bushite.

Horrors of War Watch

The Nation magazine has published interviews with dozens of combat veterans from the Iraq war. In addition to the horrible brutality our military has meted out to the Iraq citizenry, what we have done to these soldiers and marines should also weigh heavily on our national conscience. Here is an excerpt:

"People would make jokes about it, even before we'd go into a raid, like, 'Oh fuck, we're gonna get the wrong house'. Cause it would always happen. We always got the wrong house."

"I'll tell you the point where I really turned... [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little two-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs and she has a bullet through her leg... An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me... like asking me why. You know, 'Why do I have a bullet in my leg?'... I was just like, 'This is, this is it. This is ridiculous'."

"I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, 'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?'... [Only when we got home] in... meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then."

"A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want."

Heaven help us.

The Brain Dead Executive Branch

2007-07-12T07:31:00.000-04:00

Lead Paint Watch

I think I've finally figured out what is wrong at the highest levels of our government: they are all into eating massive amounts of lead paint chips. This makes them ignorant, violent, and forgetful. Perfect for Republicans, of course, but not so good for running the country. Former Rove aide Sara Taylor appeared before the Senate Judiciary committee yesterday, although she claimed she didn't have to because she admired the President. She had the usual bout of amnesia that overtakes this administration when they testify. And Patrick Leahy had to correct her twice on the fact that she took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not a loyalty oath to Dim Son.

Also, apparently Bush has "ordered" Harriet Miers not to testify before Congress. Seeing as how she doesn't work for him anymore, it's not clear what that means. It may also be a felony.

Sicko Watch

Michael Moore had a second half of his interview with Wolf Blitzer and a debate with Sanjay Gupta on Larry King's show. While Gupta tried to nitpick Moore's numbers (with no real success I'd say, since Moore knows his sources well), the entire segment missed the big picture: That Cuba, while spending about 1/25 of what the US spends per capita on healthcare, provides almost as good healthcare to its citizens as we do.

Hordes of citizens have risen up against CNN to defend Moore. Again, thank goodness for the internet so people can read their own sources and check to see who is actually right. There is also a large backlash against Kyra Phillips, a CNN talking head who introduced the second part of Blitzer's interview with Moore by saying "if you can stomach it".

The larger picture here is of pharmaceutical companies and health insurers trying to cast doubt on Moore's credibility. This is the same crew that smeared "Hillarycare" in the early 90s. But Moore's basic message, that we spend much more and get much less for our healthcare dollars, just cannot be denied.

Holy Papa Watch

It's nice to see the Pope telling other Christians they don't have the keys of salvation. Reminds me just how rational religion is.

Politicization Watch

The last Surgeon General was, of course, told what he could and couldn't say by the Bushies.

No Underlying Crime

2007-07-10T16:53:00.000-04:00

Single Payer Watch

Following on this morning's link to the smackdown of Wolf Blitzer by Michael Moore, here is Moore's point by point refutation of the "fact-checking" done by CNN. Will CNN apologize? Don't hold your breath. You may also listen to a longer, very interesting and intelligent discussion of single payer health care in other countries, Moore's film, and the political stranglehold on our choices in this Fresh Air interview from NPR.

Hypocrites Watch

Well, some of the phone records of the "DC Madam" have been released, and guess who's on the list? You guessed it, a "pro-family" Republican from the deep south, senator David Vitter from Louisiana. Just as "scratch a homophobe, reveal a homosexual" is becoming an almost unbroken rule of thumb, so too is "scratch a morality-spouting right-winger, reveal an adulterer". It seems that like just as many psychology students enter the field to work on their own problems, right-wing authoritarians appear to be guilty of all the problems they are accusing the populace of having. Your favorite Republican in a twist about gay marriage? That was an important issue for Mark Foley and Ted Haggard. Are they clutching pearls over Clinton's affair? Like Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, and Henry Hyde, you can be pretty sure they are playing "hide the subpoena" with some young aide of their own. Vitter is no exception. Glenn Greenwald outlines his political/sexual history:

So, to recap: in Louisiana, Vitter carried on a year-long affair with a prostitute in 1999. Then he ran for the House as a hard-core social conservative family values candidate, parading around his wife and kids as props and leading the public crusade in defense of traditional marriage.

Then, in Washington, he became a client of Deborah Palfrey's. Then he announced that amending the Constitution to protect traditional marriage was the most important political priority the country faces. Rush Limbaugh, Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich supported the same amendment.

As always, it is so striking how many Defenders of Traditional Marriage have a record in their own broken lives of shattered marriages, multiple wives and serial adultery. And they never seek to protect the Sacred Institution of Traditional Marriage by banning the un-Christian and untraditional divorces they want for themselves when they are done with their wives and are ready to move on to the next, newer model. Instead, they only defend these Very Sacred Values by banning the same-sex marriages that they don't want for themselves.

What was Vitter's response to Clinton's Lewinski affair? Well, he was stepping into Bob Livingston's congressional seat in 1998, after Livingston was denied the Speaker of the House position because of his "baroque" sexual excesses and resigned.

"I think Livingston's stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess," he said.

I wonder if he feels that way now. The CNN story on Vitter is entitled "Senator Sorry after number appears on D.C. Madam's List". Like all Republicans, he is sorry because he finally got caught. And, I would add, he was a sorry son of a bitch before that as well.

Federal Penury Watch

Thanks to Gary for this story, which reveals that the surge is only transferring our tax dollars into Halliburton and Black Water's pockets at the rate of $12 billion per month. Using our rule of thumb, that is $120 of my money per month to finance this outrage.

Libby Lies Watch

Today, our local newspaper published a letter to the editor which parroted one of the most common right wing lines with regard to Scooter Libby and his Technicolor get out of jail free card: that there was no "underlying crime" because prosecutor Fitzgerald already knew that Richard Armitage had leaked Valerie Wilson's covert status to Robert Novak when Libby was questioned. The logic seems to be that Libby's lies were therefore immaterial to the investigation of the crime, and could not technically be perjury.

Note that this is the reason that Clinton was never indicted of perjury. His testimony on a consensual affair with Monica Lewinsky was deemed immaterial to whether he had sexually harassed Paula Jones. And though right wingers continue to falsely claim that Clinton was "convicted" of perjury, he was never even charged.

However, used as a defense of Scooter Libby, this argument, which I have heard spoken and seen written by dozens of Bush apologists since his commutation of Libby's sentence, is incredibly retarded. That it is now being repeated by the sheep in the public indicates just how supine (or absent) the defenders of logic are in our public dialog.

The correct answer to this argument, which I have yet to see anyone effectively spell out, is that Fitzgerald, by the time he was questioning Libby in front of a grand jury, was not investigating the leak to Robert Novak any longer. He was investigating a criminal conspiracy made up of at least nine separate criminal acts.

Please see this chart prepared by the House Oversight Committee, showing the known flow of the knowledge of Valerie Wilson's undercover status through the CIA, the White House, and the State Department, out to people in the press. From people who have security clearance, to people who don't. Each of these transfers of information from the federal government to reporters was potentially a crime. That Novak, a shill for right wingers for decades, would be the first to rush the information into print, should surprise no one. The leaks were:

1) Ari Fleischer to Walter Pincus
2) Ari Fleischer to David Gregory
3) Ari Fleischer to John Dickerson
4) Libby to Judith Miller
5) Libby to Matt Cooper
6) Rove to Matt Cooper
7) Rove to Novak
8) Armitage to Novak
9) Armitage to Bob Woodward

The fact that Fleischer made an immunity for testimony deal with Fitzgerald indicates that Fitz was investigating far more than the leaks to Novak. (And by the way, note that none of the flying monkeys ever brings up the Rove to Novak leak). Any idiot can see that these Chatty Cathys were engaged in a coordinated effort to blow Wilson's cover, and that that effort was most likely coordinated from above, almost surely by Cheney and approved by Bush.

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice because he prevented Fitzgerald from moving up the ladder to Bush and Cheney. It is that simple. And Bush commuted his sentence in another act of obstruction to keep it that way.

So when you hear someone repeating this tired lie, remind them that there were at least eight other criminal acts that were being investigated, all leading back to Dick.

Humor Watch

You may enjoy this funny, but ultimately sad, compendium of our dear leader's greatest moments caught on tape.

Torture Watch

Finally, this great quote on torture from a blog commenter: "The key distinction between you and the guy you are torturing is that he might be innocent, but you are not."

Michael Moore lays into Wolf Blitzer

2007-07-10T06:32:00.000-04:00

Wow, here is a spanking that is richly deserved. CNN tries to do a "fact check" on Michael Moore's movie "Sicko", and he blasts media whore and Bush apologist Wolf Blitzer for about 5 minutes. Awesome.

Onward, Dark Christian Soldiers

2007-07-09T17:17:00.001-04:00

Prognostication Watch

Above is a cartoon by Tom Tomorrow, written and published in 1998. Nearly ten years ago, Sparky the Penguin had everything right, while fools like Dick Cheney, Richard Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle were preparing to drive this country directly into the ditch. Ah, the hilarious irony, if only we didn’t have to suffer the consequences.

Fascism Watch

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman recently interviewed the author of “American Fascists” about the Dominionist movement in this country, which overtly advocates a fascist theocracy in this country (rather than the slightly-less-than-overt advocacy of the GOP). Chris Hedges knows his theology, he knows his Dominionists, and because of his graduate training, he knows his fascists. And he is angry about where they want to go with this country. If only the leaders of the Democratic party could be half as knowledgeable and angry as he is, we might get somewhere. Fascinating to me is the importance of “husband as the head of household” in this political movement (also prominent in Islamic fundamentalism and the “Promise Keepers” group in this country) and the fact that he nails Pat Robertson on his investments in blood diamonds. Hedges has made an appearance on the Colbert Report, but this is the first long in depth interview I’ve seen with him. The transcript and links to audio and video are available above, but you can also watch it in two parts at YouTube. He talks a bit about the cult-like aspects of their recruiting:

And they talked about targeting people who are vulnerable. They used a technique very common to cults. It’s called love-bombing -- it’s a term taken from Margaret Singer -- where you -- three or four people go and you sort of focus intently on the person and are fascinated by everything that they say. You build false friendships. And eventually, of course, the goal is to draw them into these megachurches.

This movement talks about family, but it is the great destroyer of family. And I would stand up in these -- or I would be in these meetings and see people stand up weeping, and they would be weeping for unsaved spouses or children, because once you get sucked into these organizations, your leisure time, your religious worship time, you end up becoming involved in groups, you’re essentially removed from your old community and placed into this authoritarian community, where there is no questioning of those above you. You’re often assigned -- you’re called a baby Christian when you first come, and you’re assigned spiritual guides to teach you to think and act in the appropriate manner.

Brave Sir Colin Watch

Colin Powell is a fascinating figure to me. Not too many people know much about him, and because of that, they have a good feeling about him. His name is bandied about a lot as a possible presidential contender (or it used to be), and he had high positive poll numbers with Republicans and Democrats alike. But if you look at his actual record, the guy is dirty as hell. He was mixed up in the Mi Lai massacre cover up in Vietnam, and was up to his neck in the Iran Contra scandal as Reagan’s National Security Advisor. (Note that as part of his Teflon persona, neither of these are mentioned on his Wikipedia page. You have to go to the scandal pages directly to find him). Then, he cheerled the way into the US war in Iraq with his famous “Saddam’s Gonna Get You” speech to the UN (which he has since denounced as chock full o’ lies). The guy is a rotten apple to the core. And now, he has the temerity to tell us that he spend a whole 2.5 hours - 150 minutes! – trying to get the dimbulb-in-chief to understand what a disaster Iraq was going to be. Thanks for telling us four and a half years later, Colin. You’re a real profile in courage. From ThinkProgress:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell revealed that he spent 2.5 hours “vainly trying to persuade President George W. Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today’s conflict cannot be resolved by U.S. forces. ‘I tried to avoid this war,’ Powell said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. ‘I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.’” In terms of the current situation in Iraq, Powell said: “It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States.”

Your Disappearing Rights Watch

The ACLU has obtained a heavily redacted document from 2002 which describes how events should be prepared for El Presidente’s arrival. Though the original document is 103 pages long, the 13 (mostly blank) pages they did release did contain this advice for dealing with Americans exercising their first amendment rights:

Preparing for Demonstrators

There are several ways the advance person can prepare a site to minimize demonstrators. First, as always, work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be place, preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route.
The formation of “rally squads” is a common way to prepare for demonstrators by countering their message. This tactic involves utilizing small groups of volunteers to spread favorable messages using large hand held signs, placards, or perhaps a long sheet banner, and placing them in strategic areas around the site.

These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators. The rally squad’s task is to use their signs and banners as shield between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA! USA! USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the even site. The rally squads can include, but are not limited to, college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/sororities.

There is much more concerning demonstrators, but apart from the appeal to the young brownshirts for protection against ideas they don’t like, how sad/cheesy is it to have them chant USA! like Colbert’s audience? What children. Sad, funny, fingers-on-the-button children.

Sicko and insurance companies

2007-06-21T17:11:00.000-04:00

Watch What You Wish For Watch

It's a classic case of overreach: In the act of trying to become even more powerful, the odiousness of a powerful entity becomes visible and unbearable. Only the unchecked excesses of the monopolies and corporate barons at the last turn of the century could have brought about the muckraking and reform which followed. Only the draconian policies of the deranged (and probably chemically poisoned) King George III could bring about open revolution, followed by the crafting of a government with a severely checked executive. Only the naked aggression of Hitler dragged an extremely war-weary Europe into yet another continent-wide conflict.

The bulk of people just want to work, have a place to live, spend time with their friends and families, raise their kids, have a little security, and not get hassled. Most people aren't fire-breathing radicals who want to challenge the system. They'll tolerate quite a bit of petty corruption and interference by the various powerful forces in their lives, as long as the interference and outrage aren't too awful.

For decades this country has put up with the for-profit health care system. And for decades, the for-profit health care system has been tolerated by the citizenry. It encouraged insurance companies to try to cheat people, but because of reasonable regulation by the government, and the ability of the insured to challenge the companies' policies in court, it held up reasonably well. Of course, there were always people falling through the cracks of the system, and the courts have always been off limits to the truly poor, but health care got along well enough that people could put up with it to get by.

But that wasn't enough for the insurance companies. They had to keep pushing the rules to the limit: cherry-picking their members, trying to expand the list of "pre-existing conditions", denying service, creating mazes of paperwork, and slow-stepping claims. And worst of all, when they found that their avarice was not slaked within the boundaries of the law and regulations, they latched onto the tide of corporate ownership of government to effectively ignore regulation. Now they could charge exorbitant fees, and because of the war against government regulation, and the fact that they owned large portions of congress, they could use every trick in the book to try to screw their customers. Who was going to stop them? The government? The people? Mwah hah hah hah!!

But like every overreach, there is only so far that people will stand for it. With millions upon millions of uninsured, with the US government paying more per capita for healthcare than even countries with single payer systems, with people who have insurance getting the runaround, with access to healthcare going down and down, eventually the people have to react. And spurred by events in their own lives and sparked by Michael Moore's film "Sicko", react they will.

Moore's been making the promotional rounds for this film, and recently issued this challenge to Democratic presidential candidates:

It's not going to be in enough in the next twelve months just to say, 'I believe in healthcare for everyone.' That's not enough. That's not enough! You're going to have to tell us very specifically what you are going to do to remove profit and greed from the system and put the system in the hands of the people of the United States of America. That's what we want to hear, and that's what we expect.

The poor, naïve millionaires who have been hearing Moore talk about his film can barely believe that Americans are getting a raw, and deadly, deal. David Letterman, hearing a story about a baby dying of fever while its mother tried to get it to an "in-network" hospital, could hardly believe it, bless his heart. Quoth the bubble-encased, gap-toothed Croesus,

In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, surely someone with some humanity in that circumstance would not let that happen . . . I'm just saying, "Really? Somebody could look at an infant with a 104 fever and say 'Nah, you want the, the, that's down the street, you wanna get down there if you can'". They wouldn't step in and say 'here, we can do this.'?

What Dave doesn't realize is that many of the people with "some humanity" have been removed from that equation. Likewise, Moore was able to penetrate the wealth-cocoon of Oprah long enough for her to admit,

I have to honestly say I hadn't thought about it because I'm one of those people "I've got mine" so I wasn't thinking about who didn't have theirs.

Americans could have been content to let this rotten system continue on forever, probably, with some small level of government regulation to keep them from becoming completely derelict in their duties and morally bereft greed-heads. But like all overreachers, they had to kill that government oversight and may succeed in killing the golden goose. Let's hope so.

Gore is managing his non-campaign for President brilliantly

2007-06-07T14:42:00.000-04:00

Every time he is interviewed, the first question out of anyone's mouth is: "Are you running?", and then he makes some noise about this and that, oh, he says it would be a really good platform for effecting change, but I really don't like the horse race, etc.

He never shuts the door, so he keeps the question out there, the shiny soccer ball for the horse race-obsessed lobotomy victims in the press.

Then he gets to talk about substantive issues, which of course the media otherwise would ignore in favor of how his poll numbers stack up against the other candidates, if he were announced. He gets to expound on the environment, on fiscal responsibility, on Iraq, on the Constitution and legality, on illegal wiretapping, on scientific fact over ideological dogma, on the importance of making good decisions, and how good decision making might come about in this country.

He is playing the media like a fiddle.

He knows if he were "running", they'd stop listening to what he was saying. So, he teases them enough to keep their little hamster brains running on their little wheels, and gets to put his IDEAS out there.

In his public appearances, instead of a head-on attack of these criminals, which would put him in the "crazy" Democrat category (to the media, there are only two kinds of Democrats: "crazy" ones who actually tell the truth about things (see Dean, Murtha, Kucinich, Michael Moore) and "wimpy" ones who won't say too much about the corporate agenda and can just be dismissed as "Republican lite" (see Dukakis, Gephardt, Biden)), he takes this thoughtful approach: "Gee", he says, rubbing his virtual beard, "why IS it that the US keeps making these stupid decisions?"

This is a brilliant way to approach it. First, it takes as a PREMISE, not something that needs to be argued, that we have been making stupid and bad decisions, and then gets everyone pondering why that is. It focuses obvious attention on the bad decision makers, and also the enablers in the media and the mostly-slumbering citizenry. The political will to improve our decision-making grows out of this conversation. It implicitly condemns CheneyCo while simultaneously looking at the brighter future beyond them.

Frankly, I don't know how his strategy could be any smarter. He clearly is the first Democrat to really THINK about the problem of the media and come up with effective jujitsu against it (as opposed to just capitulating to it, as the Congressional Democrats just did). This alone puts him miles beyond most of the other candidates, for whom media coverage will just blow them along like paper boats in a storm.

Gore has learned a lot. AND, he has tape of thousands of people begging him to run. This, finally, is a Democrat who gets it concerning the media.

Go Gore!

Impeachment Watch

2007-01-30T12:00:00.000-05:00

This is a letter I sent my federal government representatives today:

Dear XXXXX:

This letter is to formally ask that you publicly support impeachment of President Bush. Obviously, impeachment is a serious and even drastic step to take against a sitting president. However, I believe that President Bush has more than earned the right to be impeached. Specifically, the following high crimes and misdemeanors qualify him for impeachment:

- Exaggerating, misdirecting, and fabricating evidence to pressure the Senate to give him authorization to use military force against Iraq;

- Disastrous execution of the war, resulting in the ruin of an entire country and the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis and more than 3,000 US soldiers;

- Refusal to recognize that Iraq has descended into civil war, ignoring the will of the American people, ignoring the advice of military commanders, firing or replacing military commanders who disagree with him, ignoring the advice of the Iraq Study Group, and proposing further escalation against all reason, placing more Americans in harm’s way;

-Lying about, authorizing, ordering, and then defending illegal and unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping of Americans;

-Authorizing and ordering illegal and unconstitutional data mining of confidential phone records of Americans;

-Authorizing and ordering illegal and unconstitutional spying on American’s email and mail;

-Authorizing, ordering, and defending use of torture;

-Authorizing, ordering, and defending use of extraordinary renditions;

-Authorizing, ordering, and defending indefinite imprisonment of “enemy combatants”, holding them without charges and without access to a lawyer; and

-Promoting the destruction of the environment in the face of incontrovertible scientific evidence of global warming as a result of human activities.

The harm done by President Bush over the last six years is truly incalculable. It is time for you to take a stand and do what needs to be done; please support the impeachment of President Bush.

Sincerely,

John Locke

Responsibility Watch

2007-01-16T20:35:00.000-05:00

What does it mean: to take responsibility for something? We’ve been hearing the phrase an awful lot these days, and I think it worthwhile to examine the saying in more detail.

First, let’s examine what it means to NOT take responsibility for something…

September the 11th was the single worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor, and it occurred during the Bush Administration. On April 13, 2004, President Bush was asked the following question: “Two and a half years later, do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11?” Bush gave a long-winded reply, saying he wished we had had the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security before the attack and that he wished the country had been on a “war-footing” before the attack, but his answer regarding personal responsibility was essentially “no”.

SO President Bush feels no personal responsibility for not preventing the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. He feels no personal responsibility for ignoring an urgent request from Richard Clark on January 25, 2001 for a high-level National Security Council review on al-Qaeda. He feels no personal responsibility for not trying to get Osama Bin Laden in the first eight and a half months of his reign. And most of all, he feels no remorse for ignoring the August 6, 2001 presidential briefing entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,” that detailed “suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks…” So that is what it means to NOT accept responsibility for a mistake -- a mistake that resulted in the deaths of almost three thousand Americans.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated huge areas of the Gulf Coast and resulted in the destruction of the levees around New Orleans, Mr. Bush announced that no one could have predicted that the levees would break. No one, of course, except PBS, and Nova, and meteorologists, and climatologists, and engineers, and the National Weather Service, and CNN, and CBS, and NBC, and ABC, and perhaps even the FOX network… Then, despite massive evidence to the contrary, with people dying in the streets of New Orleans, Mr. Bush praised FEMA Director Michael Brown as doing a “heckuva job”. Later, Mr. Brown would be forced out of FEMA, and Bush would state, “And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility.” Since it is clear to most Americans that the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, one would conclude that Mr. Bush is therefore responsibility for at least a large portion of the suffering and deaths that occurred as a result of his bungling. And what did Mr. Bush do to atone for his part in the disaster? Nothing.

When it turned out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- which as we all know was pretty much the only reason given to the American public for going to war -- Mr. Bush took a different tack. First, on March 24, 2004 at the White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner, he joked about it, pretending to look for the weapons under his desk. That was really funny, particularly since lots of people were dying as a result of the war! Later, in December of 2005, Mr. Bush changed his mind and stated, “It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As President, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.” At the time, 2140 American soldiers had been killed in Iraq, and Bush estimated that about 30,000 Iraqis “more or less” had been killed as a result of the war. And what did Mr. Bush do to atone for his part in the disaster? Nothing.

Now, almost four years into a war that Mr. Bush proudly touted as “Mission Accomplished” and announced the “End of Major Combat Operations” back in 2003, Mr. Bush has taken again responsibility for the nightmare. “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me,” he stated. Over 400 billion dollars have been wasted, hundreds of Iraqis have been tortured at the hands of our military, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed (even the Iraqi government estimates that over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed -- and those are only the deaths that are officially reported), over three thousand American soldiers have been killed, over 20,000 American soldiers have been wounded and maimed, our military is dangerously overextended, the civil war continues unabated, religious militias rule the streets, the Iraqi infrastructure is much worse than it was under Saddam Hussein, the Islamic world (both Sunnis and Shiites) is furious with us, Al Qaeda is thriving, Afghanistan is slipping quickly into chaos, and the world is a much more dangerous place than it was before we went into Iraq. So when the President takes responsibility for the mistakes in Iraq, that surely must mean something, right? Nope. Only a few days later, Mr. Bush would be interviewed on 60 Minutes and asked whether he thought he owed the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job… Mr. Bush responded with a smirk (no exaggeration), and asked whether the interviewer meant “That we didn't do a better job or they didn't do a better job?” He then stated that we owed the Iraqis an apology “not at all”. He criticized the Iraqis for not being grateful enough for all that we have wrought in Iraq. So much for accepting responsibility!

I know I live in a dream world. That much is readily apparent. But even in the corporate world (where much excess and corruption can be overlooked), if a president of a company made a mistake that cost, say, only a billion dollars, that corporate president would resign in shame. If the lies that were told were sufficiently egregious, that president might be charged with a crime (e.g. Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay). If a president of a company habitually made so many mistakes that thousands or tens of thousands of people died as a result of those mistakes, that corporate president would resign in shame.

Similarly, in the military, if the captain of a US Navy ship hits another ship and kills a few people, that captain is usually relieved of command (whether or not the captain was even awake during the incident). If a commander in the US Army makes mistakes that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, not only would that commander resign in shame, but he or she might be looking at a war-crimes tribunal…

You might think that President Bush, looking back on the utter and complete disaster that his Presidency has been, would conclude “Holy crap! You know, I really suck at this!” and resign before he makes any more disastrous decisions. You might think that, but you would be wrong. These days, Mr. Bush accepts “responsibility” for any mistakes that are made, but his sort of “responsibility” is only a means of asking “Can we please stop talking about this and move on to something more pleasant?”

Mr. Bush needs to be impeached; it is as simple as that. However, it is important to note that even impeachment is not really good enough for him, but it is the only legal punishment that even comes close to addressing the breadth and depth of his stupendous and vicious incompetence.

-John Locke

Recent Email to My Representatives Regarding the Iraq Surge

2007-01-13T17:19:00.000-05:00

The following is an email I recently sent to my representatives regarding the Iraq Surge:

Dear :

In the strongest possible terms, I urge you to denounce Bush’s new “plan for victory” in Iraq. The President has clearly lost touch with reality. A surge will only provide more American targets in Iraq and further drain our military.

Mr. Bush promised to listen to advice from the military; yet from General Shinseki to General George Casey Jr. to General Abizaid, he has completely ignored their advice. Mr. Bush promised to listen to the suggestions from the Iraq Study Group, yet he has completely disregarded their counsel. Mr. Bush promised to listen to the American people, yet he has completely ignored their desires. Mr. Bush promised to listen to the Iraqis, yet he has ignored their pleas as well. Mr. Bush promised to listen to our allies, yet he has spit in the face of the world. Mr. Bush lied us into this war; Mr. Bush’s disastrous and stupid policies have caused us to lose this war; and Mr. Bush continues to lie to us on a daily basis. Due to Mr. Bush’s incompetence, we have lost the Iraq war, and it is time to bring our troops home.

What Mr. Bush needs is to be impeached. Please cut off funding for the “surge”, cut off funding for this disastrous war, and impeach this idiot before he does any further damage.

Sincerely,
John Locke

Quick Quiz Regarding Boosh's Surge

2007-01-13T17:17:00.000-05:00

Here's a QuickQuiz for you:

Question: Who said the following?

"I would confess I'm no expert on Iraq."
AND
"At the outset of the strategy, it's a mistake to talk about an exit strategy"

Answer: US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.

Question: Who said the following?

“I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It's easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”

Answer: General John Abizaid, who was forced into retirement by President Boosh when the position of the military conflicted with the position of that most experienced and battle-hardened National Guard veteran, George Boosh.

Question: Who said the following?

Who said, "I don't care what my military advisors say; I don't care what the American public thinks; I'm going to keep winning in Iraq no matter what!"
AND
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."

Answer: It's actually a trick question -- it's a paraphrase of President Boosh's new strategery: SURGE!!! A Plan For Victory!

Now ask yourself, do you really want this Commander in Chief commanding anything larger than a small tricycle, much less putting more American soldiers in harm's way???

-John Locke

History doesn't repeat, it rhymes

2007-01-12T15:35:00.000-05:00

Studying history is a very useful thing, and of course something that Americans do very little of. A good reading of ancient history, and even American history, might show people the sorrows of empire and put some brakes on the imperialistic aggression we are displaying these last few years. But more important even than ancient history, we lack a knowledge of recent history that leaves us incapable of choosing our leaders wisely.

For example, let’s consider some claims that are advanced from time to time by opponents of the Cheney regime.

Cheney and Rumsfeld colluded to run the US government over a weak president.
Cheney and Rumsfeld created a subdivision of intelligence analysts specifically to gin up lies about how dangerous a foreign threat we are facing.
Cheney lied us into a war in Iraq, specifically claiming imminent attack.
Bush lied us into a war in Iraq, specially citing human rights abuses and threats to our allies.
Cheney advocated invading and occupying Baghdad and deposing Saddam, despite predictions by experts that this would lead to a horrible, bloody occupation with no good way out.

Put these claims together in one place, and one is likely to be ridiculed by the corporate media as a left-wing nutjob conspiracy-theorizing terrorist sympathizer.

But are any of the claims credible? Should we consider these behaviors likely in these men, or are they out of character for them? How can we judge?

If we had the resources and the supposed mandate of the media to keep track of such things, we might be able to judge for ourselves if these claims are credible. We might even include such information during a presidential race, about what we know of the men who would lead us, and what they were capable of, based on their previous actions.

Each of the five statements above is undoubtedly true for the time period of 2001-2003. There are mounds of evidence that the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal stove-piped intelligence data to create a false picture of a threat-filled Iraq, and over the objections of intelligence professionals, the State Department, and regional experts, knowingly used that distorted picture to justify a war of aggression leading to a bloody occupation. The results have been greater political control for them and truckloads of money for war profiteers. But if you suggest these things to Bush supporters or vapid media types like Wolf Blitzer, they clap their hands to their faces in Munsch-like horror, in as much to say “How could you accuse these men of such things”?

It cannot, or should not come as a surprise to people that these accusations are true, however, because each of these five actions not only occurred between 2001-2003, but are also true of the time period from 1974-1992, as well. Each of these things occurred before Bush/Cheney were appointed to power, and the men responsible for them escaped with no punishment. It should not surprise us that they felt free to repeat them, having gotten away with it at least once. And so it really is an insult to be treated as if these accusations insult the “honor” of Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Bush. All they were doing was going back to the game plan that worked so well for them before. Let’s take them one by one.

1. Cheney and Rumsfeld colluded to run the US government over a weak president.

Rumsfeld and Cheney both had appointments in the Nixon administration. When Ford became President after Nixon resigned, Rumsfeld was chosen to manage the transition, and became Ford’s de facto chief of staff. Cheney was his deputy. Their real rival for power in the Ford administration was Henry Kissinger, and so

Having turned Ford into their instrument, Rumsfeld and Cheney staged a palace coup. They pushed Ford to fire Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, tell Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to look for another job and remove Henry Kissinger from his post as national security adviser. Rumsfeld was named secretary of defense, and Cheney became chief of staff to the president. The Yale dropout and draft dodger was, at the age of thirty-four, the second-most-powerful man in the White House.

Compare this behavior with what happened to Colin Powell, and note that neither Ford nor G. W. Bungle was elected to the office. Hmmm. Given this information, would it surprise us to find that Cheney and Rumsfeld ran roughshod over our beloved, retarded man-child leader in 2001?

2. Cheney and Rumsfeld created a subdivision of intelligence analysts specifically to gin up lies about how dangerous a foreign threat we are facing.

The main objection that Cheney and Rumsfeld had to Kissinger was his policy of “détente”, a lessening of tensions with the Soviet Union. Say what you will about the evils of Kissinger and Nixon, they both were working to reduce the threat of thermonuclear Armageddon. This absolutely wouldn’t do for Rumsfeld and Cheney. After all, if we – the American people – weren’t scared out of our minds about a foreign enemy to the point where we would do whatever the government told us to do, such as give huge amounts of tax money to arms manufacturers, then we might actually be able to use the government to do social good. Their solution? First, they got Ford to scuttle the SALT II arms control treaty. Then, they created Team B, a group of “outside specialists” whose mandate was to claim that the Soviets were much more of a threat than the CIA considered them to be. This group of six government outsiders (including Paul Wolfowitz and given the go ahead by then-CIA director George H. W. Bush), essentially were people scared to death of the evil commies sapping our vital fluids. As former CIA-director William Colby put it, it was hard

"to envisage how an ad hoc independent group of analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities than could the intelligence community."

Team B essentially created a bunch of fairy tales about all of these scary phantom weapons capabilities that the Soviets had, and how the Soviets were planning to launch and win a first strike nuclear war. All of their assessments have since been proven completely false. But they were useful for raising the defense budget.

Donald Rumsfeld began to make speeches arguing that the Soviets were ignoring Kissinger’s treaties and secretly building up their weapons, with the intention of attacking America. The CIA strongly disagreed with Team B's assessments, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone. A top CIA analyst called it "a kangaroo court of outside critics all picked from one point of view."

Now, given all of that, what do we make of the accusations that Cheney and Rumsfeld created the Office of Special Plans to cherry-pick intelligence to try to make Iraq look like more of a threat than it was? Is that a completely wild accusation? Or does it sound possible?

3. Cheney lied us into a war in Iraq, specifically claiming imminent attack.

In 1990, Cheney was Bush I’s Secretary of Defense. As they were ginning up domestic and international support for an invasion of Iraq, Cheney claimed that Defense Department satellites had shown “120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia”. This lie was repeated by Bush I. However,

Jean Heller, an investigative reporter on the St Petersburg Times decided to investigate. Satellite photos from a commercial satellite - Soyuz Karta were obtained for around US$ 3,000. On January 6, 1991 she wrote an article detailing what had been found, titled "Photos Don't Show Buildup." The photos were reviewed by several experts and did not show any evidence to support the claims of George H.W. Bush. No buildup of troops in anywhere near the amounts stated by the President were visible in the photos.

This story, of course, was not “picked up” by the corporate media. Now, should we be surprised that Cheney would feel free to lie to us a second time, to start a second war with Iraq? After all, he had lied with impunity in 1990, and suffered no consequence.

4. Bush lied us into a war in Iraq, specially citing human rights abuses and threats to our allies.

Ok, this one is a bit of a cheat in that it cites both Bush I in 1990 and Bush II in 2002/3. But clearly the son must have learned from his father and Cheney what would be allowed as far as lying to start a war was concerned. In addition to the lie about the Iraqi buildup, cited above, Bush I also was part of the infamous “incubator babies” PR stunt (parodied in the movie Wag the Dog which was not, no matter how many people think so, about Clinton and Monica Lewinski, but about Bush I and the Gulf War):

Although the human rights abuses of the Iraq regime before and after the Kuwait invasion were well-documented, the government of Kuwait set out to influence American opinion with a few accounts. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the U.S. It hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11 million, paid by the Kuwaiti government. This firm went on to manufacture a campaign in which a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor. The story was an influence in tipping both the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and seven Senators referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military actions in a 52-47 vote. One year later, however, this allegation was labeled a fabricated hoax. The woman who had testified was found to be a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family living in Paris during the war, and therefore could not have been present during the alleged crime.

After this young woman, the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the US, gave her false, PR-firm coached testimony to a congressional committee, congressional support swung over to the invasion. Bush I referenced these atrocities in speeches justifying the war. Is it any wonder that Bush II, seeing his father emerge smelling like a rose after lying us into the Gulf War, thought that he could do it too?

5. Cheney advocated invading and occupying Baghdad and deposing Saddam, despite predictions by experts that this would lead to a horrible, bloody occupation with no good way out.

We know that this is true for the Iraq War. The clues to it for the Gulf War are harder to follow, but Norman Schwarzkopf hinted at it in his memoirs. Sure, in 1993 Cheney toed the party line and claimed “Now you can say well you should have gone to Baghdad and gotten Saddam, I don't think so I think if we had done that we would have been bogged down there for a very long period of time with the real possibility we might not have succeeded.”, but during the war his department repeatedly sent plans to Schwarzkopf detailing how Baghdad might be attacked. And if he was so smart in 1993, what made him so seemingly stupid in 2003?

When politicians begin doing the same things they did 20-30 years ago, repeating their same old modus operandi, don’t the media owe it to the public to point this out? Shouldn’t we have been told all of this before the 2000 election? Yes is the answer, and yes.

America has always been at war with Iran

2007-01-12T15:29:00.000-05:00

Most of the news from the last month has been about the escalation of the war that Bush is planning. Bush, Lieberman, and all of the other warmongers have been saying for a long time that troops would begin their withdrawal, but that was before the elections. Now that we are safely past them, the only strategy left for prolonging our involvement in Iraq is to escalate. From what I've been able to tell, the public, the joint chiefs of staff, the Congress, the generals who have up to now been in charge of Iraq, and even crazy Oliver North are against escalation. On the other side are Bush, McCain, Lieberman, and two or three people from the American Enterprise Institute (and of course, our evil overlord Cheney). AEI includes many of the deep thinkers who got us into this mess.

But whatever. I write this morning with this bad news: that we have started the war with Iran. This morning, we landed five helicopters on the roof of the Iranian consulate building in Kurdistan, stormed the building, and took at least six Iranians captive. This is an act of war.

Starting the war now makes some sense from Cheney’s point of view. It has long been their strategy to do so many evil things at once that before any opposition can organize against Evil Action A, they are outraged over Evil Action B, and so on until outrage overload overwhelms them. So by attacking another sovereign nation as the Congress gets ready to stop escalation in Iraq, Cheney creates what he hopes is enough confusion to get away with both atrocities.

I wonder if his heart will give out before his war crimes trial is over, like Milosevic.

Let’s all pray that this does not lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Nuking a Muslim country would paint a target on all Americans, forever, in the eyes of the radicals in the world.

The real problem we face: Dems and the toadying media

2006-11-07T11:43:00.000-05:00

No matter who wins today, we still have a big problem, and that is the media and its relationship with the Democratic party and Democratic politicians. Claims of media bias (from the Right, claiming that the media is biased against them) still abound, absurd as they are, and have recently been voiced by Dick Cheney and Lynn Cheney as well as many others. But what is actually going on is a little more complex.

The political discourse in this country has been reduced to that of the pecking order at Ralphie's Warren G. Harding school in "A Christmas Story": You're either a bully, a toady, or one of the hapless rabble of victims. Our problem is not that the media are bullies, it is that they are the toadies to the GOP bullies.

Consider the Kerry flap, based on an awkward delivery of a joke about how stupid Bush is to have gotten us stuck in the pointless, bloody war in Iraq. Such awkward deliveries are made about fifty times a day by everyone who has to do public speaking. It goes with the territory: if you are going to be speaking in front of crowds all the time, you are going to mess up, not deliver lines quite the way you want to every single time.

For some well-worn examples, here are some of the things which Bush has said, and which the media, surprise surprise, did not raise a three day fuss about:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004. Was he really implying that his administration is always thinking of new ways to harm the country? Shouldn't the press have held his feet to the fire for days until he apologized?

"I want to thank my friend, Sen. Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. (Laughter.) Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me." Nashville, Tenn., May 27, 2004. Was he implying that he is transgendered? Should he have apologized to the transgender community? Should he have apologized to the evangelical community for confusing them?

"There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like." Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002. WTF? Should he have apologized to the English language? Should he be required to go to at least ONE serviceperson's funeral?

"I can look you in the eye and tell you I feel I've tried to solve the problem diplomatically to the max, and would have committed troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq knowing what I know today." Irvine, Calif., April 24, 2006. This isn't even a misstatement. But shouldn't he have to apologize for making this horrifying assertion anyway? He seems to be admitting to even more war crimes than those he has already committed.

"I'm certain to maintain the peace, we better have a military of high morale, and I'm certain that under this administration, morale in the military is dangerously low." Albuquerque, N.M., the Washington Post, May 31, 2000. This was a campaign speech. Shouldn't he have been required by the media to apologize for bad mouthing the military this way? (He did this incessantly in the 2000 campaign, by the way, constantly talking about how rotten our military was, as a way to attack Clinton and Gore's record.)

Ok, enough of that idiot's braindroppings. The idea that Kerry, a highly decorated veteran who volunteered for one of the most dangerous assignments in Vietnam and who had an Ivy League education, was implying that only stupid people end up in Iraq, is retarded on its face. Even without the prepared transcript of his speech, it is evident that he was indicting Bush.

But then, what happened? The Rovian GOPers, sensing that their time in control of Congress is perhaps almost up, need a whipping boy, and they stumble on this quote, which they realize that if read with your brain turned off, could just barely be construed as a cut on the military. Again, you'd have to be stupid to come to that conclusion, but hey, whatever works. They demand Kerry issue an apology.

And what do the toadies in the press do, sensing that the bullies have picked a Democrat out of the herd to beat up on with a phony baloney "issue"? They immediately pick up on "question" of "Why doesn't Kerry apologize?" as if he should apologize for something he never said. Several Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, sensing that the pack of bullies and toadies is moving in for a kill, also denounce Kerry's remark and call for him to apologize.

Digby, as usual, nails it:

First you had the John Kerry flap. After the first news cycle everyone knew he'd blown a punchline. There were even plenty of conservatives who admitted it. But that didn't matter. What mattered was forcing him to apologize for something he never said. It was a pure act of force, as if they put their foot on his neck and demanded that he agree that "up is down and black is white" --- a modern show trial in which Kerry agreed to confess in order to spare his party's chances in the upcoming election. He instinctively resisted, as sane people always do when forced to deny reality. But the sheer power of the coordinated Republican outcry (with the willing help of cynical Dems and the media) finally made it imperative for him to issue an apology for something he never said.

And the Republicans laughed and laughed because once again they had forced a leading Democrat to bow to their will as surely as if they'd physically held him dow n and made him agree that black was white and up was down. It was all the more delicious because every party to it, the Republicans, the Democrats, the public, the media and John Kerry himself all knew the real truth. Now that's power.

So, that is the real problem. The media, toadying to the GOP bullies, will agree that the sun rises in the West if it allows them to keep participating in the group attacks on Democrats. What can be done to counter this dynamic, especially in the context of the 2008 race?

It isn't clear. Kerry tried to tell people to shove their calls for apology up their butt, but had to humiliate himself for the good of the party after 48 hours of relentless attacks by toadies and the indifference of other victims finally left him no choice.

Bill Maher and some idiot journalist on his talk show last Friday agreed that this meant Kerry's hopes for a 2008 nomination were over. Wow. He misspoke a little and then didn't bend over immediately for a media pantsing, and now his presidential aspirations are down the drain? Wild. Hillary's continued assumed viability as a candidate appears to be based on her ability to run with the crowd of toadies.

They destroyed Dean using a tape of him yelling "Yeah". There wasn't even a misstatement there. What effective strategies are there against the media toadies?

Non-gay, Non-drug-abusing, Non-alcoholic, Non-hypocritical, Non-pedophile, Non-morally-bankrupt, and/or Non-corrupt Republican Watch

2006-11-04T21:23:00.000-05:00

Are there any non-gay, non-drug-abusing, non-alcoholic, non-hypocritical, non-pedophile, non-morally-bankrupt, and/or non-corrupt Republicans? Current evidence says no.

Recent and not-so-recent events indicate that Republicans are either:

1) gay
2) drug abusers
3) alcoholic
4) hypocritical
5) pedophile
6) morally bankrupt
7) corrupt

or some combination of the above…

Case in point: Republican homophobic hatemonger Ted Haggard and big-time opponent of same-sex marriage now appears to have hired a gay prostitute for methamphetamines and sexual gratification. That would be 1, 2, 4, and 6 from the list. If he was hopped up on meth when he was participating in one of the presumably many teleconferences between evangelical Christian leaders and President Boosh, that would be just plain ironic.

Case in point: Republican congressman Mark Foley has admitted to being gay and an alcoholic, but has denied being a pedophile. That would be 1 and 3 and possibly 4, 5, and 6 as well.

Case in point: Republican representative Bob Ney has pled guilty to criminal conspiracy and making false statements with respect to his dealings with Republican Jack Abramoff. That would be 6 and 7.

Case in point: Republican representative, allegedly happily married, and staunch "marriage defender" Don Sherwood, admitted having a FIVE YEAR affair with a woman other than his wife; he does deny trying to kill her. However, he has reportedly paid her $500,000 to not talk about the affair and the supposed choking incident until after the election. That would be 4 and 6.

Case in point: Republican and former Bush Administration official David Safavian was found guilty of obstruction of justice, claimed he was sorry, and asked for leniency in the case relating to Republican Jack Abramoff. His lawyers then promised to appeal. That would be 6 and 7.

Case in point: Republican Tom Delay was indicted for breaking campaign finance laws. After first denying the charges, Mr. Delay resigned from congress soon after winning the nomination of his party in the primary. That would be 4, 6, and 7.

Case in point: Republican state congressman Michael Huffington finally admitted he was gay in 1998 and divorced his wife of 12 years. That would be 1 and 4.

Case in point: Jim Bakker, televangelist and hatemonger extraordinaire, reportedly embezzled millions from his Praise-The-Lord network and was convicted of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. Mr. Bakker reportedly paid Ms. Jessica Hahn so that she would not report Bakker’s drugging and raping of her. Mr. Bakker is divorced from his first wife and has remarried. That would be 4, 6, and 7.

Case in point: Republican talk show host and hatemonger Rush Limbaugh used to say that any white person doing drugs should be convicted and “sent up the river”. As it turns out, Mr. Limbaugh is very good at prescription shopping, getting prescriptions for Oxycontin from multiple doctors, and then having his housekeeper pick up the highly addictive drug. Mr. Limbaugh has also been caught with Viagra, which was prescribed to someone else. That would be 2, 4, and 6.

Case in point: Chief Republican and President Boosh. In his first election, Mr. Boosh promised to unite, not divide. Almost six years later, the country is extremely divided; Mr. Boosh uses the politics of hate to attack gay people, immigrants, and people of different faiths. Mr. Boosh swore to uphold the Constitution; yet he ordered warrantless wiretapping, detained terror suspects indefinitely without access to lawyers or the court system, and illegally obtained phone records of millions of Americans. He swore to defend the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic; yet the massive intelligence failures of his administration and his indifference to his responsibilities allowed 9-11 to happen. He also promised not to nation-build; yet he has failed in his efforts to nation-build in Afghanistan (not enough to bomb) and in Iraq (no weapons of mass destruction). Mr. Boosh promised to fire anyone involved with the outing of Valerie Plame; yet he has stood by and NOT fired admitted traitor Karl Rove (who, as it turns out, is rumored to be gay) who helped out her. Finally, Mr. Boosh is an admitted alcoholic and rumors persist that he has done more than a little bit of the white stuff as well. That would be 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7.

I could go on and on and on. The lies, hypocrisy, and deceptions of Republicans -- members of the self-proclaimed “moral” political party -- is truly staggering,

SO, if there are any Republicans out there who are not gay, drug abusers, alcoholics, hypocritical, pedophile, morally bankrupt, and/or corrupt, it would be nice to know who…

Because maybe then we could have an honest intellectual debate. Until one is found, I can only urge you to vote Democratic.

-John Locke

Tin Foil Hat Watch

2006-10-28T16:53:00.000-04:00

I've got my tin foil hat on... Got yours?

This Blackwell guy -- the Secretary of State in Ohio -- has got to go. Apparently in 2004, he signed an order decreeing that exit polling within 100 feet of a voting place is illegal.

Now, why on earth would the Secretary of State of Ohio want to put a stop to exit polling in Ohio -- a state that had very strange results in the 2004 election... As I recall, the only way anyone was able to explain how Boosh won Ohio was to pretend that huge numbers of people voted for Boosh but were so ashamed of their vote that they lied to the exit pollsters and claimed they had voted for Kerry.

Hmmm...

Oh wait. Isn't Blackwell a Republican who owns Diebold stock; and isn't Diebold run by a chief executive -- also a Republican -- who promised (in writing) to help deliver the State of Ohio to Boosh in 2004; and don't Diebold machines lack a verifiable paper trail; and aren't Diebold machines easily hackable?

Hmmm...

You tell me: why shouldn't I have a tinfoil hat on???

-John Locke

Rumsfeld Incompetency Watch

2006-10-28T16:42:00.000-04:00

Ronald Dumsfeld made the news again...

He told reporters to "just back off" when they asked him to explain the most recent "setbacks" in Iraq (like the raging civil war).

"You ought to just back off..." he whined.

Hmmm... yes. Just back off and wait to see if this administration can do anything right, because let's face it, their record of achievement so far in Iraq (as well as the rest of the world) is simply amazing to behold.

Why doesn't someone in the "press" hold this a-hole's feet to the fire???

All they would have to do is cite a number of administration quotes like "Mission Accomplished", "insurgency in its last throes", "days or weeks, I doubt months", "dead-enders", "stay the course", etc, then point out that these great quotes all came at great times for the administration and were touted to the American public as evidence that we were winning or had won this damn war. Remember, this is the WAR PRESIDENT we are talking about. The war is the primary reason he won reelection: can't change corpses in mid-stream or somesuch nonsense.

Anyway, the fact that we're spending close to half a trillion dollars on this mess, the fact that we're losing three or four soldiers a day, the fact that the Iraqis are losing 100 or more civilians a day, the fact that we're embroiled in the middle of a civil war with no real allies -- all of these facts should mean that "back off" is not an acceptable response by any stretch of the imagination.

Such a level of incompetence in the whitehorse has not been seen for decades, if ever. How dare Dumsfeld refuse to answer serious questions about his competence and the competence of the Boosh Adminstration???

I've been watching for almost six years now, and I have yet to see even a glimmer of competence.

-John Locke

Dick Cheney Truth Watch

2006-10-28T16:09:00.000-04:00

So Dick Cheney was caught telling the truth this past week. Amazing. Even more amazing, the Boosh administration is now denying that he told the truth...

What am I talking about? I am talking about waterboarding, that most noble of interrogation pasttimes (i.e. torture).

The VP (or should that be TP, for Torture President?) was being interviewed by a conservative talk show host and was asked whether "a dunk in the water" for some suspected terrorists is a "no-brainer". The TP responded, "Well, it's a no brainer for me..."

This truthfulness was a breath of fresh air for Cheney and the Boosh Administration. However, the next day, they realized that being truthful can get you in trouble, because some crazy people concerned about human rights picked up on his statement...

So, the administration reversed course and claimed that Cheney was only talking about a "dunk in the water" and not about waterboarding. For those of you who are clueless out there, waterboarding is where the Boosh administration gestapo strap you to a board, put a cloth bag over your head, and dump water on your head, which induces a severe gag reflex to the point that you think you are drowning. For those of you who have never had a near-drowning experience, it is not a f#cking walk in the park. Anyway, they make you continue to believe that they are crazy enough to kill you until you sign a confession to stop the torture. Then they use that forced confession to try you in a military tribunal where you have no right to see the evidence against you.

According to Wikipedia, waterboarding can cause "extreme pain and damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, and sometimes broken bones because of the restraints applied to the struggling victim. The psychological effects can be long lasting. Waterboarding can also result in death." CIA volunteer agents exposed to waterboarding lasted an average of 14 seconds before capitulating.

For the record:

Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge used similar tactics; he was the much beloved
leader of Cambodia.

At least one Japanese officer was tried and convicted of waterboarding
during World War II.

The US Department of State formally recognizes Tunisia's poor human rights
record in part due to their propensity for submerging the heads of prisoners in
water.

Anyway, the Boosh administration is now saying that Cheney does not advocate waterboarding but does advocates dunking prisoners in water to elicit confessions... Unless my junior high history classes fail me, that's called dunking or ducking and was used in the Salem Witch Trials to elicit confessions from "witches". The "witch" was tied to a pole that was dunked under water. Duckings were repeated until either the "witch" died by drowning or until she confessed so that she could be put to death another way, such as hanging or burning at the stake...

Since there were a lot of "witches" back then, we know that dunking or ducking or waterboarding are very reliable ways of getting people to confess...

"You know as a matter of common sense that the vice president of the United States is not going to be talking about water boarding. Never would, never does, never will," Snow said. "You think Dick Cheney's going to slip up on something like this? No, come on."

Yes, actually, yes, I do.

OH COME ON! Cheney's denial of his brief episode of truthfulness is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to claim that somehow he was not talking about waterboarding, since waterboarding is all the rage in this Administration and has been in the press ever since it was leaked that the CIA was waterboarding people to obtain confessions.

This is so beyond the pale, it's simply not credible.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THIS ADMINISTRATION CONDONES WATERBOARDING.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THIS ADMINISTRATION REFUSES TO DENY THAT THEY WATERBOARD.

EVERYTIME THAT THEY ARE ASKED ABOUT WATERBOARDING, THEY REFUSE TO ANSWER, THEN REPEAT THE MANTRA "WE DON'T TORTURE"

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THIS ADMINISTRATION WILL BE USING CONFESSIONS GAINED VIA WATERBOARDING AT THESE SO-CALLED MILIATRY TRIBUNALS.

JEEZUZ. THIS MAKES ME SOOOOOO MAD.

When are the american people going to wake up and realize that the whitehorse has been h1jacked by a bunch of immoral and insane lunatics??? I don't want these people "defending" me by torturing people. Period. And I really don't want them torturing me.

I repeat my suggestion that the next time Rumsfeld, Cheney, or the Boosh testify in Congress, we strap them to a waterboard and waterboard them until they confess. (After all, it's not torture, right?)

-John Locke

New Jersey Gay Marriage Watch

2006-10-28T15:40:00.000-04:00

Ah god... It was sooooooo close.

The New Jersey Supreme Court handed down its decision regarding gay marriage. They overturned the decisions of the trial court and of the appellate court...

It was a unanimous decision that same-sex couples deserve ALL of the rights given to heterosexual couples -- which is wonderful. It is especially wonderful that it was a UNANIMOUS decision. Among the statements in the decision:

"the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our State Constitution."

"Times and attitudes have changed, and there has been a developing understanding that discrimination against gays and lesbians is no longer acceptable in this State..."

"HELD: Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed samesex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes."

However, it was a 4 to 3 decision that same-sex couples did not deserve the right to be "married," which is in the end, very disappointing.

Overall, it may be a net-good decision, but it is still a sad day for the state of New Jersey. The Supreme Court opted for giving the legislature the chance to put a "separate but equal" into the law books.

I was thinking about it last night. Would interracial couples be satisfied with a "separate-but-equal" domestic partnership??? NO. No one would. Because it's separate AND inferior ... it necessarily demeans the relationship of the people in the union.

Civil marriage is just that -- civil -- and therefore the demesne of the state. If they offer civil marriage to heterosexual couples, then they'd goddamn better offer it to same-sex couples. Otherwise, it is simply NOT EQUAL. Conversely, if they only want to offer domestic partnerships to everyone, then fine. Let's see how straight people like them apples.

Furthermore, to some degree, the decision is still a farce, because only "marriage" would force other states to recognize it as such. (DOMA is clearly unconstitutional, but the ACLU, Lamda Legal, Equality California, and others are biding its time on that one -- too much hate right now and too much risk of a Constitutional Amendment eradicating all the gains in the past decades).

We'll have to wait and see. It would be nice to see NJ leaders actually lead, do something right, and grant same-sex couples the right to marriage.

-John Locke

Death of Habeus Corpus

2006-10-19T22:40:00.000-04:00

For those of you who haven't seen it, the following link is a video of Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, talking about the death of Habeus Corpus -- the direct result of the Military Commissions Act.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ANvFdY0_6lo

The following is an email I wrote in support of Mr. Olbermann's editorial:

Dear Mr. Olbermann:

Thank you so much for speaking out against the Military Commissions Act; your speech was both impassioned and dead-on. Unfortunately, I have a feeling we will be seeing each other in the camps...

-John Locke

Here is a transcript of Mr. Olbermann's editorial:

And lastly as promised, a special comment tonight on the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the loss of habeas corpus.

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived as people in fear.

And now, our rights and our freedoms in peril, we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before and we have been here before led here by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.

We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,” most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese.”

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons. And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.
Many of the very people Wilson silenced survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900,000 votes, though his presidential campaign was conducted entirely from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt‘s internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States to the citizens of the United States whose lives it ruined.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons. In times of fright, we have been only human. We have let Roosevelt‘s “fear of fear itself” overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said, “the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass.”

We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists. Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

Or substitute the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

Or the Socialists.

Or the Anarchists.

Or the Immigrants.

Or the British.

Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always wrong.

“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush, your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act. You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly, of course, the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

But even within this history we have not before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And again, Mr. Bush, all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check, drawn against our freedom, to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check, drawn against our freedom, to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It‘s against our laws and it‘s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank, check drawn against our freedom, to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere, anywhere, but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere, anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant,” exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?

“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush, “in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.”

“Presumed innocent,” Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke the Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

“Access to an attorney,” Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

“Hearing all the evidence,” Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists, real or imagined, could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”
And did it even occur to you once, sir, somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations yesterday of the horrors of 9/11 -- that with only a little further shift in this world we now know, just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died—did it ever occur to you once that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future president and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “unlawful enemy combatant” for—and convene a Military Commission to try—not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And doubtless, Sir, all of them, as always, wrong.

California Courts Watch

2006-10-15T02:06:00.000-04:00

On Friday, October 6, 2006, in a 2-1 decision, the California Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s decision that declared that gays and lesbians had the constitutional right to marry in California. Among the many unconscionable things written in the decision, was the quote: “California law does not prohibit gays and lesbians from marrying, so long as they marry a person of the opposite sex.”

Wow. Who would have thought that the court system could be so enlightened… It is clear that the two judges who voted to overturn the trial court’s decision have no friends who are gay, because the opinions that they issued were so dramatically uneducated, it defies belief.

The “moderate” judge, who ruled that gays and lesbians do not have the right to get married concluded that IF sexual orientation is not a choice, then the denial of marriage rights to gays and lesbians would be “suspect” (subject to a higher level of judicial review) and thus implied that the ruling would have gone the other way.

Let’s see here… Who, among anyone who has a good friend who is gay or lesbian, believes even for a moment that your friend chose their sexual orientation – that they chose to be gay or lesbian? No? No one? That’s right folks, because people simply do not choose their sexual orientation.

If people did choose their sexual orientation, then it might happen something like this…

Scene: young boy, just turned 12 years old, sleeping in bedroom. Sun just beginning to rise through window, birds chirping.

Enter Father, stage right.

Father: Rise and shine, sleepyhead! Happy twelfth birthday, Son! Today’s the big day!

Son: (rubbing eyes) Wha???

Father: This is it! Your twelfth birthday!

Son: (Looks at clock) So? It’s six o’clock in the morning. I want to sleep!

Father: Come on, get up! Its time to decide your sexual orientation, Son!

Son: Huh? (More forcefully) What??

Father: (Exasperated) Today is the day you get to decide your sexual orientation!!!

Son: I heard you, but I don’t understand.

Father: (Laughing) Ok, Ok. I was so excited I forgot to explain… (Sits on side of bed, holding Parental Pamphlet) Everyone has to choose their sexual orientation, Son. There a number of orientations to choose from, but you have to pick one. Now, there’s no pressure, and your Mother and I will support whatever decision you make, but there comes a time in a person’s life when you have to pick an orientation, and that day is today!

Son: Oh. Ok. Go on.

Father: Well, like I said, you have a number of choices: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, etc… The list goes on (points at Pamphlet), but those are the main choices. There are some sub-choices, but let’s stay simple for now.

Son: Ok.

Father: To help you out, let me recap what each of the main four choices are:

Heterosexual: First off, let me start by saying what a FINE choice this would be. Both your Mother and I are firmly and completely 100% heterosexual! We made that choice years ago and we never looked back. No regrets at all! Heterosexual means that boys are attracted to girls and vice versa. Most everyone (at least 90% of the population) picks this one. And why wouldn’t they??? It’s definitely a great choice. Since most people are heterosexual, you will fit in with everyone else. No one will pick on you because you chose to be heterosexual. Choosing to be heterosexual means that you can get married to the person of your dreams (by definition a girl) and you and your wife can raise a family with all possible legal protections. Most people will assume you are heterosexual, and you will find it easy to make friends and make small talk about your family, which in turn will help you build a career at work. No one ever gets fired for being heterosexual, that’s for damn sure.

Ok, now homosexual: This means that instead of being attracted to girls, you will be attracted to boys. (Shudders) I can’t really think of any advantages to this, but I can think of a number of disadvantages. First, you will be in the minority. Less than 10% of the population is gay, so you will part of a pretty small minority. You may get picked on some. (Laughs). What am I saying??? You WILL get picked on. You may get beat up. Hell, some homosexuals even get killed because they are gay. So there’s that. To avoid getting picked on, beat up, or killed, many gays choose to live in the closet, which means they live secret lives and pretend that they are not homosexual; they have fewer true friends because they live in the closet, and are more prone to depression and suicide because society doesn’t accept them. You can get fired for being gay. Up until recently, in some states it was illegal for two consenting homosexual adults to have sex in private – however, the Supreme Court recently declared such laws unconstitutional. Many Americans are hoping that the current administration will appoint more conservative justices to the Court, and that decision can be overturned soon. With the exception of one state, you won’t be able to marry the person you are attracted to, and you will be discriminated against in terms of legal protections, taxes, and just about everything else. Oh yes, a lot of Americans (some of them not too stable, and some being politicians) believe that you will go to hell for being homosexual, and will say many nasty things about you. But since these people are criticizing a minority, their behavior is tolerated and sometimes rewarded.

Bisexual: This means you can go either way -- attracted to both boys and girls. Kind of like a switch hitter in baseball, I guess. This is not a bad choice -- certainly better than homosexual, but not as good as heterosexual in terms of societal acceptance. Not that society accepts bisexuals, mind you. Just that you can get away with being attracted to boys by publicly being attracted to girls. ‘Nuff said.

Transgender: Don’t understand this much. From the Parental Pamphlet I got a few weeks ago in preparation for your twelfth birthday, it seems that transgender people are confused. They can’t decide whether they want to be a boy or a girl. This confusion can range from just being a cross-dresser and, in the case of a boy, wanting to wear women’s clothing, to wanting to go all the way and change sexes. (Draws close and whispers) Means you get your you-know-what CUT OFF! (Leans back) Definitely not accepted by society -- can definitely get you fired. And you definitely don’t want to go announcing that you are transgender to anyone – like homosexual behavior, this can easily get you killed. Strictly speaking, being transgender is more about your own identity rather than who you are attracted to, but since you have to decide your orientation, you also have to decide your identity as well… Most people will just think you’re mentally unbalanced, so it’s probably better than we stop talking about this choice anyway.

Father: Anyway, so today you get to choose your sexual orientation. What’ll it be, Son?

Son: Hmmmm… So many choices… I guess… No… I… Uh….

Father: Come on, come on! Spit it out!

Son: (Excited) Ok. You convinced me: I want to be gay!

Father: (Face crumpling) WHAT?!? (Collapses on floor). I am a failure as a father! (Wails)

Son: (Laughing) Oh, come on Dad! I was just pulling your chain! I was kidding! I want to be heterosexual!

Father: (Shakily) Oh, my dear Jesus. You had me there, I must say. Whew! (Wipes sweat off brow).

Son: Come on, Dad! Do you think I am stupid? Why on earth would I CHOOSE to be gay??? That’s ridiculous!

Father: (Big grin) Yep, sure is, Son! Hey! Why don’t you pull the same trick on your Mother? She will just DIE! (Snickers and smacks Son on back). Then we can all go celebrate!

Exit Father and Son, stage right.

Yeeeeeessssssssss… We all choose our sexual orientation. Riiiiiiight... Because we can all remember that special day when we chose what our sexual orientation would be, right? But apparently, the judge in the case was looking for specific scientific proof and evidence that people do not chose their sexual orientation; and if that proof had been provided, the judge would have voted the other way. But it’s hard to prove scientifically that we don’t choose our orientation, even though no one EVER talks about making such a decision.

Recent cases in other states have been decided equally stupidly. My favorite argument in the New York Supreme Case (which ruled against gays’ and lesbians’ right to marry) was that marriage is to protect heterosexual couples’ babies, since heterosexual couples can get pregnant accidentally, and thus need more legal protections to help hold their families together. Since homosexual couples cannot get pregnant accidentally, those couples will only get pregnant or adopt children when their relationships are already stable, so they don’t need the legal protection that heterosexual couples need. My jaw hit the floor when I heard that argument.

Anyway, the California case will now be decided by the California Supreme Court, which is not a surprise -- the case was always going to end up there no matter what the Appeals Court decision was. I just hope the Supreme Court is more enlightened than the Appeals Court, because the Appeals Court decision was pretty stupid.

-John Locke

Reality Check in Iraq and the Upcoming Election Watch

2006-10-13T02:21:00.000-04:00

OK, so, we’ve now been fighting the Iraq war for over three and a half years. And it’s been three years, five and a half months since Bush victoriously landed on the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and delivered a stirring speech, declaring an “end to major combat,” with a huge “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging over his shoulder. So, heading into the mid-term elections, it seems fitting to see how we’re doing and how this administration and this Republican-led congress are doing...

At the time Bush declared an end to major combat, only 137 US military members had been killed. Today, we’ve lost a total of 2757 soldiers, and 20,895 soldiers have been wounded.

Even before the war, Rumsfeld announced that the war “could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” Cheney echoed this daft assessment, saying, “I think it will go relatively quickly… weeks rather than months.” We’re now almost three and a half YEARS into this war, and the US Army just announced that it is planning to keep the existing level of troops in Iraq until 2010. Of course, the Army claims that they can scale down the level of troops at any time… But just when exactly do they think that the violence and civil war are going to end?

On March 16, 2003, Cheney went a step further in a Press the Meat interview; Cheney was asked “If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?” Cheney’s response: “Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.”

Liberators, eh? In a recent poll, over two thirds of Iraqis indicated their desire to see our American troops dead. They don’t want us to liberate them anymore; they don’t want us to leave; they want us dead. Iraqis who blow up our soldiers are heroes to the Iraqis, not terrorists. Anyone think that Abu Ghraib and Bush's policies advocating torture (among many other things we have done or not done) might have contributed to this?

On December 30, 2002, Budget Director Daniels predicted that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion. Counting next year’s budget, we’ve now committed very close to half a trillion dollars to this war. Let’s see what half a trillion dollars looks like, written out: $500,000,000,000,000. That seems like a lot.

Remember the “Coalition of the Willing”? We were told that 49 countries were willing to help out in the war. “You forgot Poland!” wailed Bush during a debate with John Kerry. Poland has now reduced its forces to 900 and has committed to keeping them there, possibly until 2007 (only a few months away). Thanks, Poland! Even the Brits -- who really empowered Bush’s megalomaniacal push towards war -- are wavering; Britain’s top military commander announced today that the Brits’ presence was exacerbating the situation in Iraq and aggravating the security situation around the world. I predict that soon after Blair quits, the Brits will be going home…

Remember the claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction that started off this entire thing??? None were found, and as it turns out, Iraq had abandoned its attempts to building biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons long before the war.

Remember the claims that Iraq was harboring Al Quaida? That was also not true, since Saddam Hussein hated and feared Al Quaida.

Remember the claim that as the Iraqis stand up, our forces will stand down? Our troop levels are essentially unchanged. And the Iraqis lose 25 police officers a day. So the Iraqi security forces are not standing up; they’re dying.

Well, okay, we might have messed up a little, but at least we got Saddam Hussein, right? Hussein is alleged to have caused the deaths of 100,000 to 200,000 Iraqis in a period of approximately 20 years. Not exactly a great guy – in fact, clearly an evil guy.

However, as it turns out, we beat him hands down. A study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and funded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that as of June, 2006, an estimated 655,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the war – that’s about 2.5% of the total population in Iraq. Over 600,000 of those deaths were violent in nature; and an estimated 30% or so were caused directly by Coalition forces. And that’s just in three and a half years.

Now up until this paper was published today, the most authoritative count of civilian casualties was thought to be from the Iraq Body Count, which estimates that there have been between 44,000 and 49,000 reported civilians killed – based on news reports, not interviewing actual civilians. I note that the IBC has correctly and ethically declined to comment on the Johns Hopkins study until they have studied it.

Bush however, was willing to state that he was sure that the study was flawed, even before the study was published and even before he or anyone on his staff had read the report. Bush did not indicate any specific complaints or criticism regarding the methods used – he just declared that it was wrong. Note that General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command has declared that “We don’t do body counts,” so if the military is not counting, it’s not clear on what authority Bush was relying when he denied the possibility that our actions and inactions had killed well over half a million Iraqis. Most of the time, US and British officials decline to say how many Iraqis we have killed; now, however, they all seem quite happy to name 50,000 as a rough number. Even if it’s only 50,000 – which I doubt – how is this a success??? This is in three and a half years. Even assuming that the number of Iraqi deaths is somehow only magically 50,000, we will likely surpass Saddam Hussein’s achievement within a few years, since the violence is continuing to increase, not decrease. After seeing the carnage on television day after day and reading about how we killed X number of insurgents here and Y number of insurgents there, and Z number of tortured bodies were found across Bagdad, and M number of car bombs went off, killing N number of passersby – all in one day – I have to believe that the number of Iraqi casualties is far closer to the 655,000 estimate than the 50,000 estimate.

In the meantime, Bush is running around the country, campaigning for whatever Republican that is willing to be seen in public with him, and repeatedly claiming that the Democrats have become the party of “Cut and Run”. Even some Republicans are now demanding a change in strategery for Iraq. When asked if he can think of any mistakes he’s made since he became President, Bush seems unable to think of any significant missteps. Yet he proclaims anyone who disagrees with him as weak on defense, and implies that they are traitors. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and Ronald Dumsfeld and all the Republican strategists echo the same stupid mantras. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. If you don’t support the President, you are a traitor. If you don’t believe that we should stay the course, you want to “cut and run”.

I don’t know if any of the Republicans are watching the same war that I am watching, but I no longer think we are losing this war; I think we have lost. I think every single thing about this war has been a colossal fuck up (excuse the profanity). I don’t have any great answers to the problems in Iraq. I know that no matter what we do, civil war is a foregone conclusion, since it is happening right now. The best we could do if Bush and the Republicans were not in charge would be to withdraw from view (similar to John Murtha’s plan) and see if we can get the UN or Arab nations to help stop the insanity that we created. That’s the best I can offer. In the meantime, it seems that we have managed to lose Afghanistan as well… But that’s a separate topic.

Given that all the polls show that the Republicans have lost the edge for every single major issue, including “morality” and “security”, I fully expect Bush to announce a major “shift” in policy, or to try to scare Americans by tweaking the Terror Color Code, or to whip up a foiled terror attack, or some other such nonsense right before the election. And all I can say is, in the upcoming elections, please, please, please vote against any and all Republicans. I don’t care who they are; I don’t care whether they are running for national, state, or local offices. Vote against them, because we really need a system of checks and balances in our government, and you can’t have that when one political party controls all three branches of government. The Republicans got us here, and now it’s time for them to go.

Long Live the Republic

-John Locke

PS. Dear NSA, CIA, FBI, KGB, and Bush: I am not a terrorist. I love the US. Please don't spy on me.

What is Joe Loserman doing?

2006-08-10T15:42:00.000-04:00

I just sent in this email to Mr. Lieberman, who after losing his primary, has announced that he's creating a new party so he can run in the general election...

Dear Senator Lieberman:

I am a registered Democrat and am offended by your recent antics. While it is clear that you are trying to hold onto your job at any price, I believe you are doing an incredible disservice to the Democratic party. The primaries are intended to let voters of each party choose their desired candidates. You worked within this system for years without complaint, yet when Democrats denied you the right to represent them, you attempted an "end-around" that subverted the process; you even went so far as to create a bogus political party to further your goals. This is as unethical as it is distracting.

The majority of Americans believe the Iraq war is going poorly; the majority of Americans believe that the war was not a good idea; a majority of Americans believe that the country is going in the wrong direction; and a majority of Americans disapprove of President Bush and his policies. You claim that you represent the citizens of Connecticut, yet you CLEARLY do not represent them well. Now, Republicans such as Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman, and Dick Cheney are openly campaigning FOR you!

As a registered Democrat, I urge you to step aside from this insanity and back the winner of your party's primary. Howard Dean and countless others have done it, why can't you?

-John Locke

Pakistani Plutonium

2006-07-25T17:07:00.000-04:00

In other good news, Pakistan is moving towards plutonium production, and the administration knew about it and has been hiding this knowledge from Congress. Atrios remarks,

Like every other sentient being on the planet I'm rather confused by our policies towards Pakistan. We're generally led to believe that Bin Laden is hanging out there along with some of his pals. It's a dictatorship with an unclear line of succession if that dictator ever accidentally gets in the way of an assassin's bullet. They have an active nuclear program. Their top nuclear scientist was handing out nuclear technology like candy on Halloween. The country promptly pardoned him for this and we didn't say a thing. Oh, and for the Malkins of the world THEY'RE ALL BIG SCARY MUSLIMS.

And, just for fun, they have a new plutonium plant. And the Bush administration hid this fact from Congress. Probably for the best, as Republicans were busy readying legislation to make Bush Supreme Exalted Emperor of the Universe even though Alberto keeps telling them not to bother as the AUMF ALREADY made him Supreme Exalted Emperor of the Universe.

GOP Brain-Worm

2006-07-25T16:55:00.000-04:00

Here is a short, edited clip of General Wesley Clark trying to reason with a bunch of Faux news viewers concerning the Middle East, and to explain why “Kill them all and let God sort it out” isn’t necessarily a good policy position. I suppose he makes some headway. What is interesting about this clip is what the audience members say. Clark tries to explain why diplomacy and dialog with other countries is a good thing. But the audience keeps throwing up their hands in despair at ever being abl e to communicate with the people of Syria, or Lebanon, or Iran. “How do you negotiate with people who want to kill you?” seems to be the battle cry of everyone who is too lazy to do the hard work of talking with their fellow human beings, and would rather just shoot them, or bomb them, or drop white phosphorus (which creates burns which don’t stop burning, even on babies!) on them. How wonderful that this particular sentiment has embedded itself into the populace, and how convenient that it works in the favor of this administration.

The act of negotiation, which can be accomplished with 99.99% of the world’s population, requires a de facto humanizing of the people on the other side of the table. You must acknowledge them, you must listen to them, and you must try to think like them. You must try to understand them, and this is something that the Bush administration must not allow. And so “how do you talk to people who are (threatening us, terrorists, Muslims, brown-skinned, ‘crazy’[see Kim Jong Il], bent on destroying our way of life, etc.)” is tossed out into the public conversation, to show just how futile all that “talking” is anyway.

Better to just kill others. Kudos for Clark for trying to reason with the Faux news crowd.

Beach Reading

2006-07-25T16:22:00.000-04:00

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, and I wanted to point to some good books for people to check out when they head to the beach.

Tragedy & Farce, John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney

This is one I hadn’t heard much about in the media, but it is an extremely astute look at the media: its history, why it has failed, and what might be done about it. Nichols and McChesney blame the corporate media for the failure in reporting what was going on before the Iraq war, for doing a terrible job of policing the Democratic primary race, and for atrocious coverage of the 2004 election. They pinpoint the problems of concentrated media ownership and explain how it came about and what they prescribe to lessen its impact. They end with a description of some grass roots organizations that have media reform as their primary goal, including an organization, FreePress, which they started themselves as an umbrella group to create more public participation in media policy decisions. As an example, they discuss broadband internet coverage in communities, and how that battle will be fought by large monopolies like cable companies.

The book features several exclusive interviews, including one with Howard Dean and one with John Kerry. They make the case that Kucinich, alone among the Democratic presidential candidates, understood the problem of the media, but they credit Dean with figuring the problem out as his candidacy went on. They also politely point out the ways in which Kerry signaled he had no clue about the problem of the media, and how that hobbled the Democratic run.

It’s an extremely lively read, with an emphasis on the proper, vital role of an honest media in a democracy, and how our broken media has ushered in tragedy (the Iraq war) and farce (election 2004). They discuss the “Dean scream”, Rathergate, Bush’s wire in the first debate, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and the media’s incredible coddling of Bush.

Crashing the Gate, Jerome Armstrong and Markos Zuniga

Jerome and Markos are two of the earliest and most successful progressive bloggers. This book really discusses the make up and dynamics of the Democratic party, and why they lose so many elections – and what can be done about it. The first problem they describe is the machinery of the party as made up of several separate interest groups: labor, environmentalists, women’s groups, etc., and how the party has continued to act as a collection of these groups, rather than including these groups and citizens at large as members of a larger progressive coalition. Another problem with the progressive movement is a failure to identify, fund, and nurture young talent. Conservatives bankroll large numbers of writers, activists, and politicians through the early parts of their careers, and Armstrong and Zuniga describe the beginnings of such infrastructure on the progressive side. They also describe several tactical failings of the Democratic party in the last 30 years or so, including only concentrating (and sometimes only contesting) certain “battleground” states and congressional seats. This strategy is being reversed now by DNC chair Dean and his “50 state strategy”, but the damage has been severe.

The heart of their critique of the Democratic Washington insider culture is really their description of how Democratic consultants, who get paid huge sums of campaign funds whether their clients win or lose, have a lock on the campaign gravy train. It works like this: say you are someone running for a House seat. You need lots of money for your campaign, and the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), whose job it is to allocate campaign funds for the party for these races, says, “OK, we will give you some money, but you must hire our buddies as your campaign consultants and managers, and they will make your commercials and report back to us as to whether you are ‘behaving’”. These chummy consultants then get their huge fees whether they win the races or not, and innovative campaigning, especially campaigning focused on local issues and strengths, is stifled. It’s maddening to read about this corrupt system, especially when you think about all the people who were eating ramen noodles so they could contribute another $10 to Kerry’s campaign in 2004, and especially when you consider that Bob Shrum, who has been a campaign consultant on seven losing Democratic presidential campaigns (seven!) was again hired to make more millions on Kerry’s campaign, making his record 0-8. The GOP, as corrupt and full of cronyism as it is, would never put up with that kind of failure. The problem is described in much more detail by Amy Sullivan in this article, “Fire the Consultants”.

Another interesting insight in the book is the effect of the McCain-Feingold act on campaign financing. It seems that people on all sides agree that McCain-Feingold gutted the Democratic party’s financing system when it came online in 2002. They had been depending on huge, corporate donors, unlike the GOP which had many smaller contributors (that’s a non-obvious reversal in how we normally think of the parties). Many of the national Democratic leaders thought it was going to be the death knell for the Democratic party, and so the GOP was happy to go along with getting it passed. Why would Russ Feingold be part of such a piece of legislation when it would hurt the Democrats so disproportionately? Feingold may have saved the soul of the Democratic party with this legislation. He cut off the big money donors and is forcing the Democrats to turn to smaller donors, the actual people they represent, for financing. He did it deliberately, and it actually poses a good chance of ending the lock that corporations have on Democrats’ actions.

Finally, there is this description of what Armstrong, Zuniga, and many people saw in Dean’s candidacy in 2003. It’s too good to pass up:

On March 15, 2003, when [Dean] spoke at California’s annual state Democratic Party gathering at the convention center in Sacramento, Dean was still registering below 5 percent nationally in the polls. We were there expecting the usual Republican-lite speeches, but hoping for more. The evening before, we had watched John Kerry give a “keynote address” that was so long and failed on so many levels it was tragically comic – the convention hall lighting was too dim, the speaker system never worked, and Kerry made bad jokes about his prostrate. The crowd milled around uninterested while Kerry labored on, his wife Theresa fidgeting by his side. The next afternoon, a prerecorded address from Joe Lieberman provoked hissing from the generally liberal crowd. John Edwards elicited boos and catcalls as he attempted to defend his support for a war that was about to start. The crowd, a few thousand of the party diehards in California, was getting a close look at the men seeking the Democratic nod, and not liking what it saw.

And then Howard Dean walked on stage.

“What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President’s unilateral intervention in Iraq?”

That brought loud cheers from the delegates.

“What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting tax cuts which have bankrupted this country and given us the largest deficit in the history of the United States?”

More cheers. Dean certainly had the crowd’s full attention, and he was just getting warmed up.

“What I want to know is why the Congress is fighting over the Patient’s Bill of Rights? The Patient’s Bill of Rights is a good bill, but not one more person gets health insurance and it’s not five cents cheaper. What I want to know is why the Democrats in Congress aren’t standing up for us joining every other industrialized country on the face of the earth in having health insurance for every man, woman, and child in America?”

By now the chants of “Dean! Dean!” had begun and the crowd was on its feet.

“What I want to know is why so many folks in Congress are voting for the President’s education bill – the ‘No School Board Left Standing’ bill – the largest unfunded mandate in the history of our educational system?”

And then Dean fed that “red meat” crowd a line borrowed from the late Paul Wellstone which resonated with them.

“I’m Howard Dean, and I’m here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”.

Dean then blasted both John Kerry and John Edwards for their support of the Iraq War, talked about how he’d balanced the budget in Vermont and how every child under eighteen was covered under Medicaid in Vermont. He then wound up the crowd a bit more.

“We are not going to beat George Bush by voting with the president 85 percent of the time. The only way that we’re going to beat George Bush is to say what we mean, to stand up for who we are, to lift up a Democratic agenda against the Republican agenda, because if you do that, the Democratic agenda wins every time.”

On a roll and all pumped up by now, Dean raised his voice louder as he closed his speech.

“I want my country back! We want our country back! I’m tired of being divided! I don’t want to listen to fundamentalist preachers anymore! I want America to look like America, where we are all included, hand in hand, walking down. We have a dream. We can only reach the dream if we are all together- black and white, gay and straight, man and woman. America! The Democratic Party!”

The crowd was on its feet, the convention hall shaking from audience pandemonium, the speech serving as liberation of sorts – a vindication for every party activist who had lived through the Democratic Party’s “abused puppy” routine the previous two years.

I love that description. I heard a similar speech by Dean at a fundraiser in Philadelphia about two months after that, and was similarly moved. There is a brief description in the book about how the Democratic Party establishment then moved to crush Dean’s candidacy, and just how effective it was in doing that. If only they could have done the same to Bush.

Cheney, the anti-Madison

2006-06-22T16:01:00.000-04:00

James Madison feared a tyrannical executive branch. He wanted to keep the executive branch weak, certainly weak enough to be checked by Congress.

Madison knew how very easy it was for an executive branch to seize powers not granted to them, though. One recipe for vast expansion of presidential power was during a time of war. Madison wrote

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions, and the most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

Madison saw clearly that having a war was like a goody bag for the president. He gets to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, gets to dispense public money, gets to heap the reflected glow of military success on himself. And no one can usually stop him. War is fantastic for the executive branch. It’s the best thing that can happen to it.

Of course, war sucks for the people fighting and dying, the people being brutalized and driven out of their homes, the people footing the bill, and the people who have to give up rights under an increased executive. But next to the temptations of war, Madison saw that the executive branch would have to be checked.

His formula for preventing or reducing frivolous wars fought merely to aggrandize the executive was for Congress to have the power to declare war, not the president. And, the press’s job, the most important job they had, was to inform the citizenry of the truth of what the executive was claiming. Thus, the media’s true function, as emphasized by Madison, was to help to prevent frivolous wars, which would lead to tyranny.

We have not been immune to frivolous wars in this country, of course. For at least a century, from the Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin to the mythical murdered Kuwaiti incubator babies, executive lies have been used to get us into, or get us deeper into, wars of executive choice.

But suppose someone came to power who thought that the executive was really much weaker than he thought it should be. Suppose, instead of looking at tyranny as a bad thing, this hypothetical person looked at it instead as the goal. What could he do? Taking Madison’s warning as a playbook, he sees that in the absence of a strong press, if he makes unnecessary war, he can achieve tyranny.

Such a person exists in our vice president. Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld as well, have long been on the record as not understanding the reining in of executive power after the excesses of Nixon to be necessary. Instead, they perceive the powers that Nixon seized, including illegal surveillance, to be well within the sphere of their desired tyrannical state. Take, for example, Cheney’s recent Q&A at a press club luncheon:

Q You have talked about reclaiming the powers of the presidency that was lost following Watergate, in fact when President Ford had taken office, and you've talked about the notion of the unitary executive. Should there be any limits, and if so, what?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't believe I've ever talked about the unitary executive. Others may have suggested that I talked about that.

But I clearly do believe, and have spoken directly about the importance of a strong presidency, and that I think there have been times in the past, oftentimes in response to events such as Watergate or the war in Vietnam, where Congress has begun to encroach upon the powers and responsibilities of the President; that it was important to go back and try to restore that balance.

I participated in the Iran-Contra investigation in the Congress. For those of you who are bored and don't have anything else to do, there are minority views we filed with that report that lay out a view with respect to how we think the balance ought to exist between the executive and the legislative in the conduct of national security policy. So I do believe there is a -- it's very important to have a strong executive.
What are the limits? The limits are the Constitution. And, certainly, we need to and do adhere to those limitations. But I think if you look at things like the War Powers Act, for example, adopted in the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict, that that was an infringement on the President's ability to deploy troops. It's never really been tested. I think it's probably unconstitutional. There are a series of events like that that we believed needed to have the balance righted, if you will, and I think we've done that successfully.

Congratulations, Mr. Cheney. You wanted to be able to “deploy troops” whether or not the Congress approved (forget having the Congress declare war, that notion is long gone) and you’ve got it. You wanted to be able to spy on your fellow citizens, as is the executive’s right, and you got it. You just needed to start a pointless war, and suddenly there are no barriers to your powers. Want to remove any constitutional rights? Just declare them suspended under “national security” concerns. We are, as we are CONSTANTLY being reminded, “at war”.

Now does it become clear why the GOP plan for Iraq is to stay there forever? The Iraq war is not a means to any particular end, it is the end itself. The more chaos created there, the longer the executive will have to gobble up tyrannical powers (and also make its members exceedingly rich). That’s why they get so panicked when the Democrats talk about leaving Iraq. Ending our involvement in the war will take away their excuse to do whatever they want. That’s why the GOP keeps trying to equate withdrawal with defeat. It would be a defeat for their plans to practice unhindered corruption.

In reality, Bush has already announced that Iraq will be a problem for future presidents to solve. So, we won’t get out until at least January 2009, regardless of who says what between now and then. We’re in for about three more years of increasing tyranny, and I shudder to think what will happen between now and then.

TGFQ

2006-05-13T01:53:00.000-04:00

Thank God for Qwest!

Of the four largest telecommunications companies, only Qwest had the courage and conviction to stand up to the NSA and demand a court order for production of telephone data of all their customers. According to the USAToday, AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth all rolled over and played nice with the NSA, providing massive amounts of data regarding who called whom when and for how long over the past four and a half years. The stated goal of this NSA project is to “compile a database of all calls in the United States”.

Q: Why is the Qwest refusal so important? A: Because it gives us a glimpse into the NSA’s illegal program. Here’s what we can infer from Qwest’s refusal:

1. By its own actions, even the NSA doesn’t believe that their data gathering is legal. After all, if the NSA thought that the program was legal and would be approved by the FISA court (or any other federal court), all they would have to do was ask for a court order or warrant and, if the program was legal, they would have gotten approval. It’s that simple. The FISA court grants almost every request for warrants -- they almost never deny a request. So, it’s clear that the NSA does not believe that their program is legal. When asked for legal back-up, the NSA backed down and left Qwest alone.

2. Even the NSA doesn’t believe that this program is very valuable from a terrorist-catching standpoint. After all, if the goal was to create a national database of ALL calls made in the US, allowing the fourth largest telecommunications company with 14 million customers to opt out of the program would clearly prevent accomplishment of the goal. Also, if the goal is to catch terrorists, what if the terrorists have Qwest as their telephone service provider? The NSA could miss apprehending the terrorists simply because of dumb luck. Not a very impressive way to run the world’s most secretive intelligence agency! The best explanation for NSA’s failure to pursue Qwest is that NSA is not solely interested in the data just to catch terrorists.

A number of conservative leaders and commentators have jumped to the defense of the program -- most of whom don’t know anything about the program other than what was reported in USAToday. I watched with disbelief and extreme disdain the Judiciary Committee debate regarding the recently revealed spying program… Republican Senator after Republican Senator expounded on the belief that the program is legal, that the NSA was “only” given telephone numbers and data, and that the NSA was not spying on average Americans… All of which were refuted in the USAToday article.

1. The program is illegal. It violates the 1934 Telecommunications Act, which made it illegal for phone companies to give out any information about their customers, including who they call, who calls them, how often they call, and how the calls are routed. It also violates a series of laws enacted in the late 1970s that were designed to strengthen privacy laws regarding telecommunications. So, the program is clearly illegal.

2. The fact that the telecommunications companies (except Qwest) gave “only” telephone numbers and data to the NSA means nothing. The government already has databases linking telephone numbers with names, addresses, and social security numbers. Remember your tax return from just a month or so ago? If you wrote the government a check to help cover the cost of the Iraq war, your check probably had your phone number on it, didn’t it? Even if the government didn’t get your phone number from your check, there are easy ways to find out the name of the person associated with a phone number… You can go to www.anywho.com and find out the name associated with a given phone company for free. For free. If anywho can do this for free for fun, you can bet your @ss that the US government can do that and much much more. So, your phone numbers ARE personal identification numbers that directly link your name with your calling habits -- all very private information that historically has required a court order.

3. One Republican Senator had the cajones to claim that the NSA was clearly only collecting phone data for a few people linked to Al Qaida. Let’s see… If more than 200 million Americans are members of Al Qaida, then I think we have lost the war. Apparently, the Senator failed to fully read the USAToday article before leaping to the defense of the program.

I am going to say this very clearly: Any Senator who defends this program or any other other illegal NSA warrantless spying programs is abdicating his or her sworn duty to uphold the Constitution as part of a system of checks and balances. The legislative branch’s duty is to be part of a system of checks and balances that prevents either the judicial or the executive branches from gaining too much power. Remember your social studies classes in middle school? Remember the SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES???

President Bush is not my king and if he acts like a king, he needs to be impeached and removed from power. No person is above the law, yet Mr. Bush is clearly ignoring legal and Constitutional limits to his power. I don’t care if Bush is a Republican or a Democrat, my liberty is precious to me. Bush needs to be impeached. And any Senator who defends Bush’s illegal programs is a traitor.

As for the bastard phone companies, I, for one, look forward to joining in the class action lawsuit against them for violating my privacy and betraying my trust.

My prediction: in a few weeks or months, we will learn that the NSA has also coopted the four companies with the most concentrated and sensitive information imaginable -- Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. By linking telephone numbers with names with calling patterns, with credit card purchases, with Internet usage, with phone conversations, the US government will have developed a massive blackmailing capability beyond the wildest wet dreams of even J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, or Senator Joseph McCarthy. And all in the name of stopping "Terror".

Long Live the Republic!

-John Locke

PS. Dear NSA, CIA, FBI, KGB, and Bush:
I am not a terrorist. I love the US. Please don't spy on me.

The NSA - Illegally Spying on Americans

2006-05-11T19:16:00.000-04:00

I don’t know if anyone reads these posts, but in the hopes that someone out there is listening…

Today, we found out that the Bush Administration’s claims that the National Security Agency (NSA) does not mine personal data from phone calls and does not spy on Americans are simply not true. According to USAToday, the NSA has developed a massive database that documents what numbers you call, what phone calls you receive, when the phone calls occur, and how long you talk. According to one source, the goal of this spying program is “to create a database of every call ever made.” AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth are all apparently guilty of colluding with the US Government to provide this data. Combined, these three telephone giants serve over 200 million US citizens. The only major telecommunications company that refused to cooperate was Qwest. Good for you, Qwest!

Although USAToday’s sources state that the names of people associated with each phone number are not being turned over by these phone companies, the sources point out that the government already has databases that link names with phone numbers, so the NSA has the ability to determine exactly who you called and who called you.

The USA article can be found here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-11-nsa-reax_x.htm

Remember that leading up to the 2004 election, Bush publicly stated that, “Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

As it turns out, that was SIMPLY NOT TRUE. A good summary of all the untruths by the Bush Administration relating to illegal wiretaps can be found at this site:
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/12/bush_on_wiretap.html

Then, when the story broke last December that the NSA was conducting wiretaps on Americans without court orders, and without the required judicial or legislative oversight, the President insisted that at least one person on the line had to be an Al Qaeda operative or be suspected of being a terrorist operative.

In April of 2006, Mark Klein, an AT&T technician, reported to the New York Times that AT&T was routing Internet data into NSA computers. Mr. Klein stated that AT&T was tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T’s Internet circuits), “Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA. And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals' phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens.”

An account of what Mr. Klein witnessed can be found here:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70619-0.html

On May 2, 2006, AT&T petitioned a San Francisco court for an injunction so that they won’t have to testify about what they have been doing because they claimed the information was a protected state secret. This seemed extremely suspicious -- almost certainly corroborating Mr. Klein’s report.

Now, we find out that the NSA has been collecting information about nearly every phone call made in the US -- information that typically requires a court order to be obtained.

Bush has neither confirmed nor denied the veracity of this new discovery, but since it would have been very easy to deny such a program in today's news conference if it didn’t exist, Occam’s Razor (the simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation) dictates that the program clearly does exist. Frankly, who knows, it could even be more sinister than USAToday reports…

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR ON THE PART OF OUR GOVERNMENT!

THE NSA’S ACTIVITIES ARE CLEARLY ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS BROKEN NEARLY EVERY PRIVACY LAW ON THE BOOKS AND NEEDS TO BE STOPPED.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN AMERICA, PLEASE CALL OR WRITE YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES AND LET THEM KNOW THAT THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOR IS UNACCEPTABLE AND UNAMERICAN.

NOTHING LESS THAN YOUR FREEDOM AND PRIVACY ARE AT STAKE.

-John Locke

Hayden Watch

2006-05-08T23:49:00.000-04:00

Hayden Watch

President Bush has nominated Mike Hayden to be the next head of the CIA. "Mike Hayden is supremely qualified for this position," Bush proclaimed in his press conference.

Much as I hate to do it, I have to agree with President Bush on this one; I agree that Hayden is supremely qualified to violate the Constitutional rights of all US citizens...

Interestingly, here's what Mr. Hayden said in a speech in 2000: (I got this helpful transcript from the NSA website itself!)

"Those of us who have been around awhile recall hearing about the Church and Pike investigations of the mid-1970s. After lengthy investigations, the House and Senate committees concluded that NSA had not given appropriate weight to privacy considerations in conducting its signals intelligence mission."As a result, Congress passed a law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act regulating electronic surveillance in the United States. Both houses of Congress established permanent intelligence oversight committees to ensure compliance. Moreover, President Ford issued an Executive Order which both authorized and set limits on the conduct of intelligence activities. As a result, the legal and policy context for intelligence activities was forever and dramatically changed.
"Now, if you've seen "Enemy of the State" you might believe that the intelligence gathering mission offers the greatest threat to the privacy of network users. Like many people, you may not be aware of the laws and regulations under which the NSA operates, and the rigorous oversight applied to those operations to ensure our compliance."So how do we reconcile the government's need for foreign intelligence information with the need to protect individual privacy rights? We do this through a series of procedures outlined in the Executive Order, approved by the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, and vetted with the Congressional intelligence oversight committees.
"The procedures recognize two important facts: first, there are times when a government needs to collect information about its citizens. The circumstances under which this is allowed to occur either inside or outside the U.S. are extremely limited and well-regulated. Basically, there must be probable cause that a person is an agent of a foreign power and a court must issue a warrant authorizing the surveillance inside the U.S."

It's actually quite a good speech. You can read the entire speech at the following address: http://www.nsa.gov/releases/relea00006.cfm

Similarly, in April 2000, Mr. Hayden testified to the House Select Committee on Intelligence:

"The Seventies were a watershed for the Intelligence Community. Congressional investigating committees, led by Senator Frank Church and Congressman Otis Pike, found that Government agencies, including NSA, conducted a number of improper intelligence activities directed against U.S. citizens. The revelations of these committees resulted in new rules for U.S. intelligence agencies, rules meant to inhibit abuses while preserving our intelligence capabilities. In other words, a concerted effort was made to balance the country's need for foreign intelligence information with the need to protect core individual privacy rights.
"A wide-ranging, new intelligence oversight structure was built into U.S. law. A series of laws and Executive Orders established oversight procedures and substantive limitations on intelligence activities. In the aftermath of the Church and Pike committees' revelations, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which created a procedural structure with a special court for considering and approving certain surveillances that occur in the U.S. and thus have the potential to affect rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The House and Senate each established intelligence oversight committees. President Ford issued an Executive Order that established for the first time a formal system of intelligence oversight in the Executive Branch. Oversight mechanisms were established within the Department of Justice and within each intelligence agency. The President also established an independent Intelligence Oversight Board.
"The result today at NSA is an intelligence gathering system that operates within detailed, constitutionally-based, substantive, and procedural limits under the watchful eyes of Congress, numerous institutions within the Executive Branch, and --through the FISA --the judiciary. The privacy framework is technology neutral and does not require amendment to accommodate new communications technologies."

Wow. Also a good speech. You can read the whole thing at: http://www.nsa.gov/releases/relea00069.cfm

WAIT A MINUTE! Hayden's speeches in 2000 appear to conflict directly with his most recent speech on January 23, 2006, where he defended the warrantless spying program of the Bush Administration:

QUESTION: "Sam Husseini from IPA Media. You just now spoke of, quote, "two paths," but of course the FISA statute itself says that it will be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance may be pursued. Are you not, therefore, violating the law?"

GEN. HAYDEN: "That's probably a question I should deflect to the Department of Justice, but as I said in my comments, I have an order whose lawfulness has been attested to by the attorney general, an order whose lawfulness has been attested to by NSA lawyers who do this for a living. No, we're not violating the law."

QUESTION: "The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "we reasonably believe"; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, "we have probable cause." And so what many people believe -- and I'd like you to respond to this -- is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place in probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?"

GEN. HAYDEN: "Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order. Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable."

WHOOOOPS!!

Turns out that the NSA people have "lernt" everything wrong regarding the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

So, actually, while Mr. Hayden was spewing propaganda at his January 23, 2006 press conference, he actually revealed that as head of the NSA, he completely and utterly failed his Constitutional test, stating that searches and seizures must be reasonable and do not require "probable cause". This re-writing of the Constitution by Mr. Hayden is extremely dangerous, and is why I oppose his nomination to head of the CIA. This man is dangerous to our liberty and freedom. As head of the NSA, he has been spying on Americans without warrants and in clear and knowing violation of FISA. SHAME!!!

In 2000, Hayden repeatedly admitted that the NSA had participated in a number of improper intelligence activities against Americans in the 1970s and that Congress had responded by limiting NSA's activities via FISA. In 2000, Hayden admitted that FISA prevents the NSA from spying on Americans without a warrant and that a series of checks and balances from all three branches of government "forever" (his word) precluded NSA from warrantless spying.

In 2006, without any changes whatsoever to the FISA law, Hayden insists that he and the NSA can now "end-around" FISA because of an executive order, and that the NSA can thumb its nose at the judicial and legislative branches of government, creating a new lower standard of "reasonableness" that is not part of any check-and-balance system in the government. Without Congressional or judicial oversight, Mr. Hayden and the NSA can spy on whomever they want -- including political opponents of the corrupt Bush Administration. SHAME ON YOU, MR. HAYDEN!!! You are not an American. You are a despot. I despise you!

Long Live the Republic!

-John Locke

Hypocrite Watch

2006-05-06T20:33:00.000-04:00

Hypocrite Watch I

Last week, President Bush (the Second) had the strength and conviction to stand up to all the Hispanic immigrants in the US and declare that he finds the idea of singing the National Anthem in Spanish inappropriate.

“I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English…” Bush declared.

Wow. That was a coherent, well put-together thought! Too bad it’s not true. Turns out that at a number of fund raising and campaign events leading up to the 2000 election, Bush -- pretending to be a “compassionate conservative” (whatever that is) and trying to scare up a few Hispanic votes -- appeared at a number of Hispanic events where the National Anthem was sung in Spanish. He never seemed to take issue with it -- particularly when he was trying to win votes and collect money.

So Bush wins the Hypocrite Award for the week. Way to go!

Bush also wins the Intolerant, Uncompassionate, Unconservative Award for the week as well. Why?

Because heaven forbid that an illegal immigrant who risked his or her life to cross the border be allowed to sing the National Anthem in their native tongue! Have you ever tried to learn a foreign language? It’s freakin’ hard, even when you are in high school. When you are an adult, it’s almost impossible. So I hardly think Bush’s comments were appropriate, given that Bush himself can’t speak a foreign language. Furthermore, the fact that any immigrant wants to sing the National Anthem is incredible at this point. After the furor caused by the Republicans over the immigration bill, no immigrant could watch that hateful fracas and not be upset about the uncompassionate unconservatives who are currently running all three branches of government into the ground!

Remember that Republicans like immigrants because immigrants will do any menial or hard labor task for pennies on the dollar compared to what us Caucasians would charge. (It also helps if there are a lot of illegal immigrants, because they have no legal protections, so US citizens can take advantage of them.) On the other hand, Republicans dislike immigrants because immigrants are different; they speak a language other than English; and they tend to vote Democratic. Probably the last dislike is the most important, though I bet there are a number of Republicans who really dislike immigrants just because of their skin color. So it really is a huge political issue. Realistically, we just can’t deport the ~12 million people who are in this country illegally. From a merely logistical standpoint, how could you imprison and then deport that many people? The US already incarcerates 2 million people -- more than any other country IN THE WORLD. How could you take that prison population and double or triple it as we deport all these people??

From a humanistic standpoint, how could you uproot all those people -- who have sweated and slaved (in some cases almost literally) for extremely low wages, providing us with low-cost food and amenities -- and just dump them in another country where they have no job and nowhere to live??? I know the Republicans don’t like humanistic questions, but how could you do that?

Anyway, so Bush wins both the Hypocrite Award and the Intolerant, Uncompassionate, Unconservative Award for the week. Way to go!

Hypocrite Watch II

Runner-up and a close second for the Hypocrite Award this week was Mary Cheney, the daughter of Beelzebub himself -- Vice President and Chief Dictator Dick Cheney. You see, Mary is a lesbian. And yet she campaigned for President Bush, who vocally supports making same-sex marriage illegal in all 50 states -- so much so that Bush is willing to indelibly inscribe this hateful message into the most sacred document in US history -- the US Constitution…

Ms. Cheney reported that she was so upset about Bush’s position on same-sex marriage that she did not attend the 2004 State of The Union address because of Bush’s views. Wow. Very very upset. Yet not so upset that she didn’t stop campaigning for Bush. Yet not so upset that she would speak out against Bush (or even Bush’s position) until long after the disastrous election. Yet not so upset that she would vote against this dishonest and immoral puppet. Yet not so upset that she would publicly denounce the president for what he truly is -- a petty, hateful person with a penchant for torture in the name of his God. And yet not so upset that she would write a book about her life and make money…

Sigh. So close, but yet so far. Ms. Cheney came close, but Bush edged her out for the Award -- primarily because I don’t know Ms. Cheney and I don’t have any way to judge what kind of person she really is. It must have taken quite a bit of courage to come out to someone as intolerant as Dick Cheney, yet Ms. Cheney did that, so maybe she isn’t all bad… Hopefully, evil isn’t genetically inherited. Anyway, Ms. Cheney is runner-up for the Hypocrite Award. Way to almost go!

-John Locke

Truthiness

2006-05-01T11:08:00.000-04:00

The White House Correspondants dinner has long been an enigma to me. Journalists and politicians get together for an evening of drinks and comedy, theoretically at their own expense, but in reality they all have a big laugh together about what insiders they all are. What's weird about it is to see people who are essentially mortal enemies laughing it up with each other. Case in point: at this year's event, there was Joe Wilson and Valerie Wilson, in the same room with Bush and the First Lady, and lots of people who think it is perfectly all right that all of Wilson's former intelligence contacts in Iran have been exposed (and probably killed) because of what Cheney and Rove did.

The President usually has a skit including self-effacing humor (like the year he hliariously showed pictures of himself huntin' up those WMDs), and this year was no exception. And then there is a keynote address by some comedian whose job it is to poke gentle fun of the President and the press, with the sense that hey, we're all just powerful people in this together and isn't it nice to just pretend like everything's OK? For example, Jon Stewart, in a lion's den like that, would make quips about the absurdity of everything, and at the end of the evening everyone would love him.

This year that did not happen. Someone named Mark Smith booked Stephen Colbert to do a 30 minute presentation, and Colbert took him up on it. And Colbert hit for the bleachers, apparently not worried that he woudln't be asked back. He presented in his TV persona, that which mirrors Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, and while sarcasticly professing to agree with everything Bush was about, proceeded to lay out everything Bush was about in accurate, excruciating detail.

Colbert bombed. His audience was tense and mostly silent during his long presentation (you can hear how subdued they are when they finally laugh more or less out loud at one of his less controversial jokes about global warming), and it was clear that neither the power media people nor the power politicians appreciated having their evil presented to them on the platter of Colbert's elfin, confident delivery. What's amazing is his absolute courage in ramming the truth of this press's complicity and the evil of the administration home. He proceeds slowly, letting the barbs settle and sink in. As you watch the audience, they are sitting stony faced, or with their hands over their mouths, or pop-eyed that anyone would dare say these things while only 10 feet from Dim Son himself. He addresses the President several times, directly, disarmingly, claiming a rapport between them.

A transcript of his presentation is available. You may also watch part of it (including a video showing a hilarious press conference which turns into an homage to Helen Thomas) at Crooks&Liars, but for the best effect (including reaction shots from an obviously pissed off Bush) see the three videos at YouTube (they are also posted together at ThisMuchLeft). But see it, see as much of it as possible, and you will understand the courage and the brilliance of this man.

Here are some of my favorite parts:

I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by those standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us; we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means its 2/3 empty.

I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, has he stood on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man’s beliefs never will.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on N.S.A. Wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason, they’re super depressing.

The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know: fiction.

General Mosley, Air Force Chief of Staff. General Peter Pace. They still support Rumsfeld. You guys aren't retired yet, right? Right, they still support Rumsfeld. Look, by the way, I've got a theory about how to handle these retired generals causing all this trouble, don't let them retire. C'mon, we've got a stop loss program; let's use it on these guys. If you're strong enough to go on one of those pundit shows, you can stand on a bank of computers and order men into battle.

John McCain is here. John McCain - John McCain. What a maverick. Somebody find out what fork he used on his salad, because I guarantee you it wasn't a salad fork. He could have used a spoon. There's no predicting him. So wonderful to see you coming back into the republican fold. I have a summer house in South Carolina; look me up when you go to speak at bob Jones University. So glad you've seen the light.

Amazing.

The Watch

New Deal on Television Watch

The Shock Watch, Part 3

Shock Watch, part 2

Shock Watch

Supply Side Voodoo Watch

Defending the New Deal Watch

Waiting for Presidential Jujitsu Watch

Lieberman Watch

Shame Watch

Palin Watch III

Palin Watch II

Palin Watch

Statue of Liberty Watch

American Automobile Makers Watch

Humanist Web Watch

Huckabee's-Positions-Are-Extreme Watch

God-Bless-Our-Allies Watch

Just-Another-Giant-Step-Towards-Fascism Watch

Naomi Wolf discusses airport detentions, legal torture, and Blackwater

AT&T Whistleblower on retroactive immunity

Bush-Taking-Lessons-From-Musharraf Watch

Republican in Democratic Clothing Watch

Stupid Republican Representative Watch II

Spineless Democrat Watch II

Mukasey-Is-A-Tool Watch

Stupid Republican Representative Watch

Spineless Democrat Watch

In Which Godwin's Law is Invoked

Scary Iran, just in time for Halloween

Our Closing Society

The Military Industrial Surveillance Complex

Reverse Robin Hood

The Shock Doctrine

Just don't call it torture

Truth in Military Advertising

Irony poisoning

Freedom isn't free. Yeah, there's a hefty f*ing fee.

In Which We Stand on the Brink

In which the atrocities come thicker and faster

Talking tough

In Which the Gravy Train is Finally Threatened

Impeachment, it's not just for breakfast anymore

The Brain Dead Executive Branch

No Underlying Crime

Michael Moore lays into Wolf Blitzer

Onward, Dark Christian Soldiers

Sicko and insurance companies

Gore is managing his non-campaign for President *brilliantly*

Impeachment Watch

Responsibility Watch

Recent Email to My Representatives Regarding the Iraq Surge

Quick Quiz Regarding Boosh's Surge

History doesn't repeat, it rhymes

America has always been at war with Iran

The real problem we face: Dems and the toadying media

Non-gay, Non-drug-abusing, Non-alcoholic, Non-hypocritical, Non-pedophile, Non-morally-bankrupt, and/or Non-corrupt Republican Watch

Tin Foil Hat Watch

Rumsfeld Incompetency Watch

Dick Cheney Truth Watch

New Jersey Gay Marriage Watch

Death of Habeus Corpus

California Courts Watch

Reality Check in Iraq and the Upcoming Election Watch

What is Joe Loserman doing?

Pakistani Plutonium

GOP Brain-Worm

Beach Reading

Cheney, the anti-Madison

TGFQ

The NSA - Illegally Spying on Americans

Hayden Watch

Hypocrite Watch

Truthiness

Gore is managing his non-campaign for President brilliantly