Iraq: Requiem for a Profound Misadventure

Joe Klein in Time magazine.

[It is a matter of some relief that Barack Obama did not announce the end of major combat operations in Iraq under a banner that said "Mission Accomplished." He did it in a speech to the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), the most grave and sober audience imaginable. And appropriately so, after a war that should never have been fought, a war that by some estimates will cost $3 trillion before it's done (including the health care services rendered to those represented by the DAV), a war whose casualties number in the hundreds of thousands. Iraq hasn't been much in the news over the past year, but this is an important milestone — even if our mission there will continue on a much smaller scale for 16 more months — a moment for reflection and humility in the face of a national embarrassment.

There is no "victory" in Iraq, nor will there be. There is something resembling stability, for now. There is a semblance of democracy, but that may dissolve over time into a Shi'ite dictatorship — which, if not well run, could yield to the near inevitable military coup. Yes, Saddam is gone — and that is a good thing. The Kurds have a greater measure of independence and don't have to live in fear of mass murder, which are good things too. But Iran's position in the region has been strengthened. Its Iraqi allies, especially Muqtada al-Sadr's populist movement, will play a major role — perhaps one more central than ours — in shaping the future of the country. Our attempt to construct an Iraq more amenable to our interests will end no better than the previous attempts by Western colonial powers. Even if something resembling democracy prevails, the U.S. invasion and occupation will not be remembered fondly by Iraqis. We will own the destruction in perpetuity; if the Iraqis manage to cobble themselves a decent society, they will see it, correctly, as an achievement of their own. (See a timeline of the first seven years of the Iraq war.)

There are other consequences of this profound misadventure. The return of the Taliban in Afghanistan is certainly one. If U.S. attention hadn't been diverted from that primary conflict, the story in the Pashtun borderlands might be very different now. The sense of the U.S. as a repository of tempered, honorable actions may never recover from the images of the past decade, especially the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison. (See pictures of the aftershocks from the Abu Ghraib scandal.)

The idea that it was our right and responsibility to rid Iraq of a terrible dictator — after the original casus belli of weapons of mass destruction evaporated — turned out to be a neocolonialist delusion. The fact that Bush apologists still trot out his "forward strategy of freedom" as an example of American idealism is a farce. That feckless exercise in naiveté brought us a Hamas government in Gaza, after a Palestinian election that no one but the Bush Administration wanted. It raised the hopes of reformers across the region, soon dashed when the Bush Administration retreated, realizing that the outcome of democracy in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be the installation of Islamist parties that might prove more repressive than the dictatorships they would replace. Freedom may well be "God's gift to humanity," as Bush insisted, radiating a simpleminded piety that never reflected another of God's greatest gifts — the ability to doubt, to think difficult thoughts and weigh conflicting options with clarity and subtlety. But I'm pretty sure God never designated the U.S. to impose that freedom violently upon others. (Comment on this story.)

It is appropriate that Obama's speech to the DAV will not be remembered as vividly as George W. Bush's puerile march across the deck of an aircraft carrier, costumed as a combat aviator against a golden sunset, to announce — seven years and tens of thousands of lives prematurely — the "end of combat operations." Obama's announcement was no celebration. It was a somber acknowledgment that amends will be made to those whose lives were shattered and that their courageous service in an unnecessary cause will be honored. A national discussion about America's place in the world, and the military's excessive place in our foreign policy, would also be appropriate in the wake of this disaster, but I'm not holding my breath. (See photos of 100 years of the U.S. Army Reserve.)

As for myself, I deeply regret that once, on television in the days before the war, I foolishly — spontaneously — said that going ahead with the invasion might be the right thing to do. I was far more skeptical in print. I never wrote in favor of the war and repeatedly raised the problems that would accompany it, but mere skepticism was an insufficient reaction too. The issue then was as clear as it is now. It demanded a clarity that I failed to summon. The essential principle is immutable: we should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.]

The great Dick Cheney empathy test

Mark Morford

[Former Vice President Dick Cheney disclosed Wednesday that he has undergone surgery to install a small pump to help his heart work, as the 69-year-old enters a new phase of what he called "increasing congestive heart failure." -- Associated Press

Here's how it works. You read the story above. You note how Dick Cheney, former vice president, Bush babydaddy, sneermaster supreme, befouler of nations, lover of war, hater of, well, almost everything else -- has undergone yet another major heart operation, this time to place a little valve-assisting pump (called an LVAD) in his withered and long dysfunctional ticker.

You then read how Dick is recuperating in intensive care following said installation -- which, by the way, is usually only a stopgap measure, just a delay tactic until the device in question gives out and the patient requires a full heart transplant. Is Dick a candidate for that? Doubtful. Also, they say LVADs are usually reserved for patients with end-stage heart disease, a last resort, the final straw. It is, they say, only a matter of time.

So it begins.

The first knee-jerk response to the Great Dick Cheney Empathy Test (GDCET) is, of course, the easiest, and the most obvious, the most available to your giddy puppydog consciousness, and my guess is it shot through you like a fast and wonderful lightning bolt of OH MY SWEET JESUS YES the instant you read the story above.

That response was, shall we say, not very subtle. It was, I'm guessing, a not-so-secret howl to the universe that the sooner Dick exits this earthly plane, the healthier, lighter and happier we will all be, planetwide. Dark shadows will lift, flowers will bloom more brightly, 10 million female uteri can finally unclench, and so on.

But then, perhaps you sigh, ponder, probe a bit more deeply. Is that how you really wish to be? What of those noble traits we all strive for: compassion, benevolence, forgiveness, a wan but merciful smile in the face of thine enemy's condemnatory sneer? Is wishing a scaldingly painful death on one of the worst and most shameful characters in American history really the right way to treat your fellow man? Any fellow man? Of course not. Well, maybe. No, no, definitely not.

After all, if you wish such a thing, what does that say? About you? About us? About this paragraph? Would we not all be wallowing on the same filthy level? Is it not similar to the death penalty argument so beloved by liberals, that no matter how vile the criminal, to wish death upon any human makes us just as base and ugly as those we deem to be evil? This is no way for an enlightened consciousness to evolve.

I know what you're thinking. And yes, passing the GDCET would require all your courage, all your gumption, willpower, whisky and every ounce of benevolent energy you can muster. You would have to invoke all your Jesus-flecked Buddha nature to turn the other cheek, love thy enemies, forgive the sinners -- basically dredge up every maxim, axiom, aphorism, proverb and Hallmark card you can think of, toss them into a karmic blender and shoot them straight into your wary soul like a desperate and godly emetic.

It ain't easy. You must first resist the very reasonable, insistent screaming of your calmly vengeful side, the one that would be very pleased indeed if Dick suffered a million scalding rashes and burned in hell with Jerry Falwell, Saddam and Strom Thurmond for all eternity. That would be wrong. Stop thinking that.

Perhaps a reversal is in order. Perhaps it's better to wish someone like Dick a longer life, so that he may bear witness to the well-deserved implosion of all his nefarious plans, his cronyist empire. The man is, by most accounts, responsible for countless thousands of innocent deaths, the acerbic tainting of our national identity, a flagrant mutilation of everything we once held dear. You sort of want the guy to feel it. Repeatedly.

Are you a seriously impassioned ultraliberal with a thing for vengeful whimsy? You might even take this notion a step further and hold out a flicker of hope that Dick will live long enough to one day be put on trial for his war crimes, hung in a public square, slowly eaten by swarms of feral pigeons. Or crows. Pugs. Whatever.

This is, of course, a total fantasy, akin to imagining Rush Limbaugh getting busted for snorting meth from a gay teenage hooker's thighs just after fellating Mel Gibson in Newt Gingrich's fetish dungeon. Doesn't matter. As long as Dick is alive, it's a fantasy that keeps many a liberal heart aflutter.

Maybe you sense there is no rush. Maybe you know there's need to wish Dick an immediate demise, given how everyone knows that before long he'll be taking the Great Escalator down to the basement. Surely a great reckoning is coming. In the grand arc of spacetime, what's a few more years?

Besides, will it not be lovely for Dick to witness Obama sail into his second term, replace a third of the Supreme Court with people who actually have souls, and overturn/reverse nearly every law, stance and spiteful stratagem with which Dick ever fouled the earth? You bet it will.

Or perhaps, finally, you can appreciate the value of a living Dick. Every culture needs its demons, yes? The villain is just as important as the hero. Dick has been, and continues to be, an ideal foil, the complete monster, the perfect perversion of humanity by which we can all measure subsequent people and deeds. You may look upon any modern atrocity, any upstart political ogre, any personal abuse and say, well, at least it's not Dick Cheney. That's something.

So, how did you do? Did you pass the GDCET? Fail instantly, way back up top, when you read the headline to this column? Not quite sure?

You might be like me. See, I try to wish no violence or death, illness or pain on my fellow man. I do not always succeed, but still I strive, every single day, with every breath, even if I can't always forgive or be as uniformly compassionate as I'd like, then at least to proffer kindness, to see the larger picture and above all, to refuse to let the poison enter my heart.

However, I'm quite sure I would not be the slightest bit displeased to learn that the laws of brutal karmic repayment have come into full, painstaking, searing effect on our boy Dick. No, I wouldn't mind that in the least. After all, it's the empathetic thing to do.]

You might be a Republican IF.....

By Loren Adams, 13 June 2010

You might be a Republican IF…

You think toilet paper should come in Q'uran and NYT print.

You find nothing contradictory about your sign that reads "Hands Off My Medicare" next to a "Government Run Healthcare Makes Me Sick" sticker on the bumper of your gas guzzling Humvee,

You think that affirmative action is only acceptable for Michael Steele and Marco Rubio.

You don’t like being called “The Party of NO” but instead like being referred to as “The Party of HELL NO!” only because Sarah Palin suggested it.

You think "Semper Fi" should be changed to "Git R Done"

You think your Tea Party posters are not misspelled that read: “I am Joe the Plummer,” or “Make English Americas Offical Langage.” Or “Say No to Socilism.”

You think Stem Cell research is what killed Terri Schiavo

As part of your boycott of all names French, you change the name of your favorite sex toy to "freedom tickler."

You think the 2000 election was fair & square when Bush stole the White House but the 2008 election was stolen by ACORN for Obama.

You've ever announced your gratitude to our troops for fighting for your freedom to drill baby drill and spill baby spill.

You feel your duty in the war on terror is to hunt down Mexicans crossing the border. (Then you hire undocumented workers to do your lawn and housework.)

You've ever complained about abuse of welfare while depositing earnings in an off-shore tax-sheltered account or you cash your disability check before heading to the gym.

You think WMD are still in Iraq but hidden by liberals to make Bush look bad.

You think Mark Felts should have been executed for treason before dying of natural causes, and Gordon Liddy should get the medal of freedom.

You've ever blamed anything on "Activist Judges" while supporting the Supreme Court decision to reject corporate spending limits on political campaigns.

You think Glenn Beck is a prophet.

You think Sarah Palin is a goddess.

You think Rush Limbaugh is the greatest broadcast journalist ever.

You watch only one news channel, FOX, because it’s the only one fair and balanced.

You firmly believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Or Indonesia. Or anyplace outside the USA.

You think Barack Obama is the Antichrist.

You think Barack Obama is Muslim.

You think Barack Obama is Socialist.

In honor of Terri Schiavo, you kept the deer you shot alive for twelve days.

You think there should be a "constitutional exemption" at home to shut your wife up.

You feel the only acceptable time turning left is at a NASCAR race.

You think Capitol Hill should be re-named "Six Flags over Jesus."

You think gay marriages would somehow taint the sanctity of your six failed marriages.

You make your wife wear a "no spin" t-shirt during sex.

You think that listening to three different conservative talk shows and FOX gives you all the variety you need.

You name your testicles "shock" and "awe."

You wear a strapped-on assault rifle to a President Obama event but would never consider doing the same to a Bush or Palin or Limbaugh or Beck or Hannity rally.

You think that Healthcare Reform includes government death panels designed to kill your grandma.

You've ever considered your finest point in an argument to be, "Oh yeah, well, you hate America!"

You feel the "culture of life" should be the standard – that every life is worth the same (except Muslims, Mexicans, gays, Africans, liberals, activist judges, and anyone for gun control).

You think Civil Rights acts were unnecessary and should be repealed, or at least sections of them – the parts dealing with private businesses refusing to serve “coloreds” and the Fair Housing Act.

You think “American exceptionalism” means God singled the US out as the most favored, thus all others are inferior and not divinely blessed.

You've ever yelled "Hell yeah, man, I agree!" while Sean Hannity was speaking.

You’ve ever experienced an erection watching Sarah Palin on TV.

You stand and salute when George Bush or Dick Cheney is on the air, even though you've never served in the military, but you flip the bird at the TV screen every time Barack Obama appears.

You’ve ever twittered Sarah Palin or Michele Bauchmann love notes.

You registered to vote at a Tractor Pull.

You boycotted your local convenience store because the clerk let it slip he voted for Obama (even though you had bought all of your NASCAR apparel there.)

In honor of Bush, you donate to his new “LIBARY” in Texas: two cartons of crayons.

You think the U.S. Treasury should replace Ulysses S. Grant’s picture on the $50 bill with Ronald Reagan’s and exchange George Washington’s on the dollar for George W. Bush’s.

You've ever answered a gun-control issue with "when they pry them out of my cold, dead hands."

You think that fetuses have a right to life but newborn babies don’t have a right to healthcare even if their parents pay for it.

You consider BP, Halliburton and Transocean Ltd. eco-friendly companies.

Your solution to the BP spill in the Gulf is to nuke ‘em.

You don’t believe in global warming but believe it’s a leftist plot to turn America socialist.

You think scientists that endorse global warming should be arrested and tried for treason.

Your strongest defense for the reason Bin Laden wasn’t caught during the Bush years is "Because they all look alike."

You think the only solution for the Middle East peace is to bomb them all to hell. (Then let God sort them out.)

You think all Democratic presidents should be impeached.

You think the only three campaign issues that matter are “God, gays and guns.”

You think the imposition of government regulations caused economic meltdown and, oh yes, Barney Frank.

You think the Bush years were glorious, but Clinton and Obama ruined America.

You think that budget deficits began only after January 20, 2009.

You approve Arizona’s “papers please” bill but demand the government uphold constitutional freedoms and stay out of your personal life.

You think GOP stands for “God’s Only Party.”

Special Comment: 16 April 2009

As promised, a Special Comment now on the president's revelation of the remainder of this nightmare of Bush Administration torture memos. This President has gone where few before him, dared. The dirty laundry — illegal, un-American, self-defeating, self-destroying — is out for all to see.

Mr. Obama deserves our praise and our thanks for that. And yet he has gone but half-way. And, in this case, in far too many respects, half the distance is worse than standing still. Today, Mr. President, in acknowledging these science-fiction-like documents, you said that:

"This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke."

"We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history.

"But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.

Mr. President, you are wrong. What you describe would be not "spent energy" but catharsis.
Not "blame laid," but responsibility ascribed. You continued:

"Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future."

Indeed we must, Mr. President. And the forces of which you speak are the ones lingering — with pervasive stench — from the previous administration. Far more than a criminal stench, Sir. An immoral one. One we cannot let be re-created.

One, President Obama, it is your responsibility to make sure cannot be re-created. Forgive me for quoting from a Comment I offered the night before the inauguration. But this goes to the core of the President's commendable, but wholly naive, intention. This country has never "moved forward with confidence".without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past.

In point of fact, every effort to merely draw a line in the sand and declare the past dead has served only to keep the past alive and often to strengthen it. We "moved forward" with slavery in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And four score and nine years later, we had buried 600,000 of our sons and brothers, in a Civil War.

After that war's ending, we "moved forward" without the social restructuring — and protection of the rights of minorities — in the south. And a century later, we had not only not resolved anything, but black leaders were still being assassinated in our southern cities.

We "moved forward" with Germany in the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War.
Nobody even arrested the German Kaiser, let alone conducted war crimes trials then. And 19 years later, there was an indescribably more evil Germany and a more heart-rending Second World War.

We "moved forward" with the trusts of the early 1900s. And today, we are at the mercy of corporations too big to fail. We "moved forward" with the Palmer Raids and got McCarthyism.
And we "moved forward" with McCarthyism and got Watergate. We "moved forward" with Watergate and junior members of the Ford administration realized how little was ultimately at risk.

They grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. But, Mr. President, when you say we must "come together on behalf of our common future" you are entirely correct. We must focus on getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.

That means prosecuting all those involved in the Bush administration's torture of prisoners, even if the results are nominal punishments, or merely new laws. Your only other option is to let this set and fester indefinitely. Because, Sir, some day there will be another Republican president, or even a Democrat just as blind as Mr. Bush to ethics and this country's moral force. And he will look back to what you did about Mr. Bush. Or what you did not do.

And he will see precedent. Or as Cheney saw, he will see how not to get caught next time. Prosecute, Mr. President. Even if you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good for generations unborn. Merely by acting, you will deny a further wrong — that this construction will enter the history books: Torture was legal. It worked. It saved the country.

The end. This must not be. "It is our intention," you said today, "to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution." Mr. President, you are making history's easiest, most often made, most dangerous mistake — you are accepting the defense that somebody was "just following orders." At the end of his first year in office, Mr. Lincoln tried to contextualize the Civil War for those who still wanted to compromise with evils of secession and slavery. "The struggle of today," Lincoln wrote, "is not altogether for today. It is for a vast future also."

Mr. president, you have now been handed the beginning of that future. Use it to protect our children and our distant descendants from anything like this ever happening again — by showing them that those who did this, were neither unfairly scapegoated nor absolved. It is good to say "we won't do it again." It is not, however...enough.

Colonoscopy

Dave Barry

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenteritis, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office he showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America 's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the
MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.)

Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You
eliminate everything.

And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?'

How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the
kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this is, but then I pondered what would happen if you got
yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house to sanitize it.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' has to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, Feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

On the subject of Colonoscopies...

Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous..... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their Colonoscopies.

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!
2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'
3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'
4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
5. 'You know, in Arkansas we're now legally married.'
6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'
7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...'
8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'
9. 'If your hand doesn'ta fit, you musta quit!
10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'
11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'
12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all.

13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket

Frank Rich
Published September 14, 2008

WITH all due deference to lipstick, let’s advance the story. A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?

It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

The ambitious Palin and the ruthless forces she represents know it, too. You can almost see them smacking their lips in anticipation, whether they’re wearing lipstick or not.

This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palin’s acceptance speech. Aligning herself with “a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri” who “followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency,” she read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” Then Palin added a snide observation of her own: Such small-town Americans, she said, “run our factories” and “fight our wars” and are “always proud” of their country. As opposed to those lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans — she didn’t have to name names — who are none of the above.

There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.

Palin, who lies with ease about her own record, misrepresented Pegler’s too. He decreed America was “done for” after Truman won a full term in 1948. For his part, Truman regarded the columnist as a “guttersnipe,” and with good reason. Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese,” he called them) were all likely Communists.

Surely Palin knows no more about Pegler than she does about the Bush doctrine. But the people around her do, and they will be shaping a Palin presidency. That they would inject not just Pegler’s words but spirit into their candidate’s speech shows where they’re coming from. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, said that the Palin-sparked convention created “a whole new Republican Party,” but what it actually did was exhume an old one from its crypt.

The specifics have changed in our new century, but the vitriolic animus of right-wing populism preached by Pegler and McCarthy and revived by the 1990s culture wars remains the same. The game is always to pit the good, patriotic real Americans against those subversive, probably gay “cosmopolitan” urbanites (as the sometime cross-dresser Rudy Giuliani has it) who threaten to take away everything that small-town folk hold dear.

The racial component to this brand of politics was undisguised in St. Paul. Americans saw a virtually all-white audience yuk it up when Giuliani ridiculed Barack Obama’s “only in America” success as an affirmative-action fairy tale — and when he and Palin mocked Obama’s history as a community organizer in Chicago. Neither party has had so few black delegates (1.5 percent) in the 40 years since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies started keeping a record.

But race is just one manifestation of the emotion that defined the Palin rollout. That dominant emotion is fear — an abject fear of change. Fear of a demographical revolution that will put whites in the American minority by 2042. Fear of the technological revolution and globalization that have gutted those small towns and factories Palin apotheosized.

And, last but hardly least, fear of illegal immigrants who do the low-paying jobs that Americans don’t want to do and of legal immigrants who do the high-paying jobs that poorly educated Americans are not qualified to do. No less revealing than Palin’s convention invocation of Pegler was the pointed omission of any mention of immigration, once the hottest Republican issue, by either her or McCain. Saying the word would have cued an eruption of immigrant-bashing ugliness, Pegler-style, before a national television audience. That wouldn’t play in the swing states of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, where Obama already has a more than 2-to-1 lead among Hispanic voters. (Bush captured roughly 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004.)

Since St. Paul, Democrats have been feasting on the hypocrisy of the Palin partisans, understandably enough. The same Republicans who attack Democrats for being too P.C. about race now howl about sexism with such abandon you half-expect Phyllis Schlafly and Carly Fiorina to stage a bra-burning. The same gang that once fueled Internet rumors and media feeding frenzies over the Clintons’ private lives now express pious outrage when the same fate befalls the Palins.

But the ultimate hypocrisy is that these woebegone, frightened opponents of change, sworn enemies of race-based college-admission initiatives, are now demanding their own affirmative action program for white folks applying to the electoral college. They want the bar for admission to the White House to be placed so low that legitimate scrutiny and criticism of Palin’s qualifications, record and family values can all be placed off limits. Byron York of National Review, a rare conservative who acknowledges the double standard, captured it best: “If the Obamas had a 17-year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.”

The cunning of the Palin choice as a political strategy is that a candidate who embodies fear of change can be sold as a “maverick” simply because she looks the part. Her marketers have a lot to work with. Palin is not only the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket, but she is young, vibrant and a Washington outsider with no explicit connection to Bush or the war in Iraq. That package looks like change even if what’s inside is anything but.

How do you run against that flashy flimflam? You don’t. Karl Rove for once gave the Democrats a real tip rather than a bum steer when he wrote last week that if Obama wants to win, “he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president,” not Palin for vice president. Obama should keep stepping up the blitz on McCain’s flip-flops, confusion, ignorance and blurriness on major issues (from education to an exit date from Iraq), rather than her gaffes and résumé. If he focuses voters on the 2008 McCain, the Palin question will take care of itself.

Obama’s one break last week was the McCain camp’s indication that it’s likely to minimize its candidate’s solo appearances by joining him at the hip with Palin. There’s a political price to be paid for this blatant admission that he needs her to draw crowds. McCain’s conspicuous subservience to his younger running mate’s hard-right ideology and his dependence on her electioneering energy raise the question of who has the power in this relationship and who is in charge. A strong and independent woman or the older ward who would be bobbing in a golf cart without her? The more voters see that McCain will be the figurehead for a Palin presidency, the more they are likely to demand stepped-up vetting of the rigidly scripted heir apparent.

But Obama’s most important tactic is still the one he has the most trouble executing. He must convey a roll-up-your-sleeves Bobby Kennedy passion for the economic crises that are at the heart of the fears that Palin is trying to exploit. The Republican ticket offers no answers to those anxieties. Drilling isn’t going to lower gas prices or speed energy independence. An increase in corporate tax breaks isn’t going to end income inequality, provide health care or save American jobs in a Palin presidency any more than they did in a Bush presidency.

This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president — like Iraq — invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.

As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.

The Candidate We Still Don’t Know

By FRANK RICH
Published: August 16, 2008

AS I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!

The poor guy should be winning in a landslide against the despised party of Bush-Cheney, and he’s not. He should be passing the 50 percent mark in polls, and he’s not. He’s been done in by that ad with Britney and Paris and by a new international crisis that allows McCain to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the neocons identify a new battleground for igniting World War III, whether Baghdad or Tehran or Moscow, and McCain gets with the program as if Angela Lansbury has just dealt him the Queen of Hearts.

Obama has also been defeated by racism (again). He can’t connect and “close the deal” with ordinary Americans too doltish to comprehend a multicultural biography that includes what Cokie Roberts of ABC News has damned as the “foreign, exotic place” of Hawaii. As The Economist sums up the received wisdom, “lunch-pail Ohio Democrats” find Obama’s ideas of change “airy-fairy” and are all asking, “Who on earth is this guy?”

It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama’s average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s leads then (each was winning by one point in Gallup surveys). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (40 percent to Jimmy Carter’s 46). At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election.

Yet surely, we keep hearing, Obama should be running away with the thing. Even Michael Dukakis was beating the first George Bush by 17 percentage points in the summer of 1988. Of course, were Obama ahead by 17 points today, the same prognosticators now fussing over his narrow lead would be predicting that the arrogant and presumptuous Obama was destined to squander that landslide on vacation and tank just like his hapless predecessor.

The truth is we have no idea what will happen in November. But for the sake of argument, let’s posit that one thread of the Obama-is-doomed scenario is right: His lead should be huge in a year when the G.O.P. is in such disrepute that at least eight of the party’s own senatorial incumbents are skipping their own convention, the fail-safe way to avoid being caught near the Larry Craig Memorial Men’s Room at the Twin Cities airport.

So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.

While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default cliché is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his “independence,” his “maverick image” and his “renegade reputation” — as the hackneyed script was reiterated by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is “graded on a curve.”

Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama’s Princeton thesis, her pay raises at the University of Chicago hospital, her statement about being “proud” of her country and the false rumor of a video of her ranting about “whitey.” But we still haven’t been inside Cindy McCain’s tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, “lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety,” in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain’s future role in her beer empire won’t be revealed before the election.

Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others — are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me. “If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”

McCain has even prompted alarms from the right’s own favorite hit man du jour: Jerome Corsi, who Swift-boated John Kerry as co-author of “Unfit to Command” in 2004 and who is trying to do the same to Obama in his newly minted best seller, “The Obama Nation.”

Corsi’s writings have been repeatedly promoted by Sean Hannity on Fox News; Corsi’s publisher, Mary Matalin, has praised her author’s “scholarship.” If Republican warriors like Hannity and Matalin think so highly of Corsi’s research into Obama, then perhaps we should take seriously Corsi’s scholarship about McCain. In recent articles at worldnetdaily.com, Corsi has claimed (among other charges) that the McCain campaign received “strong” financial support from a “group tied to Al Qaeda” and that “McCain’s personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona.”

As everyone says, polls are meaningless in the summers of election years. Especially this year, when there’s one candidate whose real story has yet to be fully told.

The Legacy of a Lunatic

NanceGreggs

As our nation readies itself to celebrate the end of the Bush presidency, discussion of his legacy fills the airwaves. The usual suspects – the pro-Bush pundits, the PNACers, the air-headed teleprompter readers passed off as journalists – now gather together on the political talk shows, ready and more than willing to tackle the formidable task of rewriting history.

Bush’s legacy, according to those still reluctant to embrace reality, will be a presidency replete with incredible foresight and heroism, all recognized by the historians who, at some later date yet to be announced, will at last recognize the extraordinary vision of one George W. Bush in the fullness of time.

However, what the dead-ender cheerleaders fail to take into account is that Bush’s legacy, like that of all presidents, will be based on the facts and not the quickly cobbled-together fictions spun by his still adoring fans.

Perhaps the most glaring reality of Bush’s presidency will be the fact that it was never a true presidency at all. The result of selection rather than election, it was marked not by sound strategy, but by stagecraft; not by purposeful action, but an endless array of photo-ops meant to capture merely an image of leadership in a constant attempt to obscure the truth that no such leadership ever existed.

While the smoke-and-mirrors experts continue to proffer their own creation – the man with the bullhorn in the wreckage of the Twin Towers, the man landing on an aircraft carrier declaring that the mission had been accomplished, the man sharing Thanksgiving dinner with his troops – the reality lurking behind the curtain is less than heroic or honorable: a lackadaisical fool reading a children’s book in the midst of mayhem, a smirking coward parading around in a flight-suit, a mindless, uncaring clown offering a plastic turkey to the men and women he was about to send to their deaths.

From the beginning, Bush surrounded himself with incompetent cronies, yes-men, and sycophants with a lust for influence, and handed out positions of power to people whose blind loyalty was the only measure of their suitability. Qualities like honesty and strength of character were never assessed, and were in fact an obvious hindrance for those who aspired to the inner circle.

Once foisted on the world stage, Bush invariably chose the role of the mindless puppet, a buffoon prone to inappropriate laughter, absurd remarks, displays of childish petulance, all washed in a thin veneer of down-home charm meant to hide the underlying ignorance, the lack of awareness, the inability to conduct himself as anything more than an over-indulged frat-boy who had no more respect for his office than qualification to hold it.

In the wake of the events of 9-11, the Bush administration touted itself as the protectorate of our national security, yet another meaningless slogan behind which to hide the already-in-place machinations of war, the suspension of citizen’s rights and freedoms, and the lining of those pockets deemed deserving by those in control of the purse-strings.

Despite the fact that Bush’s policies have made us infinitely more vulnerable, the Protecting the Homeland banner still waves as though having some actual meaning behind it, another empty gesture in place of reality – like flag-pins meant to convey true patriotism, or Support the Troops bumper-stickers meant to convince the masses that our military is actually treated fairly and honorably.

Americans are a forgiving people, and had the disastrous results of Bush’s policies been due to a mistaken anticipation of their end result, or lofty ideals that ultimately proved to be misguided in their application, the absolution of his countrymen would have been offered without question.

But as we have all sadly seen, the suffering that we as a country, and the world at large, now endure is not the result of things gone inexplicably awry, but the single-minded pursuit of a political ideology whose sole purpose was to enrich the few at the expense of the many, and to place power into the hands of those who would stop at nothing to maintain it, all to be achieved while blithely ignoring the ensuing consequences; irreparable damage, escalating violence, economic instability, and the deaths of millions.

A large part of Bush’s legacy will undoubtedly be his administration’s ability to spin the worst behavior into something noble, the most blatant lies into something too truthful to be questioned, the most heinous crimes into something heroic, all couched in language meant to divert the mind from reality, and the soul from guilt.

Terms like “executive privilege”, once used to protect the presidency from sharing sensitive information that could place us in jeopardy, have been twisted into poltically-convenient catch-all phrases behind which crimes can be covered-up and its perpetrators shielded from justice. The term “torture” has been replaced with “enhanced interrogation techniques”, a newly-coined soundbyte intended to mask the barbarism in which we now wallow with impunity.

Even the once respected term moral Christian has been forever tarnished, having now been attributed to a torturer, a warmonger, a widow-maker, a non-repentant creator of orphans, of limbless soldiers, of multitudes of homeless, hungry, sick and dying people whose fate is of no concern to he who is not ignorant of, but blatantly dismissive of the very teachings he pretends to follow and revere.

Perhaps the most enduring part of any president’s legacy is the remembrance of their most obvious personal quality. In this instance, surely Bush will be best remembered for his arrogance – an arrogance born not of an overly-exuberant recognition of his own abilities or record of accomplishment, but merely reflective of a sense of entitlement to be praised for that which he never achieved, and rewarded with adulation and respect that was clearly never earned.

Ultimately, history is not written by scholars assessing the past from afar. It is passed down to children and grandchildren by those who experienced the events firsthand, an oral history that lives and breathes long after the pages of even the most well-researched tomes are reduced to dust.

And the tales that will be told of Bush’s presidency will be rife with tragedy; tales of soldiers who died fighting not for freedom but profit, of cities left to drown amid apathy and incompetence, of corporations given free rein to exploit the vulnerabilities of a nation’s people, of an administration that plundered our treasury, saddled us with unconscionable debt, circumvented the rule of law, and left our Constitution in tatters.

Despite the best efforts of the revisionists, the spinmeisters, the propagandists, and those simply unwilling to admit that they were hoodwinked by an inept scoundrel and his attendant snake-oil salesmen, it is the truths of George W. Bush’s failed presidency that will be the basis of his legacy.

In light of that fact, Worst President Ever might be the kindest title that history eventually confers.

Have a Whte House Christmas ...

Click to embiggen

Natzweiler-Struthof 2

Implements of torture, before waterboarding was in vogue. They just strapped you to this and removed body parts.


Class A accommodations.


Gotta get rid of the bodies. They had a lot of urns for the purpose, before they stopped caring about even that.


A memorial to the French Resistance, who comprised most of those interned here.


Towards the end, they didn't even bother with urns, just dumping the ashes in this pit.

Click to embiggen.

Natzweiler-Struthof 1

Main Gate.


You couldn't run.


How they defiled the beautiful French countryside.


I tried out a cell in solitary for size. I'm 5'10".


The lab table, where humans were turned into lab rats.

Click to embiggen.

San Juan

Ft. Cristobal overlooking San Juan harbor.




Naturally we took the tour of the Bacardi Distillery. Heh ...




And of course, the beaches are extraordinary.

Click pics to embiggen.

Cavallaro v. Donohue

Full transcript.

[...]

COOPER: Well, I don't think it's our job here on 360 to tell you what to think about something. We just ask the questions and help you decide.

A few minutes ago, I talked to artist Cosimo Cavallaro and the man who worked to shut down his exhibit, Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Cosimo, I want to start by asking you what your intention was with -- with this -- this piece of art.

C. CAVALLARO: My intention was to celebrate this body of Christ, and in a sweet, delicious, tasteful way.

COOPER: Why -- why use chocolate?

C. CAVALLARO: Because it's a substance that I like. And it's sweet. And I felt that the body of Christ, the -- the meaning of Christ, is about the sweetness.

COOPER: Were you trying to shock, I mean, to -- to cause attention?

Often -- usually, when Christ is shown, he's wearing some form of clothing. This is a naked Christ, which has also caused some concern.

C. CAVALLARO: No more than the religion, the way they use it. I was just using it as an iconic figure.

I mean, that my intentions was to shock people, no. I was -- my intention was to have them taste the -- and feel what they're looking at in their mouth.

COOPER: Bill, you call this exhibit hate speech. You said it's -- quote -- "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever."

What specifically offends you about it?

WILLIAM DONAHUE, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC LEAGUE: Well, of course, asking the public to come in and eat Jesus, with his genitals exposed, during Holy Week I think would be self-explanatory.

If we took an image of this artist's mother, and made her out in chocolate, with her genitals exposed, of course, to be equal, and then asked the public to eat her on Mother's Day, yes, he might have a problem. Maybe he wouldn't.

But you know what bothers me? It's not even the artist. I mean, we have a lot of these loser artists down in SoHo and around the country. What bothers me is that this guy Knowles, who is an artist in residence, the owner, the president and CEO of an establishmentarian site, the Roger Smith Hotel, 47th and Lexington, in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, that is what bothers me, because now we have the establishment kicking in.

And to put this out during Holy Week, on street level, when kids can walk in off the street, these people are morally bankrupt. And my goal is to make them financially bankrupt.

COOPER: Cosimo, do you understand the outrage this has caused? I mean, do you think it's overreaction? Do you get it?

C. CAVALLARO: Yes, I get it. I think it's an overreaction.

You just heard the gentleman calling artists losers, or me a loser. I think what he's -- his assault is on the public at large, artists, and freedom of speech, and every Catholic. I'm a Catholic, and I'm a Christian.

And I think this gentleman doesn't even represent the people that are in his faith.

DONAHUE: That's funny. You said I put out a fatwa, right? Or the -- or the -- that was the -- the guy who ran the lab, says I put out a fatwa. I put out a news release.

So, you're accusing me of being like the Taliban; is that right?

C. CAVALLARO: Who, me? You're not that intelligent.

(LAUGHTER)

DONAHUE: Oh, no, let me tell you something. You're -- you're lucky I'm not as mean, because you might lose more than your head.

COOPER: Cosimo, did you want people to eat this? Was that part of this?

C. CAVALLARO: No.

Did you hear what this gentleman is saying, that I would lose my head?

DONAHUE: No, I -- you heard what I said. I said you're -- you're lucky I'm not like the Taliban, because you would lose more than your head, which is why...

C. CAVALLARO: Right. So, therefore...

(CROSSTALK)

DONAHUE: ... guys like you wouldn't do this against Mohammed during Ramadan.

(CROSSTALK)

C. CAVALLARO: No, because I'm a Christian. And I'm not trying to...

DONAHUE: Oh, you're a Christian. Please. Don't lie about it, all right? Don't lie about it.

C. CAVALLARO: I'm not lying. No, I'm not lying about it.

DONAHUE: Yes, you are.

(CROSSTALK)

C. CAVALLARO: I want to ask you a question, Mr. Donahue.

DONAHUE: Yes.

C. CAVALLARO: Where do you think I should exhibit this? Because you -- you have bamboozled an art gallery.

DONAHUE: Right.

C. CAVALLARO: And you have bamboozled an establishment. You have put fear in people to listen to your rhetoric and to believe -- just because a man has got his arms extended and he's made in chocolate -- it's your Christ -- and it's offensive.

DONAHUE: That's right.

(CROSSTALK)

C. CAVALLARO: And, by the way -- excuse me. I'm going to talk to you for a minute. You keep quiet.

DONAHUE: And you want the public to eat him.

(CROSSTALK)

C. CAVALLARO: Now, you go to the Catholic Church...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Let Cosimo finish his point.

C. CAVALLARO: You go to the Catholic Church, and you're going to see statues from Michelangelo that are nude. Are you going to clothe them for the Holy Week?

DONAHUE: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

C. CAVALLARO: And are you telling me that, apart from the Holy Week, we could do anything we want to do with the genitalia? What are you talking about?

DONAHUE: The...

COOPER: OK. Let Bill answer.

DONAHUE: All right. All right, first of all, Leonardo, you're not.

But, quite frankly, where should you have this displayed? In New Jersey is where New Yorkers put their garbage. There's a big sanitation dump. That's where you should put it.

COOPER: Bill, let me read you something that David Kuo, the former presidential assistant to President Bush, who worked in the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, said in reference to your protest.

He said -- quote -- "Instead of getting all amped up over this art, Christians should be spending time facing the real and very challenging Jesus found in the Gospels, and encouraging others to do the same."

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Are you making a bigger deal out of this than it deserves?

DONAHUE: No, no, no, no.

COOPER: And doesn't this, in fact, give this more attention than it ever would have received otherwise?

DONAHUE: If, in fact, it was at some dump in SoHo, I probably wouldn't pay too much attention. But the fact that the Roger Smith Hotel...

(CROSSTALK)

C. CAVALLARO: ... dump in SoHo.

DONAHUE: ... right here in New York City is doing this thing, no. If I don't pay attention to it, then I -- my people should ask for me to be fired.

By the way, I am delighted with the response from Jews, Muslims, and others, not just Catholics and Protestants, with this. People are basically saying, enough is enough. This is absolutely revolting.

And what you're saying, sir, is totally disingenuous. No one believes it. I don't even think you believe it.

COOPER: But, Bill, doesn't -- doesn't -- I mean, don't people have a right to express themselves? And isn't that what art is about? Aren't artists supposed to provoke thought?

DONAHUE: That's right. And, if we -- and if we put a swastika out on a stamp in the United States, we could call that art. It was an art exhibition. I don't think Jews would go for that.

Just because art is art doesn't mean that it is a right that is absolute. Art can be insulting and it can be offensive. And when these people are whining, claiming victim status, as this guy is doing, because of my exercise of my First Amendment right of freedom of speech -- I didn't call the cops to come in and censor this.

I'm simply saying I called up about 500 of my friends and -- running different Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and non- sectarian organizations to boycott the Roger Smith Hotel. They're morally bankrupt. I want to see them financially bankrupt.

COOPER: Cosimo, I want to give you the final thought. Do you plan to -- to display this elsewhere?

C. CAVALLARO: Yes, I do, hopefully.

And I would like to add to the gentleman who referred to the swastika, he's actually acting like a Nazi.

(LAUGHTER)

C. CAVALLARO: And I -- I would like to ask one question.

Where do you suggest that I exhibit this? Because you basically pulled it out of a gallery for me. So, where do you think...

DONAHUE: No. I -- I told you...

(CROSSTALK)

C. CAVALLARO: Where -- no, excuse me.

Where do you suggest that an artist should exhibit his work that you don't infringe on?

DONAHUE: Well, you know, go to some dump down in SoHo, where...

C. CAVALLARO: A dump?

DONAHUE: ... nobody will pay attention.

C. CAVALLARO: Is there a church in SoHo that's a dump, too, because...

DONAHUE: Oh, you would like to...

(CROSSTALK)

C. CAVALLARO: No, let me tell you something.

DONAHUE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C. CAVALLARO: There's two priests that have wanted to exhibit this in their church.

DONAHUE: Is that right?

C. CAVALLARO: Yes, absolutely.

DONAHUE: Give me their names.

C. CAVALLARO: I will not, because you're a bully.

(LAUGHTER)

C. CAVALLARO: And you know what? I believe that there's people in your organization that would like you to resign.

DONAHUE: Is that right?

C. CAVALLARO: Absolutely. And you're...

DONAHUE: Well, how come -- I haven't heard from them.

C. CAVALLARO: I got to tell you something, there's more filth that comes out of your mouth...

DONAHUE: Is that right?

C. CAVALLARO: Yes -- than I have seen...

(CROSSTALK)

DONAHUE: Look, you lost. You know what? You put your middle finger at the Catholic Church, and we just broke it, didn't we, pal?

C. CAVALLARO: No. You're wrong. You're wrong.

DONAHUE: Yes, we did. You lost.

C. CAVALLARO: I have a lot of believers.

DONAHUE: We -- we won. You're out of a job.

C. CAVALLARO: And I'm a Christian. And there's a lot of people like me, who are opposed to what you're doing, because you made a big...

DONAHUE: Yes? But I got a job, and you don't.

C. CAVALLARO: You made a -- "I got a job, and you don't"?

DONAHUE: Yes.

C. CAVALLARO: You're acting like a 5-year-old.

DONAHUE: I got a job, and you don't.

C. CAVALLARO: You're talking -- you're acting like a 5-year-old. And I feel sorry for you.

COOPER: All right. We're going to -- we're...

DONAHUE: Well, I won on this, and you lost, didn't you?

COOPER: Well, let's -- let's leave it there.

You both expressed your opinions.

Bill Donahue, appreciate you being with -- and, Cosimo Cavallaro, appreciate it as well. Thank you, sir.

C. CAVALLARO: Thank you, Anderson.

COOPER: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, thankfully, there are other stories dealing with faith tonight that aren't causing quite so much of an uproar.

Just ahead: She was sick and now is cured. She won't call it a miracle, but the Catholic Church might. And a pope might achieve sainthood because of it, Pope John Paul II. That's coming up.

Also: selling religion with sex, why church leaders are taking a page from Madison Avenue -- next on 360.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[...]

Britney's box

Remembering Molly Ivins

John Nichols at The Nation

Molly Ivins always said she wanted to write a book about the lonely experience of East Texas civil rights campaigners to be titled No One Famous Ever Came. While the television screens and newspapers told the stories of the marches, the legal battles and the victories of campaigns against segregation in Alabama and Mississippi, Ivins recalled, the foes of Jim Crow laws in the region where she came of age in the 1950s and '60s often labored in obscurity without any hope that they would be joined on the picket lines by Nobel Peace Prize winners, folk singers, Hollywood stars or senators.

And Ivins loved those righteous strugglers all the more for their willingness to carry on.

The warmest-hearted populist ever to pick up a pen with the purpose of calling the rabble to the battlements, Ivins understood that change came only when some citizen in some off-the-map town passed a petition, called a Congressman or cast an angry vote to throw the bums out. The nation's mostly widely syndicated progressive columnist, who died January 31 at age 62 after a long battle with what she referred to as a "scorching case of cancer," adored the activists she celebrated from the time in the late 1960s when she created her own "Movements for Social Change" beat at the old Minneapolis Tribune and started making heroes of "militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers."

"Troublemaker" might be a term of derision in the lexicon of some journalists--particularly the on-bended-knee White House press pack that Ivins studiously refused to run with--but to Molly it was a term of endearment. If anyone anywhere was picking a fight with the powerful, she was writing them up with the same passionate language she employed when her friend the great Texas liberal Billie Carr passed on in 2002. Ivins recalled Carr "was there for the workers and the unions, she was there for the African-Americans, she was there for the Hispanics, she was there for the women, she was there for the gays. And this wasn't all high-minded, oh, we-should-all-be-kinder-to-one-another. This was tough, down, gritty, political trench warfare; money against people. She bullied her way to the table of power, and then she used that place to get everybody else there, too. If you ain't ready to sweat, and you ain't smart enough to deal, you can't play in her league."

Molly Ivins could have played in the league of the big boys. They invited her in, giving her a bureau chief job with the New York Times--which she wrote her way out of when she referred to a "community chicken-killing festival" in a small town as a "gang-pluck." Leaving the Times in 1982 was the best thing that ever happened to Molly. She settled back in her home state of Texas, where her friend Jim Hightower was about to get elected as agricultural commissioner and another friend named Ann Richards was striding toward the governorship. As a newspaper columnist for the old Dallas Times Herald--and, after that paper's demise, for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram--Molly began writing a political column drenched in the good humor and fighting spirit of that populist moment. It appealed beyond Texas, and within a decade she was writing for 400 papers nationwide.

As it happened, the populist fires faded in Texas, and the state started spewing out the byproducts of an uglier political tradition--the oil-money plutocracy--in the form of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

It mattered, a lot, that Molly was writing for papers around the country during the Bush interregnum. She explained to disbelieving Minnesotans and Mainers that, yes, these men really were as mean, as self-serving and as delusional as they seemed. The book that Molly and her pal Lou Dubose wrote about their homeboy-in-chief, Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (Random House, 2000), was the essential exposé of the man the Supreme Court elected President. And Ivins's columns tore away any pretense of civility or citizenship erected by the likes of Karl Rove.

When Washington pundits started counseling bipartisanship after voters routed the Republicans in the 2006 elections, Molly wrote, "The sheer pleasure of getting lessons in etiquette from Karl Rove and the right-wing media passeth all understanding. Ever since 1994, the Republican Party has gone after Democrats with the frenzy of a foaming mad dog. There was the impeachment of Bill Clinton, not to mention the trashing of both Clinton and his wife--accused of everything from selling drugs to murder--all orchestrated by that paragon of manners, Tom DeLay.... So after 12 years of tolerating lying, cheating and corruption, the press is prepared to lecture Democrats on how to behave with bipartisan manners.

"Given Bush's record with the truth, this bipartisanship sounds like a bad idea on its face," Ivins continued, in a column that warned any Democrat who might think to make nice with President and his team that "These people are not only dishonest--they're not even smart."

Her readers cheered that November 9, 2006, column, as they did everything Molly wrote. And the cheers came loudest from those distant corners of Kansas and Mississippi where, often, her words were the only dissents that appeared in the local papers during the long period of diminished discourse following 9/11. For the liberal faithful in Boise and Biloxi and Beaumont, she was a lifeline--telling them that, yes, Henry Kissinger was "an old war criminal," that Bush had created a "an honest to goodness constitutional crisis" when it embarked on a program of warrantless wiretapping and that Bill Moyers should seek the presidency because "I want to vote for somebody who's good and brave and who should win." (The Moyers boomlet was our last co-conspiracy, and in Molly's honor, I'm thinking of writing in his name on my Democratic primary ballot next year.)

For the people in the places where no one famous ever came, Molly Ivins arrived a couple of times a week in the form of columns that told the local rabble-rousers that they were the true patriots, that they damn well better keep pitching fits about the war and the Patriot Act and economic inequality, and that they should never apologize for defending "those highest and best American ideas" contained in the Bill of Rights.

Often, Molly actually did come--in all of her wisecracking, pot-stirring populist glory.

Keeping a promise she'd made when her old friend and fellow Texan John Henry Faulk was on his deathbed, Molly accepted a steady schedule of invites to speak for local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union in dozens of communities, from Toledo to Sarasota to Medford, Oregon. Though she could have commanded five figures, she took no speaker's fee. She just came and told the crowds to carry on for the Constitution. "I know that sludge-for-brains like Bill O'Reilly attack the ACLU for being 'un-American,' but when Bill O'Reilly's constitutional rights are violated, the ACLU will stand up for him just like they did for Oliver North, Communists, the KKK, atheists, movement conservatives and everyone else they've defended over the years," she told them. "The premise is easily understood: If the government can take away one person's rights, it can take away everyone's."

She also told them, even when she was battling cancer and Karl Rove, that they should relish the lucky break of their consciences and their conflicts. Speaking truth to power is the best job in any democracy, she explained. It took her to towns across this great yet battered land to say: "So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."

Airpower in NYC

(top and middle)

USAAF P-51 Mustang, USAF F-16 Falcon, F-15 Eagle, A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog). You know the lady. The middle photo shows the flight over the 59th Street Bridge, Roosevelt Island is in the middle, Manhattan on the right, and Queens on the left. The wet stuff is the East River.

(bottom)

USN Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornets.

Click to embiggen

No more Bush

On Dave ...

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Rich Wood and I run the Alternate Brain, a blog concerned mainly with veterans' affairs. I am honored to stand before you today with two of my heroes, men of honor. Let me throw out some numbers:

Close to 3,000 American service people dead

Over 20,000 wounded, many with serious brain injury, many missing limbs.

No WMDs

Civil War in Iraq

Osama bin Forgotten

And the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan because troops needed there have been sent to Iraq instead.

President Bush and his henchmen lied to us at every turn to provide a justification for the war in Iraq. They fabricated evidence of WMDs, as Ambassador Wilson proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. They've cashiered flag officers, like General Shinseki, who before the war even began, made clear the war plan was insufficient and inept. People who knew failure was a foregone conclusion before the first American boots touched the Iraqi sand.

They've used the war in Iraq, our soldiers' lives, for political purposes. They've gone so far as to destroy the career of an American intelligence officer in a petty attempt at revenge. Ambassador Wilson's lovely wife, performing the critical mission of chasing down WMDs and the people who would supply them to terrorists, was put in mortal danger by her exposure, as were her contacts and assets working in the region, because Mr. Wilson dared to speak the truth. Remember, she was looking for the WMDs the President said he so desperately wanted to find.

President Bush does not want to win the War on Terror; he wants it to go on forever, for that is the basis of his power. Were it not for a Congress of sheep, or lemmings as it were because they're following him off a cliff, he would have never been able to get away with it. The Human Rubber Stamps, like Peter King, have enabled him, smiling and nodding their heads, giving him everything he asks for without oversight.

Good men like Dave Mejias are needed to put a stop to this mess.

Dave will ask the tough questions, unlike Peter King who'll do and say whatever the Republican Spin Machine tells him to.

Dave Mejias knows American troops are not just props for photo ops, not just cannon fodder and deck apes in the imperialistic conquest and illegal occupation of Iraq. Not just a comma in a footnote of history.

Dave knows that America's obligation to our fighting men and women does not stop when they can no longer carry a rifle in combat.

Dave Mejias knows that the Armed Forces of the United States are not political tools to be used by a spineless bunch who've never looked into the business end of an enemy rifle. Dishonorable men who went to the greatest lengths to avoid service in their generation's war, yet squander the lives of this generation's soldiers so cavalierly.

I have, and it is the reason I stand with him. It is the reason every veteran in New York's Third District should as well. Dave Mejias knows the true meaning of 'supporting the troops' and that's why he has my endorsement, my respect, and my unqualified support.

Mejias Press Conference

Yours truly, Capt. Cleere, Dave Mejias, and the local VFW Commander.

King-sized scandal

Reprint of an email from the Mejias campaign, 27 October 2006:

FARMINGDALE - On the heels of the recent news that the home of Congressman Curt Weldon's lobbyist daughter was raided by the F.B.I., Dave Mejias, Nassau County Legislator and candidate for Congress in New York's 3^rd Congressional District, called on Congressman Peter King to tell the truth about his dealings with Park Strategies, a lobbying firm that employs King's son, Sean King.

An article in yesterday's Newsday ("King's son works for defense lobbying firm"), details that Sean King is a Vice President at Park Strategies, and that "Park Strategies has lucrative contracts with many big businesses to lobby on defense and homeland security spending." The article quotes Peter King as saying "[Sean King] has no clients that deal with my office." NOT TRUE. This video shows Sean King in Taiwan touting his clients, Lockheed Martin and L-3 Communications, both firms that receive Homeland Security contracts.

A posting on the New York Observer's Politicker Blog quoted King as saying "[Sean King] is not a lobbyist, does no lobbying, and has no dealings with my office whatsoever." NOT TRUE. According to the State of New York, Sean King IS a registered lobbyist.

Today, in a separate Newsday article, Peter King continued to deny any wrong doing despite mounting evidence that he is engaged in a clear conflict of interest - homeland security contracts being awarded to companies that employ his son's lobbying firm.

"This is a perfect example of the culture of corruption in Washington - relatives of members of Congress lobbying for homeland security contracts," said Mejias. "Peter King is lying about his son's employment as a lobbyist, and Sean King's clients receiving government contracts. This is a major conflict of interest, and the people of Long Island deserve to know the truth."

Mejias called on Peter King to answer several critical questions:

What calls or meetings has Peter King had with Sean King and clients of Sean King?

What requests has Peter King made on behalf of Sean King and clients of Sean King to government agencies and congressional committees?

What Homeland Security contracts have Peter King steered in the direction of Sean King's clients?

Has Peter King ever encouraged companies lobbying for Homeland Security contracts to hire Sean King's firm?

Will Peter King release all correspondence with his Congressional office about lobbying for Homeland Security contract?

Will Peter King release his Congressional calendar to show who he met with, and when?

"It"s bad enough that Peter King has been a rubber stamp for the failed policies of the Bush administration," said Mejias. "Now we learn that Peter King's relatives are cashing in on his position, and he's lying to cover it up. It's time to put an end to the culture of corruption in Washington. We need leaders in Congress who will fight for us, not pad their family's pockets and roll over for the special interests."