Over on trufen.net, Victor posted that story about Ray Bradbury slamming Michael Moore for "stealing" his title. This is followed by comments noting that it ain't theft - it's allusion, homage. And, anyway, the author of such titles as "Something Wicked This Way Comes" and "I Sing the Body Electric!" is no one to talk. Bradbury may say his objection to Moore's reference to his title has nothing to be with politics, but, like "ggrihn" says, it sure looks like it's about politics. 15:34 BST
Media notes
On, Monday, Eric Alterman wrote a less than laudatory retrospective on Ronald Reagan. On Tuesday, along with more on that same subject, he printed some letters he received in response:
May God strike you down, sir. Hell hath no fury like thy scorn. You desecrate the dead on a level comparable to Al Queda. Pray for forgiveness.
"In the past few weeks -- as I have been on some of these TV shows, either talking about my book or about [my website] MediaMatters.org -- I have been -- off air -- been told by network talent: 'Thank God you are doing this because we can't do it -- because James Dobson can send an e-mail and turn NBC upside down,'" Brock said. Dobson is the conservative Christian leader of Focus on the Family.
He said Dobson "is the conservative Christian leader of Focus on the Family"? Don't they know? Is there any doubt about that? Gee whiz.
At The Poor Man: Tom Brokstraw sits in when Tom Brokaw's questions are too hard.
King of Zembla has a contribution to the paranoia report files with news from The Boston Globe that what was burned in the library at Baghdad was Saddam's government documents, and it doesn't look like it was done by random looters.
I see the Unablogger has been dedicating his cheesecake again. That's where you should go when you get really disappointed that I haven't posted a bra of the week lately. (On the other hand, visit Skippy, because I said so, and he's trying to hit the half-million mark.)
I was reading this post at Change for America and I thought to myself, "Christ, pretending I don't have to be accountable just because it's a 'time of war' would be a good reason to start a war all by itself if I was into totalitarianism." And you know, they are. (Also: Julian Bond for President.)
At Body and Soul, Jeanne slaps Christopher Hitchens for attacking Reagan personally while ignoring so many much more serious things. She's got him dead to rights.
Comedy with Peggy Noonan! Also, 6 out o 10 americans say keep your nose out of my salvation: and, in a result that only shows the nerve, hutzbah, gall, or whatever negative adjective you choose to describe the self-righteous move to judge everyone else, it turns out that the group that has the highest percentage (41%) for denying communion to politicians who support choice is found, not among catholics, but evengelical christians
Dave at Seeing the Forest received some Astroturf and decided to respond.
Ampersand has a useful post on the different ways the term "partial-birth abortion" is used.
I'm a bit late mentioning this but MadKane got damn-near serious on the subject of No child's behind left - but it still rhymes. 11:57 BST
Blogcheck
Let's see what Charlie is up to. Yikes! He is also a bit relieved that Reagan's death brings an ugly chapter to a close, because he reckons Reagan nearly got him killed.
Bill Scher of LiberalOasis recommends you go to C-Span and listen to the interview with John Kerry. It's pretty good, and he talks about what they are doing to ensure the integrity of the ballot box. And while you're there, click on the link for Hillary Clinton (who also talks about paper ballots), George Soros, and Howard Dean. It starts off with that liberal Reverend we've been needing to hear from.
Omaha the Cat Dancer was FAC's favorite comic book. Her Majesty's Customs & Excise made us work hard to get copies into the country, and we missed a few (donations welcome). But we revere the names of Reed Waller and Kate Worley around here.
I understand that new Omaha material is forthcoming, but Kate and her husband have been having trouble making ends meet while Kate fought cancer. She's lost that fight, and will be missed.
It's probably time now to do some of my periodic announcements about how my first name is first and my last name is last, I hate your HTML mail, and, um, you should really get rid of Outlook Express altogether. In other non-news:
I just got promo e-mail from The American Prospect saying, "The American Prospect builds stable of online writers." I don't have much use for an announcement like this - I mean, it's not as if I don't link them frequently anyway. But it does remind me that I am still irritated that Glenn Reynolds is still on their blogroll. You know, you look at that and you can't help thinking, "They don't even have me there, and you can hardly say I'm more of a crackpot than he is." It just rankles, y'dig? (They don't have enough women on their blogroll anyway.) But really, Reynolds has just been increasingly offensive for so long now that there's no excuse.
At Center for American Progress, Eric Alterman takes a good look at that study of journalists that right-wingers have been misrepresenting. In The Nation, he says John Kerry needs to come clean about being fooled by Bush: Like so much of the country--and its elite media--he made a terrible mistake in trusting George W. Bush. He underestimated both the fanaticism and incompetence of the President and his advisers and their willingness to mislead the country into war. He thought George Tenet's CIA reports were on the level. He imagined Colin Powell was more than just window-dressing.
At Tapped, Matt Yglesias catches Dick Morris floating the "Al Qaeda supports Kerry" line, with some suitably warped logic. Matt picks it apart and surmises that from Morris' logic, a Kerry win will mean the guy the terrorists are mad at will be out of the White House so they will leave us alone. And that would be a fine campaign slogan for Bush!
Dan Solomon: I haven't blogged for a long time, but this dragged me back. Long-time NY Times educational reporter wrote an opinion piece on failing charter schools in Texas so Edison Schools President hit back in a letter that inadvertently does a better job of exposing the dangers of this whole brand of school reform than I ever could. [Go to his main page if the permalink doesn't work.] 20:25 BST
The United States officially informed the Korean government that the U.S. will pull 12,500 soldiers out of Korea by late December 2005, including the 3,600 soldiers scheduled to be sent to Iraq, according to Kim Sook, head of the foreign ministry's North American affairs bureau.
That's a third of our troops there. Hmmm. 17:09 BST
Blogistas
Amy Sullivan is not entirely sympathetic to poor Marc Racicot.
TalkLeft also alerts us that The Agonist is moving to this address at Scoop. We found a pointer to this William Grieder piece from The Nation about how Bush has effectively made the "War on Terror" into the new cold war there.
I think I linked something earlier (that I'm too lazy to hunt for now) that connected George Bush's childhood with his attitudes now. It's not really a secret that badly-treated children can turn into fairly unpleasant adults if they haven't the facility for self-reflection.
You do have to wonder what experience informs the attitudes of the neocons, who seem to share a somewhat punitive and un-loving view of the world.
I previously analyzed Kristol's reverence for a government that will "command" and "give orders," and his view that "[p]eople need that." I have not referred to the neoconservatives as neofascists for no reason; in fact, as my earlier post indicated, I had many reasons for the designation -- and these comments of Kristol's clearly reveal what some of them are.
The more you look at what neocons believe, the scarier these guys are. The nation can only be great if a whole lot of us (read: not them) are deprived of personal happiness. Or something like that. They think authoritarianism is a good thing. They are fundamentally anti-American, in the truest sense. They do not like our mission to create a nation of prosperous and free people. 14:32 BST
Ever wonder what happened to that guy whose research paper British intel plagiarized to create support for the invasion? Richard Reeves says he's still writing about Iraq.
NYT's Apologies Miss the Point, says Robert Parry, who recognizes their behavior as part of a larger pattern of right-leaning journalism throughout the press corps. He ought to know.
SACRAMENTO - California power grid managers accused of manipulating the energy market during the state's power crisis were cleared Friday in an internal report that swept aside earlier criticism of the agency.
The governing board of the California Independent System Operator found that employees had been untruthful with a Senate committee investigating the allegations two years ago, but said they would not be punished. [...] The report said the managers attempted to line up power purchases days before major power lines were shut down for maintenance. During phone calls in November 2001 managers spoke of scheduling a "fictitious load" of power. [...] A member of the now-disbanded committee, Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, said the ISO should have issued the original report and then disputed any charges it felt were inaccurate.
"To say the report lacks credibility would be an understatement," Bowen said in a written statement. "The original report done was highly critical of the ISO and charged the ISO with lying to the committee, but it got shelved by the board and was replaced by this 34-page piece of milquetoast."
Most Americans believe that if you work hard and full time, you should not be poor. But the truth is that many working families are, and many low-income breadwinners must hold down multiple jobs just to survive. With stagnant wages in an economy that is growing for some but clearly not for others, more and more people and their children are simply being left out and left behind. What is at risk is the reality of a genuine opportunity society and the ethic of work when work no longer is enough to support a family.
I quoted a longer passage from Joe Conason's section on Republicans and economics in Big Lieslast year, but I thought this was worth remembering:
The truth about history's largest tax increase was widely available to anyone who could read and use a calculator. In October 1994 the Wall Street Journal explained: "Contrary to Republican claims, the 1993 package is not 'the largest tax increase in history.' The 1982 deficit reduction package of President Reagan and Sen. Robert Dole in a GOP-controlled Senate was a bigger tax bill, both in 1993-adjusted dollars and as a percentage of overall economy." The New York Times and the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation reached the same conclusion, which required no formula more difficult than translating 1982 dollars into their 1993 equivalent. In other words, a year after passing his tax cuts, Reagan signed the largest tax increase in history. The Gipper still holds that record today.
When someone dies as the result of a long illness, those close to them usually feel a certain relief, and I hope his family is able to feel that now without too much guilt. I've had more than one friend watch the deterioration of someone they loved from Alzheimer's and have seen how crushing this can be, so in that sense - and in that sense only - I can see Reagan's death as a blessing. (Even I don't like seeing an ex-president in that condition. Although, now that I think of it, I didn't like seeing him in that condition while he was still president.) I did not, at this late date, feel any enmity toward him, nor any threat from him, and there is not even a tiny bit of gloating in my heart. But I am grateful that those who loved him have been released from watching him degenerate.
But I will certainly not remember him as a great president. He pretended that he could harmlessly give away the treasury to the rich and then dunned those who actually have to work for that money with the largest tax increase in history, and his admirers will not admit it. The only good thing I can say about him is that he wasn't George W. Bush. 14:37 BST
Easy pickin's
I see our little friend on the right has allegedly de-fisked my de-fisking of his fisking of Al Gore, and followed up with a new set of rules for "credible" argument. Dig this:
1. If you claim that President Bush called Saddam Hussein an "imminent threat," you lose approximately 50% of your total credibility. That means you can do it twice before you lose the argument.
The Center for American Progress is one of many sites to dispense with this, noting that the evasion appears to be finding the specific phrase "imminent threat" among Bush's own statements. But, as CAP shows, the administration did use these words and though they don't appear to have a direct quote from Bush himself using exactly that phrase, he certainly used other phrases that meant exactly the same thing. It's a bit of a game to refute the charge by saying that Bush did not use those exact words - he and his agents did their very best to project the view that Saddam represented an immediate threat to the United States.
2. If you claim that President Bush blamed Saddam Hussein for the September 11 terrorist attacks, you lose the argument.
I don't think I've ever seen a direct quote in which Bush explicitly and literally did so (although Cheney did so long after even the Washington press corps had tumbled to this trick, forcing Bush to deny it), but he sure worked hard to imply it. If a substantial percentage of Americans inferred it - and, apparently, they did - that just demonstrates that Bush communicated it effectively without ever explicitly stating it. Even the conservative Washington Postnoticed this.
3. If you make a reference to President Bush's many lies, and then when asked to give an example, you say something like "There are too many, so I don't even know where to start," I will assume that you can't come up with one.
Because it's easier to come up with dozens than it is to settle on just one or two, and this is just a weblog, not a research paper. But, as I said, there are wholewebsites dedicated to the subject.
Of course, you can go right back to the 2000 presidential debates and find Bush denying his own policies. My personal favorite all-time blatant lie in the debate has been discussed here before: His claim that Gore had raised twice as much for the campaign as Bush had. This was intended to refute the notion that Bush was heavily funded by big corporations to an extent that Gore was not. It was an astonishing statement. For the entire first half of Bush's campaign, his biggest talking point had been that he'd managed to accrue record-breaking funds. There were endless exuberant articles in the Newspapers of Record about how much money he had raised. By the time of the debates, Bush had raised twice as much money as Gore had, and everyone knew it. This is not something one could easily overlook; Bush certainly must have known that he had twice as much money as Gore. This was not a matter of lying by omission or lying by implication: It was a bald false statement that was meant to libel Gore as a tool of corporate interests.
Which is why I particularly like that example. In most other cases, Bush's lies are dismissed as mere folly, as if he couldn't be expected to know the facts, or it is somehow excusable that he ignored inconvenient facts and (allegedly) allowed himself to believe things that were not true because they fit more comfortably into what he wanted to believe. But it is simply inconceivable that Bush did not know he had raised more money than Gore - and even if it were, it would make no real difference, because if we have a leader who is so consistently wrong, and who so consistently makes statements that are not true, the bottom line is that he is wrong, and we don't need a leader who is so manifestly wrong. He misstates his policies and their effects because he doesn't know what they are? How does that exonerate him from being a bad leader? He may be either incompetent or dishonest, but neither quality is appropriate in a man in his position. If he is not a liar - if his misstatements and missteps are not deliberate - then he is certainly incompetent. Which is precisely what Gore said. 12:55 BST
Clippings
In the 5 June issue of The Week I found this:
A teacher from Brooklyn, New York, has been suspended after hanging a five-year-old from a coat-rack in the staffroom. Jason Schoenberger, 24, said he wanted to surprise a fellow teacher.
I found some more serious versions of the story elsewhere but on a cursory scan of a few of them didn't see his excuse in those articles.
On the other hand, the story of this guy was just as weird when I found what I presume to be the originating article:
MOVE over, Kim Jong Il, Dear Leader of North Korea. Make way for Turkmenbashi the Great, Father of the Turkmen. Long your rival for the title of champion megalomaniac, Saparmyrat Niyazov's latest stroke of genius confirms his superior mastery of the politics of the madhouse. As of tomorrow, the President-for-Life of Turkmenistan has declared non-Turkmen qualifications 'incompatible' with the nation's great strides into 'the golden century of Turkmenbashi ' and ordered the dismissal of every doctor, lawyer, teacher and public sector worker in the land who made the mistake of going abroad to study. Thousands have received the bald official notification: 'Your diploma is considered invalid. For this reason, you are notified that starting from June 1, you are dismissed from work.'
That, in Turkmenistan, means just about everyone with a decent education. Throughout the former Soviet Union, the best brains went to places such as Moscow or Leningrad all now classified as 'foreign'. This was particularly true of Turkmenistan, a reach of inhospitable desert about the size of California containing only 5 million people, that lies east of the Caspian Sea next to Iran and Afghanistan.
But it was much funnier in The Week:
The president has also banned ballet, renamed January after himself and ordered the construction of the world's largest shoe.
Maybe he just wanted to surprise another national leader. 10:39 BST
Gore's 50-minute speech frequently brought the audience to its feet, whooping and shouting.
Gore said he initially supported Bush's decision to invade Afghanistan, but now realizes that the administration was already secretly agitating to find some way to launch a war in Iraq.
"They decided to take advantage of 9-11 and exploit the fears and exploit the anger and redirect it away from the people who attacked us" and attack Iraq, he said.
Bush has "looted" the economy and turned projected multitrillion-dollar surpluses into deep deficits, Gore said.
"In the last three and a half years, this administration has tragically and recklessly squandered our legacy, while the special interest people were advising him behind closed doors," Gore declared.
The Bush administration's "single objective is to help the wealthy and powerful," he said, adding that the president likes to act tough but "whenever he is in the presence of a wealthy contributor, he is a moral coward."
Max Blumenthal has the dope on the man who will replace George Tenet at CIA: Because of Goss's fierce loyalty to the agency, he has come under fire from everyone from Nancy Pelosi to fellow Republican Richard Shelby, who said of him, "I don't think we should be too close to anybody we have oversight of, because you can't do your job." Also, Political Art Is Dangerous Again.
Paul McCartney on drugs: He said the song Got To Get You Into My Life was "about pot - although everyone missed it at the time", and Day Tripper was "about acid". (via)
Firestarter: 20 years of Born in the USA One score years ago, Bruce Springsteen brought forth on this continent a little record called Born in the U.S.A. (And we do mean record, not CD.) I got that from Altercation, where the same post also has a ten-point list of the circumstantial evidence that Bush is an Al Qaida plant (with a link for every point). 17:23 BST
Do they think we're cheating?
We've heard a lot from the right about how liberals and Democrats (or anyone to the left of whatever the current RNC position of the moment is) is not quite a real American. Josh Marshall:
Here at TPM we've repeatedly noted the tendency for Republicans (and also non-Republicans) to argue that non-white voters somehow aren't quite real voters. The point is often framed as noting how up-the-creek Democrats would be without black voters. [...] We heard a lot of this during Tim Johnson's successful reelection campaign back in 2002 in South Dakota. And now it's being proffered as an excuse to explain Stephanie Herseth's narrow victory in the state earlier this week.
As Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), former head of the Republican House campaign committee (NRCC), told The Hill, "If you take out the Indian reservation, we would have won."
As I said when we last discussed this, I don't like making too much of this. I think the people who say such things haven't quite thought the point out. But their underlying assumption pretty clearly seems to be that blacks or Indians or whoever aren't quite real voters, and that Democrats who can't quite get the job done with ordinary white voters have to resort to them as a sort of electoral padding.
Not quite real Americans, and not quite real voters, either. So that would explain why it's okay to do things like, oh, just casually remove millions of them from the voting rolls, as they have in Florida and elsewhere. The continual use of the kind of rhetoric Josh is talking about is certainly meant to suggest to the public that Democrats gain elective office by use of illegitimate votes:
They're blacks.
They're redskins. And of course,
They're criminals.
As Josh points out, it seems like it wouldn't need saying that if a segment of a party's constituency were removed from the picture, it would reduce their turn-out and thus their representation. But why belabor this point? Are we supposed to respond by asking whether Republicans could win office if white racists and corporate criminals were eliminated from the picture? Isn't that the obvious inference?
But I don't think that's where they're going. The right takes for granted that it is racism rather than blackness that is properly "American".
Anyone who doubts this need only look at how the voter-purges worked. Although it was claimed that the purges were aimed at some vast number of ex-cons who illegally try to vote, it is actually quite well known that it's very, very rare for this to happen; these are people who might risk prison for money, sex, or drugs, but not just to vote. It simply isn't worth it.
But whose names were actually offered to officials to be purged from the rolls? Most of them weren't felons at all, as Greg Palast has ably demonstrated. But here's a point you don't hear much about: Taxpayers' money was used this way in states that by law do not disenfranchise ex-cons. Which means that the very fact of having a felon-purge was itself a criminal enterprise.
But that's okay, since it was just a crime against blacks, Democrats, liberals - not against "Americans". 14:42 BST
Vocabulary
Found in the 29 May issue of The Week:
An American Christian group is lobbying to have the whale reclassified as a fish, because that is how the animal is described in the story of Jonah. "the Bible is God's own words," says a spokesman for Concerned Christians for Education Reform. "If the Lord says the whale is a 'great fish', it's a fish. Period."
Content from The Week isn't online, as far as I can tell, so no link. Couldn't seem to find an originating article, either. 01:26 BST
Friday, 04 June 2004
Things I saw
I saw the Harry Potter movie and I liked it. Then I wandered around Little India for a while with a pal. Haven't spent much time looking at the 'net today, don't know what the news is, etc. Here's something we prepared earlier:
Is Tenet Bush's Designated John Dean?As Richard Nixon began sustaining the first injurious fallout from the Watergate Scandal, the repercussions of which would ultimately topple him from power, his strategy was to present White House Counsel John Dean as designated administration sacrificial lamb. (via)
Thousands of people die because the White House was occupied by pirates who were busy robbing our treasury and didn't care about protecting our national security, and who then launched an invasion of another country for no intelligent reason, and Ray Bradbury is suddenly really angry. And what is he angry at?
Author Ray Bradbury has ripped into filmmaker Michael Moore for using the title "Fahrenheit 9/11" for his new Bush-bashing movie, an obvious takeoff on the 84-year-old's science-fiction classic "Fahrenheit 451." [...] "Michael Moore is a screwed a--hole, that is what I think about that case," Bradbury said according to an English translation of the story. "He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission."
Continued the author: "[Moore] is a horrible human being - horrible human!"
This famous science fiction writer also displayed his predictive powers:
Bradbury dismissed any chance of the title being changed at this point:
"Who cares? Nobody will see his movie. It is almost dead already. Never mind, nobody cares."
Via Cory Doctorow, who expresses his disappointment. (I gotta be honest, I never liked Bradbury all that much, anyway. I mean, it's not like he was Theodore Sturgeon or something.) 13:50 BST
De-fisking
The other day I did a brief round-up of the reactions to Gore's speech, and one blogger on the right seems to have taken exception to my suggestion that their side had nothing new to say:
It links to part 3 of my fisking with the word "crazy." Heh heh. Nothing to say, huh? I guess that's why I spent several hours researching and dissecting the entire thing.
Nice dodge.
So, let's see if there was indeed anything new:
George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.
If you liberal idiots really cared about our international reputation, you wouldn't be bending over backwards to make it look like the Abu Ghraib abuses represent our entire military.
Of course, no one said any such thing. Gore said that it was the result of a policy - one that quite a few members of our military have been expressing disgust with, by the way.
Leaving that aside, we liberals don't have to say a single word to wreck America's international reputation, since George Bush has already accomplished that all by himself. What we liberals are trying to do is remind the world that many Americans are disgusted by what happened at Abu Ghraib and want that policy stopped immediately.
Again, this "point" is nothing new: It's a standard RNC talking point that it's not the administration's disastrous policies that make us look bad, but people who observe that those policies are disastrous that make us look bad. Right-wingers are apparently unaware that the rest of the world was disgusted without any help from us liberals.
He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.
"Bush lied! Bush lied!" Even the former vice president is parroting this pathetic smear now. I love how they can NEVER PROVIDE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES. We just have to trust them, since everyone knows that Republicans are liars. After all, if they were honest, they wouldn't agree with the eeeeeeevil right wing agenda.
It is hard to know what to say to someone who claims we "never provide specific examples." The examples are so abundant at this point that I hardly know where to start. There are entire websites dedicated just to detailing the rather wide distinction between what Bush says and what he does, what Bush says and what is true. Any regular reader of Eschaton can probably think of a half dozen off the top of their head. Seeing the Forest regularly reminds us not to count on what they say, but to watch what they do.
You have to laugh at this particular criticism, even though, of course, we have heard this one before, as well. People whose memories go back as far as 2000 remember that one criticism of Gore was that he provided too many details, seemed to have too good a grasp of them and did not hesitate to discuss them. But then the same critics turned around and complained that a single speech is not presented as if it were a research paper. Nothing new.
Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention.
Yeah, because he ordered those poor, innocent guards to stack prisoners naked and take photos. And by the way, THE GENEVA CONVENTION ONLY APPLIES TO SOLDIERS IN UNIFORM! Terrorists disguised as civilians have no rights.
This is another RNC talking point, and of course it is false. First of all, the Geneva Conventions say that if an individual's status is in doubt, a tribunal must be held to determine that status before such an exception can be made; until that time, they must be treated as if they were covered by the protections of the Geneva Conventions. No such tribunals have ever been held with regard to the people in Guantanamo, let alone Iraq. Moreover, it is now well known that many - indeed, most - of those detained are entirely innocent; they weren't wearing uniforms because they were not, in fact, combatants, spies, or anything else - they were just residents and had no reason to be wearing uniforms. (The exception our hero is referring to applies only if we are talking about an army that has uniforms, in any event. We haven't even established whether uniforms are required by combatant Iraqis or Afghanistan's soldiers.)
More importantly, the Geneva Conventions make no exceptions for torture at all. There are no circumstances where they allow for the torture of anyone, ever, no matter what. That's some research you did, sugar.
Note also that our hero is unable to distinguished between Iraqis and Al Qaeda. You will recall, even if CD does not, that there is no known connection between Iraq and 9/11, but the illustrious CD presumes that every single person who happened to be around where US military personnel were picking up apparently random personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq were terrorists.
Ah, here's a good one:
He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq.
Could've fooled me.
Clearly, someone did. I mean, it's only been all over the news.
How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.
The horror! The horror!!! How about the horror that we felt in witnessing the 9/11 attacks? Do you really believe that those poor, mistreated prisoners wouldn't have flown those planes themselves if given the chance? We treated them better than they deserve.
Again, it has also been all over the news that most of the people detained in Iraq are innocent. And if you think merely by virtue of being Iraqis that they were pleased to see 9/11, let alone that they would have been willing participants, you really need to see a proctologist about the position of your head.
But of course, this has been the real Number One Talking Point of Bush with regard to Iraq: that it was not Osama, not Saudi Arabians, not insane religious fanatics, who were responsible for 9/11, but the secular government of Iraq. (This is one of those lies we were talking about earlier, CD.)
To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II.
From its earliest days in power? What the f**k were they doing before 9/11 that was so horrible for us?
Yep, that was terrific research you did. Do the words "South Korea" ring a bell? Bush was wrecking our foreign policy very early in his term. 9/11 just stepped it up a few notches.
Part 1 goes on pretty much in that vein. Part 2 begins:
This next section is a bit beyond my area of expertise, so it's not going to be brilliant, but I have to get through it so I can return to the good stuff. Let's begin...
At which point I thought to myself, "Let's not." Having seen his "expertise" in Part 1, I'd had plenty. Part 3 is a projection of the terrible threat Kerry presents to us. Nothing new, nothing new, nothing new. But pig-ignorant, f'sure.
The astonishing thing is that this so-called "fisking" is presented as some sort of refutation of Gore's speech. Not a single word of it has been refuted, of course; this isn't even a half-decent example of a rebuttal, let alone a refutation. But, amazingly, this guy just throws out a bunch of tired old RNC talking points and a load of snide statements and thinks he has presented something new.
Well, I am chagrined, Kevin drum did a post about female bloggers, including me, and I've been getting all these visitors and I haven't written much of anything all week, just posted a passel of links and quotes. Most readers of The Sideshow will probably be familiar with most of the weblogs he mentions, but do check out the others he listed as well as those added in the comments by his readers. 01:29 BST
Thursday, 03 June 2004
Recommended reading
I learned at Get Donkey that Howard Dean has a weekly newspaper column. I think the first one is Electronic voting - not ready for prime time: In December 2000, five Supreme Court justices concluded that a recount in the state of Florida's presidential election was unwarranted. This, despite the desire of the Florida Supreme Court to order a statewide recount in an election that was decided by only 537 votes. In the face of well-documented voting irregularities throughout the state, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision created enormous cynicism about whether the votes of every American would actually be counted. Although we cannot change what happened in Florida, we have a responsibility to our democracy to prevent a similar situation from happening again.
I think I've seen this cited elsewhere in the blogosphere, but if you haven't seen Dana Milbank's Tuesday piece in The Washington Post, Making Hay Out of Straw Men, check it out: It is an ancient debating technique: Caricature your opponent's argument, then knock down the straw man you created. In the 2004 campaign, Bush has been knocking down such phantoms on subjects from Iraq to free trade.
Two articles from Matt Welch in Reason:
On the climate of suppression of free speech and the abandonment of First Amendment principles by journalists, in Fair-Weather Friends: Similarly, when Cumulus banished the Dixie Chicks from its airwaves after lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience she was "ashamed" to hail from the same state as President Bush, many self-described civil libertarians made the point that, after all, Cumulus is a private company and is free to air whomever it likes. That is true, of course. But defending freedom of speech is more than just respecting private property. It's expressing support for the climate of free-wheeling expression.
On the idea that the American press is a fifth column bent on losing the war, in Flaming the Messenger: "But for the most part," Michael Barone wrote in a column earlier this week, "[Franklin] Roosevelt did not have to deal with one problem Bush faces today. And that is that today's press works to put the worst possible face on the war." Instead of being greeted with the howls of mockery it richly deserved, this hyperbolic rant was greeted as Important Media Criticism all over the pro-war blogosphere.
Meanwhile, Matt Yglesias, having struggled with the contradictions of the "Two Presidents Theory" (one president - Karl Rove - running a cynical domestic policy at home while the other - Dick Cheney - creates a debacle in Iraq because his theories are just stupidly naive), finds this unsatisfying and comes up with a unified theory: Now, at last, with the revelation that Ahmad Chalabi has been passing intelligence information to the regime in Iran, the opportunity presents itself to construct just such a unified theory. The truth, hard as it is to accept, is that Bush is an Iranian agent. The light-hearted tone should not be mistaken for light-weight analysis; there's a serious point, here.
And Tom Tomorrow explains whose fault it is if the war goes badly because it was ill-considered, poorly planned, and badly managed.
14:31 BST
I missed the big sports story over the weekend, which was the Bingham Cup. Doesn't matter to me who played or who won, but I didn't know any of this and I think it's kinda cool:
Then there was his rugby. As a 6ft 4in, 220lb powerhouse No8, his colleagues on the University of California XV which twice won the national title always looked to Bingham when the going got tough.
"He was a man you wanted on your team, always willing to take charge if things weren't working right," said Eberhart. "He played with a smile but would hit like a freight train!"
Then, as Americans celebrated the heroes of flight 93 as the first true US symbols of resistance in their war against terrorism, they discovered another thing about Mark Bingham. He was gay.
To his friends, this was irrelevant. He wasn't a gay hero; he was just a hero. Others, though, felt he should be held up as a role model, a shining example of a gay man who became a hero. [...] The sheer size of one of the world's biggest single-site rugby festivals - it will feature 27 teams and 650-plus players from around the world, watched by crowds of up to 3,000 - is testament to the explosion of interest in the sport in the gay community which has been largely inspired by Bingham's name. The Rugby Football Union support it, United Airlines have provided financial backing and mum Alice has flown in to present the trophy on Sunday. [...] One Fog team-mate, pondering what must have happened on Flight 93, had this recurring image of Bingham on the rugby field. "We'd kicked the ball, and there were 15 people between Mark and the guy who caught it. Mark would duck down his head and go through the crowd fearlessly and then tackle that guy."
It will be a weekend to remember a good rugby player and a good man.
Astonishingly, this tribute was given a full page in London's Evening Standard, hardly a liberal paper. But you no longer have to be liberal - in this city, at least - to know that how tall you stand is not a matter of sexual preference. And though no one really knows what happened in that plane on that day, people know that Mark Bingham was someone to look up to. 20:29 BST
Notebook
A reminder: You can't trust machines to count your votes.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think this guy is saying that liberals made things so nice for his generation that they thought it was safe to support Republicans. Or something like that.
I really wish Cursor used permalinks for each day's entries, but it doesn't. In any case, catch today's stuff about the Newsweek article and other coverage of Abu Ghraib and everything else:
Newsweek reports on signs of a cover-up in the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Chicago Tribune quotes Globalsecurity.org's John Pike on the limitations of the Army's probe headed by Maj. Gen. George Fay: "Is this guy going to get to the bottom of Gen. Boykin's operation, or is this guy going to unwrap what Steve Cambone knew and when he [knew] it, or who authorized all this over at the White House? Of course not. Or figure out what CIA's role was in all of this? No way."
The Newsweek article mentions attorney Scott Horton, who said on "Now" that "the Pentagon's script" is to "keep the camera on these lurid photographs," to "just talk about six or seven rotten apples" and to "portray the Geneva convention as a web of hopelessly complicated legal technicalities that no one could be expected really to understand and even the lawyers disagree about them."
As the AP reports that "Several U.S. guards say they witnessed military intelligence operatives encouraging the abuse of Iraqi inmates at four prisons other than Abu Ghraib," the Washington Post editorializes that "President Bush's persistence in describing the abuse of foreign prisoners as an isolated problem at one Iraqi prison is blatantly at odds with the facts seeping out from his administration."
The Post's Fred Hiatt accuses Bush of giving aid and comfort to the enemy by opting to address the Iraq prison scandal with "a Nixonian strategy of damage containment, and a summer of piecemeal disclosure," and Billmon writes that "it's as if in the summer of 1974, Richard Nixon was still trying to blame everything on Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, even as the Ervin Committee was exposing his own taped self incriminations."
Josh Marshall notes that today's column by David Brooks is floating a brand-new excuse for the first round of Bush tax-cuts: that, in the advent of the dot.com bubble bursting and the recession, businesses were calling the White House begging for a policy shift to improve the economy. As Marshall says, it's pretty hard to buy that one given that the tax-cut proposal was part of his 2000 campaign and was sold on the basis that the economy was buoyant at the time. The proposal never came off the table, even when we went into recession in March of 2001. A new rationalization for the policy - to help the recovery - was introduced as the economy started to drag. Says Josh:
This new argument -- that the White House pushed through big tax cuts because of the economic slow-down of early 2001 -- is simply an effort to retrospectively exonerate reckless and dishonest behavior which was demonstrably reckless and dishonest at the time. Columnists should challenge that sort of mendacity, not abet it.
Josh does not make note of the fact that the recession hadn't actually started at the time they took office, either, and this lie is also meant to incorporate and buttress another RNC lie: that the recession began not in March of 2001, but during the Clinton presidency. 18:27 BST
"You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror," Bush told Rumsfeld in a Wizard-of-Oz moment May 10, as Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and senior generals looked on. "You are a strong secretary of Defense, and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude." The scene recalled another Oz moment: Nixon praising his enablers, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, as "two of the finest public servants I've ever known." [...] It was Barry Goldwater, the revered conservative, who convinced Nixon that he must resign or face certain conviction by the Senate - and perhaps jail. Goldwater delivered his message in person, at the White House, accompanied by Republican congressional leaders.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee likewise put principle above party to cast votes for articles of impeachment. On the eve of his mission, Goldwater told his wife that it might cost him his Senate seat on Election Day. Instead, the courage of Republicans willing to dissociate their party from Nixon helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency six years later, unencumbered by Watergate. [...] Today, the United States is confronted by another ill-considered war, conceived in ideological zeal and pursued with contempt for truth, disregard of history and an arrogant assertion of American power that has stunned and alienated much of the world, including traditional allies. At a juncture in history when the United States needed a president to intelligently and forcefully lead a real international campaign against terrorism and its causes, Bush decided instead to unilaterally declare war on a totalitarian state that never represented a terrorist threat; to claim exemption from international law regarding the treatment of prisoners; to suspend constitutional guarantees even to non-combatants at home and abroad; and to ignore sound military advice from the only member of his Cabinet - Powell - with the most requisite experience. Instead of using America's moral authority to lead a great global cause, Bush squandered it.
In Republican cloakrooms, as in the Oval Office, response to catastrophe these days is more concerned with politics and PR than principle. Said Tom DeLay, House majority leader: "A full-fledged congressional investigation - that's like saying we need an investigation every time there's police brutality on the street." [...] What did George W. Bush know and when did he know it? Another wartime president, Harry Truman, observed that the buck stops at the president's desk, not the Pentagon.
But among Republicans today, there seems to be scant interest in asking tough questions - or honoring the example of courageous leaders of Congress who, not long ago, stepped forward, setting principle before party, to hold accountable presidents who put their country in peril.
(I'm pretty sure Nixon's son-in-law was instrumental in convincing him to resign, as well.)
Bernstein was also on Countdown with Keith Olbermann later, and pointed out that George F. Will was among the first conservatives to start criticizing Nixon. Now he seems to have been repeating that history. It would be nice to think it's the beginning of another ground-swell. 17:20 BST
Things to read
Arthur Silber: Many of today's hawks speak as if the dangers we now face are unique in some indefinable way, and that they represent a particularly dangerous and lethal threat to us. But nothing about what is now occurring is new. Also read Arthur on Bush and the Responsibility Era - and what it means.
I've been dismayed for years about the appalling silence on major civil liberties issues, and on the invasion, of British musicians whose position is unassailable enough that they could speak out with impunity. I guess it's very nice that McCartney finally said something but what took him so long, and where are the rest of 'em?
If you don't remember who Sam Dash and Archibald Cox were, here are a few useful links:
Kieran at Crooked Timber talks about The Saturday Night Massacre (and Bork's reasons for wielding the knife on Nixon's behalf: "Cox had done nothing wrong, but the President can't be faced down in public by a subordinate official").
TalkLeft on Cox here, and on Dash here and here with reminiscence and round-ups. 02:10 BST
Feeling a chill?
Our own member of the working UK press says in e-mail:
i've checked it out, and these bills DO exist. i figure it'll take at least 5 million soldiers to 'protect' the saudi oilfields for the christian right!
He enclosed a copy of (but not a link to) the story in The Guardian that's been floating around the web already:
Last Wednesday, the American public was officially instructed to panic. Attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller - brows furrowed, faces grim - took over primetime TV to deliver a spine-chilling message to their fellow citizens: "Al-qaida attack imminent."
When, where, and what form the outrage will take, is unknown. But something very, very awful is going to happen very, very soon.
Cynics will be sceptical. Was this another attempt by the administration, like those "orange alerts" last year, to divert attention from Iraq, the soaring price of gasoline, and Abu Ghraib?
On the same day that Ashcroft was terrifying his countrymen, I was emailed by an American student friend. He too is terrified. "The US legislature," he wrote, "is trying to bring back the draft asap. Check it out at www.congress.org. For some reason no major news networks or printed media in this country are carrying this story. If these bills go through, the only thing between me and military service is my asthma."
He's right. There is pending legislation in the American House of Representatives and Senate in the form of twin bills - S89 and HR163. These measures (currently approved and sitting in the committee for armed services) project legislation for spring 2005, with the draft to become operational as early as June 15.
Draft-dodging will be harder than in the 1960s. In December 2001, Canada and the US signed a "smart border declaration", which, among other things, will prevent conscientious objectors (and cowards) from finding sanctuary across the northern border. There will be no deferment on higher-education grounds. Mexico does not appeal.
All this has been pushed ahead with an amazing lack of publicity. One can guess why. American newspapers are in a state of meltdown, distracted by war-reporting scandals at USA Today and the New York Times. There is an awareness in the press at large that the "embedding" system was just that - getting into bed with the military and reporting their pillow talk as "news from the frontline". The fourth estate has failed the American public and continues not to do its job.
I'm morally opposed to forcing people to kill others and risk injury or death for something they don't believe in. I've felt that way as long as I can remember. And now I've got two nephews who will soon be draft-age. And neither of them has asthma. 02:06 BST
Monday, 31 May 2004
Max versus the Three Stooges
I never did like P.J. O'Rourke. I thought maybe it was a girl thing, but I just couldn't read him without getting bored and annoyed. For a while, O'Rourke served the role of the Three Stooges here in that respect, since the Stooges themselves have no appeal to my partner, who was not exposed to them growing up.
Now Max exposes me to more of what must be humor from O'Rourke since otherwise it sounds too dim even for him:
Fascism, however, is a pointless ideology -- the graps (sic) of power for power's sake. The fight against fascism seems like Dad's war, Granddad's war. Fascism should be out of date in the purposeful, task-oriented world of today. Never mind Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Putin, Yasir Arafat, Somali warlords, Charles Taylor, China's politburo, the Saudi royal family, murderous Hutu rabble, and New Gringrich's career arc. . . . Fascists do bad things just to be bad. . . .
We have forwarded this vital information to our intelligence agencies. It should be a boon to the search for Islamo-fascists. The key is that, otherwise lacking in distinguishing features, the way you can find these miscreants is by looking for the bad people. Those over whom hovers the Shadow of Evil.
Ironically, it is just this contentless depiction of fascism that is itself a feature of fascist discourse. It is the invocation of an enemy other that serves as an all-purpose justification for the invasion of the month, or for domestic repression.
Sorry Charlie, a jingoist cannot be an anti-fascist, and World War II is not about 9-11.
(The other two stooges are the guy who quoted O'Rourke approvingly and of course the one and only Christopher Hitchens.) 23:40 BST
Some people we link to went to the big blogger bash in Denver and apparently had way too much to drink. In a massive outbreak of dual personality, Gary Farber has written about it, twice in the same post. It's a bit silly, and I can't escape the feeling he has insulted my cosmic twin sister. (Jeralyn, here is the post you need to read.)
In a post that my cosmic twin sister is bound to like better, Gary approvingly cites an article about Sheriff Bill Masters, who has had it with the War on Some Drugs:
Every year, Masters and Sam Shoen attend Marquis's parole hearing, determined to see that he serves every day of his sentence until his mandatory release date. For Masters, one of the most outrageous aspects of the case is that Marquis was out on parole at the time of Eva's murder. He'd been charged with ten counts of sexual assault in New Mexico but pleaded to one count and served only nine years. What kind of country lets rapists go free, he wondered, because its prisons are overloaded with drug offenders?
Seth Finkelstein has been egoscanning and, like most of us, enjoys seeing himself quoted. Here's a quote that amused me, too:
[On
Ralph Nader] Seth Finkelstein offers a nice comment on the claim that Gore ran a lousy campaign, the major reason he lost: Each individual straw heaped on a camel's back can say, "Who me? Wasn't me. I'm just one straw! What sort of a big strong camel is this, if he can't deal with one more straw on his back? The solution is to get a better camel!" ...
Seth is a smart guy. I've known him on the net for what must be close to a decade, now, and I still want to meet him.
Stamping some issue as controversial can be a substitute for thinking it through. In the case of embryonic-stem-cell research, thinking it through does not require further study or commissions of experts. This is one you can feel free to try at home. In fact, thinking it through is a moral obligation, especially if you are on the side of the argument that wants to stop or slow this research.
Of course, you could say that about a lot of issues, and you'd be right.
Time is also finally looking at the awkward relationship between Cheney and Haliburton; everybody tried to brush it off, but they really can't do that anymore. It's corruption, dammit, just like we kept telling them. (via)
Charlie is cheered by the news that research has indicted the necktie as a hazardous element in a doctor's wardrobe. 17:19 BST
The Whiskey Bar is open again and serving up some excellent stuff - and a banquet of metaphor:
I must confess that I spent a good part of my week off feasting at the schadenfreude buffet - and many good things to eat and drink did I find there, including such delicacies as skewered neocon, fricasseed Judith Miller, fried huevos de Sanchez (and you know I'm not talking about eggs), Republicans on the half shell (or in Denny Hastert's case, on the half wit) and, last but certainly not least, Shrub-a-la-road, smothered in Max Factor.
Not just food metaphors, either:
It's almost as if the mainstream media abruptly awoke from a coma and realized their doctors had been slipping them sedatives and going through their wallets. Even useless tools like Chris Mathews seem to have light bulbs dimly flickering over their heads. Suddenly, the outrages the left side of the blogosphere has been screaming about for months - the crimes, the corruption, and, above all, the sheer incompetence of the "war effort" - are being splashed all over the tube. For the first time since I started Whiskey Bar, I've actually felt redundant. So for once I was content to sit back and take it all in, savoring the details of each new poll, chortling over each pathetic media mea culpa (culminating in the New Pravda's hilariously understated "editor's note") and gleefully watching the pus ooze from each new infarction in the tissue of lies that is the Bush administration.
Travis and David Neiwert are both talking about Osama's support for Bush. David has some strong language about the way the righties have been pushing the "A vote for Kerry is a vote for terrorism" meme.
Susan at Suburban Guerrilla explains why a certain type of disaster relief program encourages disaster.
Also at Ars, an article on the Pirate Act, a new set of legislation aimed at criminalizing various acts of online piracy. Although the media and the RIAA always refer to file sharing as "theft" or "stealing," in the majority of cases copyright infringement is actually a civil issue and not a criminal one. The Pirate Act would change this, though, and in fact would mean that the government (and therefore the taxpayer!) would foot the bill for copyright prosecutions - as well as bringing the increased fines and longer prison sentences that the RIAA et al. so fervently wish for. All in all, it sounds like an extremely dangerous development for civil liberties. The EFF are mounting a campaign against the proposed legislation, fortunately, and as usual they are well worth supporting.
The idea of the RIAA trying to call anyone else pirates still has me steamed. But you knew that. 18:42 BST
Readers' lettuce
Sumana Harihareswara writes with a clarification of the Salon offer:
Just so you know, Salon's offer only applies to active-duty military personnel. I'm not familiar enough with the US military to know the extent to which that limits the offer.
"...all active-duty military personnel. If you are currently serving in the U.S. military and have a .mil e-mail address, send us your name and address and we will give you a free one-year Salon Premium subscription. If you are one of the active-duty GIs already receiving Salon Premium, we will extend your subscription for a year free of charge.
To take advantage of this offer just send an e-mail to [this address] with your first and last name and e-mail address and we'll create your Salon Premium subscription. Please note that we'll only be able to create Premium subscriptions for .mil e-mail addresses.
Thanks for publicizing the offer. I'm proud of it.
Oh, I think it's a very good thing, thanks for doing it.
Richard Bensam has some thoughts about Disney's attempt to shut down Michael Moore's movie:
This may be in the category of old news, but some friends were talking about the Michael Moore / Disney flap last night and I had a minor "lightbulb" moment.
Here in New York City, the tv stations have been showing an endless spate of commercials promoting tourism in Orlando...not just Disney, but also the Universal parks, Sea World, and all the other tourist attractions. This is purely anecdotal and subjective, but it really seems like the volume of ad buys for Orlando tourism has increased. I only noticed this because I particularly dislike Orlando and got annoyed at hearing it plugged every few minutes.
Then I turned up an interesting factoid. As Mayor Bloomberg pointed out during his appearance before the 9/11 Commission, the funds which New York City receives from the Department of Homeland Security come out to $5.87 per capita, and this is wildly disproportionate to other metropolitan centers. But Orlando, Florida receives $47.14 per person from the same source...eight times as much money for a city which is probably not at eight times the risk of NYC. I'll grant that it IS a potential target and I don't like to think about the prospect of a terrorist attack on Disney World; I know people who work there.
Thing is, though...aside from the PR stance that these funds are earmarked for security and emergency services, any money coming into state coffers from the federal government will ease any other state budget shortfalls, and means that state money is free to be spent elsewhere. Say, on promoting Florida tourism? So I kinda feel New York is getting shafted so Orlando can run tv ads telling us to visit there.
I haven't looked into what sort of tax breaks and/or kickbacks Disney might receive from Governor Bush, but no one could argue that there isn't a huge opportunity there for collusion and favoritism. It doesn't require trusting everything Michael Moore says to see that there's strong motive for Disney to favor the Bushes. The burden of proof should be on those who claim otherwise; who say that Disney is capable of being disinterested and nonpartisan in such circumstances. Simple logic says otherwise.
I mean, if I drop a bowling ball out my window, I don't need to prove in advance it will hit the pavement...but someone who claims it will just float there unsupported and never touch ground is going to have to demonstrate some means by which that could possibly happen before I'm gonna believe it.
Lorri doesn't doubt Al Qaeda's support for Bush:
I agree that Al Qaeda wants Bush to be reelected, but not for the reasons you gave. What's the goal of Al Qaeda? To see our country demolished. They must be jumping with joy at the division they see among us right now. But if Kerry is elected, and especially if he's elected by
a wide enough margin to prevent any credible claim of a miscount,
there's a chance that this country might get "back on track," do
something right in the international arena, and not disintegrate into civil war at home. Therefore, it's more in the interest of AQ to see Kerry lose. If I were Kerry's people, I would give high priority to security. He may be under no actual threat, but hey, if I can think of something bad, I'm sure the people whose job it is to think these things up can think of something bad, too. Although I think, unfortunately, *any* home-turf terrorist attack would be enough to give our "great war leader" Bush the extra points he needs to be reelected.
I certainly agree that the divisiveness Bush has caused can only be good news for Al Qaeda. And it's rather a bad joke to hear the administration talk about how "they hate our freedoms" and then proceed to eliminate as many of our freedoms as they can. If they really believe AQ hates our freedoms, it's hard not to wonder this: Whose side is Bush on, anyway? 16:38 BST
The reactions
I wondered how the establishment would deal with Al Gore's speech. It wouldn't surprise me to know that that speech was the real cause of the sudden emergence of John Ashcroft to announce another unlikely terror alert. The RNC was ready with claims that Gore had "lost it", "gone off the deep end", descended into "ranting", and so on. The predictable phony psychoanalysis was, of course, available from Krauthammer, who declared that, "it looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again," as The Daily Howler and Media Matters report.
Atrios has already pointed up the only other talking point the RNC has - it's Clinton and Gore's fault. They're claiming Gore has amnesia. They seem to have forgotten that 9/11 occurred on Bush's watch.
In the larger context of the Cold War, Vietnam made a kind of sense. In the context of the struggle against Islamist terrorism, Iraq is an act of self-sabotage.
Bill Scher is at an undisclosed location somewhere so Air America's Sam Seder is sitting in at LiberalOasis and doing an amazingly good impression of Bill, looking at the spin on Kerry's position and why, as usual, you shouldn't believe it.
Iain Coleman says he has found, "the most convincingly feasible exit strategy from Iraq that I have seen to date."
From Bad Attitudes: As reported in today's Washington Post, the Bush administration is notifying federal agencies to plan for budget cuts should Bush win election in November.
I just discovered Wanda's weblog, Just Breathe, and with it the news that Dave Dellinger has died. Dellinger always looked a little bit out of place among the rest of the Chicago Eight, but he never lost his committment to peace. 18:59 BST
[Kelli] ARENA: Neither John Kerry nor the president has said troops pulled out of Iraq any time soon. But there is some speculation that al Qaeda believes it has a better chance of winning in Iraq if John Kerry is in the White House.
BEN VENZKE, INTELCENTER: Al Qaeda feels that Bush is, even despite casualties, right or wrong for staying there is going to stay much longer than possibly what they might hope a Democratic administration would.
One wonders what such suppositions are based on. How do they know what "Al Qaeda feels"? Where is that intelligence coming from?
I haven't said much about this because, frankly, I don't see any mileage in it, but let me say for the record that when Al Qaeda announces that they'd prefer Bush to win the election, I don't necessarily believe they are being facetious. For one thing, they tend not to lie very much about their beliefs and plans, and for another they already know from experience that when they tell the truth about what they are up to, no one in the administration pays any attention. They provided an announcement on the radio that they were going to make a big hit on us in 2001 and left more breadcrumbs than Hansel and Gretel, and no one followed it up. Their MO isn't lying, it's open boastfulness. Why should they lie? Is it going to make a difference?
And it makes sense. The administration that allowed them to commit the enormity of 9/11 already looks more friendly to them than some administration that wouldn't. You only have to read the papers to know that in terms of things that might stop real terrorism, no real changes have been made. Indeed, John Ashcroft is far too busy chasing porn and hookers and trying to turn America into a more Talibanish kind of place. Plus, the administration actually did the one thing we know Osama wanted - pulled out of Saudi Arabia. Then they opened up Iraq for the religious extremists and terrorists. What more could they have asked for? Meanwhile, George Bush is the poster boy for Al Qaeda recruitment, and everyone knows it. Kerry just doesn't hold the potential to reap such benefits for Osama's children.
So, yes, I think it's quite possible that the Islamist crazies really do want Bush to win in November because Bush has done them more good than anyone could have been expected to do. And they may feel perfectly free to say so publicly, because they know that Americans are going to react just the way they have - by treating it as a transparent lie, and assuming that they really fear Bush. But they have no reason to fear Bush; Bush is their fairy godfather.
Atrios recommends we let CNN know what we think of the way this "speculation" is being aired:
There you go. We're fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and they think John Kerry is a wimp.
Atlanta: 404-827-1500
Washington: 202-898-7900
You can communicate your thoughts to Ms. Arena personally at:
kelli.arena@turner.com
You can now send your emails to Eason Jordan at Eason.Jordan@turner.com. He's CNN's chief news executive.
You might ask them when they are planning to discuss the speculation that the terrorists really do want Bush to stay in the White House, 'cause he's been their sugar daddy. 18:20 BST
War on kids
The thing about being a kid is that they are constantly getting you to write and draw things, put your thoughts on paper.
And there you are, maybe just trying to get through the day, or maybe taking them at their word and thinking surely they are smart enough to know the difference between the thoughts that pass through your head - things you don't express normally - and the things you actually do. Taking them at their word that they are just teaching you how to draw or write or whatever, and maybe trying to show some spark, some talent, some willingness, something. I mean, it's school, and you're a kid, and no one listens to what you say, anyway. So it turns out that an important component of the war on kids is the war on art. Hey, look, Jeralyn says another kid wrote a poem:
The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a case in which a 15 year old student was convicted and spent 100 days in juvenile hall for writing a violent poem. Sample phrases:
"For I can be the next kid to bring guns to kill students at school." Another reads: "For I am Dark, Destructive & Dangerous."
You might, if you are the mother of this boy, be a bit worried about those dark thoughts, but a lot of teenagers have dark thoughts - sometimes downright murderous thoughts - and never act on them. And, maybe, you'd want your kid to get counselling if he wrote a poem like that, but he's not the one who is deranged if this happens:
What law was George T. convicted of?
The law in question, usually invoked in domestic violence cases, carries a maximum one-year term for criminal threats that convey an "immediate prospect of execution." The lower courts found that this threat met that definition, a decision the boy's attorney argued was unfounded.
The court actually believed that this poem presented "an immediate prospect of execution"? Where do these people get their ideas?
So, the first thing we're teaching kids is that when it comes to self-expression, don't do it.
And also, "Don't trust us when we tell you it's safe to be honest with us."
Gee, I wonder why so many kids hate being a kid. Grown-ups are always trying shut you up, betray you, tell you not to have fun, tell you things that aren't even true and are frequently worse than useless. Like those stupid drug ads:
The Government plans to spend $145 million this year on anti-drug ads. A new study shows they don't work. They may even prompt some kids to start experimenting with drugs. [...]
Three of every four students reported the ads sparked thoughts that ran counter to the ads' message, the study showed. "For example, in response to ads linking drug use to the war on terror, the most frequent unanticipated thoughts were that marijuana should be legalized, the war on drugs has been ineffective, and that marijuana users should grow their own," said Czyzewska.
These kids are clearly smarter than their elders. No wonder everyone wants to shut them up.
Well, I hated being a kid, even back in the Good Old Days, and I wasn't even black. What if you are, though? TChris knows:
It's amazing that a school district couldn't arrive at this conclusion without the help of a panel appointed by the district superintendent.
Security officers in the Kent School District, the target of complaints over the discipline of black students, should no longer handcuff students or carry firearms, batons, tasers or pepper spray, a panel has recommended.
The recommendation came after the Seattle chapter of the NAACP filed several claims against the district alleging that teachers and security guards used excessive force to discipline black students.
Not that anyone is planning to pay attention to this recommendation, you understand. Yes, that's right, treat kids like criminals early so they start off feeling like outsiders. That'll really help them feel like a part of the community.
Salon is offering free subscriptions to anyone in the military.
The most watched video list at C-Span has Gore's speech at the top. (The crowd went wild. It's kind of breathtaking to see someone in Gore's position use that kind of language, isn't it?) The third item listed, by the way, is Greg Palast on Washington Journal.
"There is something so liberating and exciting about it, you've got to try it out," she said recently as she fidgeted, fully clothed, on the couch in her friend Tasha's Manhattan apartment. "I was teaching a class on imperialism, " she continued, "and I was delivering all this material that was kind of new and upsetting, and everyone was getting all worked up and upset, and I was getting all worked up and upset, and all of a sudden, all I wanted to do was flash my underwear! It was crazy," she said with a throaty giggle.
That's because she wasn't wearing just any panties. Elizabeth is part of Axis of Eve, a fledgling group of rabble-rousing feminists and anti-war activists who have taken to flashing their undies as a form of political dissent. The Eves, as they call themselves, are on a mission to sex up protest. They take to the streets wearing "protest panties" which come emblazoned with anti-Dubya double-entendres like "Expose Bush," "Lick Bush," "Give Bush the Finger" and "Drill Bush Not Oil." When the Eves flash them at rallies, the effect is somewhere between a 1970s' love-in and George Bush's worst, frat- addled nightmare of a panty raid gone awry.
Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world.
President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.
He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.
In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.
I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability...
Every now and then I think about writing a post called, "Al woke up. It had all been a dream." It's still the autumn of 2000, and he knows this was not just a dream. He's not the only one, it turns out. Over breakfast, Tipper says, "I had the most awful nightmare last night...." He hears that a number of times during the day. Bill Clinton calls him and says, "Al, this isn't just any election. I had this dream...."
And Ted Koppel, Tim Russert, and Dan Rather, shaken by the picture of their own culpability, try to assure themselves that faced with the same choices they would not let themselves be pushed into the same laxity of professionalism, and resolve to live up to a higher standard. Michael Kelly realizes he's been playing a stupid and dangerous game and that it's time to grow-up and take his responsibilities seriously.
And four years later, the Republicans have their convention in Atlanta, and then the Democrats have their convention in New York. Gore has turned out to be a far better president than I had imagined. We may not know what changed him, but we know that somehow he has become the president we'd always hoped for. On the eve of the election, we drink a toast to the man who we know will be re-elected in a landslide, as we gaze out over the city from the restaurant at the top of the tower. 16:11 BST
The best way to unite the country is to elect a president and vice president who agree on nearly nothing.
It's astonishing to me that there are actually Democrats who think McCain is in any way a viable choice for a Democratic VP. He may not be as far out in Loonyland as the bulk of the Republican leadership, but that doesn't mean he's our guy. He's actually a staunch conservative, and that's not what we need right now. He's also the head of the Arizona Bush campaign and has publicly stated that Bush should be returned to the White House. His reputation for integrity is only by comparison; he's not as wonderful as the buzz paints him, he's just a whole lot better than the gang of maniacs and liars that currently controls his party.
And anyway, what Kerry really needs is someone who will help promote the kind of liberal ideas that appeal to real working people - including the real working people who don't yet realize why they should be voting Democratic.
I think that guy is John Edwards. Wesley Clark is nice, sure, and if he wants to add his voice to the campaign that would be neat, but Edwards is the guy who has really developed a program to address the real policy needs of our country, and crowds seem to love him. Skippy thinks Edwards is the people's choice, too - although he is not from the liberal end of the party, he has a liberal understanding of the value of people who work for a living, he is engaging and thoughtful and energetic, and he seems to have a real grasp of what needs to be done. Skippy also notes that even Howard Fineman is saying Edwards is polling well.
Bear in mind that the VP candidate doesn't have to be the only guy who helps campaign for the ticket. Some Democrats have already shown a willingness to come out strong as critics of the current administration. Those who have done so should be rewarded (as Atrios keeps reminding us); those who have not should be encouraged to do so. People like Joe Biden should be spanked for being more of a hindrance than a help.
And McCain's criticisms of Bush are actually much more powerful coming from him as a Republican Bush-campaigner than if he switched parties. (Let's not forget what the Republicans did to Jeffords when he switched, eh?) I like him right where he is, thank you. 14:51 BST
In Salon, the wonderful Eric Boehlert talks about Rush's forced conscripts: American Forces Radio fires a daily barrage of Rush Limbaugh at its million uniformed listeners. So why are liberals kept off the military's airwaves?
I've been reading Al Gore's speech, and it's so good and so strong he's covered my entire range of adjectives and several of my favorite nouns. At first I was thinking, "I could have written that," and then I realized, no, it's better than what I would have written. No punches pulled, it's all there. I hear C-SPAN 1 is going to air it in a few hours (Wednesday night, 10:00 PM Eastern Time) and I hope I can stay awake for it.
George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.
He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.
Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.
How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.
Just about had me in tears.
If only we had a man like Gore in the White House.... 00:10 BST
Wednesday, 26 May 2004
On the web
According to the blurb for a Salon article I haven't read yet: National Review pundits do battle over Bush's Iraq speech; Podhoretz says soldiers like Sivitz and England deserve their own torture. Plus: Hitchens tags Michael Moore the ultimate ugly American. Yeah, of course; after all, whatever Sivitz and England did, at least they didn't torture the right-wingers by being a liberal who gets air-time.
Media Matters for America was horrified to learn that our tax dollars are paying for Rush Limbaugh to be piped-in for the listening pleasure of our people in Iraq, and cries foul. An open letter to Rumsfeld says: As you know, Mr. Limbaugh's commentary is broadcast on American Forces Radio to nearly 1 million U.S. troops, stationed in more than 1,000 outlets, in more than 175 countries and U.S territories, including Iraq. According to a May 26 article on Salon.com, the radio network was established "to improve troop morale by giving service members a 'touch of home' with American programs overseas." It is abhorrent that the American taxpayer is paying to broadcast what is in effect pro-torture propaganda to American troops. I ask you to consider removing Mr. Limbaugh from the radio network to protect our troops from these reckless and dangerous messages.
At Through the Looking Glass, Charles Dodgson found Stanley Fish making the remarkable suggestion in the NYT that academics should stay out of politics. Well, I suppose this had to come along as soon as the righties had convinced themselves that academe is just a hot-bed of liberals. Check out the graphic he found, too. (Oh, yeah, it's still not funny.)
Mac Thomason at War Liberal and Max Blumenthal (whose weblog I just discovered via Atrios - and it's good stuff) have more examples of the latest in right-wing efforts to keep the judiciary from, you know, upholding the Constitution. Law school must be easier than I thought if these nutters managed to get through. (Max is also one of many to mention that Al Gore was scheduled to give another big speech about Iraq last night. I can barely wait to see whether the media is still going to try to pretend he is nuts or just ignore it altogether.) Read the whole page for many more exciting things - like where else the Bush administration is getting it's help, and how Britain's libel laws are being used to prevent the publication of Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud here.
Atrios is absolutely right: Mea culpas are all very well but if the NYT really wants some credibility they need to do a lot more house-cleaning. Or do they only fire black journalists (who fail to lead the country into unjustified war)?
And speaking of the NYT, check this post at Body and Soul: This morning's New York Times brings us a sad and fantastic (definition 2c) tale of how the election in Florida was accidentally stolen and African American voters disenfranchised by sheer coincidence. [...] See, when they purged the voting rolls of "felons" in Florida, they had no idea that the people kept from voting would be disproportionately African American. Nobody but a conspiracy nut or an illiterate would come to the conclusion that it was intentional.
Rehnquist orders study after Scalia flap: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has ordered a study of federal judicial ethics, a move that follows intense criticism of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for taking a hunting trip with his friend, Vice President Dick Cheney.
If you've missed the story of how the people sent to Iraq by the White House to run the country were chosen not for their expertise (they had none) but for the fact that their r�sum�s were posted on the Heritage Foundation site, Nick Confessore has the gist at Tapped. He's also got something on the little K Street war between Dick Armey and Tom DeLay and a look at how Fox gets it's fair and balanced voices, and recommends this interview with Bill Moyers, who is retiring from PBS. And Matt wonders why the Bush-supporters seem to think that having their dear leader give a speech is all that's necessary to fix things.
The more I look at this picture from Salon, the more it cracks me up. (And then there's this, from Drudge.) 13:17 BST
Alterman claims his correspondents rendered him irrelevant, and declared a Slacker Monday.
From "SSG Van":
I am not stealing any thunder from our Officer Corps, we have some really awesome leaders, but an LT doesn't have years of experience, that Staff Sergeant did. He took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, and he failed. Bored, pissed off, or God forbid, following orders, he had a moral obligation to do the right thing. Just like it's always preached, the hard right over the easy wrong. He had control over his men, and was with them, constantly. If stuff was ordered that wasn't right, he had the power and the right to say no. If they told him to do it anyway, he could have refused and had it taken care of further up the chain of command. Same situation Bateman was talking about, refusing an unlawful order. That Staff Sargeant is the direct link where the metal hits the meat and he failed the Corps of Non Commissioned Officers. There is another saying you may or may not be familiar with, that the Corps of Non Commissioned Officers is the backbone of the Army. That NCO lacked any backbone. He needs to fry for dishonoring everyone of us.
It's hard not to share that feeling. "Just following orders" is not a legitimate excuse in the US military. While we recognize the difficulty of refusing an order in the field, the fact is that American soldiers are legally obliged to do so in the face of an illegal command - and torture is unequivocally illegal under US law, no matter where that order is made. (And, contrary to this administration's famous weaseling, the Geneva Conventions are clear that any captured combatant is entitled to GC protections at least until a tribunal is held to determine their status.) Simple morality is one reason, and the inefficiency of torture is another, but there's another reason why even "evil" nations were prepared to sign on to the Geneva Conventions, as Tim Wilkins reminds us:
I cannot imagine anything that would be adequate punishment for anyone who would offer or accept the advice that America should not abide by the Geneva Conventions, or not listen to the ICRC about prisoner abuse. Let me explain my thoughts.
My only uncle, Major James V. Wilkins, was a USMC-Reserve fighter-bomber pilot in Korea. He was shot down during a bombing attack in the first months of the Korean War. He was badly injured parachuting from his plane, and was captured. He was tortured both physically and psychologically, and forbidden any communication with his family for most of four years. Many, if not most, of those imprisoned with him died in captivity.
After his release, he told us that one of the few things that kept him sane and alive in horrific conditions was receiving some of the packages sent to him by the family through the ICRC, and infrequent inspections of his prison camps by the ICRC, which pressured the North Koreans to comply with the Geneva Conventions.
He, along with the others who came home, only returned to us because of the influence of the ICRC and international pressure. He was proud to know that no U.S. prisoner could ever have been treated as savagely as he was.
What sort of "quaint" punishment would be appropriate for those traitors who would advise the country to weasel out of the Geneva Conventions, and thus put our soldiers forever at risk of torture, abuse and worse?
The practical safeguards the Geneva Conventions and the International Red Cross provide to our military personnel are vital, and it is simply astonishing that we ever had an administration that would so easily dismiss them, let alone that Bush's lawyer would actually put it on paper that it was all a bunch of old-fashioned rubbish. Quaint? To try to prevent the torture of your own people? Quaint for an administration that invokes morality at every turn to advocate torture of others? What kind of people are they?
Maybe "Old retired Navy guy" Nicholas Pisano is trying to answer that question:
If the political rhetoric in the wake of 9-11 and through both the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions is any indication, the Baby Boom belief system seems to be that our birthright as Americans makes us omniscient when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world. That this comes at a time when we seem to have little concern for domestic democratic processes, republican institutions or the social and economic welfare of our fellow citizens is hypocritical and an indication that our elites possess a hubris that is about ready to set us up for a big fall--as if Vietnam wasn't bad enough. That these elites have learned to take advantage of their own tremendous self-righteous and self-serving miscalculations and scandals to further erode civil institutions and democratic virtues is even more galling and perhaps an indication to anyone paying attention (including Stupid) that it may be time for the public to bring democracy back to the United States and concentrate on applying our own principles and living up to our own promises at home.
This may be a good description of the administration and their supporters, but I don't think you can hang this on "baby-boomers". These guys were never much like the rest of us.
The column finishes out with Jim Dwyer's pocket bio of Sy Hersh's career highlights, a downright classy consideration of The Sopranos as an exploration of loyalty and morality, and a few final words for Tony Randall. Good stuff. 14:30 BST
A joint project by the Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism reveals a darkly pessimistic view of the profession among its own members, often echoing the criticisms of the public at large.
The 55 percent of national journalists, and 37 percent of local ones, who see the media as soft on Bush may well be reflecting their own views of the president. At national outlets, 34 percent describe themselves as liberal, 54 percent as moderate and 7 percent as conservative. (The local split was 23-61-12.) Nearly 7 in 10 of the liberal national journalists criticized the Bush coverage.
PNH has threeshortposts up with links to articles that he says tell us about Our Future. You should check them out.
Last week Jim Henley responded to the alleged discovery of an alleged actual chemical weapon in Iraq with a point-by-point explanation of why it doesn't change anything. This is the sort of thing that should be kept on file in case any more of this stuff turns up.
Josh has all the straight dope, of course, but my pick for the topic is Teresa Nielsen Hayden and her merry gang of commenters on the story of The Mouse That Played "Let's you and him fight." If Iran really did manage to scam the US into invading Iraq they have pulled off a masterful sting that is tremendous pay-back for the way we embroiled them in a war with Iraq not so long ago.
And it was easy for them, because it was what the Bushistas wanted to do anyway. Only a mark who was detached from reality in truly Nabokovian dimensions could have fallen for it, but hey, it turns out we weren't misunderestimating Bush after all!
And anyway, I'm sure it must be Clinton's fault - even though the neocons haven't yet figured out how to "prove" it, yet. (Well, they don't call him "Slick Willie" for nothin', eh?)
Those who have figured out it's FUBAR but can't quite bring themselves to blame Bush think Rummy's head is the only one that has to roll, but I think Skimble, referring to another aspect of the Iraq story, has it right:
Terror alert level: Ignored. Fred Kaplan in Slate correctly focuses on the aspect of the White House culpability story that is being drowned out by the disgusting spectacles of Abu Ghraib and Nick Berg: the deliberate negligence of Zarqawi:
It's a tossup which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the chance to kill a top-level enemy in the war on terrorism for the sake of pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq-or a president who leaves a government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to his aides.
The "failure of leadership" meme that Taguba made public last week has the shape of a much larger theme that applies to the entire Bush White House.
I'm sure the administration will go through it's entire wardrobe of excuses and distractions to try to make us forget to look for the man behind the curtain and all that (did they kill Hubble because that would find him?), but since even several members of the Washington press corpse have started to get the feeling something could be wrong, bits and pieces are leaking into the public consciousness. As Josh observes, even The Candidate Himself is making dark jokes:
Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, 'Did the training wheels fall off?'
I pushed a button for whatever tape was in the deck and somehow
this song just seemed so relevant:
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
Tony Blair tells us that we should do everything we can to support America. And I agree. I think we should repudiate those who inflict harm on Americans, we should shun those who bring America itself into disrepute and we should denounce those who threaten the freedom and democracy that are synonymous with being American.
That is why Tony's recent announcement that he wishes to stand shoulder to shoulder with George Bush is so puzzling. It's difficult to think of anyone who has inflicted more harm on Americans than their current president.
I learned on Air America that "evangelist" is an anagram of "evil agents".
Thanks to Owen Boswarva for a heads-up on Barbara Ehrenreich's reaction to Abu Ghraib. (I didn't have this reaction. Even leaving Margaret Thatcher aside, we should know this from our own experience - I mean, we went to highschool with other women, and it wasn't all nice.)
From Alexander Bolton at The Hill, Who let bin Ladens leave U.S.? Bush refuses to answer 9/11 commission's queries: The Bush administration has refused to answer repeated requests from the Sept. 11 commission about who authorized flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden's family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of 2001.
Molly Ivins: 'How fascism starts': It's pretty easy to get to the point where you don't want to hear any more about Abu Ghraib prison and what went on there. But there are some really good reasons why Americans should take a look at why this happened.
They're voting in committee about voter-verified ballots for their voting machines in Fairfax County. GOTV is looking at who makes those machines:
Advanced Voting Solutions is the new name of another voting company, Shoup Voting Solutions. Their current top management, Howard Van Pelt and Larry Ensminger, were executives for Diebold-Global until last year. Officers of Shoup Voting Machine Co. were indicted for allegedly bribing politicians in Tampa, Florida in 1971, according to the San Francisco Business Times. Ransom Shoup was convicted in 1979 of conspiracy and obstruction of justice related to an FBI inquiry into a lever machine-counted election in Philadelphia. Shoup got a three-year suspended sentence. Meanwhile, Philadelphia has bought new voting machines from Danaher-Guardian, which appears to only sell voting machines formerly known as the "Shouptronic."
But it has always been a dream of mine to receive a doctorate and to know that today, without putting in any effort, I will. It's incredibly gratifying. Thank you. That's very nice of you, I appreciate it. [...] Lets talk about the real world for a moment. We had been discussing it earlier, and I.I wanted to bring this up to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess as good a time as any. I don't really know to put this, so I'll be blunt. We broke it.
Please don't be mad. I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So, sorry.
Wasn't it just weeks ago that we were debating whether we should see the coffins of the American dead and whether Ted Koppel should read their names on "Nightline"? In "Fahrenheit 9/11," we see the actual dying, of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike, with all the ripped flesh and spilled guts that the violence of war entails. We also see some of the 4,000-plus American casualties: those troops hidden away in clinics at Walter Reed and at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where they try to cope with nerve damage and multiple severed limbs. They are not silent. They talk about their pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. "I was a Republican for quite a few years," one soldier says with an almost innocent air of bafflement, "and for some reason they conduct business in a very dishonest way." [...] Speaking of America's volunteer army, Moore concludes: "They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?"
I didn't expect Rich to be won over easily, and I don't think he was. I want a DVD of this thing as soon as it's available, just like Atrios does. 18:40 BST
So we felt it was appropriate that we have some analysis of our circumstances today in the year 2004. Are we better off than we were in 2000? Are we better off in education today than we were back then, having passed but not funded the No Child Left Behind Act? Are we better off with our own national security and homeland security today than we were in 2000? Are we better off in our fiscal policy, our economic policy? Are we better off with regard to crime statistics? Are we better off with infrastructure? Where is it that we are better off?
I dare say no one could possibly say we are better off.
I kind of liked this:
We have heard a lot about the death tax, the so-called death tax, which is the estate tax paid by some who have large property transfers from one generation to the next. I do not hear my Republican colleagues talk about the birth tax.
There is now a birth tax of more than $20,000 because of fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement. That birth tax is paid not just by people who inherit but by every single American child when they are born.
I wonder if they can get that meme off the ground. 18:04 BST
Eric Alterman with a news flash: Thirty-seven years after its anticipated release, an all-new studio recording of SMiLE - often referred to as the most famous unreleased album in history - will be made available worldwide by Nonesuch Records on September 28, 2004. SMiLE will be produced by Brian Wilson and will feature the ten-member band that has supported him on tour over the past five years, augmented by The Stockholm Strings and Horns.
In honor of the release of the third edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Buzzflash interviews Greg Palast again:
I have a new chapter called "Oil Slick Jim, the Third Ring, and One Million Missing Ballots," and a whole bunch of new stories. The big story is that there were over a million missing ballots from African-American voters across the U.S. in the 2000 election -- even this kind of knocked me out.
I've been working with the statisticians from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and Harvard Law School. In the year 2000, 1.9 million votes were cast and not counted across this country -- 1.9 million votes. And of those 1.9 million votes, about a million were cast by African-Americans. This investigation was conducted by Harvard and the Civil Rights Commission, and I grabbed the material. There's a 1965 Voting Rights Act that gave black people the right to vote, but not the right to have their votes counted. [...] For example, in black counties in Florida where paper ballots were used, if you made a mistake on a ballot -- a single wrong mark -- your ballot was thrown out and your vote wasn't counted. If you voted in predominantly white counties, and you made a wrong mark, your ballot was handed back to you. You were given a fresh ballot, and told to vote again and told how to correct your mistake. How about that? [...] Oh, it gets better, because the trick of this apartheid "spoilage rate" -- that's the technical term -- the trick to lose a million votes or make them disappear is to keep radically changing the system. Because what happens is that technicians fix the systems. In Florida, they fixed the problem with the paper ballots, and, therefore, they had to throw out the paper ballots. For example, the blackest county in Florida is Gadston. One in eight voters -- one in eight voters! -- had their ballots thrown out in the blackest county in Florida. It had the worst spoilage rating, and they knew it. They knew that there was going to be this problem with their ballots in advance.
Democrats had warned election officials and warned Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush that this was going to happen, in advance of the election, and nothing was done. After the election, it was fixed. And in 2002, there were basically no spoiled ballots in Gadston. So now that black people have their votes counted in Gadston, they've now been ordered to switch them over to computers. Because the system currently works -- it's been fixed -- and that can't stand.
There is, of course, a whole lot more to Palast than just the election story - although boy is that a big story - but you may recognize this feeling:
BuzzFlash: You were one of, if not the first, to cover the relationship between Bush and the House of Saud. Since then, several books have been released about these two powerful families and their history of money and oil contracts. I think you can take credit for people talking about this.
Greg Palast: I'm laughing. You know why? I write all this stuff way in advance or broadcast them on BBC television and write them in the Guardian newspapers. And then I'm called a conspiracy nut. So the definition of a conspiracy nut is someone who reports the news a year before The New York Times.
Greg talks more conspiracy nuttery in this interview - and, remember, he's got the documentation. 13:54 BST
Indecent exposure
Sidney Blumenthal, on The religious warrior of Abu Ghraib: Boykin was recommended to his position by his record in the elite Delta forces: he was a commander in the failed effort to rescue US hostages in Iran, had tracked drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia, had advised the gas attack on barricaded cultists at Waco, Texas, and had lost 18 men in Somalia trying to capture a warlord in the notorious Black Hawk Down fiasco of 1993.
Krugman on The Wastrel Son: He was a stock character in 19th-century fiction: the wastrel son who runs up gambling debts in the belief that his wealthy family, concerned for its prestige, will have no choice but to pay off his creditors. In the novels such characters always come to a bad end. Either they bring ruin to their families, or they eventually find themselves disowned.
Skippy wonders if it's payback time in Washington.
Reuters, NBC Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq: U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said Tuesday.
12:33 BST
Peche a la frog
Here's a couple of headlines from Reuters:
Democrats Demand Payback of Illegal Medicare Videos: "Republicans should not be robbing Medicare to pay for political ads," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. The fake public service announcements were "justified" on the grounds of a requirement to inform the public, but they weren't actually informative; their main content seemed to be that, gosh, George W. Bush sure is nice to us!
From Jane's: Marching valiantly into the quagmire: According to the report, secret discussions may be under way concerning the Polish-commanded south-central multinational military division. There has been continuous speculation that the Poles, one of the biggest contingents in the Coalition force, will withdraw. (Thanks to 56K.)
From Gallimaufry: Free speech/free thought: Briefly, in March 2003, a young girl in an Albuquerque high school wrote a poem critical of the Bush administration. The principal and "a school military liaison" accused her of being un-American. They fired the girl's teacher and ordered the girl's mother to destroy her poetry. 01:24 BST
