My New Year's wish: surprise me

Over a month of no blogging! I think the reason is simple: nothing shocking has happened, and I am waiting for the new era to begin.

Sure, things have happened that are worthy of comment, but my capacity for shock and outrage and snark are seriously depleted.

I mean, really: is it surprising in the least that a candidate for the GOP chairmanship would send out an offensive "parody" disk to republicans around the country this season? We really don't need any more ammunition in the You Pasty Old White Boys Don't Get It And You Never Will argument, and yet, they just keep delivering. Also not shocking: the possibility that this stupid, stupid move will actually enhance his chances for the seat.

Oh but never fear, rank-and-file, your intellectual leadership has a plan! And it includes Twitter! Because Twitter and Republican are two proper nouns I'd like to see forever linked.

Bush, meanwhile, pardons a man whose father's campaign donations might effectively kill congressional republicans Eric Holder/ Marc Rich outrage machine. So then he decides to take the pardon away, within days of issuing it. Was anyone honestly taken aback by this? Has the Bush administration ever properly vetted anyone?

Congressional republicans are demanding "transparency" and there's talk of them shutting down the president-elect's stimulus/recovery plans if they don't pass GOP muster. They want "fiscal responsibility" again. Of course they do. Whatever.

Also, turns out that OSHA hasn't actually been in the business of occupational safety and health for about... 7 years. Question for the 10% of American workers who're injured on the job each year: does it surprise you that your government's chief concern has been not bugging your employer? Thought not.

Then there's the coal ash spill in Tennessee: turns out that no matter how "clean" your coal operation is, the ash still contains toxic levels of arsenic, lead, barium, chromium, and manganese; tens of thousand of pounds per year. Also turns out that the TVA asserted for days after the spill that the sludge was not toxic. Shocking, shocking shocking. Not.

And the situation in Gaza is terrifying, Bush is in Crawford riding his bike, and Condi isn't on a plane yet. Although, even if she got herself over to Riyadh or something, I don't know how much leverage she has left. And all it leaves me with is a sad sense of deja vu. It's been a long time.

So I'm waiting for a new year, and some new stories to open. A whole new cast f characters who maybe won't be so goddamn predictable and obvious and stupid.

(I had an hour or so of dismay over the Rick Warren thing, but ultimately I realize that the man I voted for reaches out in just this way, compromises in just this way, recognizing that the people who admire Warren and didn't vote for Obama and supported prop 8 need a president, too. Note to Barack, though: it'd be swell if you invited Rev. William Sinkford to the White House before his term is up this summer. Just sayin'.)

I'm waiting patiently for New Years Eve champagne, and then I'll be waiting in a cozy wash of ahhhhhh for January 20, 2009. After which I am certain there'll be lots to get worked up about, and hopefully a few surprises.

This week, by the numbers

John McCain George W Bush's White House released a helpful Fact Sheet:

While these numbers are disappointing, what is most important is the overall direction the economy is headed. Last week, the economy posted a strong gain of 3.3 percent at an annual rate in the second quarter, led by growth in consumer spending, exports, and a well-timed and appropriately sized stimulus package. This level of growth demonstrates the resilience of the economy in the face of high energy prices, a weak housing market, and difficulties in the financial markets.

US unemployment rate now over 6%, worse than anticipated. 84,000 US jobs shed last month, 84,000 more men and women collecting unemployment.

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac are about to be taken over by the Fed.

Under a conservatorship, the common and preferred shares of Fannie and Freddie would be reduced to little or nothing, and any losses on mortgages they own or guarantee could be paid by taxpayers. Shareholders have already lost billions of dollars as the stocks have plunged more than 80 percent this year.

FDIC just took over Silver State Bank- incidentally, until July Senator McCain's son, Andy was a director there. (h/t Atrios). This the 11th bank failure this year, if you're keeping track.

Foreclosures are at a 30 year high, and home loans 1 or more payments behind are at over 6% (though there are estimates as high as 9% ).

But the important thing to remember is that our economy is resilient!

The problem with John McCain the White House's analysis is, as always, that the Republican focus on "growth" ignores entirely that the growth has not translated to economic security or opportunity for American taxpayers.

That, my friends, is the straight talk.

Hi, I'm a member of the "Hateful Left"

Over the course of the Bush administration, I've repeatedly started and repeatedly stopped an essay or a letter on a theme that feels so huge to me, I can't ever get it concisely into words. I'm not sure I can today, but speeches at the Republican National Convention have picked scab after scab, and so I think I'll try to get this theme out, let it be my summation of two weeks of conventions.

My theme has always started with the words George Bush doesn't want to be my president. This week I have come to the conclusion that John McCain doesn't, either. Once I would have thought that, as different as we are, he'd at least assume that "willing patriots" included people like me. At the end of a full week of speeches by his surrogates and supporters, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that that John McCain, if he existed, is now too beholden to the radical community organizers who get out the ideological vote. The rest of us, you moderates and faithful liberals, you whiners, you 70% of the American public, have been cast aside.

Once the campaign of 2000 ended, when George W Bush took the White House still promising to be "a uniter, not a divider", his method for unity was creative: all citizens who disagreed with anything he said or did simply ceased to exist. All decisions were explained with The American People want..., any challenge to a decision was met with, The American People want.... Each time he made a decision, he chose the path guaranteed to be met with the greatest controversy and opposition, and then sneered at any opposition for not trusting his judgement for the sake of The American People.

(Except in his first stem cell decision, summer of 2001. This time, he made a wishy-washy 50-50 call, because The American People had to include both Nancy Reagan and James Dobson.)

When the March For Women's Lives brought over a million people to the National Mall in support of a vast array of policies: comprehensive sex-ed, access to contraception, canceling the deadly global gag rule, and yes: protecting Roe v Wade, We didn't expect the president to acknowledge us, really. He was up at Camp David, anyway, and even though he always acknowledges the comparatively tiny annual anti-abortion demonstrations in DC, it would have been a stretch to think he'd give us a wave.

What we didn't expect was that the media would for the most part ignore the sheer massiveness of the March, or that Karen Hughes would be trotted out to respond. The American People, she said, understand since 9/11 that the US is different from terrorists because we value a Culture of Life.

When challenged her words later, she said she had never compared pro-choice citizens to terrorists- which is true, strictly and carefully speaking. What she did, and what she was not challenged on, was sweep our very citizenship out from under us by excluding us from The American People.

The Bush administration, with back up from the press, did this consistently throughout his first term. There was no thoughtful opposition to the invasion of Iraq: there were Anti-War groups and Pro-America groups. Meaning that my position was, by default, Anti-American. Dixie Chicks CD burning rallies? Pro-America! Get a camera out there! March on the White House by veteran's groups? Never happened, as far as the administration and the media were concerned. A recent analysis of guests on the major news outlets during this period found that opposition to the invasion was consistently presented by foreigners. That is, Americans presented to us by the news media almost uniformly supported the invasion.

It's like being in a dream, where you keep trying to scream, but no sound comes out. Is it any wonder so many of us took to the streets?

This rhetorical exclusion continued apace until finally, Bush redefined the terms. After the election of 2004, rather than attempting to pretend that The American People wanted anything in unanimity, he said he would work with everyone, if they supported his goals. Which meant not Goals, like dealing with Social Security in such a way that the government meets its responsibilities, but specific policies: private accounts for all.

At least this time he was honest.

After the summer of 2005 (Camp Casey, Katrina, and falling poll numbers- trifecta!) surrogates like Mary Matalin, rather than ignoring us entirely, went on the air to offer cheap analysis and faux pity. It's just so sad, these people. They're so angry. Bush began to at least acknowledge that some of The American People disagree with him, on a lot. But that does not mean his style of governing changed, nor has the rhetorical exile for most of us. The press continues to court the fiction that opposing Bush on anything is "leftist" or "extreme", even when poll data belies that.

The party George Bush leads enjoys this kind of with us/ against us bravado, and has no desire to change it. In fact, the party's strength has always been in hardening that rhetorical divide- there is no political gain, for them, in respect for differences, in bipartisanship, in synthesis of ideas.

The mythology of John McCain lies in his perceived rejection of such division. Working across the aisle, all of that. This week, however, a week when he presumably needed to both fire up the Base and make an appeal to moderates and independents, the convention has been about nothing except defining, once again, the The American People who attended his convention and debasing the rest of us.

President Bush, confined to a few minutes from a remote location, still managed to remind the delegates why the campaign mattered: The Hateful Left is obviously still a threat, and John McCain won't let them win.

(Which is interesting, because on what may be described as McCain's two signature issues over the past 4 years- immigration and torture- he capitulated not to any Hateful Left, but to the nationalist right and President Bush, respectively.)

Romney sneered at us. Guiliani made fun of us. Sarah Palin skinned us like a recent kill. The Senator from Arizona? He made some noise about respecting Obama for what he's accomplished, but it rang empty when followed up with the willing patriots line. Let's face it: Patriot means, to them, whatever they've decided it to mean this week. Willing Patriot means supporting whatever it is they want to do this week. If they win, we are headed straight to rhetorical and practical exile, once again.

McCain does not have the Rove-built get out the vote organization that Bush did. He's counting on those red meat delegates and the Focus on the Family email list to win this thing. They do not want to hear that the other side has a rightful seat at the table, nor will they work to elect anyone who won't harden the divide.

I look forward to packing away my giant Sharpies and giving up the need to march in the streets. I'm hoping that we can have an administration for all Americans, one that won't pretend that faithful opposition and valid counter arguments don't exist, that won't seek to define everything outside of their preferences as "fringe", "left", "hateful", "angry". I am hoping that under such a presidency, I would lose the scream stuck in my throat feeling, and actual work could be done in the federal government, for the betterment of our country.

John McCain, like George Bush before him, does not seek to be my president. To my way of thinking, he doesn't deserve the office.

The militarization of St Paul

The raids on DFHs from Food Not Bombs and the like was followed on Monday with tear gas and pepper spray, heavily armed cops marching in formation and herding what looks like anyone out-of-doors into impossible corners, arrests of journalists including Amy Goodman and at least one AP photographer, buzzing helicopters and big black humvees- a rather impressive show of force to bring out for a constitutionally protected display of assembly and speech. Greenwald has a ton of key links in his post: video and audio, local and web-wide coverage, so best to visit him for the particulars.

I've been at major marches, and I cannot imagine how I's have avoided trouble if police were lobbing tear gas and herding us into corners for arrest. But then, the police don't seem to have been there to keep people out of trouble. They seem to have been there to fight a preemptive war, on crazy dirty fucking hippies and the journalists who cover their presence.

While there is no accounting for crazy, and sure it's possible that a few people may have been drawn to St Paul to create some havoc, it is simply not believable that the city was under the kind of serious threat this kind of presence would warrant. I don't know much about St Paul's mayor or its police force, but I do know that the FBI was there, and so it seems obvious that the heightened state of alert was their doing. Perhaps the St Paul police were really convinced that there were large-scale plans for violence and anarchy. Perhaps the FBI is, once again, the president's private police force.

Is it me, or do the FBI's weekend raids remind anyone of Tom Delay calling out Homeland Security to track Texas legislators?

What is the advantage to the GOP from this kind of abuse of power? It's highly unlikely that any march would garner much national coverage, the media has been focused on hurricanes and Sarah Palin, why worry about a bunch of DFHs in the streets?

I think the lunatics at the head of the republican party, lacking any issue positions that would go over with the majority of Americans right now, are pushing more fear of change. They aren't getting enough traction with "Obama's black, and maybe his church is scary". So they're hoping for a scene that will recall the late '60s, and put the fear of hippie radicals in every middle-aged mind. That's why they keep dragging up Ayer's name, even though there is no there there. That's why surrogates were openly speculating about floor fights at the democratic convention, and whether the scene would be another Chicago '68 melee.

As it turns out, we on the dem/liberal side do conduct ourselves fairly well, and last week's convention was a hue success. But if they can still scare people with images of war in St Paul, well, why not give it a try?

I really hope that the sheer number and randomness of the gassing and arrests backfires. And I hope that if the '60s spring to the American voters minds, the images remembered will be of police dogs and water hoses, and bullets flying into crowds in Ohio.

More on surges and timelines

Froomkin:

In agreeing to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June, and from the rest of the country by 2011, President Bush has apparently consented to precisely the kind of timetable that, when Democrats called for one, he dismissed as "setting a date for failure." Bush can call it an "aspirational goal" until he turns blue, but a timetable is exactly what it is, thank you very much. [snip]

It is hypothetically possible that an American pullout on this timetable will leave behind a peaceful, democratic and pro-Western Iraq. One can certainly hope. But it seems more likely that the sectarian fissures opened by the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation will once again explode into violence as soon as U.S. troops -- and U.S. payments -- stop creating an artificial sense of stability.
And then, of course, there's Bush's own histrionic prediction. "It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing," he said last May. "All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength -- and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq. I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure -- and that would be irresponsible."
So the next big question is this: How will Bush explain this turnaround when he finally emerges from his Crawford vacation? Will he try to downplay its significance? Or will he actually suggest that the job is nearly done in Iraq? That would be a bold move indeed, but not one with a lot of evidence to support it.

Experience, judgement

Salon has a new blog, Open Salon, and I'm becoming enamored of a poster named Leigh, who writes as a deep insider in the DC game. I want to draw attention to his post today.

In about fifteen years I was a skilled and experienced international lawyer for the US government. And even though it is illegal I learned the lobbying trade at the same time because the Executive Branch lobbies Congress every day. (It's called giving technical advice so as not offend the law.) (Despite eight years as President I'm sure "W" doesn't know that arm-twisting on Capitol Hill is a criminal offense for a government employee. But he lacks lots of experience.)
To the best of my knowledge no American President has interpreted treaties, negotiated in 80 countries, worked the delegates at the UN, seen Robert McNamara nude in the Pentagon swimming pool when he had to be briefed in a big hurry and manipulated Congress at the same time. Short of doing that no President has ever had serious experience in international affairs or national security affairs. People will tell you that Roosevelt was an Assistant Secretary of the Navy. By the time an issue got that high in the Navy Department it was already decided. FDR was not an expert in international affairs and national security until he was close to dying. One of our best Presidents succeeded him with no warning, Harry Truman. HST was a haberdasher in Missouri. When he became Vice President under Roosevelt he was given nothing to do and had no briefings of importance. But he had what Obama has, brains, judgement and personality.
[snip]
I want to mention one other thing. "Traveling Senators". They are set up by the State Department. Their appointments are arranged. The people they meet are pre-selected, they are made to feel important and given leather bound briefing books with all the "right" answers and they are taken shopping. Cocktail parties a plenty. They are duped. Except for a spontaneous greeting like the one Obama got in Berlin. Don't imagine the Bush State department helped set that one up for a Democrat.
[snip]
So where did McCain get his foreign affairs and national security experience? He didn't. He went to the movies. Thousands of witnesses paraded before the dais of his committee and carefully guarded the truth to ensure that McCain didn't know it. Sometimes he was given classified briefing books market Top Secret with a cover sheet bordered in red. But the contents of the briefing book only included information the executive branch wanted him to have. He was duped.
I could go on all day but you get the point. Washington is run, arranged and manipulated by the executive branch to dupe the dupeables. McCain was one of those. That's why he doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shiite. Its hard to remember all those words when you only read five minutes a day. If he read much more he would have graduated higher than the bottom of his Annapolis Naval Academy class.
Obama has no more (or less experience) than McCain. But there is one big difference. He's smart as a whip (and being President of the Harvard Law Review attests to that. If you have that title in your resume today you can work anywhere in the country you want and fresh out of law school you'll be earning $165,000) and he isn't one of the dupeables. He is a quick learner. McCain thought he'd royally screw up his foreign trip and say the wrong word at the wrong time so he goaded him. Then he had to do everything possible to destroy a man who obviously slid right into the role of a wizened chief of state. When the Russians invaded Georgia McCain attacked viciously and immediately. Obama attacked mildly and cautiously. The experienced foreign policy expert would have done what Obama did. The temperamental foolish dupe would do what McCain did. He didn't even have time for his staff to brief him on the importance of Russia's help in settling that minor atomic bomb crisis in Iran before shooting off his mouth. But Obama was thinking. Always thinking. And Obama is a nice man or he knows how to present himself as a nice man. Either one is better than McCain who acts like a son of a bitch. And the media kisses his ass because he's a maverick.
[snip]
No matter what you hear, Presidents do occasionally get that 3:00 AM phone call. I can just hear Obama saying "Tell me more". I hear McCain saying, "Let's go get those fuckers".
Most of you are too young to have lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis with a President Kennedy and his brother Robert both of whom lacked McCain's so called experience. I am quite confident that if McCain had been President during the Cuban Missile Crisis I would be dead now, along with my wife and children and I can't imagine what the rest of the country would have been like. I am certain that Obama could be trusted to guide us through that nightmare. We really did believe we would all die the next day in a nuclear holocaust. Go back and read if you didn't live through it. But we slept better with a smart, personable man of good judgment than we would be entitled to sleep if John McCain were President.

Which goes back to my earlier (outsider) post on Wisdom. A president must listen, and then exercise sound judgement. According to contemporary accounts, the current president refuses new or more complex information than he has already based his decisions on, and either allows the information received through a very filtered single source (the VP's office) or directs the information be changed or created out of whole cloth to support his ideas (Suskind).

And then there comes the question of exercising judgment. Even in cases where he might have had the best information available, I think we can all agree that his judgments tended to result in either total failure (Katrina), opposite outcomes (democratically elected Hamas officoals in Palestine), or a prolonged mess of one step forward, two steps back (the rebuilding of civil society in Iraq and Afghanistan).

John McCain, despite his "maverick" reputation, has voted with Bush administration goals and proposals 95% of Bush's term. And this week, his response to the situation between Russia and Georgia has sounded painfully like our current president, if even more hawkish. Despite the fact that our recent diplomatic efforts in the region have really painted us into a corner and tied our hands in this conflict.

Should the cold war be heating up again, should we face a power over the next 8 years who's actually armed enough to cause us great harm, I want a JFK on that phone. A deep thinker as well as a pragmatist, who projected good will to the harshest of America's critic, who had some diplomatic credibility as well as the brain power to keep that button from being pushed, in the USSR or here in the states.

We don't truly know how either candidate would lead until the office tests them. But we can look at their tendancies in the time we've known them and make the best decision.

I'm voting for the guy who has demonstrated the ability to listen, to respond, to allow his plans to evolve and change as new information is made available.

Wow. I mean, just... wow.

President Bush,today:

No regime should ignore the will of its own people and calls from the international community without consequences.

I just don't even know how to respond to that.

Probably better that I don't, not until I'm at a table with some friends and a lot of beer

Iran

One would hope that a country such as ours would be disillusioned enough with the administration's lust for war in middle east. One would hope, but this remains to be seen.

Over the past few months, the saber rattling has gotten steadily louder, more intense. A letter writer to the Star asked earlier this week:

With the outrageous actions by Iran, such as launching missiles and its president announcing Iran will annihilate the U.S. soon, does it not seem it's trying to provoke an attack from us?

What other reason could it possibly have for encouraging superior forces to attack unless it wants to use a nuclear weapon it has developed in secret or purchased from North Korea against our troops? Or perhaps use new silent submarines to sink our aircraft carriers and kill several thousand of our servicemen?

Why would Iran test missiles right now? Hmm. I dunno. Maybe because our president and his surrogates and one presidential candidate keep insisting that bombing Iran would be a really great idea?
Condi:

WASHINGTON— Condoleezza Rice flexed America's muscles in the Middle East on Thursday, forcefully warning Iran the U.S. won't ignore threats and will take any action necessary to defend friends and interests in the Persian Gulf.

Bolton
Kristol
Lieberman

And that's just a lazy one-site one-minute search.

And McCain is a harbinger, as should be clear to anyone with ears. Conason writes:

Obviously the war lobby within the Republican Party and the Bush White House has lost neither influence nor determination, no matter how wrong its predictions nor how disastrous its policies have proved to be. When John McCain jokes that exporting cigarettes to Iran might be a "way of killing them," he isn't really kidding. Like his warbling of "Bomb bomb Iran" last year, that moronic remark represented a profound judgment that war is the only way to achieve American objectives in the Gulf region.

None of this is about security, none of this is about "our FREEDOMS". It is all about control. It is all about playground bullies who want to own the swing set, and lack the imagination (or humanity) to figure out a way to talk their way in.

Anyway. Can't hurt to get organized right now. Armchair activists can go to The Friends Committee on National Legislation and start sending letters, getting connected.

Racing to the bottom....

This just pisses me off:

Accounting Plan Would Allow Use of Foreign Rules
WASHINGTON — Federal officials say they are preparing to propose a series of regulatory changes to enhance American competitiveness overseas, attract foreign investment and give American investors a broader selection of foreign stocks.

But critics say the changes appear to be a last-ditch push by appointees of President Bush to dilute securities rules passed after the collapse of Enron and other large companies — measures that were meant to forestall accounting gimmicks and corrupt practices that led to those corporate failures.

Legal experts, some regulators and Democratic lawmakers are concerned that the changes would put American investors at the mercy of overseas regulators who enforce weaker rules and may treat investment losses as a low priority.

When all else fails, deregulate? Because over the last 30 years, that has worked so bloody fucking well for us?

I am so very, very tired of the idea that we need to lower our standards on every fucking issue in order to be "competitive" in the "global economy".

We need to set our standards to be more in line with countries that have appalling human rights standards, no environmental standards, and, apparently, skewed and dishonest accounting standards.

Say that once, without a trace of dismay in your voice, if you can. And then tell me how that equates to American Leadership.

Bush and the GOP do not want this country to lead. They want this country to be a playground bully with wealthy parents.

Bonus reason to work to keep McCain out of the White House: Phil Gramm would most certainly set economic policy under a McCain presidency.

More on happy, happy Pakistan

NY Times:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.

But The Surge rocks!

Bush foreign policy and national security, or, McCain? Really?

The Army War College (patchouli-soaked hippies) has released a report on the Iraq occupation, concluding that Rumsfeld and the neocons really never knew there asses from a hole in the ground.

Not that we didn't already know that.

And not that a solid review of the mess that got us into and sustained this grand adventure isn't needed. It is, if only to maybe put a few red flags in people's minds in case our government decides to launch a new grand adventure (like, I don't know... in Iran?)

But there's more to our global situation than Iraq, unfortunately. There still exists a nagging little problem called Afghanistan, the first one we invaded, because the governing body there was actually harboring al Qaeda, plus they were (are) total assholes.

And there still exists the nagging problem of Pakistan, a country that actually has nuclear weapons. Like the kind we were sure Saddam Hussein was hiding under his bed, the kind we pretty sure the mullahs in Iran keep beneath there skirts, the kind North Korea has developed over the last few years of non-engagement.

NY Times:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In the last two months, Taliban militants have suddenly tightened the noose on this city of three million people, one of Pakistan’s biggest, establishing bases in surrounding towns and, in daylight, abducting residents for high ransoms. [...]
The threat to Peshawar is a sign of the Taliban’s deepening penetration of Pakistan and of the expanding danger that the militants present to the entire region, including nearby supply lines for NATO and American forces in Afghanistan

Today the Times reports:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — With Islamic militants tightening their grip around Peshawar, kidnapping residents and threatening the city itself, the new coalition government of Pakistan delivered its first military response to the Islamists on Saturday.

The action was limited, with security forces shelling territory outside Peshawar held by an extremist leader. Army forces were not used, and the intent apparently was merely to push the militants back from the city’s perimeter.

But the shelling was the first time the new civilian government, which has been committed to negotiating peace accords with Pakistani Taliban and other Islamic militants, resorted to military action.

In response, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, announced that he had suspended his participation in peace talks.

It remains to be seen whether this initial action has accomplished anything: it is likely that the militants left the area ahead of the force, and shutting down shops and imposing curfew are temporary controls, one would think.

The news from Peshawar this week is a reminder that Afghanistan hs not been stabilized at all. That outside of Kabul, muscle is the only government, and Taliban have a lot of muscle.

And that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is still a dangerous home base for extremism. Focusing only on our grand adventure in Iraq lets the administration off the hook for the complete bungling of Afghanistan.

And this region was always where the threat lay, and this region was always where we had the chance to be the "liberators" our government assured us we were destined to be.

Any discussion of national security needs to include these facts.

And the idea that McCain is still seen as "strong" on national security would be laughable, if it wasn't so frightening. This is a man who still believes that Iraq was a great idea, who still believes that concentrating all of our might and money to Iraq will lead to a bright and beautiful and capatalist middle east.

And who hasn't addresses Afghanistan to any real degree.

Just keep celebrating the surge, senator. That will make everything perfect. No, for real.

David Brooks: Bush Sucks (And We Should Love Him For It)

It must be hard to be a conservative columnist in the waning days of the Bush empire.

It must be hard to be a conservative columnist in the months leading up to what will most likely be a crushing defeat of John McCain.

And it must be very hard to be David Brooks, conservative columnist for the New York Times, trying to salvage your credibility as report after report after report proves that you have spent the better part of the past eight years on the wrong side.

In his column The Bush Paradox in today's New York Times, Brooks struggles once again to vindicate not just the disastrous policies of George W. Bush, but the personality flaws of the man himself.

Brooks takes us back to the winter of 2006-2007 when, in Brooks's own words:

Iraq was in free fall, with horrific massacres and ethnic cleansing that sent a steady stream of bad news across the world media. The American public delivered a stunning electoral judgment against the Iraq war, the Republican Party and President Bush.

But Bush paid no attention to the "stunning electoral judgment" of his war policies. He wanted to send another 20,000 troops to Iraq, and nothing would stand in his way.

He paid no attention to the conclusions of the Baker-Hamilton report, "which called for handing more of the problems off to the Iraqi military and wooing Iran and Syria."

He paid no attention to the Democratic leadership or the op-ed pages across the country that called for Bush to start withdrawing troops from Iraq.

He paid no attention to his own generals -- the "generals on the ground" Bush often invokes as a reason to ignore the call of the "stunning electoral judgment."

When President Bush consulted his own generals, the story was much the same. Almost every top general, including Abizaid, Schoomaker and Casey, were against the surge. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was against it, according to recent reports. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called for a smaller U.S. presence, not a bigger one.

But according to Brooks, Bush's refusal to listen to anyone -- American citizens, the commission tasked with offering solutions to the quagmire, or even his own advisers -- is exactly why Bush is, apparently, a visionary.

The secret to Bush's success, Brooks argues, is those very traits the rest of us decry.

Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.

Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals.

...

Bush is also a secretive man who listens too much to Dick Cheney. Well, the uncomfortable fact is that Cheney played an essential role in promoting the surge. Many of the people who are dubbed bad guys actually got this one right.

See? He's stubborn, arrogant, and secretive -- and, oh yes, he listens to Dick Cheney, the man who claimed the Iraqi insurgency was "in the last throes" three years ago.

But these are all good qualities because look how Bush has been proven right, while everyone else has been proven wrong.

And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility.

We should not be criticizing. We should not be investigating. We should not be questioning. We certainly should not be withdrawing.

No, we should be enjoying our "season of humility."

And then:

...the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

So we must humble ourselves before the great and brilliant President Bush, and then we must concede that he "actually got one right."

Why does this matter? Bush will be leaving the White House in another six months, and if the current polls are right, he will be taking his failed policies with him as the Democrats sweep the White House, the House, and the Senate, ushering in a new era of politics and policies that are actually based on something slightly more substantive than stubbornness, arrogance, secrecy, and listening to Dick Cheney.

But this is why it matters.

Because David Brooks is still at the New York Times. And as of this year, William Krystol is too.

And countless other talking heads who were wrong -- absolutely, unequivocally wrong -- are still writing and talking, and we are still listening.

And despite Brooks's rather hypocritical call for the "cocksure surge opponents" to humbly admit how wrong they were, we have yet to see such humility from the chattering class that helped to get us into this mess in the first place.

Yes, some newspapers and magazines have attempted to analyze their own failings in covering the build up to the war.

In May of 2004, the editors of the New York Times published FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq, in which they concluded, after "reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation", that:

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge.

Too bad about all the dead people. Wish we'd been more rigorous. Wish we'd been more aggressive. (No mention of the reporter, Judith Miller, who wrote the bulk of these stories. No mention of her complicity in allowing members of the Bush Administration to cite her stories, the stories that were fed to her by the Bush Administration, as evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.)

Later in 2004, executive editor of The Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr. acknowledged that Post's coverage was, well, flawed.

"We were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale," Mr. Downie said in a front-page article that assessed the newspaper's prewar coverage. "Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part."

It was a mistake. See? Mistakes happen. Oh well. Thousands of dead American troops, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, but, you know, that was a mistake.

Whoops.

But has the media really learned its lesson? Have we?

Has the coverage of Iran's nuclear program been any different than the coverage of Iraq six years ago?

Just last month, the New York Times published this story:

Atomic Monitor Signals Concern Over Iran’s Work

The International Atomic Energy Agency, in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran’s suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained “a matter of serious concern” and that Iran continued to owe the agency “substantial explanations.”

The nine-page report accused the Iranians of a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be intended more for military use than for energy generation.

A few days later, the Times ran an editorial titled "Iran and the Inspectors," in which it warned:

This latest report is alarming, but it must not be used as an excuse by Washington hard-liners to launch another war. There are no good military options.

That seems like an improvement, doesn't it?

But we shall see. If, for some reason, the Democrats fail to capture the White House, we will likely see an increase in stories about the supposed threat Iran poses to American security. We already know John McCain's foreign policy regarding Iran:

"You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran?" the Republican presidential candidate said. Then, he sang. "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

So while Bush may be on his way out, we do not yet know what we will get in his place. And we do not know how the major media will cooperate as it did in 2002 and 2003.

But David Brooks is right about one thing:

Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.

[Cross-posted at DailyKos]

Bush: If You Want To Slander America...

If you're still questioning the righteousness, morality, or constitutionality of the activities at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, President Bush has a message for you:

Stop slandering America.

In an interview with British Sky News reporter Adam Boulton, broadcast Tuesday morning on Democracy Now!, Bush once again displays his hostility toward the rule of law, particularly the Supreme Court, who had the audacity to order him -- once again -- to uphold the Constitution.

Boulton: I mean, you’ve talked a lot about freedom. I’ve heard you talk about freedom I think every time I’ve seen you.

Bush: Yes.

Boulton: And yet, there are those who would say, look, let’s take Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and rendition and all those things, and to them that is the complete opposite of freedom.

Bush: Of course, if you want to slander America, you can look at it one way. But you go down—what you need to do—I think I suggested you do this at a press conference. If you go down there to Guantanamo and take a look at how these prisoners are treated—and they’re working it through our court systems. We are a land of law.

Got that?

Let's review.

Those who would look at the myriad scandals surrounding Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and those who would question the policy of rendition, well, they're just slandering America.

Later in the interview, Bush says:

My only point to you is, is that, yeah, I mean, we certainly wish Abu Ghraib hadn’t happened, but that should not reflect, you know, America. This was the actions of some soldiers. That doesn’t show the heart and soul of America.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Bush still insists that widespread reports of abuse and violations of the Geneva Convention -- "quaint" though it may be -- are merely the actions of "some soldiers."

This, despite the fact that in April of this year, ABC News broke the story that, in fact, discussions of torture methods went far beyond "some soldiers."

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

...

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

...

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

...

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Some soldiers, huh?

Yesterday, Michigan Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, held a hearing investigating this very matter.

From Senator Levin's opening statement:

Today’s hearing will focus on the origins of aggressive interrogation techniques used against detainees in U.S. custody. We have three panels of witnesses today and I want to thank them for their willingness to voluntarily appear before the Committee.

...

So, how did it come about that American military personnel stripped detainees naked, put them in stress positions, used dogs to scare them, put leashes around their necks to humiliate them, hooded them, deprived them of sleep, and blasted music at them. Were these actions the result of “a few bad apples” acting on their own? It would be a lot easier to accept if it were. But that’s not the case. The truth is that senior officials in the United States government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. In the process, they damaged our ability to collect intelligence that could save lives.

Today’s hearing will explore part of the story: how it came about that techniques, called SERE resistance training techniques, which are used to teach American soldiers to resist abusive interrogations by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were turned on their head and sanctioned by Department of Defense officials for use offensively against detainees. Those techniques included use of stress positions, keeping detainees naked, use of dogs, and hooding during interrogations.

Ah, but that's just slandering America, because, Bush insists, "This was the actions of some soldiers. That doesn’t show the heart and soul of America."

Despite the fact that Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet and Ashcroft were having top secret meetings in the White House, in which they "choreographed" torture techniques, and that the discussions were so troublesome that even the tender sensibilities of John "Soar Like an Eagle" Ashcroft were offended. Or at least, he had the foresight to be concerned about how history would judge them.

But never mind all that. We're just talking about "some soldiers."

In the same interview, the president also reveals, once again, his shocking ignorance of the judicial process.

Boulton: But the Supreme Court have just said that—you know, ruled against what you’ve been doing down there.

Bush: But the district court didn’t. And the appellate court didn’t.

Boulton: The Supreme Court is supreme, isn’t it?

Let's pause for a moment.

To Bush, apparently, it does not matter that the Supreme Court of the United States -- the highest court in the land and the final voice on whether a law is or is not constitutional -- because the lower courts agreed with him. The fact that the lower courts agreed with him has no legal impact whatsoever, since their holdings were overturned by the Supreme Court, and it is the opinion of the Supreme Court that matters.

Let's continue.

Bush: It is, and I accept their verdict. I don’t agree with their verdict. And it’s not what I was doing down there. This was a law passed by our United States Congress that I worked with the Congress to get passed and signed into law.

Boulton: But it looked like an attempt to bypass the Constitution, to a certain extent.

Bush: This is a law passed, Adam. We passed a law. Bypassing the Constitution means that we did something, you know, outside the bounds of the Constitution. We went to the Congress and got a piece of legislation passed.

Boulton: Which is now being struck down, effectively.

Bush: It is, and I accept what the Supreme Court did, and I necessarily don’t have to agree with it.

See?

The Supreme Court has ruled that it's unconstitutional, but Bush disagrees because, after all, he worked with Congress to pass and sign the law (that the Supreme Court just ruled unconstitutional).

If it sounds like circular logic, that's because it is. Congress passes a law and the president signs it. The Supreme Court reviews the law and deems it unconstitutional. But Bush thinks the Court is wrong because he worked with Congress to pass and sign that law -- and therefore, it can't be unconstitutional.

Are you dizzy yet?

The president is technically correct. He does not have to agree with the Court's ruling. But he does have to follow it. And invoking the rulings of the lower courts is, well, pointless and kind of stupid. But that's what we've come to expect from our president, isn't it?

And for anyone who would question this logic, who would question the activities at Guantanamo that the Supreme Court held unconstitutional, who would investigate the lawfulness of these activities, who would question whether such activities are consistent with American principles, or with Bush's mantra of "spreading freedom," who would seek accountability for possible crimes committed by our government and members of our military, well, they're not actually upholding the Constitution. Not even Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who, during the hearing, denied that Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples. He blamed bad administration policy, and suggested pretty strongly that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Haynes, and Yoo are among those responsible. But Senator Graham and others aren't trying to restore America's reputation in the world.

Nope. They're just slandering America.

[Cross-posted at DailyKos]

Note

About the posts below:

No, I don't want to spend the next few months looking backward. Yes, I am thrilled at the feeling of opportunity and transformation that the presidential race is inspiring.

I'm all about celebrating, this week.

But unpunished crimes of this magnitude upset me. And being lied to by a guy whose salary I pay and who obviously holds our concrens, our fears, our morals, our opinions in total comtempt really pisses me off.

Fraud

Although phase 2 of the Senate Intel committee's report on the handling of pre-war intel is 5 years late, it is finally done. TPM provides links to download the entire report here.

A quick and not at all thorough glance tells me that (like Scott McMoonface's confession) there isn't much new stuff there. The fact that the Bush administration committed fraud on this country is easily documented by available public record statements and documents, and has been for years.

What is significant is that it came out of the senate, and that Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel approved it. Just as Scottie's book is significant because he's the first of the Texas loyalists to confirm pretty much everything every former administration member has said over the last 7 years.

I really think the only way to drive home the point that fucking Bush and Rummy and Cheney and Wolfie have killed tens of thousands of people because they WANTED TO, and not due to any actual threat against this country, would be full-on impeachment hearings for Bush and Cheney, and fraud prosecutions for the others.

Not going to happen though.

From around the intertubes:

Balloon Juice:

“Shorter Phase II Intelligence Report- the dirty fucking hippies were right about everything.”

Think Progress notes that Bush's claim of credibility on this issue is somewhat undermined by the report:

Q: Can you explain why you believe you’re still a credible messenger on the war?

BUSH: I’m credible because I read the intelligence, David.

To which Atrios responds:

Also undermines claim that he's not a sociopath who lied to bring the country into a war which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Just sayin'.

More memories

Lots of Katrina talk this week, including John McCain completely lying about supporting any review of what went wrong and why.
Over at Salon , more on what was going on in the White House while New Orleans drowned.

On Monday, August 29, 2005, at about 6:00 a.m., Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. A category 5 hurricane until just before landfall, it was one of the worst storms ever to hit the Gulf Coast. Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, had been briefed extensively about what to expect when the storm hit, which was why, on the Friday night before the storm reached the coast, she signed papers declaring Louisiana to be in a state of emergency.

Returning that week from camping in a ditch in Crawford, Texas, I watched the tragedy unfold on TV and wrote:

Let’s just take a moment to reflect: Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi were being slammed by a category five storm, with much loss of life anticipated. A couple hundred people were camped in ditches next to war memorials, begging for recognition of their pain.

The president was going golfing in AZ, and then on to San Diego to stay at Hotel del Coronado. Unlike, say, the Teri Schiavo craziness, which saw him zooming back from Crawford and signing “emergency” legislation in his pajamas, he was flying as far away from death and reminders of death as he could. And while the papers would cover his irrelevant speeches on Medicare or whatever, Camp Casey was mobilizing to address grief and pain once again.

I remember Buddy saying, when he first told us the news on Katrina, “People are going to die.” Maybe lawyers have better forecasting skills than fake cowboys? Is that why Bush didn’t seem to get it?

Remember

In the comments, darth someone asks if I remember 9/11/01.

Yes, Mr. Vader, I do.

And that day struck me so deeply that I began to research and gather information from all available sources, and so I am quite confident in my assessment that the Bush admin are a bunch of war criminals and that William Kristol is an asshole.

That is all.

Sunday schadenfreude- of the primary sort

Part II

To appease, or not to appease? As has been pointed out by plenty of people with brains, memory, and a
basic knowledge of 20th century history, appeasement and dialogue are not synonomous. Not even a little tiny bit.
So it should go without saying, but just in case my republican friends are still unclear on the concept:

All of which begs the question: in regards to the current Middle East and Iranian crises, what would Reagan do (WWRD)?

Aides to and biographers of the nation's 40th president universally note that he had a preference for one-on-one engagement. And in describing the foreign policy of their former boss (or subject) they employ language that reflects, almost point by point, much of the rhetoric coming from the Obama campaign.

In fact, I'll go even further: the next line of the article:

But when asked if he would, if he were alive and in the Oval Office today, meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the bag is mixed.

"I think the same strategy would apply to Iran as currently applies to say North Korea. Reagan would always indicate a willingness to talk but you'd have to have an indication of sincerity on the other party," said Richard V. Allen, Reagan's National Security Adviser. "Reagan would not negotiate with an Iran that had been implicated in the killing of servicemen in Iraq. He would want that stopped and he would use it as a means of getting a negotiation."

Which sounds good until you remember that Reagan's administration secretly sold weapons to Iran after the hostage crisis and while Iran was at war with our then ally, Saddam Hussein.

So, yes, I think Reagan would have talked with Iran. Like Kennedy talked with Kruschev, like Isreal's talking to Syria. He might have even talked to the head of the government, Supreme Leader Ali Hoseini-KHAMENEI, instead of endlessly fretting over the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad.

Just absolutely no clue

Daddy Bush assures us all that within weeks, we'll be able to head out to the mall and buy ourselves a new hat, which will make us all feel better about the price of gas and our disappearing economic prospects.

"Starting Monday, the effects of the stimulus will begin to reach millions of households across our country," Bush said Friday in remarks on the South Lawn of the White House.
[...]"The money is going to help Americans offset the high prices we're seeing at the gas pump, the grocery store, and also give our economy a boost to help us pull out of this economic slowdown," Bush said.

Hm. The husband's gas bill last month was over $400. Our little piece of the "stimulus" pie might cover that for a bit. No new hat for me, though.

This is roiling in my brain along with John McCain's pronouncements on labor: like women need more training, not fair pay legislation, and his challenge to construction workers last year that they couldn't handle picking lettuce for $50 an hour.

I was at the legislative conference when McCain lost his cool and began this tirade. Your readers are correct, his assertion was that no American would be willing to do this work for $50.00 an hour. There are those who will argue that offering such a wage to American workers would not be adequate incentive, but clearly to an audience of construction workers this is not the case. Our president was behind him on stage when he made this asinine comment in response to the public outcry he received because of his very vocal support of comprehensive immigration reform, Our president(and myself since I worked in the field as well) was struck dumb because our members(not unlike those of the other trades represented in the crowd) work 8-12 hours each day in the heat throughout the country bending over and laying 80 lb concrete blocks, heavy stone & marble, brick, and working in hellish conditions worse than the Arizona summer.

Yes, I know it's a messy stew of only marginally related muck turning over in my head, but it just takes me to the THEY HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT refrain.

If either of them ever had to work for wages a day in their lives...

Anyway. Stimulus checks. Big fucking deal.

Painful memories

Atrios posted this last week, and I was surprised how much it affected me. I had this physical sensation that was very unpleasant, strolling through the mental nightmare memory of 2002-2003:

It's hard to try to recapture those time. A nation had gone truly mad, our discourse was run by warmongering fools and Very Serious Liberal Hawks, and any attempt to oppose the Iraq war was marginalized 3000 different ways.

Proof in the pudding: an old post by Kevin Drum - who is very smart and whom I read regularly:

What's more, they know that everything they say is easily verifiable once the war starts. No one ever pressed LBJ for proof of what happened in the Tonkin Gulf, but there will be dozens of countries and dozens more NGOs who will be looking very closely at what we find in Iraq after ground forces move in. It will hardly be possible to fake vast numbers of mobile weapons labs, swimming pools of anthrax, ballistic missiles, and the like, and if those things aren't found in substantial and convincing quantities George Bush will be lucky to escape impeachment, let alone win reelection.

If your opposition to war is based on the idea that Saddam does indeed possess illegal weapons but it's best to leave him alone anyway, well and good. But if it's based on the idea that the administration is lying and none of this stuff exists, you should tread carefully. I think it's pretty likely you will be proven wrong shortly.

It gives me shudders to think back on that time, and worse: it makes my blood boil that we have come this far from then, and no one has yet been held accountable.