Stoopid Stuff

Do you think he Understands the Difference?

2009-07-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI stressed the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday, pressing the Vatican's case with the U.S. leader who is already under fire on those issues from some conservative Catholics and bishops back home.

Pope. Leader of an international group of people who have chosen to live according to the strictures of a particular mystical, metaphysical and philosophical belief system, predicated on an ancient text that is generally accepted outside the confines of the church as describing events that often have no basis in reality. Like membership in a club or union, the members of a church agree to abide by it's arbitrary rules and live within it's proscribed boundaries.

President. Elected as leader of a country or nation-state, chosen by the people to represent EVERYONE in that country equally and fairly. To consider the real - world needs and aspirations of his constituency, regardless of their individual spiritual or philosophical beliefs or the demands and constraints of their chosen thought-leaders.

These are powerful men, with very large constituencies and responsibilities. And yet, they are not the same. They are FAR from the same. If Obama (or any elected leader of a diverse constituency, for that matter) allows himself to be influenced by the dogma and doctrine of a narrow group whose ideology is defined by mythology, he will be no different in his governance than Amedinejad. Obama was elected by the vote of the majority of Americans, and is obligated to balance his agenda so as it might serve the broadest measure of the citizenry.

By dint of the constraints of their beliefs and the dictates of the church leadership in Rome, Catholics are by the very nature of that self-identification constrained from various actions and activities, although it does seem odd that these are subject to some evolution over time. While they now can eat meat on Fridays, they are still prevented by threat of excommunication and eternal torment from divorce, contraception or abortion. And this is as it should be. Anyone is certainly entitled to enter into membership agreements that constrain their ability to choose their own actions in exchange for the perceived benefits of said membership. But people who choose to believe a different doctrine, or even who choose not to believe at all, must still be governed as equal citizens under elected democratic leadership.

I am an atheist, and Obama is my president too. He needs to lift his head, square his shoulders and tell the pope "you may instruct Catholics all over the globe, but I lead Americans, four fifths of whom are NOT catholics, so while I deeply appreciate your input, it would be profoundly undemocratic for me to follow that course". Of course, he also must send the same message to evangelical American christians, that they are completely entitled to live their lives in accordance with their interpretation of scripture, but they may NOT impose that scripture on Americans who do not choose it for themselves...

Sarah Smile

2009-07-07T18:14:00.000-07:00

So what does the future hold for former part time governor and full time ideologue Sarah Palin? Well, it's a bright, if somewhat constrained future. Let's be clear about this. She is the queen of the 28%ers. The far right bigots, the tribal paranoids, the people who use the word "socialism" without ever bothering to look up what it means all love her. And when you are the figurehead for a political movement that constitutes by any reasonable metric close to 60 million people, people who will forgive you for any transgression and allow you any stumbling incoherence, you have a great opportunity not only to a life of cheering adoration but for great wealth.

Let's be clear. Sarah Palin offers the Republican party nothing. The base loves her, and will turn out with activists, phone banks and money. But she will bring not one single independent or fence-sitting voter over to her cause, for her message is so extreme and her qualifications so limited. She can raise money that they would have raised anyway, and bring out crowds that would have come out anyway, more out of Obama hatred than Palin love. She will keep their message on the front page, but with her political illiteracy, issue ignorance and odd, provincial cadence it won't be in the way they hope for.

Sarah Palin is a fool's choice for spokesman, and an even worse choice for political leader. As spokesman, she delivers nothing but derisive laughter and head-shaking confusion. As leader, she offers only a fair-weather leadership, and when things heat up and times get hard, well, we've learned her response this weekend. Only quitters fight. Fighters quit. Right. In the Republican black-is-white up-is-down world of political convenience and institutional incoherence, she offers a unique willingness to ignore not just reality, but logic in general.

So carry on, Sarah. Let your victim flag fly. Go proudly into that tiny, insular world of paranoid fear and hatred, rally the angry, scared white people to the cause of holding back the tide of history. Diversity and community is the future, so cling to fearful homogeneity and tribal animosities. Dwell in the past, glory in a time when anyone who wasn't a white man had no voice and no power. Of course, the fact that that was you, as a woman, is not to be considered. There is a constituency for your message of hate, ignorance and fear. But fortunately for the rest of us, it is small, regional and shrinking. And as you can only guarantee the ultimate failure of that message, you may actually turn out to have done some good...

Genuinely Stoopid Stuff

2009-06-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

Waxman Markey.

Simple Cap and Trade.

Glenn Beck says it's either ignorant or treason.

Broun calls it a "Hoax".

Gingrey says its just the same as North Korea and Iran.

Boehner says it will cost millions of jobs, Bishop says passage will be "tragic" as the death of Michael Jackson.

Really? Do any of these idiots know what they're talking about? Or perhaps more to the point, how stupid do they think we are? Yes, I understand they're counting on the disinterest and ignorance of the American electorate, but at what point will they actually get called on their lies and demagoguery?

Underneath the economic complexity of it's implementation, this is what we're arguing about: Industries that burn a great deal of fossil fuels have, up until this point, had access to a critical public resource for zero cost. The atmosphere. Although the environment belongs equally to all human beings, and it's degradation carries the same costs for all in terms of health and quality of life, it has for centuries been used as a dumping ground by industries around the globe. And yet the costs of this resource, upon which these industries depend for their profits, has never been valued, and the costs to human society have never been assessed. For global business to assume this resource has no value and to utilize it at no cost is ridiculous, and outside of the most basic understanding of how business works.

A so-called "Cap and Trade" bill, at it's root, is nothing more than a methodology for factoring the costs of the "negative externalities" of burning fossil fuels, while at the same time seeking a way to implement these costs without either excessively hurting the profitability of these industries and protecting consumers from the cost increases.

Of COURSE there are costs associated with recognizing the costs of greenhouse gas pollution, and while a Cap and Trade program does a pretty good job of mitigating the costs to both business and the poorest segment of the population, this isn't a sudden decision to "tax" greenhouse gas polluters. It merely brings the cost of burning fossil fuels into a more realistic realm, where it is not artificially subsidized with the lives and livelihoods of the human population of the planet.

And suddenly, when you have a realistic cost structure around burning fossil fuels and dumping the waste into the atmosphere where it has global consequences, other forms of energy, from renewables like wind and solar to alternatives like nuclear are not anywhere near as comparatively expensive and a more realistic mix of power generation can be implemented that is substantially less destructive to the future of mankind.

Waxman Markey isn't a solution. It doesn't begin to address the problem in the US, let alone globally. But it's a start. And the fact that American business is so greedy and so shortsighted that they are frantically opposing, along with their republican lackeys, the implementation of even a watered - down and limited beginning is appalling. They are essentially demanding the right to destroy the ability of the planet to sustain human life on it's current scale in order to ensure their own short - term profits.

I cannot even conceive of a deeper evil...

A Beautiful Life

2009-06-22T18:04:00.000-07:00

Neda.

Tragedy wears the face of a beautiful young woman.

Ideology breaks hearts even as it bleeds out the innocent.

Horror is the eyes going slack, at the end of a young life destroyed.

Revolution is costly, and none of the lives lost will be forgotten either by those who love them, nor those who took them.

Agony carries the misery of the loss, never balanced by honesty nor truth nor fairness nor love.

Hope dwells in the tears of the masses, tears of loss, and tears from the gas.

Anger sits heavy in the breast, railing NO! against the pointless lies and self-serving violence of the leadership.

Power is found in guns and terror, but also in righteous beliefs and solidarity.

Strength can only be rooted in the love of family, the support of neighbors, and the caring of a world unwilling to let this crime stand.

Faith can sustain believers, but it is the children that create the space where a new world can grow.

Courage can be recognized, in the videos and the texts, but cannot be impelled and should never be expected nor demanded.

There is a purity in combat, not a glory, certainly not a promise for a bright future, but in the smoky chaotic violence of a moment forever frozen in time, our hearts are savaged and our souls are thrown to the cracked asphalt in the wild confusion of the shouts and gunfire, but in the very same way that everyone is tainted by the horror of the confrontation, in the high keening madness of a fight that leaves your life behind you, hopefully to be retrieved later when you have recaptured your sanity, you make decisions that, should you survive the revolution, you will describe to your grandchildren fifty years on, eyes glistening with the names of the fallen.

Later, when the roaring in your ears is quieted, and a somber silence lies across the field, the lonely broken dead lie crumpled, bled out, the ultimate cost for the ultimate conflict.

Neda.

Lost forever to her family and her friends, even as she is embraced by a world horrified and angered by her loss. And the awful, bloody irony that they took her life in order to undermine their OWN system.

Do not misunderstand. You can't define who is and who is not a combatant in a war zone. Who will live, who will die, who will win the day. The price paid is not measured by contribution, but merely by participation. And at the end, the dead offer the only real truth...

Day of Reckoning

2009-06-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

Like the cylinder of a revolver smoothly rotating to place a live round under a cocked hammer, the last piece of the seemingly inevitable collision between an authoritarian leadership that has finally crossed a red line they never even knew was there and a seething young population who only want what other young populations want, not even anything so profound a true democracy but only to sing and dance and love in the springtime of their lives has fallen neatly into place. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini offered to his people a sermon today, in which he told them they must not only accept the blatant fraud imposed upon them even while they had faith that their system, limited and claustrophobic though it already was, was fair and did not fear a leader they could elect but who would never have real power, but to continue to merely stand on the street in silence was to invite beatings, arrests and even death.

It is entirely unclear how this will pan out. Perhaps, under the threat alone, the demonstrations will lose steam and fade away over the next couple weeks without further bloodshed. Perhaps the demonstrations will continue, and in the power of their numbers and their compelling silence the security forces will refuse to murder them, and something historic will happen. Perhaps in a brief, terrifying paroxysm of violence and horror the institutions of a state that finally chose to take off the mask and reveal itself to be the dictatorship it has denied being for so long will crush the "Tehran Spring" moment, ending for a generation the hopes of the population to make decisions about their own lives without intimidation from their government.

What does appear clear is that, after a week of posturing, maneuvering and shadow-boxing, the tipping point has been reached. Tens of thousands of Iranians will take to the streets on Saturday, seeking to be heard, asking only for the rights they have grown up believing they already had. And they have been warned - they will do so at their peril. In the recent history of authoritarian governments, it has frequently been the case that they only fall when they fall victim to their own lethal combination of hubris and paranoia. When they react to popular discontent with overwhelming violence and abuse of their power. When they force the people into an understanding that there is no longer anything to lose, and popular outrage turns into a bottomless anger more powerful than fear. Sometimes massive killing works, but it's always the last desperate gamble of a regime bereft of all credibility, seeking merely to cling to power for the sake of power, offering no reasonable explanation of their actions, only fighting and killing the only existential threat that ever ultimately matters - their own people.

The Americans who wave pompoms and shout from the sidelines when peoples are finally pushed past the point of acceptance, be it Georgians or Iranians, are wrong. We have no dog in this fight. These people aren't necessarily standing up for some kind of nebulous political philosophy such as the American political right has so toxically fetishized. They have been forced to acknowledge that their leadership has so degraded their personal liberty that they have no real future, no hope of living the life they desire, and their concrete demands are not for a political system, but for a chance to make a living, raise a family and live the way they wish. Understand, for this is important. They don't WANT to be Americans. They WANT to be Iranians. When even that became impossible, they went to the barricades.

Tomorrow we may find out what destiny has in store for them...

The Soft Bigotry of...Expectations

2009-06-18T10:20:00.001-07:00

Measured objectively, it is fair to say that so far, Barack Obama has been a pretty good president. Not great, certainly, but orders of magnitude better than his foul, venal predecessor. Unfortunately, for both him and for us, it is not possible to view his presidency objectively. Indeed, everything he does or doesn't do must be viewed through the prism of the expectations set during his very long campaign.

We could not help but see him as a forceful agent of change, major if not radical change to the system and the way it works, so every day we see the status quo is a day we wonder what happened to the Barack Obama we THOUGHT we were electing?

We expected powerful leadership, and we are disappointed to see an odd, kind of weak passiveness in the face of a weakened and discredited political opposition.

We expected the promised transparency and we have seen the Obama administration double down on state secrets, reverse itself on the release of photos and documents and just this week refuse to release the White House visitor logs a la Dick Cheney.

We expected a strong voice on freedom and equality and instead got an administration out of step with the people it claims to represent, strongly supporting DOMA and refusing to even begin to engage on Don't Ask Don't Tell.

We expected a reasonable voice to end America's horrendously counterproductive wars and we get hedging and doublespeak on Iraq, a major escalation in Afghanistan even as we edge closer to open warfare with Pakistan and North Korea.

We expected a leader that would protect the middle class from economic predation, and instead we got an administration that seems to cower before the financial lobby, that didn't even show up on Cramdown and allowed a few political grandstanders to water down his stimulus bill.

We came to expect a powerful political force, willing to stand against the worst instincts and excesses of both parties with demands for common sense and real-world solutions. We got a president who won't even fight for his own cabinet nominees, who seems to lack the political vision to make use of overwhelming majorities in both houses.

Given the choice between Obama and McCain, it's impossible to actually regret the actions and events that brought us here. But I think disappointment and discontent is brewing, as the people are tired of a political leadership that refuses to serve their interests while talking openly of serving the interests of corporations and industries. The people are beginning to sense that something has gone horribly wrong when a young, brilliant, charismatic leader is elected and cannot seem to move the nation off its unsustainable path. When a trillion dollar military is not even worth discussing, but a trillion dollars over ten years on health care for American citizens is just "too expensive". When a few of the Bush administration's worst crimes are rolled back and the vast majority of their maniacal grab for power and wealth is embraced by what we had come to believe was the "anti-bush".

President Obama, now is the time. It is not yet too late, but make no mistake, one can see "too late" from where we stand today. You must begin to stand up for what you claimed to believe in, you must begin to demonstrate a willingness to fight, even to make a few (more) enemies in the process. You have an unusual opportunity to change the course of history, and if, in the interest of some kind of political legacy you allow the self-interested rabble of congress and the media to cow you into passivity, silence and "compromise" that is not compromise, but surrender, it will all slip away. The people are becoming restless, and if you continue to demonstrate political expediency rather than political courage, you will lose everything. Popularity, power, opportunity. You are well on the way to proving yourself a fraud, another political hack who told a good story to acquire power. If that is how the Obama story plays out, we will all have lost.

Iran into a Little Trouble Over the Weekend

2009-06-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

I suppose I should say something about the Iranian elections. Although there really isn't a great deal to say, as most bloggers and pundits seem to waver between sky-is-falling speculation and suggestions for somehow putting things right.

In order to even have the conversation, you need at the very outset to define who it is you are speaking for, and about. If you want to discuss the implications of the election and it's dubious outcome for American policy and in light of American interests, that's going to be a very different conversation than a discussion of the impact of the election on the Iranian people and regional geopolitics. Neither of which is as fascinating as a completely speculative discussion of not just what actually happened, but why.

But first, we need to try to decide what, at this point, we believe actually occurred. There are three possible narratives.

First, and least likely, the possibility must be considered that something unexpected happened and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad actually did win this election fair and square. There are no reliable polls in Iran, and Ahmedinejad's base of support is rural, so one must consider the possibility that the outcome was exactly as it should have been. However, enough experts have debunked this possibility, not to even mention what simple common sense tells us about the differential and how it was announced. If he had "won" by a much more scant margin, or even had to wait and "win" the runoff, there would have been fewer questions asked. But it appears that in their arrogance, the powerful people ruling Iran did not consider the popular reaction.

If we do not accept that possibility, the next likeliest scenario is that Ahmedinejad had become part of the powerful elites in government and the Revolutionary Guards and they set out to manipulate the election results on their own, outside of the purview and capacity of the clerical leadership. This is somewhat unlikely because of the absolute power the Ayatollahs wield, but if it happened it would be the scariest outcome, because then power would be vested in the hands of a dictatorial few who's agenda we cannot know.

The most likely explanation for what we saw in Iran over the last few days is that the clerical leadership had some deep reservations about Moussavi's ascent to power, and at the last minute decided to make certain that Ahmedinejad kept the Presidency. This seems to be the scenario that most people favor, and based on what we've been able to observe it is the description of events that most neatly fits observed reality, but it has one gaping flaw. Why? The Ayatollahs have the power, and they have kept that power when reformist politicians held presidential office before, in much more challenging times when Saddam was a real threat on their border. What could have caused them to decide it was necessary to risk the social turmoil, or even the possibility of a real change in government that this blatant action might lead to?

Until we can understand what it was about a Moussavi Presidency that was categorically unacceptable to the Mullahs we cannot really understand what transpired there. So we move on to the next question, the one that Americans always ask because EVERY global event is ultimately about us, is it not? What should we do? And of course, wisdom would cause the American leadership to recognize the limitations on any American reaction. Almost ANYTHING we can do would be counterproductive in light of America's unfortunate history meddling in Iranian internal politics for the last sixty years.

The US can register it's concern over the election, and can certainly support any internal Iranian calls for internal or international investigations. Beyond that, America cannot do anything helpful to the Iranian people or their nascent democracy movement. And there has been so much debate about diplomatic engagement with Iran over the last few years, certainly there will be calls for an end to the American diplomatic outreach to the Iranians that has only barely started. But for what? What can possibly be gained by further isolating the Iranian leadership.

The reason a nation engages diplomatically with other nations is to pursue HER interests, not the interests of the other nations. American interests haven't changed, and the only way America can pursue those interests is to engage with the leadership, no matter who they are, or how they came to power. If America is willing to share diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia or China, we cannot honestly claim to be squeamish about dealing with a non-democratically elected leader in Iran, can we?

Kerry Good!

2009-06-12T13:05:00.000-07:00

In an interview with Financial Times, Sen. John Kerry did something unprecedented among Washington politicians and pundits. He told the truth about Iran's nuclear program. After years of wondering whether ANYBODY in the American leadership had ever even READ the NPT, it is stunning to discover that finally someone has the cojones to actually say that under the treaty and international law Iran has every right to enrich Uranium to produce reactor fuel, which is what they have been doing. The IAEA inspection regime has repeatedly assured the world that there is absolutely NO evidence that the Iranians have diverted any fissile materials to weaponization.

When you think of all the time, effort and international political collateral that has been wasted in order to try to end a program that is entirely legal and that exists unchallenged in dozens of other nations you realize how outrageous, unproductive and unnecessary it is. When you think about how many people have called for starting a WAR over the perfectly legal actions of the Iranian researchers, you wonder how it is that the US is not an utter laughingstock.

Israel has an advanced nuclear deterrent. There is no possibility that any reasonable, thinking person in Israel actually believes that an Iran with nuclear weapons, let alone an Iran with a nuclear research program under IAEA monitoring is truly an "existential threat". It's pretty clear that if the people in power in Israel want to avoid making any concessions to the Palestinians they need a credible external threat to keep people from concentrating on the brutal occupation of the West Bank and the horrible conditions being forced on the people of Gaza, and Iran fills that requirement nicely. It has, however, been appalling to watch the American government blindly and unquestioningly go along with nothing more than a political ruse in order to support a single political party in Israel.

And now, finally, someone stood up and told the truth. Someone powerful, as Kerry is the chairman of the foreign relations committee. Someone has actually pointed out the pasty white ugliness of the naked emperor. I'm very proud of John Kerry today. Maybe even slightly hopeful that this whole weird honesty thing might become a trend.

Pundits like to refer to a particular school of thought around International Relations as "realist", and oddly, much of the foreign policy under Bush/Cheney did not fall into that category. They never had much truck with realism, of that there can be no doubt. But one should be careful not to confuse a "realist" stance on foreign policy with being realistic. It is clearly time to start viewing the world without the obfuscation of ideology and fantasy, and learn to put the maximum effort into the most genuine challenges. To spend so much capital trying to artificially define challenges to serve nothing but a political agenda is nothing short of stupid. There are real challenges, from climate change and energy policy to human rights to economics to resource depletion. All the time spent addressing imaginary challenges only takes away from doing something about unquestionably REAL challenges. If there are solutions, they will come from powerful people being honest about what they are.

Unplug the Coffee Pot, Turn off the Lights and Lock the Door

2009-06-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

That's got it. All caught up. At dawn I leave for the high country. Yosemite. Grubbing in the dirt, rassling bears, living on nuts and berries. I'm messing around getting my backpack squared away now, and I can't wait to leave this valley behind for the tranquility and beauty of that one.

Peace be on all of you, I'll be back Friday if I don't get eaten by a bear.

Private Holocaust Post-Embrace Denial?

2009-06-07T09:20:00.000-07:00

Imprisoned in the Hague for war crimes, Charles Taylor has converted to Judaism. He was a Christian, but apparently had trouble believing the whole Christ Son of God thing, so in his metaphysical and theological explorations he has decided to become a Jew.

Now, there's about six layers of irony in all this, but mainly I'm struck by the common embrace of religion by those who have inflicted death and suffering on an industrial scale, people who's very life stories embody the hellish dishonesty of scriptural gospel.

Of course, there's also that whole "genocidal maniac identifies as Jewish" thing that's frankly a little hard to wrap my mind around.

There's that whole "finding religion once you're pretty certain never to have your freedom again" deal that somehow always seems a little tawdry to me.

For years I have grappled with and railed against the fundamental hypocrisy of the worlds motley collection of organized religions, but this is something beyond their baseline mendacity. If some very powerful Rabbi somewhere doesn't stand up and say, "hey Charles, know what? I checked with god and he says fuck you - find some other path to spiritual realization", it will reinforce everything I've ever thought about religious institutions...

Words and Deeds

2009-06-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

"No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust..."

President Obama said that early in his speech in Cairo. And, of course, therein lies the real problem. Just as it's a ridiculous falsehood that "they hate us for our freedoms", it's equally false to assume that they "hate us for the things we say". It is America's actions in the Middle East and around the world that have gotten us to this point. Sure, terrorism is bad and people who use terror as a political tactic are criminals, etc. etc., but we understand WHY there are people, many of them muslims, who want to attack the United States.

So whether America's leader uses the arrogant, bellicose words of the cowboy in a saloon or the eloquent, poetic words of peace and moderation, it is unrealistic to expect any real change in the world without actual changes in behavior. And that, of course, is a great deal harder than saying the words.

The people of the "muslim world", the population of the middle east and south asia, have a lot of reasons to hate the United States government. The US has not been an honest broker in their legitimate disputes, and they can clearly and without argument identify a series of actions the United States has taken in their region that negatively and measurably impacted their life and well-being. It is a wonderful first step to announce that we have common goals, and that we should pursue them in peace. But you cannot blame them for being skeptical, after all these years, and waiting hopefully for some indication that America as the entity that has destroyed so many lives and families is willing to act with their interests at heart.

America can select what it is she wishes to talk about, but it's imperative that, whatever the topics chosen, she speak with honesty and balance. If the American leadership wants to talk about nuclear proliferation, they must do so honestly, unflinchingly indicting enemy and ally alike, not just Iran and North Korea, but India, Pakistan and Israel also.

If the American leadership chooses to talk about authoritarian government, they must be prepared to address not just nations with whom they have differences, but also nations like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and even Israeli governance of the occupied territories.

If the American leadership chooses to talk about human rights, they must move forward under already ratified international law and prosecute the torturers in America.

American international credibility is at it's nadir, and the primary reason for that is a combination of American Exceptionalism and American Hypocrisy. When we continue to make demands of some nations we do not make of others, when we speak to how nations of the world should behave and then abandon those behaviors ourselves when they are inconvenient, when we ask governments to respect the rule of law when we neither do so ourselves nor require it of our friends, we hold ourselves up as nothing but a blowhard bully, a toxic combination of empty rhetoric and massive weaponry.

If it is to be an argument about ideals, then American leadership must recognize that it is not an argument to be won with bombs and bombast, but rather by living those ideals at home and abroad, and demonstrating their utility in modern society. If you seek peace, you begin by not engaging in war. If you wish to demand an end to aggression, you first must stop invading. If your goal is to spread human dignity and the rule of law, you must have the courage to release people from custody if you cannot charge them with a crime.

There is much America can do to lead the world into a peaceful and prosperous century, each more simple and obvious than the next, but all requiring a level of political courage not present for many decades. Obama says nice things, but will he have the courage to risk his personal political future and become one of those rare, transcendent global figures, a statesman who changes the status quo, or will soaring rhetoric be followed up with safe, incremental changes in American policy that essentially preserve the current order? I know what I see, and I am not optimistic...

It's Like if you Went Through the Looking Glass, Only to Find Another Looking Glass

2009-06-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

Sure, Michal Steele is willfully tone-deaf on any kind of social justice issue, and sure, irony crawled under George Bush's personal oval office carpet, curled up and died nearly a decade ago, but some things are just so amazingly, blatantly idiotic that even after you go back and read it a second time, you still think you must have mis-read it.

Stuff like this, from Think Progress this morning. Yes, THAT Michael Steele. The black one. The one who seems to think that the key civil rights issue facing Americans in 2009 in the oppression and unfair treatment of white men. A man who, in his own lifetime, has seen black men murdered, wrongly incarcerated, prosecuted and executed at a rate that far outstrips their representative population. One can only shake one's head when you realize that, yes, the Republican party IS actually going to base it's platform on resistance to the oppression of white men. The sense of entitlement, and it's coinciding sense of victimhood as their grip on total power slips away, is breathtaking.

And now there's this. Bay Buchanan, a terrifying aggregation of her husband's hate and bigotry and her own massive dishonesty had an assistant who was convicted of a hate crime. She knew about it, but it wasn't widely distributed knowledge, and ultimately he only more honestly expressed the actual beliefs of the organizations that employed him, so she quite happily kept him on staff. Of course, in Washington, everything eventually comes out, and so this ugly, sordid story exploded on the Internet this week. And while this guy was rightfully pilloried for his bizarre and ugly felony, his employer saw fit not just to defend him, but to describe his treatment as a "lynching". That's right. Lynching. As if there was some equivalence between pointing out that an organization actively involved in attempting to preserve the traditional privilege of white males employed a man convicted of a race-based hate crime and the torture and murder of people for no other reason than their skin was a different color.

The grip the extreme right has come to exert over Republican party politics cannot last. Virtually everything they do, every position they take, and every time they cling to ideology to the detriment of the vast majority of the American people they lose more ground. They really only represent the deep South, where their constituency lives in fear of freedom, human rights and diversity, and will only elect leaders who they believe will shield them from the future. Whether there is a path back to sanity and electoral success for the Republicans, or another party will arise to provide modern, realistic opposition to the center-right Democrats in power remains to be seen. But is does seem clear that while they are in the wilderness, struggling for relevance in a world that has passed them by, they are prepared to unleash an obscene, violent attack against the basic values that America stands for, and the more unhinged among them will serve as their shock troops. Of course, as with the previous administration, only those foot soldiers will be held accountable for the bloodshed...

Money Talks and Bullshit Walks

2009-06-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Timothy Geithner's "Legacy Loans" program that caused so much angst a few months ago is now officially off the table. This may or may not be good news, as the very idea of taxpayers guaranteeing loans that private firms could then use to overpay for some of the banks assets without any risk of financial loss appalled most people as they came to understand it. And that's not to mention the various ways for banks to game the system and further enrich themselves at the expense of the American taxpayer. But the most interesting thing is WHY the policy failed.

If you recall, the idea was for Treasury and FDIC to help the banks they deemed "too big to fail" to improve their balance sheets by being able to sell off a substantial part of what have come to be called "toxic assets". The banks haven't been willing to sell them, because in order to do so, the market would have to determine what they were actually worth, not what the bank values them at as an asset on the books. If a bank says it has 100 million dollars in CDOs, it can show 100 million dollars in assets. If those CDOs are sold for 18 million dollars, the bank no longer has assets worth 100 million dollars, it has 18 million dollars in cash. In essence, it finds itself insolvent.

But the Geithner plan was for the US government to offer "no recourse" loans to anyone willing to purchase these assets at auction. The assumption was, if there was little or no risk in buying them, the funds that did so would be willing to essentially overpay for them, as any losses they would take down the road would be passed off to the taxpayers.

Apparently, that's not what happened. Nobody was going to come close to paying what the banks claim these assets are worth, and as such, with implicit guarantees from the government in place even without the auctions, the banks simply refused to offer them for sale. They would keep them to maturity, insisting all along that they would make a profit on these investments, without being required to expose them to the market for a valuation.

The ride these giant banks have taken the American people on is just horrendous, by any measure. Their ruthlesness and overarching self-interest makes the mob look like a caring and compassionate organization. To borrow a phrase from the presidential campaign, how can we expxect our government to stand up to the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Il when they are utterly cowed by their own financial industry. The banks take billions from the US treasury and refuse to offer up even the slightest concession, knowing that there will be no sanction, and should they require even more billions, they'll get them without question. They continue to sit at the table in a game that is fixed in their favor, one that they cannot lose no matter what decisions they choose to make. In this game, they not only flaunt the rules, they do it blatantly with sneer of disrespect, for they know there will be no consequences.

This is a glimpse into the interconnected, globalized world of twenty first century capitalism. Increasingly, nations serve only as platforms for business operations, and the real power is in the hands of the bankers and the CEOs. Increasingly, people and resources will be brutally exploited in the name of quarterly profits simply because there will be no entities who have an interest in protecting them. Increasingly, the gap between the rich and the poor will become a chasm, and there will be nothing in between. It has become desperately clear that this is not a place we want to go, and yet already we find we are powerless to affect the outcome...

A Death in Kansas

2009-06-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

It really was only a matter of time. The American political right had already adopted the intolerance and bigotry of al Quaeda, demanding allegiance to one true religion and branding non-christians as apostates and infidels. They had already adopted the tribal fealty and superstitious fears of the Taliban, seeking to dictate a set of repressive measures to control what people do, what words they can use, how they are to dress, what social and sexual behaviors will be permitted and those that will be suppressed by punishing anyone who deviates from their vision. They had already defined their desired society, ruled by iron fisted men, with rights carefully limited and wealth in a few, powerful hands.

So one cannot be at all surprised that once again, when they find their power at it's nadir and their ability to influence people outside of their own community to have slipped from their grasp, that they would turn from the philosophy of al Quaeda to the tactics of al Quaeda. Terror. The use of violence to create fear and close off options, so people, however unwilling, might be forced to live under their repressive, medieval laws. The use of intimidation to squelch political debate and silence opposition. If there are ideas out there you cannot suppress, you can still try to kill them, by killing those with whom you disagree, and inciting the less stable and more fanatical among your followers to kill and destroy in the name of an ideology you espouse and a fear you create. All, ultimately, to achieve power.

Power over the population. Power over the purse strings. Power over the military, the police, the legislature. Power over women, power over thought, power to neutralize ideas and defeat progress. Power to take lives and destroy families. Power.

The Obama administration has been in power four months. Four months out of at least four years. The republican opposition has yet to find a single position that resonates with the majority, that hasn't been widely discredited, that hasn't simply failed epically. The frustration deepens, the futility gives rise to a desperate kind of anger, the rhetoric becomes uglier, more polarizing and certain unsavory and deeply amoral partisans see an opportunity for personal aggrandizement. In a heavily armed nation where all the brightest traditions have the population reaching for their guns in the face of any sort of problem. Americans kill their way out of trouble, and solve any kind of challenge with violence, and they certainly face a daunting challenge this time.

The American people rejected their fear, their hatred, their bigotry and intolerance. Americans have embraced diversity, and our culture has left the old divides in a tragic past. They have lost the argument, so now it remains only for them to take out their guns - from Davey Crockett to Audie Murphy, from John Wayne to Mel Gibson, the answer is there for the righteous man wronged.

Keep in mind that the media will talk around the elephant in the room. Keep in mind that it still quacks like a duck. Keep in mind that today and tomorrow and into the future, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich and all their hate - spewing colleagues will continue to ratchet up the rhetoric, offering only incitement, not as a solution, but in place of one. They are the ones who will look at Dr. Tiller's murder and see progress, hope for their cause. They will see the pain and fear in an opposition that had already won the field, and they will be encouraged.

I don't know how it will all play out, but I think we can safely assume that we will bear witness to something horrible over the next few years, something ugly that America has not seen before, and Americans are very much unprepared for. A kind of low-level insurgency, not-quite-civil-war and not-quite-peace. America has had a lot of experience on that kind of battlefield, and it seems unavoidable that she faces the same kind of cowardice and butchery in her cities that we witnessed in Iraq. If we have learned nothing else, it is that the expression of fear and hatred is seldom without consequences...

Kim Jong Illin'

2009-05-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

Once again, the entire world has it's collective panties in a bunch over the actions of North Korea and their Amazing Steampunk Nuclear program. Perhaps it's time to have a grown-up conversation about this.

First, let's understand the reasons behind this nuclear test. Certainly , having a few nuclear weapons will always serve as an effective deterrent to foreign attack or invasion. Once the international community is convinced that you have the bomb, any saber rattling they do in your direction can be safely ignored as hollow and perfunctory. But the international community was convinced by the first North Korean test, back in 2006, so what is the justification for this one?

It's never a real good idea to try to determine the thought processes of the legendarily unpredictable, some might say unstable Kim Jong Il, but one obvious trend that runs through all of his provocations is a cry for respect. As the leader of an isolated, insular nation with no economy to speak of, unable to feed it's population or influence international events, Kim has found the only way he can demand attention is to act in a warlike, threatening matter. To create the perception that North Korea is a threat, a force to be dealt with as a peer. And right down the line, the leadership of the US, Japan, South Korea and Europe all react as frightened mice, calling him a "threat to international peace and security" and offering to immediately begin talks to find a way to make the big bad Kim Jong Il stop threatening them.

This is nonsensical. Exactly who is North Korea threatening, and how are they doing it? Their atomic weapons have a short history of not being very robust, they have no real method for delivering them outside their own borders and other than it's symbolic nature, they don't really need an atomic bomb at all. For many years now, North Korea has protected itself from foreign attack by effectively holding the 25 million people of greater metropolitan Seoul hostage. Seoul sits right on the DMZ between the two countries, and North Korea has it surrounded by thousands of artillery pieces, rocket launchers, missile batteries and armored assault units. It is accepted as doctrine that before they could be rolled back, the North Koreans will have destroyed the third largest city in the world and killed hundreds of thousands, if not a million civilians. With or without nuclear weapons, this threat is enough to shield them from outside military intervention, and they know it well.

The two nuclear tests they have undertaken have not been particularly awe inspiring for their effectiveness or competence. The first test is generally acknowledged to have been what weapons experts like to call a "fizzle", where the weapon either does not reach criticality or it "pre initiates" and very little fissile matter is converted to energy. The second test, while almost certainly a fission explosion, is being rated in the neighborhood of 4 kilotons, about a fifth of the Nagasaki bomb of the same general design. A pretty large explosion as explosions go, but not even on the scale for typical atomic blasts.

It's time for the rest of the international community to stop panicking every time Kim demands attention. North Korea is a nuclear power, and unless they can be persuaded to give up their weapons, there is nothing in the world that's going to change that. They are a genuine threat to South Korea, and to a much lesser extent Japan, and not at all to America. Considering their geopolitical location, they cannot even be accurately recognized as a regional power. If they want talks, fine, have talks. If they want aid, well, that can be part of the talks. But the US should make it clear that from where we sit, WAY over here on the other side of the Pacific, they are welcome to their nuclear weapons and we aren't going to either attack them for having them or offer them any kind of substantive reward for giving them up. We just don't care. Let China carry that ball for a while...

Memorial Day

2009-05-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

Usually on Memorial Day I write an overwrought, maudlin piece expressing support for the struggles of our soldiers home from combat. It is an important issue for me, and one can never do enough to make people understand the implications of a world where you can be under fire one day, in a restaurant in Germany the next and home sleeping in your own bed the day after that. The human brain wasn't designed for the demands of modern combat, didn't develop any mechanism for dealing with a full year of 24-hour-a-day stress and fear, and simply can't adjust to such radically changed circumstances without extreme difficulty.

But this year, I'm feeling substantially less charitable. It's hard to honor our "heroes" who, when engaged with a small group of lightly armed irregulars, call in massive air support and kill dozens of civilians. It's hard to ask people to salute those who risk so much for freedom when we chose to start the war in the first place. It's hard to demand people "honor their sacrifices" when they have laid waste to so much of the world, destroying so many lives in the name of a nebulous and arbitrary agenda. And should we look forward to a future Memorial Day when we unveil a glorious marble monument to our courageous drones?

It seems the world is in a dark, somewhat hopeless place today, and at least some of that can be laid at the feet of the American love of war, our virtual fetishization with all things military. Perhaps it's time for a holiday that celebrates men of peace, builds monuments for wars avoided and calls the roll of those, combatant and innocent alike, not killed in vain. Maybe on a Memorial Day sometime in the future, when a child looks upon a statue of a soldier and asks what it is, his mom might be able to tell him "men used to travel around the world killing and destroying because their leaders told them to". A time when we can look back on the brutality and barbarity of war as a solution to political and economic disagreements as something from an earlier, less enlightened era. When a country's great leaders will be recognized for the health, well being and education of their people and a country's great scientific advancements for curing disease and improving the lives of human beings.

In the meantime, today? A car race, a ball game, a steak and a beer. A warm spring day in the park. Not so much reflection - I've had all the war I can stomach for now, and I fear more is yet to come. The soldiers are still coming home from combat, still watching a surreal world through wary eyes, still struggling to adjust to a world without bombs, without weapons, without deadly enemies around every turn. They'll still need our support and understanding, and we'll still need to welcome them back. But today it occurred to me that much of the honor is gone, and if it ever really existed at all, the time for celebrating war is at an end...

Pink Boxers

2009-05-22T13:01:00.001-07:00

I have to admit this made me smile, and I can't deny I not only enjoyed, but appreciated what Secretary Gates had to say about it. But it's interesting to take a moment and ask ourselves why it's newsworthy.

As much as Americans approve of military solutions to all sorts of intractable problems, worship and even fetishize the military and call for acts of extreme violence from invasions to air strikes with minimal compunction, very few Americans have ever had to come to grips with the realities of life in a war zone. While they are perfectly able to conceptualize, it is well nigh impossible for most Americans to viscerally understand how a family might live day in and day out, being startled awake and rushing out into the dark and chaos to fight or to flee. The easy death, the endless horror, the constant fear, the disease, the destruction, the smoke, the smell.

Even American soldiers, with their vaunted reputation for taking some of the comforts of home to the front lines of battle, have to live wound tight, on a razor's edge, understanding that at any time peaceful quiet can be shattered by gunfire and explosions, and there can be no hesitation in response. Anyone who has tried to sleep in a war zone has had to make the most careful of calculations - Should I take off my boots? My pants? Where should I put my weapon, my magazines, my grenades, my helmet? Should I keep my pistol in my rack? A knife?

For the residents, of the battle areas, the families with farms and livestock and children and pets, the calculations are harder, and the choices fewer. It seems certain to me that if Americans had a better understanding of the misery, the disruption, the tragedy that is unleashed on regular people every time there is a battle or an air strike, they would be much more circumspect in their desire to see deadly force employed as a routine matter of policy. It is unfair that a nation can unleash so much death and suffering, so much fear and horror, and suffer so few consequences for it. It's all gotten too easy, too mundane.

Perhaps the sight of a young man rushing to the fight with his comrades in boxers and flip-flop sandals can teach us, as a people, a little something about life in war. About what it demands, and what it costs...

Pakistan, The Taliban and Those Pesky Nukes - A Calm Analysis

2009-05-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what the US Government and their stenographers in the media actually want. The seem determined to drive Pakistan from a democratic, civilian government with an active political opposition and a small, militant insurgency to a full-blown civil war. They don't seem to be willing to allow the Pakistanis to work out their political and ideological differences through a negotiated political process, but instead seem to be frothing for bloodshed. It never seems to get mentioned in any of the American discussions, but a nation that is at war with it's citizens, attacking it's own towns and creating desperate refugees has failed at it's primary purpose.

The Pakistanis were understandably resistant to going to war against their fellow Pakistanis, so the US and the Obama administration just kept ratcheting up the pressure and offering more in the way of rewards until the Zardari government and the Army under General Kayani made a craven calculation that it was in the short-term interests of the governing elite (yes, that does include the military and ISI) to kill a few thousand of their citizens in order to keep American aid flowing. It is nothing short of appalling that apparently neither the Obama nor the Zardari administrations can see beyond the next fiscal quarter. That future is grim, but precisely NOT for the reasons the American hype machine keeps shrieking.

Let's be clear. Assertions are regularly made in the American press about the state of Pakistan, her government, her military and her nuclear weapons. In parallel, further assertions are made about the Talilban, their goals, their support and the type of threat they impose on the Pakistani nation. They are almost entirely and uniformly false, and yet the truth so seldom finds it's way into the conversation that one must reach the conclusion that the truth is, to borrow a phrase from Al Gore, inconvenient.

Let's start with the real bogeyman here. The nuclear weapons held by the Pakistani military. And make no mistake, the civilian government has NO access to them, nor the ability to order their release. The military retains the strategic options, both because they don't have faith in the willingness of the civilian government to unleash them, but also, and perhaps more importantly, they don't have faith in the institutions of democracy that might place someone who's ideology is at odds with the Generals in a position of power. The American press loves to describe a frightening scenario where a Pakistani nuclear warhead "falls into the hands" of the Taliban or al Quaeda and is smuggled into an American city and detonated with hundreds of thousands or millions of casualties. Is that reasonable? Should that be the primary concern that drives American South Asia policy? Let's think about it for a minute.

Does anyone else hear that "ticking time bomb" from the torture "debate"? For this scenario to come to pass would require a set of circumstances, decisions, operations and opportunities so far fetched as to be the same kind of science fiction as that legendary time bomb of the hate-driven fever dreams of authoritarians in and out of government. But with America's cultural predisposition to the expedient, our love of action-adventure stories and our utter lack of understanding of Islamic cultures, we have no second thoughts in believing these terrifying stories. And yet...

A nuclear warhead is a large, heavy, incredibly high precision device that is easy to conceptualize, somewhat harder to design and very difficult to engineer. And any loss of precision results in something less than a mushroom cloud. And we've seen too many movies with "suitcase nukes". While a few, highly advanced nuclear weapons programs (the US, Russia, perhaps China, Great Britain and France) have developed the technology for reducing the size and weight of an atomic weapon, those are NOT the weapons we are talking about in Pakistan. That nobody ever bothers to make the distinction, but rather avoids the discussion in order to allow American imaginations to run wild is telling in and of itself. A Pakistani warhead is a large, cumbersome piece of single-purpose technology, designed to be delivered by short or medium range missile against Indian targets. It is heavy, not designed to be portable and requires a great deal of gentle care if it is to be expected to release it's nuclear energy on target. And even then, it's a dirty little secret that the reason a nuclear power wants so many warheads is that many of them can be expected to fail to "deliver significant yield" and it is doctrine to plan to deliver multiple weapons to ensure a single detonation.

But OK. For now, let's assume that Taliban, with Osama bin Laden's evil minions assisting, have commandeered a 300 kiloton Pakistani warhead, perhaps with significant assistance from the ISI. They have the engineers they need to to load it into a 40 foot shipping container and brace it so it is not damaged in transit. They now have a nuclear warhead ready to transport, in an international standard shipping container, in a remote Pakistani nuclear development facility. Has no one noticed? Is there not SOME part of the Pakistani Government, or the Pakistani military, who is concerned, and would prefer this did not happen? After all, even with all the support in the world, this weapon was NOT designed to be delivered in this way. It took time, innovative thinking and creative engineering to get this far. The Pakistanis would have known where the facility was, and they would have known that it was compromised. Even assuming their F16s and helicopter gunships somehow fail to remove the threat at the source, their special operations teams can't find a way to stop this? OK, let's say they can't

Now the time has come for the Taliban and their al Quaeda henchmen to move this weapon to a port. They load the container on a truck and, what, just drive to Karachi? Whereupon they innocently load this container on a container ship bound for Savannah, pay their money and sign the bill of lading? Do the Pakistanis not KNOW their nuclear facility has been compromised and a weapon stolen? Do the Americans not know? This happened in complete secrecy, without having to kill a guard, blow a gate, coerce a manager or trigger a safeguard? Wow, these guys are good. In fact, the whole world would realize that there were rogue nukes on the loose and among other obvious countermeasures, container traffic would be anything but business as usual.

Then there's the matter of device security. What we call PALs, or permissive action links. See, everybody figured out about fifty years ago that, with forward deployed nuclear weapons, the enemy or a rogue ally could seize control of one or several of them and, well, at that point anything's possible. So from combination padlocks to advanced digital security, the weapons have been protected by security devices and tamper proof housings. Do the Pakistanis employ this level of security? We do have to admit we don't know, but they would have the same motivation as the US or Russia or any other nuclear state - to make certain that the weapons didn't end up destroying their own interests. I think it's VERY likely that the way the Pakistani military maintains control of the nuclear weapons is to control the release codes. There is very likely no one, or a very limited number of people anywhere near the development/maintenance facility, who actually have the knowledge to make the bomb go boom. The science of encryption and one-way cyphers is well known, and the Pakistanis have plenty of mathematicians. This would not be a significant challenge to them, and they would be madmen to have no controls on these weapons at all. They are not.

Which brings us to an important cultural discussion. Here in the west, we like to make all sorts of determinations that Islamic extremists are "fanatics", that they have no interest in living, that in order to carry out their nefarious plots they would happily die, even along with their family, their tribe, their mosque and their nation. They are just not like us, you see. We want to live. They WANT to die. And yet, look around for evidence of this. Attempt to demonstrate a case where anyone, Islamic extremist or other, who was willing to see his entire group, the very same group that suffered the grievances he's attempting to redress through violence, utterly destroyed. An individual, traumatized and indoctrinated, carrying out a suicide bombing does not rise to this level. I frequently hear this charge leveled with a particular kind of smug self-certainty at Iran. But yet, with all their power, they seem to be highly circumspect in attacking their enemies, be they Israel or Saudi Arabia. It's almost as if they aren't willing to absorb the certain retaliation that would come from starting a war. As if they actually WERE like us. Human beings, with families and hopes for the future.

Our government and our press regularly tells us things that are not true. It is up to us to think about the claims they are making, and to evaluate them based on facts we know or can logically assume to be in play. The people attempting to shape the discussion, the groups that want to frame the debate, have an agenda. And while your hopes, dreams and desires may coincide with that agenda, they very likely do not. You must take the time to think about what you are being told, and to insist it pass a very basic smell test. You will commonly find you are being manipulated, to your detriment, and that is something you should very much want to avoid.

Liberal Democracy to Authoritarian Police State - The Direct Route

2009-05-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

Republican legislators are outraged that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called out the CIA for "misleading" her in briefings over the Bush/Cheney torture policies. Of course, their arguments against Pelosi's statements have very little to do with their accuracy or truthfulness in the sense that they are offering actual evidence that she is incorrect or lying. Rather, they are taking the radical position that it is simply beyond the pale for an American lawmaker to call into question the agency's perfection, apparently because to do so is unacceptable, unamerican and unpatriotic.

Eventually, when historians look back to identify those critical points where the American experiment in representative democracy collapsed, this might well be one of them. When an elected representative of the people, with statutory and constitutional intelligence oversight responsibilities, feels it appropriate to take the position that it is unacceptable to question the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency, he is essentially ceding control of Government from elected political leaders to anonymous, unaccountable intelligence bureaucrats. He is saying that the secret police should be allowed to operate without challenge, unfettered, based on the assumption that they will never take a self-serving or counter productive action because, well, they're the good guys.

Especially in light of the excesses of the previous administration, I WANT the co-equal Legislative and Judiciary branches to question every agency, demand information on every program, and exercise active oversight to the point of denying funding for questionable programs and lack of transparency. One of the truly appalling things about the Bush/Cheney years was the way the Republican - led Congress was willing to subjugate their power and authority to that of the White House. These are men and women of immense ego and great power. Under the constitution they had not only the power, but the responsibility to make themselves part of the process. Instead, they chose to act as lap dogs, nothing but a rubber stamp, the saddest kind of flaccid third-world banana republic parliamentary assembly, acting as instructed by the party elders, without any ability to influence events. These partisan hacks sold out their country, and their constituents for nothing but some political party platform. They made a mockery not just of themselves as legislators, but of the institution to which they had the rare privilege of being elected.

And now they want to take their craven, anomalous behavior as servants of the party in the name of executive power and make it, not just the way the system is supposed to work into perpetuity, but to make a powerful, independent, effective Legislative branch into some kind of subversive fifth column. For that does seem to be the takeaway from the mindless arguments they are shrieking at increasing volume.

Don't question the secret police. Let the military make the decisions, not the civilian government. Demand more surveillance, more torture, more incarceration, a militarized border, more and more military spending to support more and more wars. The irony is that on political issues there is very little daylight between the Republican party's official positions and that of the Saddam Hussein government. Just as on social issues, tolerance and diversity, the Republican party and al Quaeda have shockingly parallel beliefs and ideologies.

It's a path I don't believe the majority of Americans want to walk. But with the political cowardice and self-interest of the government and the mindless, arrogant, embarrassing idiocy of the press, there seems to be no way to change direction. We're going to be very unhappy with the nation we're creating, and yet we continue to rush headlong into a dark, authoritarian future...

Incredible Sources

2009-05-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

Let me ask a very quick question here. Why would anyone ask Liz Cheney about her father's actions as Vice President? I'm not certain but I'm pretty sure she was NOT on his staff or involved in his actions around detainee interrogations, particularly as much of that was classified, but even beyond that, has anyone noticed that he's her FATHER? Asking someone if they think their Dad is a war criminal seems unlikely to result in any valuable data.

As if we needed some additional evidence to allow us to understand the mindless and tragically ineffectual nature of our electronic press, this should serve as a milestone, a stake hammered into the very concept of political journalism announcing, for now and ever, it's wheezing demise. Think about this. The Vice President of The United States of America is embroiled in controversy due to his horrific and very likely criminal behavior. And the press thinks it will contribute valuable insight into the issue to interview his DAUGHTER on her views of his actions. And people listen to her speak, and discuss the things she says as if she has any credible standing to address the matter. It's beyond bizarre. And I know you're going to find the outcome shocking, but Cheney's daughter deems his actions to be completely reasonable, utterly justifiable and undoubtedly legal. Now that you know his daughter thinks his actions were correct, you have a much deeper understanding of the entire affair, right?

Of course, as we sadly view this marker on the grave of electronic journalism, we must recognize, and admit to ourselves, that it is too late. The media cannot be repaired - it is far to broken to ever find it's bearings once again. What we can do, what we MUST do, is help the people who pay less attention and still rely, to their great detriment, upon television and cable news for their view of the world understand that this medium is for entertainment purposes only, and that nothing credible can be learned by viewing it. As long as these hucksters and clowns can be cited as authoritative sources, the discourse in this nation will continue to be hijacked by people with money and an agenda, and our aspiration to live in a democracy will slip farther out of reach.

Imagine how refreshing it would be if one of these television news actors reported Liz Cheney's views on her father's actions, and then looked in the camera and said "but then again, what else would we expect her to say", shook his head ruefully and added "for a credible take on Vice President Cheney's actions, let's go to ____________". They could fill in anyone, from someone in government to a former administration official to a constitutional scholar to a torture survivor. It is not difficult to find people who can make a valuable contribution to this conversation. But the suspect's daughter? That's just laughable...

Who Knew?

2009-05-13T12:34:00.000-07:00

So now the torture-loving authoritarian right are all stomping their feet and shouting triumphantly that Democratic legislators including Speaker Pelosi were briefed about the Bush/Cheney torture programs and essentially signed off on them, or at the very least did nothing to stop them.

Please forgive me for being so dense, but I really don't understand this argument, what it means or or what they believe it accomplishes. It seems so simple to me, I'm sure I must be missing something. I believe there is sufficient information available to justify a Justice Department investigation. If Cheney, or Addington, or Bybee are found to have committed a crime, they should be indicted and tried for those crimes. If Nancy Pelosi, or Jay Rockefeller, or Jane Harmen are found to have committed a crime, they should also be indicted and tried. I don't understand how you might wish to live under the rule of law and think anything else.

I suppose they are hoping that Democrats won't want to see other Democrats prosecuted, but I think this exposes the critical difference between a political party and a political ideology. To put it succinctly, a political ideology doesn't automatically lead to a mindless support for a particular party, but rather for politicians and organizations that espouse and advance that ideological agenda. I'm not sure why anyone would support a party no matter what that party did or sought to accomplish, but that certainly doesn't work for me.

There are two interesting things here. First, one has to wonder what the overall strategy among the torture supporters actually is. Their position has been that the interrogation methods weren't torture because the Bush administration lawyers determined them to be legal, so there is no need to investigate what was essentially a "policy disagreement". But if that's the case, why exactly are they crowing so loudly that "Pelosi knew"? If your position is that these actions weren't torture and therefore not criminal behavior, then what point would you be making in trying to demonstrate that your political opponents were complicit? It's oddly inconsistent at best, and incoherent at worst. The other striking thing is that by shrieking that there were also Democrats caught up in these torture authorizations, aren't they essentially leaving themselves in the position of demanding investigations to establish the facts of these allegations? It seems to me they are, and if they are calling for investigations that follow the evidence wherever it leads, then they are taking exactly the same position I am. I'm not sure how you can accuse people of being complicit in a war crime and then turn around and demand there be no investigation.

At the end of the day, I have no idea if ANY lawmaker committed a crime by enabling torture. I don't know what law would apply, and how it might apply. Once again, another reason for prosecutors to investigate. Here's what we can be certain of: War Crimes were committed. By Americans. Under cover of the US Department of Justice. But for me, at least, if an investigation can be mounted, whatever crimes it uncovers should be prosecuted, regardless of the political party membership or ideology of any of the participants. I'd hope that would end this ridiculous charade...

Band Aids

2009-05-09T17:22:00.001-07:00

When was the last time you bought Band Aids? Ok, maybe if you've got kids, that's a dumb question. I don't have kids. I'm not sure when, if ever, I've actually ever bought Band Aids before, but it finally came to pass that I needed to refresh the inventory of Band Aids at mikey HQ.

The first thing I noticed is they don't come in those cool metal boxes anymore. That's a tragedy. Those flip-top metal boxes were by far the coolest thing about Band Aids.

I have had this little metal box of Band Aids at LEAST since I was married, back in 1990. So probably twenty years. Who knows where it came from, or who actually decided to buy it, or why. History, lost in the mists, as represented by a metal box of Band Aids. Cultural touchstone, or pointless search for meaning?

Parsing Obama - AfPak Edition

2009-05-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

In his remarks after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Zardari, American President Obama said:

"The United States has made a lasting commitment to defeat al-Qaeda, but also to support the democratically-elected sovereign governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. That commitment will not waver and that support will be sustained."

Well, OK then. In light of my strongly held opinion that there is no compelling challenge to American security that requires a large US or NATO troop presence in South Asia, a couple of pieces of this statement jump out at you.

First, what has to be considered the good news. Obama specifically says that the US commitment of support is to the "democratically-elected sovereign governments" of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I'd like to think that contains a pointed message that a military coup or other extra-constitutional transfer of power in either nation would be grounds for the US to re-examine it's commitment of support. This is particularly important in Pakistan, where the military has been and remains the overwhelming political and economic power, and cannot be assumed to be a passive or even neutral player in Islamabad. While the Zardari government is fairly weak and the civilian leadership is fractured between the majority Punjabis and the population of Sindh and it's Urdu speakers and quite reasonably might not be expected to survive, it's important in the long term that the military stay out of parliamentary politics and, if possible, reduce their influence on the government in general. If Obama is sending them a message that American aid is strictly premised on their adherence to their own constitution, and if that is a message they take seriously (much less likely), then that will go a long way towards supporting real democracy and the rule of law in Pakistan.

The second point raises more questions than it answers. If the US commitment is to defeat al Quaeda, and nowhere in that statement do we see a reference to a US commitment to defeat the Taliban, then much of this entire discussion is rendered moot. al Quaeda is a small, trans-national extremest organization that uses terrorist attacks against other nations as its primary tactic. Any fight against al Quaeda should clearly be led by intelligence and law enforcement organizations, with the support of small, covert special operations strikes when actionable intelligence is uncovered.

As I have said repeatedly, the Taliban in no way constitutes a security threat to the United States of America. If a small, local, religious-extremist political/militant movement is a threat to American security, then I could list something on the order of twenty or more we should be fighting with Division-level long term military operations. al Quaeda, on the other hand, is inarguably a threat to the United States, and should be confronted and defeated. But what will it accomplish to defeat the Taliban? Asked another way, if we allowed local religious/tribal/ethnic conflicts in South Asia play out the same way we allow them to play out in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world, how exactly would that endanger American security, and if it does, why don't other similar conflicts do the same?

I don't know how it happens, but I have to believe that Barack Obama is smart enough and thoughtful enough to eventually come to understand that there is no value in spending American blood and treasure in South Asia, and withdraws the vast majority of our troops, all of our combat brigades, and starts putting significant conditions on aid to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. From an American Security standpoint, there is nothing special about these nations or this region that makes it necessary, or even slightly prudent, to engage in counter insurgency warfare to support these marginal governments. There is a place for the State Department, for economic development, micro-loans, public health, clean water and entrepreneurial support, but no reason, NONE, to be fighting the Taliban with American soldiers...

No Tolerance for Intolerance

2009-05-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

This is really nice to see. We've gotten so cautious about defining something as wrong, so unwilling to draw a line and say "there is no moral ambiguity here", that we have drifted to a point where everything is just as valid as everything else. And all to our detriment.

No. "Intelligent Design" is not science. Global Climate Change is not only a real threat to all our children, but it follows out of a simple understanding of science. There are things that must be established as facts, and arguing against them should make you a crank at best. When those things are reasonable established tenets of human rights, arguing against them makes you a bigot, and the things you say hate speech.

Which brings us to the UK and their announcement of a small group of people who are not welcome in their country. That short list includes Michael Savage, American Hate Radio host. This is good to see. If Americans cannot find a way to draw a line, to create a limit and say that at some point hatred is destructive to our society, then it falls to other, more enlightened communities to point out the turds floating in the First Amendment's punchbowl. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think we should stifle Michael Savage. I am just deeply disgusted and disheartened that he can sell airtime on a commercial radio station with his Neanderthal ramblings.

But it does seem clear to me that if you put yourself in the position of appealing to the most primitive, ignorant, bigoted and fearful extremists in order to make money, you should expect some rather intensive push-back from civilized nations. And now, today, we see that from those eloquent ladies and gentlemen in the United Kingdom.

It's meaningless, sure. So Savage can't visit jolly old England. I'm sure he'll get over it, and in the near term it provides a thug like him with something else to bleat about. These people thrive on victimhood, and will always look for an opportunity to blame others for what is essentially a reaction, not a proactive act. But it makes me smile, and here's why. When challenged, these kinds of bugs scurry back under their rocks, crying "First Amendment!" as a magical incantation to protect them from bearing responsibility for their destructive and irresponsible statements. It's way past time for people to stand up and identify them for the enemies of civilization, peace and progress they are, and expose them to the purifying sunlight of disgust and mockery.

The more quickly we, as a culture and as a species, reject this kind of divisive, tribal hatred, the sooner we can begin to see genuine peace in the world. And the government of the UK has stepped up and accepted their responsibility to identify a true enemy of civilization. They are to be commended, and I look forward to others doing the same...

The Specter of One Party Rule

2009-05-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

It would be easy to put the National Republican leadership down as brain-dead ideologues, and you would not be that far from an accurate description. But to be honest, they are faced with a very serious dilemma, that is neither simple for them to address effectively, nor would any solution be politically painless were they to find a leader with the courage to enact one.

The basis of their problem is rooted in the nature of the American political system itself. The largest constituency that the vast majority of politicians are required to appeal to is at the state level. Many more run at the district and local level. At this level of granularity, you will find a tendency for people to hold a more consistent set of beliefs and opinions than at the broader, national level. A candidate for US Representative in a district in rural Alabama will have to have a vastly different set of social and political ideologies than a candidate for US Representative in urban Massachusetts would have. In and of itself, this is as it has always been, and is typically not a problem for a national political party or movement. At the National level, a party builds a coalition, employing a significant amount of ideological flexibility across geographic regions in order to represent the largest share of the electorate possible. An excellent example of this is the pro-life and pro-gun "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House and the so-called "centrist" Democrats in the Senate.

The problem for the Republicans has arisen directly out of the Bush/Cheney Presidency. So many of their core issues have been demonstrated to be unworkable, disastrous policies that the people soundly rejected them in both 2006 and 2008. From economic policy to foreign policy, from taxes to immigration, from free-market deregulation to unabashed union-busting, the entirety of the Republican platform has become anathema to a very large majority of Americans who want to see their government work to improve their lives and the lives of their families and neighbors.

But most Republicans in office today were put there by people in the south, the rural Midwest and parts of the Rocky Mountain west who continue to hold ever more narrow and parochial views of what is "American" and what is "socialism", never mind what the word actually means. Overall, in spite of their dominance in certain states and districts, this portion of the population represents only a third of the electorate, and is shrinking at a measurable rate. For any of these elected Republicans to try to take a national leadership role would require them to expose themselves to primary challenges from the far right in their home districts, and probable defeat , either to the Democratic candidate in the general election or the far-right challenger in the primary. The challenge can be summed up like this: The Republican party needs to moderate it's platform and move towards the center in order to be a viable national party, but any individual who does so will be removed from office. When an individual's political survival is pitted against the party's political survival, it takes a rare kind of politician, with a rare kind of courage, to step up to the plate. And not surprisingly, the Republicans haven't found that brilliant, charismatic messiah to lead them out of the wilderness.

Which brings us to Arlen Specter. Now it's arguable that Sen. Specter made the choice he did out of pure political expediency. The remaining Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate is very far right, and likely to nominate the radical Toomey over the moderate Specter. He certainly saw no clear path to another Senatorial term, which is the kind of survival challenge that tends to focus the mind. But even with that, he is an important example of where the Republican party is deficient, and he clearly demonstrates the things they will have to do to regain national political viability. By any measure, Specter has been an effective and powerful Conservative politician. His views and votes, while not as far right as the party might have liked, have been consistently supportive of the worst of the Republican agenda. The fact that he is not sufficiently radical for the right-wing is telling, but one wonders how much he might actually contribute to the progressive agenda. Certainly he was encouraged to make a commitment on health care reform, but overall one wonders if he might make the Blue Dog Democrats look positively socialist by comparison.

Fortunately, the very cravenness of Specter's abandonment of the Republican party might very well serve to moderate his actions, to the benefit of the Obama agenda. He will now have to run as a Democrat in 2010, so he will have to be sufficiently supportive of a progressive agenda to first avoid a Democratic primary challenge, and then to win the Senate seat itself.

The disintegration of the Republican party is not, in general, good news for our political system. A rational and viable opposition party can prevent the party in power from indulging in excesses that might otherwise be inevitable. But that opposition party needs to have a reasonable and viable platform, one that has some appeal and one that might result in better outcomes. To spew madness and discredited policies is neither valuable nor is it supportive of a viable political opposition. If the Republican party cannot find a way to moderate its ideology, indeed, if it continues it's headlong embrace of the most radical rightwing agenda, then another party will have to arise to challenge the Democrats for political leadership. It has become clear that bile, hatred and ignorance will not sustain a national political party in the twenty first century.