"Independent" is meaningless

So the Senate just passed a bill that will in part deny suspects the right of habeas corpus and allow the President to set interrogation rules (which in itself wouldn't be terrible if our current leader didn't openly wonder what "outrages on human dignity" meant). While not a single person has been put on trial for charges stemming from 9/11, that's over 5 years for some detainees, this bill was shoved through Congress right before a mid-term election and was obviously designed with the goal of making Democrats look "weak" on "terror". This is very clear with statements like this:

“It is a kind of difficult vote to explain, at least where I come from,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.

Well, Senator, you should be coming from a background of being a judge, but fucking with some of the most fundamental bedrocks of our judicial system to make some people look like pussies because they are the ones not scared shitless, yeah, it's hard to explain.

This shameful act, one which will probably be challanged immediately and thrown back to Congress to rewrite anyway, was brought to us by the "independents" as David Broder has classified them. You know, people like Lieberman, who get all worked up about video game violence, but don't seem to be that bothered by waterboarding.

Apparently, being mad about what happens these days makes you just some angry loser according to Broder. But real "independents" like Schwarzenegger, they're the future. You see, Schwarzenengger is an independent not because he took his humiliating defeat in 2005 as a sign people don't support his right-wing policies, but because he:

..now works comfortably, convivially, on forging compromises with the very same Democratic legislators and lobbyists he once tried to run out of town. In turn, they have responded by cooperating instead of conniving to defeat or embarrass him.....Schwarzenegger is providing his party -- and the country -- with an object lesson in how to survive and thrive in that kind of independent political environment. Others will have to learn.

Don't understand how listening to a majority of your constituents is somehow "independent" and not just a sign Republican talking points won't just work? Well, obviously you don't understand the need to debase our legal system because THEY MIGHT KILL US ALL!

This man is a genius

I was trying to find footage on youtube of George H.W. Bush's coin-flip at Monday's Saints/Falcons game at the Superdome. When he was announced, a strange, hard to describe sound came from the audience. Not quite cheering, and not quite booing, but both, perhaps combined with cursing.

Anyway, I was hoping to see it again, but instead this came up in my searches. This guy makes some good points, the Falcons do suck! Take that Katrina!

She talked about the Civil War AND the Cold War. Neat!

It is hard to say what is more embarrasing, Katie Couric's interview with Condeeleza Rice or her blog post about it. That's right, she has a blog, and it doesn't exactly strengthen her REAL SERIOUS NEWS credentials. It actually kind of reads like Harriet Mier's paradoy blog, with the difference of being real. Anyway, the best part of the blog post is the comments, that vary between funny, insightful, and scary. From the very first comment:

You begin by talking about her great memory, but fail to note that she repeatedly testified to not remembering key conversations when she was before the September 11 Commission.

Why do you hate America JMEhrlich? And do you get together with your friends to play Brahms? So what do you know?!

A quick word of the interview, Rice actually compares those who say "Muslims can't handle democracy" (people who DO NOT EXIST IN THIS DIMENSION OF TIME AND SPACE. SERIOUSLY, CAN YOU NAME A SINGLE PERSON, JUST ONE?!?) are like those who said blacks were sub-human during the civil rights struggle. The crazy analogies just keep coming from these guys! "I don't think your Iraq policy is thought out, going to work, or even takes in account the realities of the country today" = Racist KKK leader.

At least Couric confronted her with a quoted from a major Iraq war critic, her teenage daughter. That's right.

My political education

With the President equating the deaths and lives of hundreds of thousands to a comma and yet another chapter in the continuing reverse Roots saga of everyone's favorite senator, things look bad. It seems American politics is in the gutter, that personality triumphs policy, that our leaders are stupid, criminals, liars, crooks, and generally not admirable people. It seem like it has reached an all time low. Maybe it has, but then again, I was reminded this weekend it probably has always been like this. At least as long as I have known or cared about it.

New York magazine's cover story this month is former New Jersey governor James McGreevey's "confession" for his hiring of his gay lover into a state job and the eventual scandal that ended his political career. Its a pretty sad and torrid story, and while McGreevey hurt alot of people, his family, his wife, his supporters, with his deception, it almost seems like he had no choice. The call to power was so strong he was willing to sacrifice everything for it and, as his telling makes clear, not just the truth of his sexual orientation, but his general morality and ethics.

In 1997, in his first run for the governorship against then Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, McGreevey nearly won, which in itself was a victory and lead to his landslide in 2001. That summer I was about to be a high school senior and with a drivers license for the first time. Excited, and thinking about college applications, I volunteered for the McGreevey campaign in Woodbridge, and somehow ended up as a "Policy department intern", which I think was a totally made up title to make me feel good about working for nothing. I realize now I had a naive view of how government and elections worked, one weaned on bad movies, history/civics classes, and my debate club.

Anyway, I don't remember much of what I did. I mostly filed newspaper clips, shocked to see most articles were written very similar to each other. It was as if there was some sort of "release" given to the "press" that most journalist just reworded and sent to their editors. The one thing I clearly remember though was calling hospitals to see if any children had died from neglect or abuse. There was a scandal involving the DYFS (a kind of HHS for NJ), and a large number of deaths caused by a combination of abuse and terrible government oversite and lack of funding. It was a campaign issue, and worried they weren't getting all the info, they asked the lowliest person in the office, me, to pretend I was a Rutgers student doing research and call hospitals to see if any kids died. In a sick way, they kind of were hoping there were more dead kids, so they could hammer Whitman for it. I did a really shitty job, I felt horrible about lying, and about the whole disgusting thing.

I kind of stopped coming a few days after that. I was accused of being a flaky teenager, and since it was easy to agree with that, I did. To this day, when I think about sitting there, with just a phone book, trying to find information numbers for hospitals, lying about who I was, and "hoping" to find kids died, I feel terrible. Even though I didn't come up with the idea and I was just 17 hoping to make a good impression, it just seems like I did something wrong. Reading McGreevey's apology today reminded me of all of this, and that feeling.

I can't be that mad at someone like McGreevey because he's been publicly humiliated and he has not just admitted he did wrong, he seems to know it. There really isn't much a point to this post. We all know the ideal of democracy, public policy, public service is far, far away from the actual work of politics: the electioneering, the marketing, the slogans, the soundbites. For me, that divide is too much and that's why I rather post this, here, anonymously, and maybe read by just you. Maybe its a weak excuse, but all that counts is our equal ability to evaluate freely available information to help choose our shared destiny, our obligation to do so based on what is right and what is wrong, and to argue openly with each other about those decisions. The politicians and the processes might all be horrible, but as long as we have that everything will be okay.

That and voting machines that actually work.

Did Lincoln play squash?

The top story on the New York Times site right now? Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat. Wow, that sucks. What else is going on....now here's a much more facsinating, insightful piece:

There, no matter how the war in Iraq was going or how many Democrats were calling for his head, Mr. Rumsfeld could uncork his deadly drop shot, leaving his foe helpless and himself triumphant, at least for a moment.

In some ways, squash offers a window into Mr. Rumsfeld’s complicated psyche, revealing much about his stubborn competitiveness and seemingly limitless stamina. Pentagon officials and employees say Mr. Rumsfeld’s play closely resembles the way he has run the Defense Department, where he has spent six years trying to break the accepted modes of operating.

I'm not saying that people in positions of power shouldn't have personal lives with hobbies, or even if such hobbies shouldn't be the subject of news stories. Why not? But the contrast between the two articles, which are given similar amount of space and attention, is pretty fucking weird. Especially Donny "my critics are Nazi appeasers" Rumsfeld's signature project, the war in Iraq, is not only making us less safer, but is a complete failure in its own right. Rumsfeld has helped usher in one of the darkest periods in for the American military, where torture and war crimes seem to be the order of the day. He then goes around comparing himself Bush to Lincoln and the war in Iraq to the US Civil War? And then the Times writes an article about his squash playing and the great insights it has into his (incompetent) management style.

I guess.

Where the White House explains it is charge of deciding laws are unconstitutional

and not the Supreme Court:

Me: But isn’t it the Supreme Court that’s supposed to decide whether laws are unconstitutional or not?

Tony: No, as a matter of fact the president has an obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is an obligation that presidents have enacted through signing statements going back to Jefferson. So, while the Supreme Court can be an arbiter of the Constitution, the fact is the President is the one, the only person who, by the Constitution, is given the responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend that document, so it is perfectly consistent with presidential authority under the Constitution itself.

Okay, that's pretty disturbing, but I think there is another very telling part of this exchange. What brought it up was good ol' John "Separation of Powers is just a suggestion" Yoo recent (repeated) assertions that the President can just ignore court decisions if he wants. Yoo was behind the infamous, and since disavowed, torture memos that said anything short of organ failure was cool. His recent op-ed was much derided by progressive blogs and commentators. Well, when Snow is asked about Yoo's comments, there's this "great" moment:

Tony: So, who was John Yoo deputy assistant attorney general for?

Me: Um, President Bush.

Tony: OK. Was he really?

Other reporters: Yeah, yeah. The architect.

Tony: Wow. He was the architect of this….WOW! This is great! In any event, uh…boy, I stepped in that one, didn’t I? (laughter) Uh, but the fact is that the theory here all along has been that you don’t do it to evade your constitutional obligations, but, in fact, to meet them.

That's right, you know about the recent history of this "war on terror" and the Bush administration than Tony Snow, who literarily has no fucking idea what he's talking about.

Thanks BTCNews

Hugo Chavez and George Allen: ideological buddies?

By now everyone has probably heared that Chavez called Bush the "devil" at his speech at the UN yesterday. As a drunken, hate-filled liberal, I was kind of happy to hear the less civilized response to our dear leader, especially considering he compares himself to Lincoln and FDR several times a day to audiences who ponder the depths of his comments. That being said, Chavez actually made some thoughtful points that get at the heart of why the world's view of the US is so radically different from than the Bush "spreaders of democracy" version:

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.

What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I'm quoting, "Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom."

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.

...

The president then -- and this he said himself, he said: "I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace."

That's true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They'll say yes.

But the government doesn't want peace. The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.

It wants peace. But what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?

He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?

This is crossfire? He's thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.

Well, read the whole thing, it isn't just sulfer and the devil. But Chavez's presence in the news reminded, again, of good ol' George Allen. I know, I promise to drop talking about this guy, but in this debate with Jim Webb on Sunday on Meet the Press. Talking about how Iraq is going to be great, Allen suggested the following:

The other aspect of this that I’ve, I’ve asked Maliki, I’ve said it to Jafari and all the ministers, is the key for that country, for their economy is oil. And I think that their oil ought to be a national asset, and they ought to create something like the Alaska Permanent Fund where everybody in Iraq, regardless of where they live, regardless of their ethnicity, has a share in that oil. They’ll care about building up the oil capacity, upgrading it—and they’ll certainly care about anybody who’s blowing up the pipelines, because that would be money out of their pockets. Alaska they get a dividend. Every citizen ought to get a dividend in Iraq as well.

Um....is Allen suggesting a socialist, nationlization of the country's wealth? Isn't that what Chavez has been trying to do and why he's been treated with such disdain, as if he's Stalin II? I mean, it sounds like a good idea to me, but I'm a drunk and I haven't run in several election as a tax-cutting conservative, bad mouthing the ability of the goverment to affect positive change. Maybe Allen and Chavez should get together and share their passion for helping the poorest in society....

Allen: Okay, I am from Jewish heritage, but I eat ham sandwiches!

Seriously....

Speaking with The Times-Dispatch, Allen said the disclosure is "just an interesting nuance to my background." He added, "I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops."

kay, I know this is getting kind of boring, but there is just two other things about all of this. One is related to the whole macaca thing. Others (I did!) suggested that Allen knew 'macaca' was a racial slur when he said it because his mother, the one who has now "confirmed" the family's history, is from northern Africa where macaca is, in fact, a slur against blacks. Now, Allen is calling his opponent's campaign, and others, anti-semitic because, as he says,

"the question, the assertion, the offensive remarks that your mother taught you this slur, and that somehow it's because she has -- either she or her father was -- was Jewish."

Um....what the hell are you talking about?! No one, NOBODY, is suggesting he called the only person of color in a room 'macaca' and welcomed him to America because Jews are racists, or that macaca is a slur used only by Jews, or Jewish mothers teach racism to their children! I really don't get what he is trying to say here, that if you point out the actually meaning of words you are anti-semitic? It makes no sense.

And secondly, considering Allen's use of the Confederate flag (and the noose) as a symbol of Southern heritage, and not, you know, slavery and institutional racism, it is really telling and weird that this whole Jewish heritage thing "never came up". The guy grew up in Southern California, acts like he's some protector of Southern history, brags about his grandfather's incarceration by the Nazis, yells at a reporter for asking about his Jewish roots, and NOW explains he just found about his family's history, and it really isn't important. What a sad, sad man.

Here's the Washington Post article

George Allen: First Amendment defender

How dare you suggest my mother, who I keep telling you was held by the Nazis during WWII, is Jewish?!?!?! Never has there been a more vile slur!

The Senator's Gentile Rebuke - Dana Milbank, Washington Post

"It has been reported," said Fox, that "your grandfather Felix, whom you were given your middle name for, was Jewish. Could you please tell us whether your forebears include Jews and, if so, at which point Jewish identity might have ended?"

Allen recoiled as if he had been struck. His supporters in the audience booed and hissed. "To be getting into what religion my mother is, I don't think is relevant," Allen said, furiously. "Why is that relevant -- my religion, Jim's religion or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?"

"Honesty, that's all," questioner Fox answered, looking a bit frightened.

"Oh, that's just all? That's just all," the senator mocked, pressing his attack. He directed Fox to "ask questions about issues that really matter to people here in Virginia" and refrain from "making aspersions.

Allen actually started his shocked outrage by quoting from the 1st amendment. He's right, when will you crazy liberals learn religion has nothing to do with these elections. I guess you'll do anything to draw attention away from our crusade-like mission led by our God-chosen leader against the evil Muslims!

You Tube has the video up here. It is somehow worse than it sounds in text. What's the deal with the booing?