A Little Entry on the Republican Shadow

When righties try to claim George Orwell as their own, you know they might not be too good at things like context. But an editorial by J.R. Dunn on RealClearPolitics entitled "Bush and the Bush Haters" that tries to claim Orwell for Republicans also manages this stunning paragraph:

Bush hatred involves a number of factors that will be debated by historians for decades to come. But one component that cannot be overlooked is ideology, specifically the ideologization [sic] of American politics. It is no accident that the three most hated recent presidents are all Republican. These campaigns are yet another symptom of the American left's collapse into an ideological stupor characterized by pseudo-religious impulses, division of the world into black and white entities, and the unleashing of emotions beyond any means of rational control.

It's hard to know where to begin with everything that's wrong in this passage, it's sort of a cornucopia of dumb. For a rightwinger to insist that the three most hated recent presidents are all Republican means, I guess, he's including Clinton as a Republican--there are a mere 2,630,000 entries on Google for Clinton hatred. (True much of that's aimed more at Hillary than Bill, probably, but that just means misogyny is a preferred brand of hate--note we elected an African American president before a female one.)

But it's that last trio that amazes me in its projection--J.R. Dunn thinks those items are seen in the Democratic Party? The Dems became a party of ideology? To which I ask: Sarah Palin was the Republican Vice Presidential nominee why? Oh yeah, she was the most qualified.

J.R. Dunn needs to go back and watch the video tapes of the Republican convention, an event full of "psuedo-religious impulses." What with the endless USA chants you'd think it was Herb Brooks and not John McCain leading the Republican charge. That connects directly to the see the world in black and white issue. A term like "axis of evil" isn't created to make people feel the nuance, Dunn. Selling folks a war on terror, and at times draping it in the outmoded theory of a Samuel Huntington, well, that's rightwing talk. The left, instead, tends to see every point, which is why it's often so ineffective as a political party--we're very good at picking each other apart. I thought one of the arguments with the left is that we are too willing to mollycoddle. (I can imagine Dunn's response--"exactly, the left sees America as always the bad guy." To which I reply, "Not all of America, just idiots like you.")

But it's "the unleashing of emotions beyond any means of rational control" that I'd argue is all the Republicans have left. The "God, guns, and gays" way to victory isn't exactly an attempt to turn the country into Mensa-ites. You'd think J.R. Dunn didn't know a Rudy Giuliani exists. Or that there was an Evil Empire or a Cold War or "America love it or leave it," a phrase so many hippie longhairs yelled at the cops in Chicago in 1968.

Here's why Bush angered so many so--he tossed what we most loved about the United States away to make his rich friends richer. On Inauguration night we had a party and each attendee wrote what they most wanted to see go up in smoke from the past 8 years, then drop that slip of paper into our chimnea. There were about a dozen of us and we could have tossed slips into the fire all night. I tried to sum it up with this phrase: "Incuriosity matched by unwavering certainty."

But there's no getting back the 8 years of environmental degradation we could have been fighting, no getting back the sections of New Orleans we can miss as they were the poorest neighborhoods, no getting back the over 4000 US military dead in a war fought for no reason, no getting back the 100,000 to 1,000,000 (why bother to count?) dead Iraqis.

And then someone has the nerve to suggest there's no reason to be angry?

When the Body Is as Numinous as Words

I've got several pat answers for why I stopped writing poetry. One of them is this--you can only write the "langauge is a tool that fails us" poem so many times before you have to take your own word for it. That said, it's the only tool we've got, if at times it's like using a bulldozer to study orchids or a flea comb to search a supernova.

Language has been in bad way these past eight years. It's not just because Bush has so little facility for it, it's that he cares for it the way he cares for the poor--he hopes some meaning trickles down. We've seen how that works, and now more of us are poor. It's got so bad we've had to argue about what torture is, and asses like Rush Limbaugh can suggest Abu Ghraib was no worse than frat boy shennanigans.

So let's hope that electing a president who can write, who can say about the work of Marilynne Robinson, "The language just shimmers," might be a start to getting language back. I hate to be all old-fashioned and the artiste, but a president who values beauty can get me almost misty eyed. I mean, a president who nails his diction with a glorious word like "shimmers"? To paraphrase another ascendant African-American politican Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, it's time to "luxuriate in America's deliciousness." How sneaky, mixing wordplay with food, but then again the best writing is the most sensuous, and we need to feel it in our mouths, need to chew before we swallow.

And on this most miraculous of MLK Days, I want to quote some King, from "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," one of the best passages in American English, with that sentence that begins with "But" a lesson in the periodic sentence:

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

Here's hoping his joyous literacy is a legacy we can all share in, hoping the ominous clouds of inferiority no longer form in any child's little mental sky, that our country can put ideas into metaphor, metaphor into meaning, our words, then, made flesh.

Going for Broke

The AP reports, in a story ominously titled "Bush Says He's Working Hard on Economic Turmoil"--gee, what else can he do to screw things up?--that the White House has a plan as to how to stop our economy from going Chernobyl. The story claims:

"The American people can be sure we will continue to act to strengthen and stabilize our financial markets and improve investor confidence," the president said.

Bush did not specify what those steps might be. White House press secretary Dana Perino said she could not comment on them, either. "That's something I'm not at liberty to talk about," she said.

Perino went on to say: "After all, if we said what we were going to do, the terrorists would know. Then they could thwart all our striving. You know, keeping the free world free, except for having to pay for huge companies that fail. That part's not free, but it's the price we have to pay to live in a democracy, at least in the ways we define democracy. Not that we can tell you those or else the terrorists would know."

Asked for a comment about the economy, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain replied, "When I spent five and half years in a cell in Vietnam I would have loved to have an economy to worry about. Now I have to go and find Spain on a map, excuse me." When asked the same question, Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin said, "Maybe the country could just have a baby? That always picks me up."

Misspoke the Truth

Catching just a few minutes of NPR this morning, I got these wonderful reminders about the perfidy of the leaders of our country and why I wake some mornings feeling hungover even though I didn't drink the night previous. Must be from banging my head on the wall the night before in agony over a day's news.

First, I got to hear our President make this quote that Reuters also included in its report:

"The free world has an obligation to work together, in concert, to prevent the Iranians from having the know-how to develop a nuclear weapon," Bush told reporters after the Brown talks. "Now's the time to work together to get it done."

Get 'r' done. It's good to know come February 2009 we'll be able to catch W. as part of the Redneck Comedy Tour. What's worse is that he's still tossing the term "free world" around, as if he has to rattle the Cold War saber to get us all nervous and acquiescent. But of course I'm flattering my fellow (sane, non-28%) countryfolk that Bush Co. gives a rat's ass what we think.

For there's Condi Rice making a surprise visit to Lebanon (do note this is the surprise visit administration--if they made it clear they were going anywhere it wouldn't be safe to be there), and her quote, "In any compromise there's going to be compromises." The AFP was kind enough to her to present this quote as, "Obviously in any (deal) there are compromises," but that's not that audio NPR played.

That might just seem like sloppy talking, but I think it truly represents the Bush Co. world view. For what Rice was really saying was, "There shouldn't be compromises, there should be everyone bending to our will."

Guilty Gets Its "Until"and "Proven" Back

The AP reports, oddly enough directly using some of President Bush's own words in its lead without claiming it's quoting him, not that the press ever parrots official White House-speak:

In a stinging rebuke to President Bush's anti-terror policies, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign detainees held for years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment without charges.

[...]

Bush has argued the detentions are needed to protect the nation in a time of unprecedented threats from al-Qaida and other foreign terrorist groups. The president, in Rome, said Thursday, "It was a deeply divided court, and I strongly agree with those who dissented." He said he would consider whether to seek new laws in light of the ruling "so we can safely say to the American people, 'We're doing everything we can to protect you.'"

Bush continued, "Indeed, one of our main ways to protect you is to take away as many rights as possible. If you don't have something, then it doesn't need protection. See, we're clever that way.

"This decision, in fact, threatens to throw us back to the middle ages," Bush asserted. "Do Americans want to live in a time like 1215? Scary. That King John could have used some people like Cheney and Yoo."

Scott McClellan Changes Name to Sherlock

Well, that should be the headline, because when you hear about his new book, the reaction has to be "no shit." MSNBC reports:

"The Iraq war was not necessary," [McClellan] concludes. "Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake."

Alas, even in this book he's still lying. It was a graves mistake--over 4,000 now. We'll spot him all the dead Iraqis, as we know trying to figure out their casualty rate is just too much work.

Speaking of that, it's great that he opts to follow Bush and his "disarming personality" only to realize Bush possesses a "lack of inquisitiveness" (if one possesses a lack). Seems those two phrases both add up to "empty-headed" to me, but then I never worked in the high pressure White House. After all, as Dana Perino, current lying sack of shit, uh, Press Secretary, put it: "The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the President. I do not expect a comment from him on it — he has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers." Why read when a book can be "described" to you?

I guess I have to read the book myself to find out what MSNBC and McClellan are talking about in this line, though: "his administration early on possessed 'seeds of greatness.'" Was stealing an election greatness? Barreling through huge tax cuts for the wealthy at a time when the economy began to tank (but nowhere near how it has since)? Having a 50% approval rating 8 months after his election? Ignoring all the warnings that 9/11 was about to happen? Using 9/11 as a way to expand executive power, approve torture, and turn America further into a police state?

Perhaps most telling is this quote in the MSNBC article:

Said former top aide Karl Rove, in an interview with Fox News Channel, "If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them."

After all, there's little room for morals in the Bush-Cheney White House. Rove knows all about that. It's like that line from Paper Moon I'm sure I've quoted before, when Ryan O'Neal tells Tatum he has scruples, then asks her, "You know what scruples are?" She replies, "I'm not sure, but if you have them, I can bet they once belonged to someone else."

Sure enough, here's Scotty, "When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the president and unable to comment." Loyalty to the president? What about the Constitution, the country, the soldiers dying in vain? What about his Christian faith?

His god better be a mighty forgiving one. I'm no god, and I'm pissed as hell.

Screw a Recession--This Gives Me Depression

On the one hand you have Bush. On the other hand you have McCain. Which means both your hands are soiled with the same bullshit.

I want to see more ads!

He's Holding on with Both Hands

(Moshe Milner / Getty Images)

Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gives President Bush a GPS device. Here he is seen pointing out to President Bush the "ass" and "hole in the ground" settings.

Who made It Rest in Peace on Earth?

Bad bad week. First Michael Kidd. Bad for the dance world. Then Oscar Peterson. Bad for the jazz world. Now Benazir Bhutto. Bad for the world.

And I fear for the people of Pakistan, for President Bush today announced, "We stand with the people of Pakistan." He's said that numerous times about the people of Iraq, and there his promise hasn't turned out so well. Even more frightening, those hard to find WMDs just happen to be a good thousand miles east of where Bush said they were.

The Reports that Say NIE

Headline I want to see:

Bush, Cheney Deny Intelligence

Not Waving, Drowning

So President Bush's line is "If I can't have my Attorney General we won't have one. Na-Na!"

Dana Perino tries to make things pretty (that is her job, after all), and says, "No nominee could meet the test they've presented."

The "they" turns out to be senators feeling suddenly spine-full who don't want to confirm Mukasey until he makes it clear where he stands on waterboarding. It seems if he says waterboarding is torture, and the US doesn't torture--and as AG he would then make sure that's true--he'd pass the test.

So really what Perino means is the US waterboards. And Bush sort of admits that, too, saying "it was unfair to ask Mukasey about interrogation techniques about which he has not been briefed. 'He doesn't know whether we use that technique or not,' the president said during the session. 'It doesn't make any sense to tell an enemy what we're doing.'"

And VP Cheney "said classified CIA interrogation methods are not the same as those of the military, where waterboarding is not a permitted in the Army Field Manual. 'This CIA program is different. It involves tougher customers — men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and it involves tougher interrogation.'"

OK, so according to the President, we need secret ways to interrogate or the enemy will study up and beat the system. Although any surprising way to "interrogate" would seem to involve putting the terror in the interrorgate, so to speak.

And according to the VP, as long as the person is bad enough, whatever we do to him is what he deserves. After all, the only way the US can remain a nation of laws is to bend those laws every now and then. Guilty until tortured and you confess and all that.

So to beat the terrorists, we must become as uncivilized as they are. Gee, wonder who is winning this war?

Before anyone suggests waterboarding isn't torture, go watch this video. Hard to take, just watching it, no?

Before anyone says, "But if they captured someone who knew where the bomb was to go off, wouldn't you want an immediate answer?" go read this article in which a Marine major discusses why torture doesn't get you the truth.

After all that try to figure out why this President seems so determined to do away with the checks and balances in the Constitution and any sense of international law, too.

Bush Prevents "Commuter" Traffic

Washington, DC -- President Bush today commuted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sentence for perjuring himself while testifying to the Senate yesterday. Bush said, "I realize that Gonzales has not been convicted of perjury yet -- he hasn't even been indicted for it. But I figured I could save the country the pain of his trial and the money, too. Why wait around to subvert justice and ignore the rule of law when you can be a leader of the free world? And my plan is to keep free all of my friends, no matter their criminal activities. They have suffered enough doing what I tell them.

"Now leave me alone so that I can get back to vetoing bills that might lead to medical cures, bring an end to the war in Iraq, and provide health insurance for 4 million of American children."

Science Is for Those Who Don't Have the Strength of Their Convictions

In 2002 Dave Kopel and Timothy Wheeler wrote in the National Review:

Testosterone is in again. Witness the ascent of Dr. Richard Carmona, the true-to-life hero nominated by President Bush for the post of surgeon general and recently confirmed, unanimously, by the Senate. Our new surgeon general displays the manly virtue of courage that our nation has again learned to admire since we went to war. The confirmation process reflects our rediscovered consensus that real men aren't afraid to use force — even deadly force — when necessary to protect a woman from a violent predator.

It seems that when Carmona was a police officer who shot and killed a suspect in a hostage situation, so the National Review can only stand up and cheer.

Because Dr. Carmona was carrying a gun and knew how to use it, a violent criminal died, and two or more innocent women and men survived. By the moral calculus of most people, this would seem a very good result. Had Dr. Carmona "done no harm" to the harmful predator, then the innocent hostage would have been assaulted and perhaps murdered. The killer might have gone to murder his ex-girlfriend, as well as any peace officers (Carmona included) who attempted to interfere. To be explicit: A dead male violent predator is a better public-health result than several innocent women and men brutalized, severely injured, and possibly murdered.

As Dean Curran's [of Emory College] denunciation of the life-saving Dr. Carmona highlights, "public health" is, in some hands, increasingly becoming an instrument of moral intolerance, rather than of genuine public health.

So you have to wonder how Kopel and his National Review crew feel today when Carmona announced:

Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried. The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party.

Seems Carmona claims the Bush White House muzzled him. Now if BushCo can't keep former Green Beret and SWAT team members on its side, who is left supporting them?

Bush the Libby-rator (Rhymes with Traitor)

So BushCo has decided to learn lessons from Ulysses S. Grant, and I don't mean President Grant and his corrupt administration. I mean Grant the general. Grant managed to do what someone like McClellan never pulled off -- never retreat. Take a whomping, lots dead, but they had massive casualties too. Attack again. Move forward. Never admit to wrongdoing, to even considering any decision could be a mistake. It makes for ugly war and ugly politics.

Kung Fu Monkey sums it up best, what the Libby commutation means (hat tip Smitty):

Our representatives -- and to a great degree we as a culture -- are completely buffaloed by shamelessness. You reveal a man's corrupt, or lying, or incompetent, and what does he do? He resigns. He attempts to escape attention, often to aid in his escape of legal pursuit. Public shame has up to now been the silver bullet of American political life. But people who are willing to just do the wrong thing and wait you out, to be publicly guilty ... dammmnnnn.

We are faced with utterly shameless men. Cheney and the rest are looking our representatives right in the eye and saying "You don't have the balls to take down a government. You don't have the sheer testicular fortitude to call us lying sonuvabitches when we lie, to stop us from kicking the rule of law and the Constitution in the ass. You just don't. What's beyond that abyss -- what that would do to our government and our identity as a nation -- terrifies you too much. So get the fuck out of our way."

FurioUSA

It's time for one of those point, nod, and advise you "to go read the whole thing" entries, as Glenn Greenwald tells us what the Comey revelations mean....

James Comey's testimony amounts to a statement that -- even according to the administration's own loyal DOJ officials -- the President ordered still-unknown spying on Americans, and engaged in that spying for a full two-and-a-half-years, that was so blatantly and shockingly illegal that they were all ready to resign over it. And the President's Attorney General then lied to ensure that this episode remain concealed. Mere one-day calls for a Congressional investigation are woefully inadequate here.

There is clear and definitive evidence of deliberate lawbreaking. In addition to Congressional investigations, there is simply no excuse for anything other than the immediate commencement of a criminal investigation by a Special Prosecutor. And the administration ought to be pressured every day to account for what it did here. This is not a one-day or one-week fleeting scandal. These revelations amount to the most transparent and deliberate crimes -- felonies -- by our top government officials, not with regard to private and personal matters but with regard to how our government spies on us.

Ok, I will add one more thing--screw the Special Prosecutor, I think it's definitely pitchfork and torch time. After all, as Woody Allen says in Manhattan, "Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really get right to the point."

Mission Accomplished, Part Too

Following up on the last entry, there's this wonderful news that we certainly accomplished so much 4 years ago today....This from the AP (via MSNBC):

Terrorist attacks worldwide shot up 25 percent last year, particularly in Iraq where extremists used chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target crowds, according to a new State Department report.

[...]

In its annual global survey of terrorism to be released Monday, the State Department says about 14,000 attacks took place in 2006, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan. These strikes claimed more than 20,000 lives — two-thirds in Iraq. That is 3,000 more attacks than in 2005 and 5,800 more deaths.

Altogether, 40 percent more people were killed by increasingly lethal means around the globe.

Heckuva job, W! At least we're still in Iraq so all the killing happens there and it hasn't followed us home.

Mission Accomplished, Part 1

In light of the fourth anniversary of President Codpiece's mighty words that the Iraq War was over (except for the next ten years of war), here's an update on how well things are going in Iraq that will be nice and not even mention all the people still dying there (from the New York Times):

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.

One out of eight--that's batting .125 (I figure putting it in baseball terms might help the president understand). Perhaps we can call the political equivalent of the Mendoza Line the W. Line, but I guess we do already have the Bush Leagues. It's a good thing the U.S. never has problems with rebuilding within its own borders, right New Orleans?

Keep His Robes Away from All Those Candles

Sshhh, don't tell anyone, but Friday is the 87th birthday of Justice John Paul Stevens. If the Justice is sleeping, let him rest. If he seems to be sleeping a bit too soundly, gently wake him. If he doesn't wake, prepare for a film I'd like to call Supreme Court at Bernie's.

Many don't remember, as it happened lifetimes ago when Republican presidents were just ineffectual and not outright dangerous (ok, dangerous to others--"watch your step there, Mr. President!"), but Gerald Ford appointed Stevens to the Supreme Court. Ford had to decide between Stevens and Judge George Ringo Stella, and opted to go with the man whose first and middle names wrote better songs. Indeed, despite Stevens ending up the anchor of the liberals on the Big Bench (and alas, the Bench is now a seesaw swinging right--it doesn't help that Ginsburg is so tiny), President Ford in 2005 praised Stevens: “He is serving his nation well, with dignity, intellect and without partisan political concerns.” Of course, President Bush replied, "That doesn't sound like what I want to see in the government--get me some more Gonzales and Thomases."

The Supremes Sing "Fetal Love, My Fetal Love"

The Supreme Court reminded us you can't spell "mean" without "men" today in its 5-4 decision to uphold a law that bans a type of late-term abortion. I doubt I have to tell you which Justice voted which way, but what's most telling is the majority had to write two opinions, as Scalia and Thomas (or is that Scaliathomas, since Clarence packed up his tiny brain and handed it in a paper bag to Antonin) insisted they were prepared to go all the way and over-turn Roe v. Wade. Pretty interesting given Thomas didn't even have an opinion on the matter when he was up for Senate approval.

CNN reports:

President Bush, who signed the law in 2003 and appointed two of the justices who upheld it, said the prohibition "represents a commitment to building a culture of life in America."

Bush also said, "We plan to start arming fetuses--got our scientists who don't believe in global warming working on making them tiny little automatic pistols. That way they can protect themselves, shoot up them doctors if they try to pull anything funny like one of them DLC's or whatever they call 'em."

He went on to claim, "Today's decision affirms that the Constitution does not stand in the way of the people's representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of America."

"After all, it's huMANity not huWOMANity. If a woman or two dies because of pregnancy complications, it's ok as long as the baby makes it. Heck, it might be a boy."

Blacksburg and Baghdad

As someone who has worked or gone to school on a college campus for a couple of decades now, my heart goes out to all those involved in the shootings today at Virginia Tech.

But, then there's politics, and along with Larry Johnson I can't help but watch all the headlines and news shows get dominated by this terrible story and think of Laura Bush saying to Larry King: "But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everybody."

So, don't be discouraged, everybody. It was just one extended shooting. Why aren't we being shown the rest of the country's campuses, violence free?

Oh, and what was President Bush's response? "'The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed,'" spokeswoman Dana Perino said."

Yep, guns don't kill people, the media who cover people getting killed kill people. After all, if you never show those coffins, it's like the deaths never happened.