PINOKEO: Hypocrisy, TPM Edition


Gov. Sanford takes a personal junket to Argentina on taxpayer expense, and rightfully will refund the money.

A millionaire ex-basketball player uses taxpayer non-profit grant funds to have his car washed and errands run while his foundation has to give back hundreds of thousands of funds he mismanaged. Penalty? He has to loan the foundation $73K and take an ethics course.

A Republican spouse belongs to a nutty Alaskan-independence movement - hilarity, 24x7 ridicule.

The spouse of the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee pleads guilty to taking bribes as a Detroit official in her own right. Reaction? “No connection proven, they only live together”. Crickets.

Sex scandals? Lots of column space. Corruption and nepotism? Not so much. Republican? Scorn and ridicule. Democrat? Excuses. For the folks who’ve replaced IOKIYAR with IOKIYAD, I have a suggestion: It’s Not OK Period, or if I want to make it memorable: Period - It’s Not OK Either One.

(Game points for whoever comes up with the best slogan that fits the acronym)

Update: Of course one of the greatest pieces of hypocrisy over the past weeks is that it was important that the world could rally around the image of Neda from Iran to stir up anger, just as it was important not to release torture pictures of inmates at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, because knowing we tortured/interrogated more than 100 inmates to death, it just might stir up anger.

A vs. B, us vs them, 2 + 2 = 4 until it doesn’t, sometimes it equals 5, sometimes 3, sometimes what you want it to be.





The Genesys of Michael Jackson: You Call This Weird?


I continue to be puzzled by people thinking Michael Jackson was excessively “weird”. Uh, he’s a wealthy musician, right? Let’s see, here’s a not-so-wealthy one I might accept as “weird” (note to on-line censor: this is a MAN, therefore his breasts can be viewed and are not erotic or porn):

(click image for story)

That’s Genesis P. Orridge, founding member of Industrial Throbbing Gristle, later Psychic TV & the Temple of Psychic Youth, who besides his transformation into his deceased wife once had his teeth pulled to replace them with gold ones. Taking a trip down memory lane, there’s Frank Zappa, Nick Cave, Trent Reznor (moving into the Tate/Polanski house?), Nina Hagen, Bowie in the 70’s, Iggy Pop leaping onto glass, Lou Reed as Transformer, Gibby Haynes and the Butthole Surfers, Exene, Captain Beefhart, Ian Curtis of Joy Division, Patti Smith, Robert Smith. These are mainstream artists. Then there’s Pete Burns of “You Spin Me Round” fame, well-known androgenist along with aficionado of plastic surgery, and numerous underground too-bizarre-for-prime-time artists.

Bowie looks like an alien and people think him a genius. Michael Jackson goes pale and he’s a freak. Every day large numbers of girls get breast implants, people get nose jobs, lip implants, tummy tucks, all sorts of gimmicks to be “cute”. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have how many tatoos, piercings, shavings, and they’re “cool”.

Then look at behavior, whether violent (Phil Spector, Ike Turner, the guys in New Order, Bobby Brown, various gun-wielding rap artists), drug use (Johnny Winter, Sid Barrett, Hendrix, Guns ‘n Roses, Smashing Pumpkins), outrageous spending habits (Jimmy Page and his Aleister Crowley castle, Mariah Carey & her $125 million mansion, and too many other cases of diamonds and limos to count). Aside from Page’s mystical bent, there’s Neil Young’s love of toy trains, Ted Nugent’s gun and bow collection, Demi Moore’s collection of dollhouses (ok, not a musician), Perry Farrell’s burning cupie dolls, and I’m sure many more, some of them distinctly “childish”. And don’t even start on religious conversions that make Spinal Tap look moderate.

In a profession where whites like to act black, it certainly didn’t help Jackson to go the reverse, getting lighter by the decade, though it’s hard to imagine him playing with Slash while looking like he did on Off The Wall. But why are his image changes whack when George Clinton wearing dreads and a diaper is hip? All of this was before the pedophile charges. Was Jacko just too shy (like the Cocteau Twins, the world’s shyest band)? Or was there really something weird about him that made him stand out in a profession full of weirdos? I look at the video of Black and White, and I see him as as a kind of performance art, morphing himself from one profile to another. Perhaps that personal performance has to wait to be appreciated, still too far ahead of its time. We like our art to be artificial, and in that way Jackson’s might have been a bit too real for our comfort.

One artist I appreciate of late is Mickey Rourke, who took his box office pulling good looks and put them in a boxing ring, getting his face looking beat and pummelled and rugged and near-fossilized. Which looks like it means that now he can act, rather than just primp - he’s back in front of the camera with a presence he never had before. Maybe that’s the price of real success, being a freak even to yourself. As Kazantzakis’ St. Francis said, “All roads lead to the earth - God is an abyss - Jump!!!” And jump they did.

Waxing on Walpin: Defending the Indefensible


[Hmmm... this software seems to have the most braindead version of "autosave" imaginable. Okay, it saved *THE TITLE*. Thanks. No thanks.]

[Re-posted to set the clock back about 8 hours - i.e. the software declared "posted" when my first version crashed. Re-post includes revising "friend" of the Prez to "supporter"].

Adapted from a blog comment earlier.

TPMMuckraker has done some investigating re: the IG firing. A couple of interesting items, such as it doesn't seem Walpin went complaining to The Sacramento Bee, but instead he filed a complaint with Congress, which possibly the Bee used as its source.

It's not explained what effect the false report claiming Walpin had written to The Bee had in his investigation. Walpin did admit he got confused at the May 20 meeting in question, when he said it appeared someone had mixed up his notes in his absence (and that he wasn't feeling very well). "One or two-minute pauses where he was unable to answer questions." Wow. I watched the SEC IG in front of Congress, and she was unable to answer Alan Grayson's questions for an hour while he lambasted and ridiculed her, and she still has her job. And that was over billions of dollars.

The Walpin meeting took place on Wed, May 20. There was a 3-day Memorial Day Weekend May 23-25. Walpin was told to quit or be fired on June 10. That's 14 or 15 work days in there, and presumably the panel needed some time to carefully craft a letter and physically send it to the White House, and the White House needed some time to carefully review the matter, especially seeing Johnson indeed had been found to have misused funds and forced to give half of the amount back, just over $400K (with a sweetheart deal of 10 years to do it). On the night Walpin received his call, he informed his other side he was about to release a similar report on CUNY. Did anyone interview Walpin in those <3 calendar weeks before he was terminated? Did anyone review his work in progress? The answer appears to be "negatory".

Someone was in an awful hurry to remove a successful IG. People have tried to paint Walpin as a Bush hack, but he was in private practice/New York Attorney's office for the 40 years prior to his 2007 appointment as IG - not the typical partisan flack, whatever his comments about Kerry & Kennedy. Let's try that one again - WALPIN PUBLICLY SUPPORTS SOTOMAYOR. When he got his "Dear John" call, he thought it was another paper calling to ask about the Supreme Court nominee. Disliking Teddy does not a rabid wingnut make.

There's little doubt that Sacramento was in a tough spot. They elected a guy who they knew to be disqualified for federal funds. I don't know if there was a satisfactory compromise - such as Johnson would recuse himself from all government grants activities, or to promise really really hard that he wouldn't use any more money to have his car washed. I can sympathize that Sacramento was looking forward to having a friend of their mayor be the newly elected President of the US, and just gushing over the oodles of cash coming their way. But I can't very much sympathize with a rash firing of an independent overseer, especially one who had found malfeasance specifically in the case he was fired for.

Walpin's biggest complaint seems to be that he was locked out of the settlement meetings, a settlement that not only was financially miraculous (estimates are that St. Hope will never be able to pay back the half of the misused funds assessed), but also that the ban on Kevin Johnson and thus Sacramento from receiving federal funds was dropped. 

Why specifically was Walpin fired? He agreed that something went wrong with the meeting on May 20, which was bandied about as the reason for the rapid fire "investigation" through which Obama "lost confidence'' in him. A medical check and a follow-up interview would seem in order there. Then the excuse became "unduly disruptive" with "trouble and inappropriate conduct". Did that inappropriate conduct include the unverified rumor he'd gone to The Bee? Some have made a big deal about St. Hope's "bi-partisan board", but there are a number of Republicans looking to carefully walk the line with the new Democratic Administration, especially if that means their organization can stay alive - how many Democrats have been co-opted by Republicans to save their pet programs in the past? Didn't Republican Michael Bloomberg support both Obama and Caroline Kennedy, rather well-known Democrats?

Overall, the episode is tone-deaf and unseemly. An Administration that has missed several deadlines to provide information to Congress, some of which were months in the making, but can manage to shove an independent IG out the door in a matter of days, one who just happened to be making life uncomfortable for a friend supporter of the Prez.

And perhaps important around here - why isn't TPMMuckraker verifying whether Walpin was the source of The Bee's article or not? Why isn't Muckraker getting the exculpatory evidence that Walpin supposedly didn't turn over to his supervisors? No one can remember what Walpin's oringal actions were that started the concern before May 20, and the big complaint about him in an "Equal Employment Opportunity probe" was that he became "intimidating". Does that mean "angry" or that he bunched up his fists? Does this start to sound like high school? Here's another example of someone who becomes "intimidating" and has to be restrained. But if people were making you the object of investigation for doing your job well, how exactly would you respond?

The reality of this is none of this "reporting" tells us whether Walpin indeed did his job, and it would be nice to have an interview that asks him the tough questions, asks the board members the tough questions, gets the prior infringements and complaints delineated, and perhaps even talks to Kevin Johnson? I mean, these are public funds we're talking about - we do have independent oversight for a reason.

Remember all the feeble crap excuses that Alberto Gonzales gave during the DOJ attorney firings scandal? Do feeble excuses sound better coming from a Democrat?

UPDATE: Obama appointing former head of NRCC as his cyberczar - okay, so what about the impression that "bi-partisan" must mean true? Generally when Rebuplicans and Decromats agree, there are pools and bundles of money to be made. Oodles and oodles.

UPDATE 2: Walpin's response to Brown's complaint is worth reading. Excerpts intentionally not provided - Walpin is methodical and worth considering.

UPDATE 3: Walpin's letter in April to Congress. If this is senility, I'm likely suffering from Alzheimer's. I start to understand how Walpin might have felt bad at the May 20 meeting - with all the board members determined to override Kevin Johnson's suspension to make sure Sacramento could get stimulus funds, I'm sure there wasn't a lot of sympathy to Walpin's interest in referring to the facts of the investigation.




Hiatt Firing Froomkin: WaPo Jumps the Shark


I'm just incredulous. It's not like the Washington Post hasn't been going downhill a long time, with Fred Hiatt's bizarre fits of supporting Bush through his editorial page, from war to lying to the people to undermining the Consitution. And once upon a time, WaPo had to suck up to the Bush White House by changing Dan's column from "White House Briefing" to "White House Watch". Unfortunately, Hiatt didn't request a reciprocal change of "White House Press Conference" to "Insulting Session where Administration Feeds Pack of Lies Down Reporters Throats Like Pâté de Foie Gras". But I digress.

It appears that Dan got in a pissing match with Charles Krauthammer, and being a vaunted bastion of liberalism, the WaPo fired the liberal. Makes sense? Krauthammer called Froomkin "sometimes stupid" for disagreeing with Krauthammer's sterling example of when to torture: "The Palestinians kidnapped an Israeli soldier and the Israelis had to get him back", or something like that. I mean, wow. In Krauthammer's world, every kidnapping justifies torture? And excuse me if Krauthammer makes me want to ask, "Is this the United States of Israel?" I know people regularly excuse Israel for turning Gaza into rubble, wiping out Palestinian settlements and massively bombing Beirut - but now we use Israel's over-the-top treatment of prisoners as our judicial foundation, rather than say a combination of the Consitution and the Geneva Conventions?

But maybe it's not just that Froomkin got in a pissing match with Charles. Froomkin's been all over the torture debate and the lack of transparency coming from the new White House. And all the Village People fawn over torture, it seems - those stern voices that say "we're all for respect for the law, but [whispering tone] sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do". Well, what the Washington Post had to do was fire the one commentator who acted not specifically as a liberal, but as a tenacious, inquisitive observer. Dangerous to Obama, dangerous to Bush, dangerous to the Village Society that hates any finger-pointing in their midst.

Just how silly is this latest move? Well, Fred Hiatt defended the pardon of Scooter Libby (you know all the Villagers' kids go to camp together, probably needed a quorum for softball). Fred Hiatt defended retroactive immunity for telecom companies helping eavesdrop illegally (even when reported that they'd been planning this well before 9/11). Maybe Fred Hiatt is showing the one true piece of courage he's exhibited in many a year - the courage to finally, readily admit that the Washington Post is indeed no "liberal newspaper". Unfortunately for him, by getting rid of the "liberal" he's probably admitting it's no longer much of a "newspaper" either. R.I.P., de mortuis nil nisi bonum.

PS - And I love the keyword sensing that brings up ads at TPM. I mention "Muslims" and I get an ad for Brides of Islam. I mention Israel, I get "come2Israel.com". How come no ads for Guantanamo? "Lots of sun, free health care!!!"

Update: EmptyWheel lists the recent output of Froomkin.

Gollum and Mordor: Making the Best of Hypocrisy


I keep seeing a disturbing refrain, whether with Palin or Ensign or whomever, essentially condensed down to "they did X which is hypocritical, so I no longer have to limit myself to good taste and liberal democratic values".

Values are non-fungible. Gollum got the Dark Lord's ring, and every time he used it, he became a bit more tied to its spell. Or maybe it was using him. In any case, he ended up a slimy creature walking the edges of the upper world, no longer welcome among the creatures of the Shire.

There are always excuses to support a little bit of torture, a little bit of sexism, a little bit of chauvinism, just to get the upper-hand this one time.

The Democrats problem is in deciding whether they want to really be Democrats, to decide what that means after all these waffling years, or if they really want the starkly defined lines of the Republicans, the party of no doubt, of self-assurance, of victory at whatever cost (and boy has it cost).

Here's a hint: with the internet, everyone seems to be rushing to become a politician themselves, planning strategy approvingly along side the masters in Washington, tracking the polls, staying one step ahead. Leave it. Politics like trash collecting is dirty business - that's why we tend to hire the lower echelons of society to do it for us. Stick with real values and let the party come to you.

Why Now? Letterman Sees the Light


It took a little while, but Dave has fully apologized for his joke about Willow, realizing apparently that with her being the only Palin daughter at Yankee stadium, his joke must have been referring to her.

Good for Dave. Good for women. Amy Siskind over at Huffington Post noted recently that Letterman had invoked a new era of feminism, just as many of her co-bloggers were sadly finding new ways to excuse the sexist jokes ("hey, others have told sexist jokes - why is Letterman being punished?", or "she announced it", or "she put the kids on stage" or "they made rape/child molestation jokes about Willow in September, why'd she wait to complain until now?"). Amy's point is that old-style feminism is dead, perhaps because no one's listening anymore or all of its terms have been co-opted and twisted.

In its new guise, the blogosphere erupts, and the slurs against females young and old are reacted against. It's not perfect - it's happened rarely, but seems to be gaining a bit of steam. Hillary was able to effectively protest the phrase "pimping her daughter" because it was about her kid, with similar excuses heard at the time about "it's just language, it doesn't really mean to pimp", etc. - but she couldn't protest full page WaPo articles about her "cleavage" (then she wouldn't be a good sport), or "Nurse Ratched/ballcutter/rhymes with "rich", or a set of candidates' baseball cards where all the men were baseball heroes and she got to be a busty slutty groupie. Aside from botox jokes and numerous sexist slurs, Nancy Pelosi recently got to endure a "Pussy Galore" commercial out of the Republicans, while Meghan McCain's interesting political views are cut off by talking about her being "fat" (which really means that she's not anorexic like Kate Moss or Amy Winehouse, perhaps due to disturbing lack of substance abuse).

The Terms of Demeanment are bipartisan and focused on one sex (except when they slip over to make fun of homosexuals, cross-dressers, and a few other relatively defenseless segments of society). It doesn't help that some of the biggest proponents of "relax, learn to take a joke" sexism are women themselves, and I won't even start the long litany of reasons why this is true. It wasn't until yesterday that I got the irony of people noting Obama's "family should be off limits" in referring to Bristol's pregnancy. He of course was the child of a woman who dealt with an unintentional unmarried pregnancy at age 17, and had abortion been easy and approved at that time, we might easily have had President Biden discussing these matters instead.

The bigger issue is that women and girls carry the weight of these choices and developments - pregnancy, abortion, raising children, infant and child disability, as well as prime care-giver for the elderly and the prematurely infirm. The consistent disparagement of women from the "slutty", "ditzy blonde", "only a girl" to the various huge structural barriers to advancement to the perverse set of rules that get called into play for figures as diverse as Janet Reno, Carly Fiorina, Sonia Sotomayor, Dawn Johnsen, Sarah Palin, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi - too masculine, too feminine, got too much help, too aggressive and power hungry, too cute, too ugly, looks frumpy in pants suits, trying to be too sexy in skirts/dresses, too old and wrinkly, too tan and tight skinned.

So why now? Just because - an ugly campaign season, uglier media season, more power on the internet, the assassination of Dr. Tiller aimed at women and their choices, frustration as simple goals for equality from long ago have turned into a marsh full of excuses and rationales, just because perhaps now is when the courage and energy to fight back has started to bubble up. Rosa Parks' move wasn't an isolated one, nor was it completely unpremeditated - it was part of a larger series of actions and careful movements that built on each other.

Plus when you mess with people's kids, they tend to go postal, a well-known fact - and is the point where harassment starts to lose its defenders. But that doesn't mean just don't mess with kids - it means to get our act together, to start acting respectable towards one-half of the planet. You can't laugh at this nasty shit at the comedy show and come home and wash it out in the sink - the stink lingers over our daily lives, our daily attitudes towards people we meet and live with and read about. 

So what's next? More care. Just as a "joke" comparing Michelle Obama to a gorilla isn't funny, a "joke" making Sarah Palin into a "slutty flight attendant" isn't funny, neither for female politicians nor flight attendants, whatever your politics. Putting an asterisk next to sexism in no way diminishes sexism. Just because we've always been sexist doesn't mean today isn't the day to quit, just as a drinker would always like an excuse to quit tomorrow instead. Enough's enough. Just say no. Just say now.

Update: And in answer to Gov. Palin, who contends that "And this is all thanks to our U.S. military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America's right to free speech - in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect," you're quite wrong in so many respects. America's right to free speech cannot be guarded by any military efforts, as history has shown time and again that war footing only endangers freedom of speech. Our internal commitment to justice through courts and fair law enforcement, and the people reaffirming daily this principle of free speech - the most important principle of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights - these are all more important than any efforts of the military.

The cant of obeisance to might and military endeavors is the antithesis of what the Founding Fathers struggled for. The unconstitutional effort of Congress to censure and quiet MoveOn for a private opinion about a politically motivated military officer, Gen. Petraeus, is just one example of the dangerous effects of this simplistic counterfactual rubbish of "support the troops". Worse, this choosing sides of who's most American, of who's most important, with the cynical perception that the military will most often side with your party, is disgraceful. I appreciate the military for its sacrifice in times of need, and sympathize with it when used for crass political purposes or misused for unnecessary blunders of war through the power-hungry vanity of our leaders and their lackey, amoral followers and enablers.  But we are all Americans, and our greatest duty is speaking up, supporting the Constitution and the rule of law, whether soldiers witnessing torture in the military or citizens witnessing the abduction of the body politic or civil servants watching the wholesale ransacking of our Treasury. The Union will not be destroyed from without - it will rot from within, if not maintained.

We have a volunteer military. It is something of a representative sampling of American society, though heavily weighted to the less-fortunate and aimless, with a selection of those with a family military tradition. But like society at large, if there is no will for survival in the society, no adherence to morals, no courage to do what's right, the military will reflect this as well. If we have the need and the sense of purpose, most any one of us can step into the military and do these jobs. There are a few who work the front lines who might end up displaying more courage, but mostly courage is a matter of plain blind luck. Few will themselves to courage - most who find it just got shoved into a situation where it either comes out or completely disappears. And there's as much courage in risking your job to speak out and save someone from injustice, to speak against racism and sexism and torture and danger and corruption, to fight off street thugs or help clean up a neighborhood, as there is in most of the jobs in the volunteer military.  There's courage to give up our easy lives and do what's more difficult, to help others when we'd rather focus on ourselves, to find little things to make the nation and world a better place to live. There are a million opportunities to display courage, and to act like sacrifice and honor only come from the military side of our nation is both misunderstanding honor, and belittling the worth of people as a whole. Most all of our jobs have some honor, and giving preference to serving chum in the chowhall over handing out burritos at Taco Bell is just a type of snobbishness.

Perhaps Gov. Palin harkens back to the days when North and South grabbed their weapons and set out to bloody themselves to pieces in the name of "honor", of WWI trenches piled high with casualties of suicidal frontal attacks. But the choices in 2009 require thought as much as deed, wisdom more than rash action, persuasive and calming and inspiring words rather than hollow lingo and sheer jingoism. We suffered through the Generals' folly in WWI, and we suffer through the civilian leaders' follies now. The use of force in our arsenal is certainly not to be undervalued, but if the arbitrary use of force is the most valuable protector of freedom we have, we're pathetic indeed. 

 

 

Know Your Cuts of Meat: Letterman and Sluts Gone Wild


Lessee, so an 18-year-old getting pregnant by her boyfriend means she's sleazy and wants to fuck baseball players or total strangers. Perhaps the New York Yankees could pull a train, ain't that a larf, har har har. Oh, and that "slutty stewardess" mother of hers, that's another pile of steaming humor. Because like those Dangerous Housewives, both Sarah and her daughter have vaginas, which must mean that they've left themselves open to talk about their sex lives.

Now, I wonder how Dave resolves this with being an unmarried father - does that mean his girlfriend also has a secret craving for the Yankees, or worse, the Mets?

It would be one thing if Letterman would know when to shut up, but his half-ass apology just burns it. Plenty of people ask for ridicule, but the younger Palin simply made an underage mistake with her boyfriend - why that gives Letterman the right to make tasteless sexist jokes is hard to figure. But when you bomb, don't double down.

More Hate Speech from the Middle East


It's hard to see what Obama can do to stem the tides when there's so much hate speech coming out of the Middle East. These people can't control themselves - it just spews out naturally. Take a look - this is the situation we're trying to step into, make civilized. Any chance of that happening? And if we don't succeed, it just reflects badly on us. Make sure and watch the video - it's the straight-to-camera attitudes that often get filtered out of the news, lost in translation.

Better to focus our energies on rebuilding Detroit. Those people share our values.

PS - here's Glenn Greenwald's take on Obama "interfering in Israeli politics"

PPS - And I find something distasteful about Bill Ayers advertised over to the right. Okay, I give - give me back the Muslim women matrimony ads - I'll take sexist over... over whatever Ayers is supposed to be.


Red Cross

Like Obama's Speech? Lobby to Close Gitmo


I didn't care much for the speech, I guess it served its purpose.

But one thing I found encouraging is to read that his team's backing it up with lobbying Capital Hill hard to close Gitmo. Good for them. Like Obama? Lobby your Congresspeople. Give him a success, on something we care about. No more "some day, one day". Close it now, next week, last week. Amnesty International's still reporting abuse coming out of Gitmo, the "last chance to torture before they take it away" challenge. Get out now.

I don't want Gitmo closed to open another one. I want it closed because the whole concept sucks - military tribunals, indefinite preventive detention, torture and mistreatment that barely skirts the definition of torture. It all sucks. We have real prisons that have enough security and enough human rights problems to control. Better than one that avoids any oversight at all. And if we can't convict? Follow the American way, let them go, do a better job next time. The FBI and CIA and police work all the time on preventing crime, not just arresting after the fact. 9/11 didn't change that. The only that changed is we got scared. And now we can start to recoup that - better late than never. Vote. With your emails, telephones, feet.

PS - about releasing those pictures, seems Petraeus wants to get them out:

Petraeus argued in favor of release, saying "Let's lance this boil." He feared that the damage from withholding the photos would be greater than that from releasing them, because it would fuel suspicions that the photos are worse than they are. General Ray Odierno took the opposing view.

So it's not a slam dunk "this will hurt the troops" or "this will hurt Iraqi civilians" - our generals even disagree. So how about we resort to law and ethics and transparency in government and military - get them out there, lance the boil - show them Americans can face the truth about themselves.

 


Red Cross

Down with the Muslims: Assessing the Blame Game


We can't really claim to be blameless or fully magnanimous, but reading someone's comments on the speech, I am a bit struck that we helped get Egypt back the Sinai with a nice annual payoff, helped push the Russians out of Afghanistan, helped ease the Shah out the door, pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait, fought in Somalia to try to calm things down, went into Bosnia and Kosovo to protect the people, complained loudly and initally somewhat effectively about Chechnya, and even have government broadcasts for freedom to the Muslim region now known as western China. And yet we're always giving these speeches saying, "hey, we really don't hate Muslims". For a nation built on marketing, we're really bad at PR. In fact, our Middle East efforts are really expensive bad PR. Bush even sent an accomplished PR agent on top of Karen Hughes and Condi Rice, and all of them came across ridiculously flat. And now, with change, a speech that consists largely of, "yeah, we've really got a lot of great accomplished Muslims" without naming one (okay, Keith Ellison, whoopdie), a speech that pretends we have no power designs on the rest of the world, a speech whose center point seems to be explaining something that should have been obvious quite some time ago, that 9/11 pissed us off, so much that we lost our heads and invaded Iraq. Oh wait, he didn't quite say that, did he? No, I think there was something about fighting for their freedom. I don't know. Maybe if we didn't drive expensive gas guzzlers, we wouldn't have to be coming up with such transparent nonsense to deal with the Middle East, and we wouldn't have to pretend to be at war with Islam. After all, Morocco was way cool in the 60's, Malaysia used to be a William Gibson cyberpunk fantasy, Indonesia? What can I say, give me 5 years there on the beach. Lebanon (without the civil war) - ooh la la, the cuisine, the cafés. Turkey? Fantastisch, has it all. The Gulf States have become party & money countries. Ignore Syria, insignificant, the only countries we have issues with are Iraq, Iran, Saudi and Libya. That's it. And Saudis are mostly our allies, even if they're a bit stiff. So 3 countries. Pakistan-India's just sibling rivalry, nothing much to do with us, they're mostly British anyway, think of it as football hooliganism. Afghanistan's irrelevant without Al Qaeda training camps. Tunisia, great vacation spot. Algerians? All up in Paris & Morocco now playing Rai music, France's issue, and mostly they just want jobs. Nigeria? Keep the oil flowing, that's all anyone needs to know. So why 55 minutes of explaining? Could have just brought in Rachid, "Rock El Casbah". Ein Volk, ein Kultur, it's all hip-hop now anyway. We've been enchanted with this part of the world ever since the time of Alexander. About time we figured out how to get down with it.

PS - Brilliant, I guess the keywords triggered off an ad campaign for "The International Muslim Matrimonials Site". "7 Brides for 7 Brothers", I suppose, down ol' Al Qahira way. Sing a song about them Sabine women, back when musicals were musicals and politically correct was something for the McCarthy hearings.

PPS - Also strange that the 'g' got lopped of "Assessing" in deriving the post URL - I guess Hassan-I Sabbāh has his eye on me, better make myself scarce. Who needs Alamont when we have Alamut? Who needs TV when we got T-Rex? Just call me Isma'il.


Red Cross

The Need for Preventive Detention


I finally had the breakthrough that let me get my head around the Preventive Detention debate. And I realized it's been our major anti-crime method for decades, just we haven't acknowledged it.

You see, we've locked up millions of people for marijuana charges because smoking marijuana is a sign that one day you might actually take a dangerous drug and do something violent. (Of course quite a few people drink and beat their spouses, but we're talking about hard drugs, not liquid drugs).

Not that heroin specifically makes you kill - it usually just makes you poor and desperate, which could lead to robbery. Safer to lock someone up. It used to be easier to cut straight to the chase and lock people up for indigence until they became digent again, but most of those laws have been taken off the books, so this is a more acceptable method to our sense of caring and compassion. Besides, think of the child victims we're saving.

Even then, it's not a sure thing. Inmates in Guantanamo have been getting more and more violent, engaging in more manipulative "self-inflicted injurious behavior" (SIB, in the Army's terminology, hunger strikes to the un-initiated) and have accelerated to "permanent self-inflicted injurious behavior" (otherwise known as "suicide" in lay terms). One Yemeni prisoner resorted to manipulative refusal to breath just yesterday, and despite medical and military counter-tactics, officials were unable to reverse the effects.

This is a direct attack on America's good will, even more so than civilians callously using the spread of Agent Orange defoliant in Vietnam to push their cause via unfair propaganda showing pictures of burned and deformed children. In this case, the inmates' cold actions endanger our relations with major oil producers and the Middle East as a whole, a dangerous development in these economically tense times. At some point, we'll see past the need for Preventive Detention to the next step, which is Irreversible Pre-emptive Restraint. Whether the facilities will be accepted on American soil remains to be seen - steadfast Congressional leaders will need to weigh in on the potential effects of these most incorrigible detainees working against our basic freedoms directly in Amercia's Homeland. However, presuming these restraint cemetaries are kept well separated from existing civilian facilities, with no chance of runoff getting into the water table and our general drinking supply, chances are they will pass muster. At least we'll be certain that these preventively-detained risk factors won't rise up to potentially threaten our freedoms anytime in the future.


Speed Blogging: Martha Stewart's Cookies & Hating on Women


Firefox ate my lunch, or my post at least, so the quick version (okay, not that quick):

The freak Gordon Liddy, famous for eating rats' testicles, burning his arm and other feats, is still with us worrying about women in power menstruating.

Sotomayor is just another prominent woman suffering racist and sexist abuse on prime time media, just because that's part of what sells. Comments and imagery of castration, cleavage, and cellulite, "Mothers I'd Like to Fuck", botox babe, and the various derogatory characterizations waiting for women who step into the public arena, Democratic or Republican, of whatever ethnic group. "Bitch", "Cunt", "Pimp", "Bimbo" and anything else - it just shows those clever talking heads are "edgy". But males in power are serious. They have "cojones". Women are just aggressive ball-cutters when they're not sluts in bathing suits, dykes or plain too ugly to exist. Even the leader of Germany had to endure an unwanted backrub from our President, just part of ritual humiliations.

Blogging over the weekend turned into "why do black men always get blamed", when the statistics really beg us to ask, "why are women, black and white, so much the victims?" All the advice for women about how to fight back, when 2/3 of all attackers are known by the women - over 1/4 are husbands or boyfriends. So take that Significant Other to rape prevention class and practice gutting him with a pair of scissors - otherwise all is for naught in that special moment of intimate decisions back home, because you can't exactly lock them out when they're already in, and don't forget, they'll expect an omelette in the morning.

Oh, and should you fight back, as women are frequently encouraged to do, be comforted that you're likely to be thrown in jail even if your attempted or successful rape is caught on camera (item #4).

For dog lovers, you'll be happy to know that the media and wheels of justice and halls of power speak louder for your protection than black or white women getting raped and murdered. For women lovers, no good news today, come back tomorrow. [Of course this overlaps with sports, where Congress would rather discuss steroids in baseball than serious health care issues].

And yes, I feel for Dr. Tiller, but his murder was aimed not just at him but at women across the country. "We own you, we dictate your choices". One of 3 places to go in the country for that horrid decision of terminating a late pregnancy. Not for selfishness, for the shitty decision of "an early almost painless death versus a pre-doomed existence of excruciating pain followed by early death". President Bush posed in front of test-tube/freezer babies-become adults, not incurable babies wracked with pain waiting to die within the month. Somehow doesn't make as pretty a photo op.

In March, Obama created the Council on Women and Children. There is still no similar Council on Why Men Can't Quit Knocking Up Women and Leaving Them to Deal with the Kid. Of course some suggest that forcing the woman and kid to then live with the irresponsible schmuck will solve it all. As if watching even 1 Adam Sandler movie shouldn't clear out that idea permanently. 

Martha Stewart will likely be the longest incarceration we see for stock market crimes, that hefty $40K she picked up by selling a few shares early. Compare this with the million or so of crashing Harkin stock Bush forgot to report, all those military stock options the cabinet had as they went to war, Ken Lay's millions as he sent his multi-billion dollar company to the toilet, Madoff's Ponzi scheme, AIG's collapsing house of cards, all that seamy-sounding "naked short selling" (meaning "pretend to sell stock you don't actually own"). See, Martha's big mistake besides being smart and successful was that she was a woman. Hell hath no fury.... unlike a few trillion dollars misused and stolen. PS - $10 billion a month for wars!

And we can't show those rape and abuse photos from Abu Ghraib because that will make America look bad, unlike all those other rapes and beatings we know about that aren't on camera that just involve American-on-American atrocity.  Thats just part of the price women pay for living in the Land of the Free (for men). 250,000 sexual assaults yearly in the US, only 6% of attackers will spend a day in jail. No wonder people think we shouldn't put the soldiers on the stand. How is it we thought the Taliban's attitude towards women was primitive and backwards?

Health care isn't important to us because it's considered a woman's sport, too much wrapped around children and female issues "down there". Real men endure broken bones without seeing a doctor. Women take care of sick kids and sick parents. Men deal with health care as an emergency, women deal with health care as basic need. Preventive health care for men is like volunteering to go to a ballet performance. When health care can be framed as a basic need like beer, nachos and a good car stereo, it will receive the attention it deserves. Until then, it's just another point of bias - women and poor people abusing the system. Real men just tear off a piece of cloth, apply a tourniquet, grab a beer and get back to the ball game.  

And here's my little bonus, when one of the usual suspects comes along to tell me I'm posting this because I can't get over my anatomy or genitalia, as happened so often over the last year. Because obviously you have to be female to worry about crimes and violence against women, unlike say crimes and violence against children, animals, the environment.

So while planting pipe bombs at the Olympics is a cause for concerted action, years of harassment and threats and beatings and arsons and murders at abortion clinics is just a matter of free speech, protecting the perversely named "Intelligent Design" and all. Dr. Tiller stepped into the middle of this knowingly, did a job that's none-too-pleasant in the first place, provided an honorable service to women (and some responsibly-minded men) in need and endured the threats and abuse as well, for 36 years, including being shot in 1993. His stalkers will feel no shame or irony that he was killed in a Christian church that preaches love and forgiveness.

And despite all our anti-terrorist efforts in Iraq, surveillance against potentially violent vegetarians and Greenpeace in the US, walling off peaceful protesters and tapping millions of calls by citizens, our "justice" and "intelligence" system hasn't figured out that the Montana Freemen association is a group of thugs that commits violent crimes, despite its history of fighting US Marshalls and multiple convictions. So much for our Department of Homeland Security.

 

 

Last Analogies: Putting the Constitution to Bed


After the long discussions (here, here and here) of residual hatred towards the South, and the contention by many that there is no withdrawal option in the Constitution, I was reminded by Rutabaga's post today of the Bush Administration's contention that there is no Congressional power to *withdraw* an authorization of force, only to grant one.

It's a rather bizarre stance, that seemingly reasonable people would regularly enter into agreements with no thought that maybe a reasonable path of retreat might be necessary in the future. We've legalized divorce and pre-nup agreements, abortion up to 3 months, lifetime justices can be impeached, contracts can be abrogated due to "Force Majeure", project planning includes backout procedures and failure mode, war planners aside from Hitler at Stalingrad and Cortez burning his ships typically have retreat contingencies. But the folks signing the Constitution, just out of an ugly marriage and uglier divorce, with the War of Spanish Succession in recent memory, sign on in perpetuum to a new deal, don't look back, no way out. And the Consitution with its specific pointed granting of war authorization to the Legislative somehow is an up elevator only, a one-way ticket to Palookaville, to the Hotel California, where you can check out any time you want but you can never leave.

Even if the authorization for force is written in weasel words, without using that button-button-who's-got-the-button silly word "War", which usually kicks in special privileges and requirements. But no, we've gone a long time, since World War II, without specifically declaring War. Alberto Gonazales stood up in front of Congress to emphasize this point, that War had not been declared against Al Qaeda or Iraq, just an unnecessary authorization of Violence that paralleled the President's divine right to send in troops or missiles on a whim unless he/she has the perverse need to call it a "War", in which case Congress needs  to be involved, but not too much. Otherwise, just cut the check, thanks, we'll pick it up on the way to the office.

I don't know, I guess we're stuck in Young Empire stage, with people tossing out important, Consitutionally bounded arguments like, "You didn't say 'Mother may I'", "I hit the Trifecta, yum!", "It doesn't specifically say the Vice-President can't have his own government and territories", along with, "We intend to institute an extra-legal procedure for holding prisoners forever that fits within the law". Look, I can fly!!! Wheeeee!!!! We don't torture, period, therefore if you tell me we torture, you're wrong. Support the troops... Support the Commander-in-Chief... Support the bailout... Rubber and glue, rubber and glue... Stick needles in my eyes, hope to die... words will never hurt me... sleeeep, princess, sleeeeepppp.....

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there was a gleaming city on the hill.

Addendum: I should add that this all started out as several diaries on war, torture and the Constitution, here, here, here and here. Been quite a busy 2 weeks for someone who said he was cutting back on posting. :-(

Response to Jade on Southern Hatred and Ignorance


[Originally responded to in-line, but the software doesn't allow more than 2 URL links.]

First, I nowhere said "categorically". But there are a number of people who can't get over their notions of the South as "freaks", and I even went so far as to accept the label, though using Flannery O'Connor's phrasing, which notes that Southerners know they're freaks but also have a keen appreciation for the freak in others. The thing I love best about the South is its freakdom. And I still contend that the inability to understand the Southerners' attitudes in a slightly more wizened light makes it hard for the Democratic Party to make too much of a recovery there, whether you think that's worth anything or not.

Second, okay, Atlanta burning was a bad example, the destruction on the way to the sea is the issue there. Oleeb defends it as Sherman just doing what he had to, someone here notes it was 20% of Georgian farmland. I simple bring up the analogies - if the Israelis burn a swath through the Gaza strip or Lebanon to break the backs of resistance, the civilians' will to fight, will we accept this? Or is this a bad example - perhaps rebellions in Sri Lanka or Chiapas or the Kirin part of Burma or Chechnya or Iraq or Pakistan? Simply put, if you approve Sherman's measures there, why do you not approve similar measures elsewhere? What is our limit on Acceptable War vs. Total War, especially as regards civilians and property (and you can't disregard starvation as the result of destruction).

Third, the North helped create slavery in the US - as I noted, Massachusetts was the first state to legalize/encode slavery. I'm not aware that most Northerners understand how much slavery they were involved in, and just because it didn't take off there like it did in the South for economic/agricultural reasons doesn't give much room for moral superiority (kind of like Mark Twain taking back his stolen watermelon when a pang hit him - so he could get a ripe one instead).  More on Northern slavery here.  It's a bit telling that the Wikipedia entry on Slavery in the Colonies doesn't even mention Northern states. Yes, some people realize, but a vast portion don't.

Fourth, even on my thread the idea that States cannot secede runs rampant, and it's still a hard-coded belief for many. Oleeb (I believe) quotes Grant talking about how if the Union wasn't permanent in 1783, it was made permanent by land-grabs in Florida and Mexico, by the war in Texas, by money spent for Louisiana, and somehow by the trust of later States that earlier States would stay in. Sounds like a great Ponzi/pyramid scheme (fitting for Grant's feeble & corrupt presidency), which of course ignores the wishes of the Founding Fathers for a great deal of States Rights, and the concept that all of those concerns were gradually washed away by time and mutually shared energies without anyone saying boo about a new compact to replace the old one - till death do we part - is quite curious. I note the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, that government's power comes from the consent of the governed (here especially the States), and that it notes when that no longer is satisfactory, it is the right and duty of the governed to change it. I don't see a time-clock there, a 40-year-rule or warranty after which all rights to return damaged merchandise are voided. I may think that GOP wingnuts are silly about asking to secede over a budget deficit or a perceived socialist leader, but if a State can muster the votes to secede, sure, see ya, bye-bye. The Declaration of Independence addresses this, that "Prudence" will make it likely that people won't lightly break up a long-lasting arrangement for a temporal issue, but even so, so long, it's been real. The Founding Fathers couldn't be clearer, whatever the revisionist thinking. And it's well established that Lincoln's big concern was preserving the Union at all costs, not obliterating slavery.

Fifth, if you do approve of Lincoln's the-Republic-must-stand, please specify why you don't approve of Milosevic's the-Republic-must-stand, created under similar agreement of Balkan States. Try it both ways, if you think the issue of slavery made it imperative for the South but not for Milosevic, or if you think it was only the principle of a Contract once signed shall not be voided. What was the big principle for which Slovenia seceded? "We'd rather ski as part of the European Union". Okay, more complicated than that - changes in Yugoslavian politics meant that Serbia (the North?) would take a more dominant position, unacceptable to many of the other States. It wasn't that Milosevic had committed any atrocities at that point - it was that through Constitutional wrangling and political hardball, he'd given Serbia upper hand. So for those Unionists-at-all-costs, there was no big ground for the other Republics to secede, just because they didn't like the results of one or two elections. And for those "bring in the military" types, Milosevic's military actions to stop the secessions must be justified. Now we can wrangle over the details - would he have been justified in torching 20% of Bosnia's land but not killing civilians as Sherman did, or would collateral civilian be acceptable as in the hundreds of thousands (millions?) dying from our Agent Orange and carpet bombing in Vietnam? Or shall we say, "Don't confuse me with facts, I want to talk about abstract principles"?

Sixth - Algeria was an integral part of France for over 100 years, with Europeans there given full French citizenship. Not by Algeria's choice, but then which parts of France actually chose to be in France? Alsace-Lorraine has played hot potato several times between France and Germany, the southwest regions of Bordeaux and Gascony were for a significant time British. Considering the Colonists understanding of the horrors of European Wars and shifting tides of European nations/territories, it would be astounding if they were to write a Constitution that would assume a permanent, inviolate Republic. These people had grievances on their minds, and they weren't jumping from one frying pan into another, especially if an issue such as slavery was so heated they couldn't even get it settled without a 3/5th rule and a 20-year delay on implementation. "Yeah, we're fighting like cats and dogs now, but we'll assume in 40 years we'll have utopia with no need to worry about these spats." Sure, not likely.

Seventh, back to the Founding Fathers, many in the South in principle abhorred slavery, but frequently for practical reasons could not disown it, as suggested here. The South was built from land, the North was built from commerce and industry, and that split got worse after 1793. Nevertheless, the record shows that many Southerners prior to 1776 attempted to stop or limit the practice of slavery, including the observation of the practice in the Caribbean, that "slavery begets slavery", but England prevented a reduction. The issue of slavery persisted, and as the South's livelihood and land became more and more bound to it, the issue could no longer be separated from the threat to its existence. In a way, it's similar to the Opium addiction the English left the Chinese with in the 1800's.

Eighth, I also pointed out Hofstader's article on white indentured servitude/slavery in the New World, an occurrence that would likely make many whites accept slavery because they'd been through it themselves, and the end of which prompted a need for a replacement system, which was ripe for adopting the English slavery in vogue elsewhere. While the American numbers for slavery by the mid-1800's were horrid, US slavery was still only 1/10th of the slavery in the Americas, a startling detail that I don't think most are aware of, just as the slavery (not just extermination) of indigenous peoples of America is often forgotten.  Slavery didn't end in Brazil until 1888, though importation from Africa had started to decline 10 years earlier.

Ninth, the 3/5th rule is often used to illustrate the South's inhumanity vis-a-vis slavery, though it's a bit similar to Clinton's "definition of is is" - it was response to someone else's construction. In this case, the North came up with the weird equation to keep the South from having more votes due to slave population. This skirted the real issue of why a slave could count as a vote when not allowed to vote, though as far as I know the same peculiar attitude existed for women and children - they were simply part of the man's household. The case for women wouldn't be settled until 1920, and 18-20 year-olds finally got the vote in 1971. AFAIK, the rights of Indians weren't much discussed.

Tenth, as for events after the Civil War, that requires a whole different analysis, because you can't dismiss the effects of that war in modifying and hardening positions, in destroying the economy, perverting their feelings, etc. It's much easier to discuss who these people were and their concepts and morals and consciences before the conflagration.

Finally, this subject is not to "excuse" slavery, but to contextualize it, something severely lacking.
"To contextualize is not to excuse," says Rutgers University historian Jan Lewis. "It's to show the complexity." Understanding the early leaders' severe lapse in judgment over slavery, say Lewis and other historians, makes their ability to found a new and democratic nation all the more incredible.
The Founding Fathers hoped slavery would slip away eventually, much as the politicians and engineers hoped the levees around New Orleans would hold a few decades more. Foolish optimism, and neither saw their Category 5 hurricane, in the South's case the cotton gin that sealed their success and their devil's bargain. Nevertheless, the North in victory, much like the Bush Administration post-9/11 and post-Katrina, has rewritten its part in the catastrophe to blame everything on others, to disavow any role, that all its political intentions were pure. The facts remain - Massachusetts was the first to legalize slavery, and a number Northern states quickly followed. (Pennsylvania had the good taste to ban it, and then unfortunately legalized it 12 years later). Recently reformed sinners often carry less weight in argument than those who held to principle from the beginning, but in the 1700's, few around the world were without sin. Judging from our land theft, wars and ethnic cleansings of the first half of the 19th Century, it's easy to see we weren't so spotless then either. As Prince would say, just a Sign o' the Times.

Hopefully all this verbiage will help people understand the South - and the North - a bit better.

Addendum: Oleeb and others contend that there was no right of secession, but three states - New York, Rhode Island and Virginia - explicitly included secession rights in their acceptance of the Constitution, and as that link notes, secession had been discussed by many states over various issues long before the Civil War. Secession was an assumed right by states, but those 3 wanted to make it crystal clear. Unfortunately, despite all the obvious signals and written statements at the time, 2 centuries later it's still being debated.

Sample Signing Statement of Ratification (note the reference "derived from the people" as denoted in the Declaration of Independence, and like the "all powers not explicitly granted" clause of the Constitution denotes that any power granted "may be resumed", and that "every power not granted thereby remains":

...the People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will...

If the members of the Union did not agree that this ratification and specifically this written clarification of the terms of ratification fit with what was written in the Constitution, that ratification should have been rejected at the time. Three of 13 new states asserting this is extremely strong prima facie evidence. Before someone argues that "if it's not written in the Constitution, then it doesn't exist", Supreme Courts have been arguing ever since ratification about the specific interpretations of various terms of the Constitution and its Amendments, without most of these validations of intent being further added into the Constitution in more explicit, verbose language. If I sign a contract with a German company to be adjudicated under the laws in Atlanta, Georgia, and I qualify my signing by explicitly writing in my acceptance, "this is to ensure that under disagreement, I will not have to travel to a German court in Germany", the contract does not have to be rewritten as long as all the parties accept that that's a valid interpretation. If they disagree and do not voice their disagreement, then they have not co-signed in good faith and the contract is likely either null and void or will be interpreted as expressed in my signing statement.

Addendum 2: It would seem odd that anyone in 2009 could regard land claims, permanent borders and other attempts as eternal national and geographical truths as anything but wishful thinking. Poland shifted 100 miles to the west after WWII. Israel/Palestine is still renegotiating land partitions for the last 60 years, Britain arbitrarily plucked Kuwait out of Iraq 90 years ago, while the rest of the Middle East's borders were hurriedly scratched in, Holland perversely tossed Irian Jaya to the budding independent Indonesia 50 years ago, Yugoslavia dissolved messily over the last decade, Czechoslovakia split amicably, the Soviet Union broke up with territory arguments continuing in the Caucusus, Scotland got governmental powers devolved from Britain, Belgium continues to go through ethnic/Constitutional crisis, China keeps its claws on Xinjiang and Tibet, regained Hong Kong properly after 100 years, and now has its sights on Taiwan (which has gone between independence, Japanese and Chinese ownership over the years). We plucked Panama out of Colombia so we could build a canal, Bolivia and Ethiopia have had their wars trying to get some seafront, and so on. The US had the luxury of ethnic cleansing to make sure no serious claims against stolen property would occur later, and some of the land gains were more or less on the up-and-up serious real estate deals (Alaska and the Louisiana Purchase especially) versus our thefts elsewhere. Bolstering the premise of our inviolate Union because we stole a lot more land later is kind of a thieves' bargain - one gets caught, we all get caught - more than a legal premise.  Most troubling is if we try to carry some principle out of this to other nations composed by agreement - Italy, Germany, Spain, etc. Should Spain accuse Catalonia of high treason because it's pushed for and gained greater independence? Should the United Kingdom punish Scotland rather than acquiesce to its wishes? At a time when the world is evolving better and friendlier solutions to altercations, we have people still basking in the primitive urge to violence to settle all complaints. I guess that seemed like the easier solution, as long as someone else's land and culture was destroyed. Russia would likely agree, Iraq perhaps not. Though seems like Russia became a bit testy when terrorists/freedom-fighters started sticking it to *Russian* territory. Can give but can't take, it seems.

Addendum 3: As I stated above, Brazil gave up slavery in 1888, even though it was still rapidly increasing it after the Civil War. In practical terms, we saved perhaps 15-25 years of slavery by carrying out the bloody Civil War, and got to deal with its repercussions instead. Europe had already moved on before the war, the North had already moved on, and it was simply a matter of time. In the 90's Clinton isolated Milosevic and he was gone in 10 years. In 2003 Bush decided to own Hussein, and instead we own Iraq. Wars have consequences. Violence is often a choice, not a necessity.

Addendum 4: Should have put in  a reference to Jade's post to make it easy to hop back and forth. Here it is, for posterity now that this is a dead thread. But Quinn's long mesmerizing synopsis should live on - summarized by "What if the United States has become the Old South". New Empire, Old South. Brilliant.  

Americans are Chickenshit: News at 11


Having called Lincoln chickenshit yesterday, seems I can go me one better.

It appears that there's something Republicans and Democrats can finally agree on after all - we are chickenshit. Sen. Ben Nelson speaking for the Democrats agrees with Sen. John Kyl speaking for the Republicans: Just the idea of bringing the "bad guys" to America for a maximum security trial or tribunal gives us the runs [and hides]. Maybe we can put them at the North Pole inside Lex Luthor's walls of ice, or a deep hole bored into the Earth's crust, or sealed up in a Kryptonite vault, or perhaps on the Dark Side of the Moon. Bipartisan hysteria for these post-partisan times.

You'd think that spreading the word among terrorists that "Americans are pissing their pants as we speak" would be bad PR, that we're so scared shitless of these funky guys in their pancake brown Pakol hats that we won't even let them inside our borders after being shackled and hobbled and blindfolded for 6 years just to find an excuse to string them up. And this comes on Memorial Day, when we're supposed to remember all those brave and heroic acts in time of warfare, the people who throw themselves on hand grenades, drag buddies out of a firefight, parachute behind enemy lines to blow up targets and free prisoners, march hundreds of miles under full pack, horrid weather and enemy fire, who go on patrols just to see whose fire they'll draw that day...

Perhaps we need to get Arnie out to publicly declare that Terminator II was only a movie, that he's really not an invincible cyborg and that his stalker really can't turn into molten metal and back to human form in seconds. Perhaps we need a Congressional psychologist to walk our representatives through their post-9/11 trauma, so they can stop blubbering like babies when the lights go out and stop writing legislation that starts with, "I hope Mummy and Daddy will be around forever to keep me safe and sound...." I finally start to understand why these people turn to trembly jello when they see a man or a woman in uniform. They are stark fucking petrified. Crap, you can probably whisper "boo" in the Capitol Building and they'll be jumping out the windows. And these assholes are writing our laws, conducting "oversight" of our institutions. OUR REPRESENTATIVES. My God, what have we chosen, how far down can we go? I used to think this was all partisan posturing, but no, they're dead serious. No wonder they support torture. They'd support nuclear annihilation if it would make their bad nightmares go away. Briefcases full of unmarked bills, virgins in paradise, scrapping the Constitution - anything, just make the bad guys go away!!!

Get these people some help. And get 'em out of government service, quick. They reflect badly on all of us.

Desidero

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