CASE IN POINT

Senator John Kerry, at a speech today, made some remarks, the reaction to which typify precisely what is wrong with American politics post-millennium.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, spoke to students at Pasadena City College in California on Monday. According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the senator took the stage to roaring applause before regaling the crowd with one-liners, Bush barbs and tales of surfing at nearby Mission Beach.

He then said: "You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well.
"If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The White House chickenhawk Rapid Response Unit, knowing that Congressional Republicans have nothing to run on, quickly went into overslime mode:

Tony Snow, all puffed and huffed and fluffed, called the remark "an absolute insult". He believes, as do other Republicans, that he speaks for all troops - all of these non-troops believing that they speak for the troops - how absurd!!! (In a real world).

House Majority Leader John Boner, taking a moment to distance himself from his legal woes, called the remark "disgusting and shameful".

President Bush derided the remark as "shameful", and demanded that Kerry apologize. Funny, how Kerry didn't demand an apology from Bush when the latter flat-out lied about his record, but the rules really are different for Republicans.

Let's take a look at the statement. Before we do, a general remark. Thanks to Karl Rove's patented brand of smash-mouth politics, actual words no longer matter in political discourse. All that matters is how someone chooses, for purposes all of their own, to interpret those words. Distortion, in Bushworld, is not only encouraged but required.

So, the words: Kerry said if you make the most of education, if you study hard, do your homework, and make efforts to be smart, you won't get stuck in Iraq.

A spokesman later said that what Kerry meant to say was, "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

Strange, how even if he had made the latter comment, the righteous fury would have thundered just as loud, even though the latter comment was unequivocally directed at one person - President Bush - with no combat experience. Kerry, by the way, has combat experience. The Republicans who said that Kerry was calling soldiers "stupid" therefore believe (since they believe Kerrry has an overinflated estimate of his intelligence) that Kerry all of a sudden believes (given what he thought about Vietnam) that he is stupid!! Another example of projecting: Republicans insulting your intelligence by claiming someone else insulted your intelligence.

Kerry wasn't calling anyone stupid. He simply said (regardless of what he meant to say) was: stay in school and take it seriously. Do your best to earn good grades and to try to learn something. If you don't MAKE THE EFFORT (notice how he did not say "IF YOU'RE NOT SMART), military recruiters will prey on you, because they prey on those whom they consider to be intellectually vulnerable, and you'll get stuck in Iraq.

That recruiters do this is a well-known fact. That they permit high school dropouts is as well. That they go to high schools and are allowed to initiate contact with students and to compose a database of the students' contact information - unless students sign a highly unpublicized "Opt-Out" form is a fact.

So, basically, what he was saying is, take your education and intelligence seriously - because the military sure doesn't.

But the Republicans, adrift in a sea of pedophilia, commodes, Jack Abramoff and Macaca, don't see it that way, of course. They live in what Roger Ebert calls "a world of Rambo patriotism" - a world where someone can fancy himself a military man simply because he watches military movies, and a world where someone can beat genuine debate over the head by unquestioningly shouting "Treason!" whenever a critical comment is made about an American institution that Republicans happen to dislike. Note how in such a world, it is not reality, but the perception of reality that counts: As long as I "feel" that I am a soldier, I am one, so no one dare criticize "my" military. The military belongs to no one. Not to a senator, not to a snow job, and certainly not to the Commander-in-Chief. It belongs to all of us.

President Bush, in unsurprising disregard of these facts, countered Kerry's comment by assuming the role of military man himself, stating that the comment demeans military families, dead soliders, and further stating that people in the military are "plenty smart". How would he know about their intelligence? He has none when it comes to making military decisions. The man sees our troops as cannon fodder. Perhaps to him, serving as cannon fodder IS a measure of intelligence. More importantly, though, Bush actually has no special insight as to what comments "should" or "do" demean anyone. People who profess to have such insights are too afraid to let the subjects of derogatory comments think for themselves about what the comments mean. After all, if such thinking occurs, well, for a lack of a better word, some people might not get stuck in Iraq. I know - I "shouldn't have said" that comment. What does that mean? "Shouldn't have said" according to whom? Many soldiers hated Kerry's guts in 2004 for no more reason than the fact that his definition of patriotism was at variance with theirs, so whom should he not have directed his remarks at such that one can idly mouth the phrase "he shouldn't have said that?" If by "shouldn't have said," the keyboard commandos mean "shouldn't have said the comment because it might hurt Democrats' chances a week from now," that point may be valid, but moral outrage should not be confused with pre-election jitters - let's be clear on "why" the comment shouldn't have been said.

Republicans believe the comment should not be said because they believe patriotism is their exclusive domain. They trashed Kerry's service while he was in Vietnam, making baseless allegations that he falsified his claims of being wounded. Shouldn't THEY not have said that? Why isn't such a comment, by THEIR logic, an "insult" to all military families and dead soldiers? Shouldn't they REALLY not have said that when the truth came out (for the fourth or fifth time) and the Armed Forces published a statement saying the wounds were in fact inflicted? No, of course not. The double-standard here is breathtaking. Republicans assume that because they TALK about their fantasies of using the military, and because they TALK about how much they love the troops (while treating them and veterans like dirt), that they actually DO care about our Armed Forces. I suppose that's why we continue to have no plan for Iraq and why we're losing. Because of all of this love.

While Kerry LITERALLY did not call any soldier stupid (he said that people who don't care about their minds may get stuck in Iraq; as a logical matter, that comment does not imply that he said if you do care about your mind, you'll be "stuck in Iraq" - after all, by "stuck in Iraq", he simply meant someone who, owing to a failure to examine the truth for himself, finds himself in a situation where last-minute revelations of thought are too little, too late) - and did not say that smart people stay out of the military (rather, his implication was that people who made an effort to think do go to Iraq - which is fine - but they are not STUCK there, because they made a deliberate, thinking decision rather than having made a non-thinking non-decision that renders one "stuck" in a pool of mental vacuosness), he did, perhaps inadvertently, hit upon something interesting about the psychology of the military: soldiers are supposed to obey orders without question. Someone who makes no effort to be intelligent will thus, if he follows this directive, obey orders without knowing their purpose. The person won't appreciate what exactly it is about the chain of command that is so important for the military to function. By contrast, someone who makes the attempt to think will follow the order, but will understand just WHY it is so important to do so. We need people like this in our Armed Forces - as opposed to needing mindless drones who don't REALLY appreciate what they're fighting for in that they think the uniform and the mission are one and the same.

I think it's eminently fair to say that Kerry meant nothing more - and nothing less - than this: please try to think things through in life before you make important decisions - lest those decisions be forced upon you. What on Earth is wrong with saying this?

The answer, of course, is that nothing is wrong with it. But this country has engaged in a centuries-long semantical dance when it comes to the military anyway, so this latest high-dudgeon outrage should come as no surprise. "I support the troops but not the mission," some say. "I support the troops but not the President," others say. On some level, both of these statements cannot be internally reconciled. Uttering them, though, makes us feel good - it makes us feel that we care about those sent to be put in harm's way - and it makes us feel satisfied that we have simutaneously managed to curse those who have put them there. Americans - Republicans especially - have been "having it both ways" like this for decades. They've never been called on it. They've never been called on their incredible notion that the "military" is a concept that allows them to cry "treason" when someone insults the president, when the President is a Republican, but is somehow a different concept altogether when the President is a Democrat - a concept embodied by nothing more than a handful of individuals serving a meretricious cause. Shouldn't REPUBLICANS not say these kinds of things? After all, as Bush loves to chant, what kind of message does THIS send to troops? That UNTHINKING (here's the difference between Democrat and Republican cricitism of the other side as Commander-in-Chief) will be inspirational?

Republicans don't care about inspiring. They care about using troops as lab rats for pet military projects. If those lab rats need the best equipment and the best protection from injury to serve their purpose, that's unfortunate, they believe, deep down. (and some, not so deeply). I cannot imagine a greater way of calling troops stupid than by treating them in this fashion - by bopping them over the head with slogans like "stay the course," by implementing backdoor drafts of reservists, by stretching the National Guard beyond its breaking point, by, in violation of law, calling people up for sixth, seventh, and eighth tours of duty.

These actions explain why Kerry's comment had to be "swatted down," swiftly and with as much Faux (and Fox) outrage as possible.

In a movie I once saw, a little boy was sitting next to his grandmother, who hands him a piece of chocolate. The boy, reminded of the fact that his stern, hypocritical mother doesn't want him to have chocolate (for no good reason) tells the grandmother, "Sorry, but mom says I'm not supposed to" The grandmother offers a polite but firm smile, as she gently intones, "You shouldn't worry so much about not supposed to".

In other words, would it kill people, just for once, instead of fixating on whether "someone shouldn't have said something", actually focus on the substance of the comment, and whether it makes sense? Rove doesn't want you to do the latter; it's not just the troops that Republicans think are idiots. Rambo patriotism strikes again, and the Republican slime machine claims another victim and stifles another legitimate point of discussion.

If these people were one-millionth a degree concerned with winning this war as they are with spinning it, who knows where we would be now? I know - the answer doesn't matter. I "shouldn't have asked the question".


Sen. John Kerry got into a verbal sparring match today with the White House and fellow Sen. John McCain over remarks they called an insult to U.S. troops in Iraq and Kerry called a misinterpretation of a "bad joke" about the president's leadership.
At issue was a comment the Massachusetts Democrat made Monday before a young crowd at Pasadena City College in California in which Kerry joked about the need to get a good education.
"If you make an effort to be smart, you can do well," he said. "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
By this evening, the comment had been called "shameful" by President Bush.
The political slugfest began early in the day, though, when White House spokesman Tony Snow called Kerry's comment "an absolute insult."
"Sen. Kerry not only owes an apology to those who are serving, but also to the families of those who've given their lives in this," Snow said.
McCain, R-Ariz., also said in a statement that Kerry "owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education."
Kerry responded first with a statement e-mailed to reporters. Referring to Snow, he said "I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium."
In an afternoon meeting with reporters, a clearly agitated Kerry said his remarks at Pasadena meant that if people such as President Bush aren't well-educated, they could find themselves making bad decisions, like going into Iraq.
Kerry charged that the Republicans knew what he meant and were trying to distort his statement.
"If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy," Kerry said.
Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, also made a clear reference to the "swift boat" attacks on his military record during the 2004 presidential campaign to which he has acknowledged he was slow to respond.
"This is the classic GOP playbook," he said. "I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did."
About two hours later, President Bush weighed in.
At a dinner-hour campaign rally in Georgia, Bush said "the senator's suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and it is shameful. ... The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology."
The controversy came one week before the midterm elections in which the Iraq war is a major issue for voters.
Also calling on Kerry to apologize: House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who described the senator's remarks as "disrespectful and insulting to the men and women serving in our military;" and Paul Morin, national commander of The American Legion, who said he is "outraged."
For its part, the Kerry camp released a statement from Vietnam veteran and former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., saying that "John Kerry should apologize to no one for his criticism of the president and his broken policy in Iraq. George Bush is the one who owes our troops an apology. This is text book Republican campaign tactics."

ANNOY A CONSERVATIVE....THINK!

Bill O'Reilly clashed with David Letterman during his appearance on The Late Show Friday night. Letterman took O'Reilly to task for his over-simplified views and "bonehead" remarks.

Letterman questioned the legitimacy of O'Reilly's network, Fox News, asking "You guys over there at Fox, and guys like Rush Limbaugh, you guys know it's all just a goof, right? You're just horsing around. Am I right about that? You're doing it because you know it'll be entertaining."

Letterman also told O'Reilly, "You're putting words in my mouth, just the way you put artificial facts in your head." O'Reilly tried to reduce the Iraq war in the interview, saying "Do you want the United States to win in Iraq? It's an easy question," to which Letterman replied, "It's not easy for me because I'm thoughtful."

THE "PROGENITAL" FOR BOWERS V. HARDWICK

If you read long enough, you'll find out that the Supreme Court already has considered questions of law long before it publishes "seminary" (or what people believe to be the first) opinions on these questions. Think Bowers v. Hardwick was the first case involving the issue of whether there was a "fundamental right to sodomy"? It wasn't:

425 U.S. 901, 96 S.Ct. 1489, 47 L.Ed.2d 751
Supreme Court of the United States
John DOE et al., appellants,v.COMMONWEALTH'S ATTORNEY FOR CITY OF RICHMOND et al.
No. 75-896.
March 29, 1976 Rehearing Denied May 19, 1976.See 425 U.S. 985, 96 S.Ct. 2192.Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.Facts and opinion, D.C., 403 F.Supp. 1199.*1490 Judgment affirmed.Mr. Justice BRENNAN, Mr. Justice MARSHALL and Mr. Justice STEVENS would note probable jurisdiction and set case for oral argument.
********************************************************************************
Also, in bumpkin Cobb County, here in Atlanta, the Cobb school board has fought furiously to install a sticker iin every science textook stating that evolution is just a theory (of course, no other sticker regarding any other scientific theory graces these texts). The Supreme Court's never addresed the issue of whether such stickers violate the Establishment Clause, right? Well, not exactly:

Supreme Court of the United States
Tangipahoa Parish Bd. of Educ. v. Freiler, 530 U.S. 1251, 120 S.Ct. 2706 (Mem), U.S.,2000,June 19, 2000 (Approx. 2 pages)
TANGIPAHOA PARISH BOARD OF EDUCATION, et al., petitioners,v.Herb FREILER, et al.
No. 99-1625.
June 19, 2000.Case below, 185 F.3d 337.Petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied.Justice SCALIA, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Justice THOMAS join, dissenting.

On April 19, 1994, the Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, Board of Education (Board) passed the following resolution:“Whenever, in classes of elementary or high school, the scientific theory of evolution is to be presented, whether from textbook, workbook, pamphlet, other written material, or oral presentation the following statement shall be quoted immediately before the unit of study begins as a disclaimer from endorsement of such theory.“It is hereby recognized by the Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education, that the lesson to be presented, regarding the origin of life and matter, is known as the Scientific Theory of Evolution and should be presented to inform students of the scientific concept and not intended to influence or dissuade the Biblical version of Creation or any other concept.“It is further recognized by the Board of Education that it is the basic right and privilege of each student to form his/her own opinion or maintain beliefs taught by parents on this very important matter of the origin of life and matter. Students are urged to exercise critical thinking and gather all information possible and closely examine each alternative toward forming an opinion.”

Naturally, Scalia and Thomas wanted to hear this case so that they could rule that the oral instruction did not violate the Establishment Clause. Perhaps it does not. May I suggest a compromise: creationism can be taught in public schools if evolution can be taught in churches. Or, as someone put the matter less delicately, "If you don't pray in my school, I won't think in your church".

MACACARENA

Hey Republican kids!!! Want to be in on the latest cool dance moves? (That is, if your parents aren't the kind that flog you to death for dancing?) Check out the latest dance craze, inspired by Virginia's very own Mighty Morals Mouse, George Allen! And this song is NO JOKE, OK?


When I dance they call me Macaca-rena
And all the foamies they say that I´m buena
They all want me, they CAN have me
So they come in white sheets and lynch beside me
Move with me, hate with me
And if you're black I'll burn you crispy
Dale a tu cuerpo Allen-gria Macacarena
Que tu cuerpo es pa darle Allen-gria y cosa buena
Dale a tu cuerpo Allen-gria Macacarena Eh, Macaca-rena! A-Hai! (2 times)

Now don´t you worry ´bout that noose there
The one I keep by my front window
Won't lose it
Don't use it
Unless the Jews abuse it!

Now come on Jews, what was I supposed to do ?
"Wiz" was outta town and the CCC was soooo fine!
Dale a tu cuerpo Allen-gria Macacarena ...
Dale a tu cuerpo Allen-gria Macacarena
Aye aye
I am not trying to not noose you
Ma-, Ma-, Ma-, Ma-, Ma-, Ma-, Macacarena ...
Dale a tu cuerpo Allen-gria Macacarena
Dale a tu cuerop Allen-gria Macacarena

Come and find me, my name is Macacarena
Always spewing hatred, ´cause the racists think I´m buena
'Scum join me
"hang" with me
And all you crackers tag along with me

Dale a tu cuerpo Allen-gria Macacarena ... (5 times)
Aye aye
**********************************************************************
Isn't it catchy? You'll have to learn new dance steps, though. Instead of the part where you move each arm to your chest, you have to move each foot toward your mouth!

.... AND ONE FOR MY FOAMIES

http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2006/10/myth_vs_reality.asp

THE MYTH OF THE MYTH

"LIMBAUGH ON MICHAEL J FOX: 'When you wade into political life you have every right to say what you want, but you cannot in turn argue that no one has the right to take you on'..."

Dimballs "took on" Michael J. Fox by asserting, without any evidence (or knowledge of Parkinson's disease; that is, is people who have studied it are to be believed over an opportunist bloviator) that Fox was "off his medications" in a recent ad in which Fox made a pitch for stem-cell reseach. Limbaugh claimed that he was off the medications "so as to demonstrate the full horrors of the disease". (Which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with).

I'll bet you that Limbaugh, before making his comments, sat down, and "thought" to himself after watching the ad, "Oh, here's another example of the myth of liberal infallibilty. A sick librul, used by the Democrats, is paraded on to the air, and now we can't attack him". Why is it that every time a Republican cries, "Myth of liberal infallibility," the Republican has either, or will very shortly commence the same attack that the Republican claims he is "tongue-tied" from launching? It's the Republicans who have created a myth - a myth that there is this "liberal infallibility" - and their actions when they are confronted with the irreality of their creation prove the infallibility does not exist, AND serve to let the Republicans do best.

By the way, Fox did not argue that no one had the right to "take him on". He hasn't even responded to what Limbaugh said. So why did Limbaugh make the "take you on comment"? To fan the flames of the myth of the myth, and to launch a guttural, non-fact, non-thought-based attack. Fox, even after the "take on" comment, still did not respond to Limbaugh. It's so EASY to take the high grond when your opponent is the type who strolls through Sea World looking for his next mate (that park should CLOSE for a month or two during the year!)

Of course, one can "take on" someone who has injected himself into the political arena. But as I pointed out to a friend, political incorrectness such as Rush's rudeness is not correct, or brave, or insightful per se. Just because you can take someone on does not mean you can blubber out whatever banalities you wish; political incorrectness for its own sake is not a virtue. Why can't Dimballs take on someone FAIRLY (a word which accuratel describes how "taking on" should be accomplished)? Because to do so would require the absence of hate and the presence of thinking. These simple conditions are just too "tough" to meet for the so-called "toughest" of our political commentators. Ironic, isn't it?

NOT SURE WHAT TO SAY...

, a friend's email RE: line stated in June of 2003. The message containing this subject line is one I've been trying to live down, and live up to, ever since.

And yet here I am, tonight, mourning the loss of my pet gecko, whom my family has had for 13 years (when we bought this gecko, I was in 10th grade; my brother, in one of his last pangs of humanity, cared about this special creature and gave the gecko the name "Herbie," after the character in "Gyspy," the TV movie version of which had aired a few months earlier. Rest in peace, little Herbie), feeling that the world is caving in on my sole surviving grandparent (my father's mother has become so terrified - of living alone, perhaps - that she forgot how to operate the locks on her front door - either that or she has become so obsessed with aloneness that she obsesses over things such as the lock to the point where she can no longer do all things as a matter of routine. My aunt just took my grandmother to live with her, and swears she will never put my grandmother in assisted living or a home. After all, she takes care of herself sufficiently enough that assisted living would not accept her, and has not the total dependency that nursing home patients have. My aunt may be in denial, but it's a denial that comes from hard lessons learned the hard way), feeling horrified that my first cousin - the first of seven first cousins in my family - to have children - has given birth to twins that combined weigh two pounds less than I did, their faces obscured by tubes, patches, electrodes and wires as they are kept on respirators, when I decide to go out for a walk.

Not to cheer me up. Just for the exercise. I decide to walk around the quite nice grounds of my apartment complex. As I walk athwart the different buildings, I stumble onto the topiary garden, the "second" swimming pool, the "second" laundry room (the ones I don't use). Something occurs to me, as I am listening to "American Pie" - I have walked through these areas - which I do not need to go through to travel to and from my room - maybe ten - at most fifteen - times - in three years. How much more need be said? The friend whose lease I picked up three years ago, when showing me around (we both already knew I was taking over his apartment; he just wanted to show me what I was getting for my money), knew where these places were by heart. I still don't know and happpened upon them tonight by accident. My God, this is how shut off I have been from the world - I literally don't know what's there in the walls that surround me. People talk to me about the need to "get out more," to find a girlfriend, and so on and so forth. I have squandered ovef fifteen years of my life at the altar of hard work - a sacrifice made because I did not pay attention to these needs since, shall we say, a family voice made me afraid to do so - and now the full gale force of the price is sweeping me away in a vortex of burnout, depression, anger, loneliness, cluelessness, wan-ness, lethargy......

God, where do I start to fix all of this? The word "fix" implies something was broken, which in turn implies it once wasn't. I can't remember when things weren't broken. I can only say this: I know that I cannot live where I am living any more. The grand experiment of doing so was one for which, in my own feeble way, I was game, but it has failed nonetheless. I am so overwhelmed by my inability to make any kind of social or job progress - and by being overwhelmed itself - that I am paralyzed when it comes to choosing how to spend my time, so I choose to spend it alone, which in turn makes me more lonely, which ovewhelms me, and so on.

A paraphrase of a scene from Star Trek: The Original Series illustrates the point. Spock says something to the effect of "fear of death is illogical". Dr. McCoy then sagely replies, "You're not afraid of dying, Mr. Spock. You're more afraid of living".

So am I. I so want to conquer this fear, to feel as though I, as Virginia Woolf said in "The Hours," to have "some say in the matter of my own prescription". I'm going to find a way, somehow. After all, as another Star Trek character said once, of time, "It's stalking you. Oh, you can try to outrun it with doctors...medicines....new technologies... But in the end, time is going to hunt you down and make the kill". Quite true. The trick - and a daunting-to-perform-one it is, is to throw down enough meaningful red herrings while you're still alive.

There is, thankfully, some magical energy still left in me.

YES, MACACA, THERE IS A BOOGEYMAN

Do you, undecided, apathetic, holier-than-thout, cooler-than-thou, would-be voter STILL believe there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans? I offer this brief Exhibit in support of the humble thesis that there is indeed a difference - a diference with a distinction, as it were.

As an initial matter, to blithely propose that, at any (and all, according to some) moment in time, two political parties with almost 350 years on the American scene combined are EXACTLY equal in their assholitude is not what I would call evidence of a mind long soothed by platitudes that wants to be discomforted by nuances. Nuances, in fact, are the least of it. One not need look for nuances to discern the difference between the parties. Off the top of my head, I can name an instructive area in which to look that sharply reveals the difference: the parties' campaign "approaches".

Way back in 1964, the Democrats (a party which at that time was really half Democrat and half Republican, in today's terms) smeared the daylights out of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Emblematic of this hatchet job was the brilliant (and brilliantly underhanded) "Daisy" commercial, which so strongly implied, in such apocalyptic terms, that Barry Goldwater wanted to blow up the world, that the commercial was pulled after only having ran once. A similar ad, which never aired, features a little girl licking an ice cream cone laced with Strontium-90, a byproduct of nuclear weapons tests. Against the backdrop of the girl's licks intones a sickly stern voice, solemnly informing us that Goldwater voted against the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, and if it were up to him, we'd be buried in a world of high-level radioactive waste before we died from the actual dropping of a bomb in a heavily populated area.

LBJ, of course, won in a landslide - the worst landslide that ever happened for either party. In 1968, Dick Nixon appealed to Southern white bigots who believed a vote for Wallace was a wasted vote with what came to be known as "the Southern strategy" - using (sometimes not-so) coded language, exploitative imagery, and innuuendo, to scare these voters into believing that black men were going to murder them. Or welfare them or civil rights them to death. Or something. The resultant hatred (augmented by pre-existing hate) was carefully nourished by Republican pundits and political consultants, and was most flagrantly appealed to just 18 years ago when Republicans ran, day after day, an ad showing the picture of a Massachusetts prisoner who, because of a weekend furlough program maintained by Michael Dukakis, went on a rape rampage during one such weekend furlough (the program was instituted by a Republican predecessor, and George H.W. Bush supported a similar program that resulted in the death of an individual killed by the furloughed prisoner, but these facts were too much "nuance"). This prisoner, presented against a dark blue background with bright yellow wording telling us how soft on crime Dukakis was, is, of course, Willie Horton, whose face was made to look darker than it was. No Presidential election since has come close to producing such a despicable ad, but the Southern strategy continues until the present, albeit in more "muted" forms (that is, if you think Bill Bennett's comments about aborting black babies can be considered "muted").

This year - 2006 - involves a new low for Republicans - an attack for naked politican gain that, in its own way, is as despicable as the Horton ad:

"RUSH LIMBAUGH IS STILL A BIG, FAT...:

Every day, journalists face a great dilemma: Do we even bother trying to argue with the likes of Rush Limbaugh? Or do we ignore him, figuring his dishonesty and ignorance are self-evident?

Normally I opt for the latter approach, but today I'm going to make an exception.

Some of you may have heard about an advertisement running in Missouri, on behalf of Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill. The ad stars the actor Michael J. Fox. In it, Fox asks voters to support McCaskill because, unlike her Republican opponent, McCaskill supports stem cell research -- which might eventually lead to a cure for Parkinson's. The ad is particularly effective because Fox is swaying back and forth during the entire ad, apparently because of the Parkinson's.

Enter Limbaugh. On today's show, while responding to some listener e-mail, Limbaugh said "when I saw the ad, I was commenting ... that he was either off his medications or he is acting. He is an actor, you know." Limbaugh then mentioned receiving e-mails arguing that Fox had admitted to going off medications during public appearances, in order to demonstrate the severity of the disease. Limbaugh went on to insist "I'm not even being critical of that," (which is, of course, precisely why he uttered the response he did) but that he still found the ad to be "exploitative."

You can listen to the segment (and see the original ad) via CrooksandLiars.com, which is where I found it.
Since I didn't hear the rest of the broadcast, I suppose it's possible I'm missing some context. But assuming I'm not, it seemed worth checking out this little tidbit, just to set the record straight: Could a patient on Parkinson's show such symptoms even while he was on his medication?

Fortunately, I have access to this thing called the Internet and this nifty search engine called Google. A few clicks led me to William J. Weiner M.D., professor and chairman of the department of neurology at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He's also director of the Parkinson's clinic there.

Even better, it turns out Dr. Weiner has a phone. When I reached him, he said he'd seen the ad earlier in the day and was fairly surprised to hear about Limbaugh's reaction. Here's why:

What you are seeing on the video is side effects of the medication. He has to take that medication to sit there and talk to you like that. ... He's not over-dramatizing. ... [Limbaugh] is revealing his ignorance of Parkinson's disease, because people with Parkinson's don't look like that at all when they're not taking their medication. They look stiff, and frozen, and don't move at all. ... People with Parkinson's, when they've had the disease for awhile, are in this bind, where if they don't take any medication, they can be stiff and hardly able to talk. And if they do take their medication, so they can talk, they get all of this movement, like what you see in the ad.

Weiner was careful to disclose that a researcher in his center recently received a grant from the Fox Foundation. But he assured me that he was on solid medical ground. I take him at his word, but I'll try to get some further confirmation later.

In the meantime, Weiner also pointed out something else I hadn't considered: Fox was actually being commendably nuanced in the ad. The actor could have said stem cells will lead to a Parkinson's cure, but he said merely that it gives patients hope -- which is accurate. There's no way to know for sure what stem cells will do for Parkinson's, or other diseases, but they have the potential to do so. The only way to find out for sure is to do the research that Limbaugh and his allies are bent on blocking.
--Jonathan Cohn"

There is indeed a difference. People in general on both sides - and on neither - are too blinded by hate to see it.

IF YOU CAN'T EVEN ADMIT THE OBVIOUS,

or be truthful about nothing more than phraseology, people won't believe you when you're telling the truth about matters of graver importance:

Bush: ‘We’ve Never Been Stay The Course’

During an interview today on ABC’s This Week, President Bush tried to distance himself from what has been his core strategy in Iraq for the last three years. George Stephanopoulos asked about James Baker’s plan to
develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’”

Bush responded, ‘We’ve never been stay the course, George!’

Bush is wrong:

BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]

BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]

BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]

BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]

BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]

BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]

STEPHANOPOULOS: James Baker says that he’s looking for something between “cut and run” and “stay the course.”

BUSH: Well, hey, listen, we’ve never been “stay the course,” George. We have been — we will complete the mission, we will do our job, and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting to tactics. Constantly...

******************************************************************************
Blah blah blah. He's so pathetic that he's even lying about his own lying rhetoric. One can thank the Republican noise machine (Google the term) for the perception that Bill Clinton was a bigger liar than this putz. The more oblivious you are, the more you must try to deny reality to create a perception of competence. And Bush has been doing some very serious denial.

THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE....

Justice Scalia was mouthing his greatest fits today before an Italian-American audience. This judge, who continues to speak at occasions wherein he expresses his views about how upcoming cases should be decided (in violation of the rules of conduct governing all federal judges - and this one rule happens to apply to the Supreme Court, too - but no one will dare enforce it) proclaimed from his lofty, no-photograph zone/perch that "things like abortion and suicide are not in the Constitution"; therefore, the democratic process - rather than judges - should decide upon what laws should be passed regarding these issues.

The problem with the implicit point Scalia is making - namely, that that which is not in the Constitution can be prohibited (notwithstanding the 9th Amendment, conveniently read by Scalia so as to render it worthless) - is that history belies the point. A specific right need not be conferred in a country's governing document for one to know that the right exists. For example, the Supreme Court would no doubt agree with me when I say that there is a "fundamental right to sit in my house and watch television". Why? Because the right, regardless of whether it is viewed as a "right to privacy," is one that the government has no legitimate interest in banning, and it is one that never has been thought to have been subject to restriction by a legislature (were a legislature to abolish the right, the law abolishing it would be struck down). In this example, the dictates of past practice as well as the ilelgitimacy of any governmental interest in regulating the activity are the "volume of history" that is worth the "page of logic".

Scalia proceds from the starting point that government can regulate anything it wants to, unless a specific law - promulgated through the democratic process - permits the activity. However, we simply do not know whether the Framers believed the same thing. And why should they have believed it? Such a view was contary to their experience. Was foxhunting impermissible simply because no law granted the right to foxhunting? Of course not. So much for the converse of that which is not prohibited is permitted. Scalia believes that that which is not permitted is prohibited, or can be, for any reason. The legitimate interest the state has in such prohibition is its interest in -surprise - prohibiting it. In other words, the fact that the government, according to Scalia, can ban everything that which is not permitted means that the government automatically has a legitimate interest in such a ban; government can ban something and therefore it is "legitimate" for government to do so.

The rational basis test has more teeth than this, of course. Scalia claims to have subscribed to this test, yet has never found a law to be invalid under this test. To him, perpetuation of bigotry, irrational prejudice and hate are legitimate interests. How does he know these interests are "legitimate" any more than his opponents "guess" the interests are not? He knows because of his religious views. Thus the rational basis test can be given lip service by those who purport to believe in it but who use the presumption of favoring the government it confers to put their own prejudices into law. These people, of course, are not merely "ratifying" democratic opinion (as Scalia thinks judges should do); they are deciding, plain and simple. They are getting involved. To pronounce that a court should not be involved in something is to involve it, because one must, to make such a pronouncement, render a judgment about the role of federal courts.

Scalia simply cannot accept the fact that some people believe - and have a right to believe - that the courts, rather than the legislature or the executive, is the body that is to determine what, given what laws exist, government (the legislature and executive) can and cannot do. One has every right to believe this as a simple implication of the separation of powers doctrine. To assert that a legislature has the sole right to determine upon what matters it can govern is to in effect allow a legislature to execute its own laws. Why should courts decide what the proper subjects of legislation are? Because, out of the three branches of government, the courts by default can be the only body that can make this decision, given that no one else can. They can, of course, be overruled by constitutional amendment in this aspect, but such amending actually requires the other branches to implicitly acquire power - to assert a right - rather than to exercise it as if the right was God-granted.

DIGRESSION!

A liberal blogger's take on Fox News' broadcasting, in the early days of the Mark Foley scandal, his name with a caption of (D) for Democrat next to Mr. Foley's name:

"Face it, FUX news knows that its base of viewers aren't the brightest bulbs in the pack and they're counting on this to help sway many of the toothless wonders who crawl out of their trailers into simply voting for an 'R' by claiming a fellow party member and known pedophile isn't actually one of them.May or may not work...we'll see, but to deny that this is why it happened is to simply show your partisan stripes".

IF THERE IS ONE FIXED STAR.....

I happened to stumble across the American Library Association's web page today. The homepage has some truly stirring quotes. The lust with which some people want to take a chainsaw to the Bill of Rights is terrifying beyond belief. That there is a real chance of these thugs being voted out of office in three months pleases me no end.

The quotes:

"Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime . . . .” — Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966)

“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” — Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)

“First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”—Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition (00-795) 198 F.3d 1083, affirmed.

“Almost all human beings have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” — Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World

“Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.” — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941), Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927)

THE ENVELOPE PUSHES BACK

What irony contained in the denial of a petition for certiorari today by the Supreme Court:

On a day when the Court granted no new cases, the Justices also declined to review a claim that it is unconstitutional for a city government to deny a Boy Scout unit equal access to public services because of the Scouts' policies against homosexual or atheist members. The case was Evans v. City of Berkeley (06-40).

Berkeley's City Council barred a Sea Scout "ship" (troop) from free access to berths in a city-run marina because of Scouting's membership policies; these violate the city's anti-discrimination laws, the City Council found. The Boy Scouts of America, joining a Sea Scout leader in asking the Court to hear the case, said the case presented "a recurring First Amendment issue of national importance."

The national Scouting organization contended that government officials at many levels "are excluding religious and other groups from access to programs on account of their religious or moral values and their efforts to maintain their distinctive identities."

In upholding the action against the Sea Scouts, the California Supreme Court said: "A government that requires aid recipients to conform their actions to its laws does not thereby
enforce adherence to the philosophy or values behind those laws." (In other words, Rumsfeld v. FAIR can be used both by bigots and those who oppose them. Also, I see no First Amendment problem for another reason: the laws prohibiting the Scouts from using the facilities are laws of general applicability that apply to both "religious" organizations (which the Scouts decided they were in 2000) and non-religious ones alike. Religion qua religion is not singled out for differential treatment. This case is not like the cases decided in the '80's and '90's that said once a government allowed non-religious groups access to its property, it had to let religious groups have the equal access; here, the government is denying access to certain non-religious groups through application of a law not targeted at religion; its denying the access to religious groups is thus not singling those groups out. Neutral laws of general applicability that don't single out religous groups deliberately for differential treatment, the Court said in Oregon v. Smith, are constitutional).

SMIRKULES

What rich humor George W. Bush offers us, as I found out today in the San Francisco Chronicle, which reports:

Mocking Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is now a standard part of President Bush's campaign pitch.

"The top Democrat leader in the House made an interesting declaration. She said, 'We love tax cuts.' Given her record, she must be a secret admirer,'' Bush told a group of donors last week in Macon, Ga.

"If this is the Democrats' idea of love,'' Bush said to laughter at a Chicago fundraiser a few days later, "I don't want to see what hate looks like.''

******************************************************************************
The joke's on you, George, because all you have to do is either look in the mirror, open your mouth, or be in the same room as a Republican colleague to see what hate looks like. Given you've done all three, then Nancy Pelosi might as well be in love with tax cuts.

"CRASS IS CLASS"

This phrase could be a slogan right out of "1984". A few years ago, a friend told me that his having purchased several expensive paintings at an art gallery (or antique store, or what have you) meant that he had "class". (The paintings, by the way, were those sickly, life-deprived images of constipated French men against constipated French backgrounds fawning over their constipated French wives nursing their constipated French babies). To which I replied, "Well, if you equate spending money with class, I guess you're right". If one equals the other, of course, then Anna Niicole Smith is one classy silicone pack, and Tony Soprano is the classiest guy on the planet. Ho hum.

Another person, an acquaintance prides himself on knowing all things Southern (even though he is not Southern; this person, whom I've described before, has a bad case of George Allen syndrome). He thought that Scarlett told RHETT that "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn," and further was "sure" that Scarlett's declamation midway through GWTW was "As god is my witness, I will keep this land!" (She's standing next to a shabby little tree, for crying out loud. What land?)

This friend, who thinks such "knowledge" makes him cultured and classy as well, recently stated: "I can't wait to hear the strains of Space Odyssey 2001 when I get to Williams-Brice for the Georgia-South Carolina game on Saturday night". I've never heard of a film named Space Odyssey 2001. Have you? I bring up these examples not to mock these people. Had they just bought their paintings and made their movie malapropisms, there would have been no need for me to comment. But their INSISTENCE that doing these acts makes them the supreme arbiters of taste, class, culture (read: I am better than you) and style gives me no choice but to point something out: it isn't "classy" to drop names - of artists, musicians, movies, or whatever - for the sole purpose of trying to impress someone, as these two do (an act which by itself does not bespeak "class") when you can't even bother to get the names right. So, please, my "classy" friends - either have the class to realize that modesty and understatement are indicators of true class, and vulgarity, attempted razzle-dazzle, and "Look at me - how much class do I have or what? Want to touch me? ) are not.

A FART ON THOMAS PUTNAM

"Cut and run," "Cut and run," GOP leaders bleat when allegedly describing Democrats' views on Iraq. (I like the Democrats' slogans, which are actually accurate: "Stay and pay," and "lie and die").

I think I finally know why the Republicans keep muttering this phrase. G.W. Bush has a well-known propensity for farting in front of subordinates, so he can gauge their reaction (Sir, yes Sir, please fart in my mouth some more!). No doubt many of them run when he does this.

In fact, they've been so used to doing so, that some have even come up with a phrase for what, subliminally, "cut and run" really means: "George Bush cuts one, and everyone runs".

CRY ME A "RIVER"

Our current climate of racis cosmology dictates that those who are bigots are not really bigots, but rather, their accusers are for calling them bigots. The climate also dictates that certain "religious" types - i.e. hatemongers - are allowed to cry victimhood not in spite of the fact that they themselves have victimized others, but because of that fact.

Take (please) Mel Gibson. The Saddam Hussein look-alike, anti-Jewish, anti-thought hatehead recently revealed the following to a no-doubt shocked Diane Sawyer:

Gibson told "Good Morning America" host Diane Sawyer he has been angry for most of his life, but didn't realise the extent of the anger he still had over accusations that his 2004 film featured anti-Semitic imagery.

He explains, "The other place it may have come from is, as you know, a couple of years ago I released the film 'Passion.'

"Even before anyone saw a frame of the film, for an entire year, I was subjected to a pretty brutal sort of public beating." (Because, of course, the information that leaked out of the film - information about the script and so forth-revealed that Gibson was making a movie that portrayed Jews as they were portrayed in the passion plays of the past - as hook-nosed monsters).

"During the course of that, I think I probably had my rights violated in many different ways as an American. You know, as an artist, as a Christian. Just a human being, you know." (There is no right to expression of bigotry without the corresponding right of others to call you on it in the Constitution - and those who do not understand this - who do not understand the value of competing speech - fail to understand it because of deficiencies in understanding of the First Amendment generally - including its, shall we say, other clauses).


At the time, some critics worried that the film could incite violence against Jews, although Gibson insists that didn't happen and that he is owed an apology. (What exactly should the apology sound like? The concerns were legitimate. Jews have been the target of pogroms for millenia; they have been targets of violence as a result of bigots getting stirred into frenzies upon seeing passion plays. Even when this film premiered, any number of "good Christian" churches pointedly, through signs annointing their hallowed halls, "reminded" us that Jews were "Christ-killers" - an absurd non-sequitur. The more accurate term would be "killers of one of their own," and since the Gibson types hate Jews anyway, why should they care about intra-family violence? Aaah, religion. It's like its own form of mental Raid: it kills thought dead).

He adds, "The film came out. It was released, and you could have heard a pin drop, you know. Even the crickets weren't chirping". (Of course, Gibson knows this not to be true, but when you don't think, your memory gets rusty).

"But the other thing I never heard was one single word of apology."

What point would an apology have served? Would it have caused a diminution in his hatred of Jews? Would it have caused him to go back on the wagon? Would it make him more respectful of women or gays? A man so brimming with hate for hate's sake does not even know how to process an apology so as to gain the sense of requisite "peace" from it.

This man is sad and pitiful. There's nothing more sad than an old-school bigot who "cannot find a role for himself in peace" (well, relative peace, anyway). Such a man should be pitied. Dismissed, yes - because he does not fight fair - but pitied.

CRY ME A "RIVER"

Our current climate of racis cosmology dictates that those who are bigots are not really bigots, but rather, their accusers are for calling them bigots. The climate also dictates that certain "religious" types - i.e. hatemongers - are allowed to cry victimhood not in spite of the fact that they themselves have victimized others, but because of that fact.

Take (please) Mel Gibson. The Saddam Hussein look-alike, anti-Jewish, anti-thought hatehead recently revealed the following to a no-doubt shocked Diane Sawyer:

Gibson told "Good Morning America" host Diane Sawyer he has been angry for most of his life, but didn't realise the extent of the anger he still had over accusations that his 2004 film featured anti-Semitic imagery.

He explains, "The other place it may have come from is, as you know, a couple of years ago I released the film 'Passion.'

"Even before anyone saw a frame of the film, for an entire year, I was subjected to a pretty brutal sort of public beating." (Because, of course, the information that leaked out of the film - information about the script and so forth-revealed that Gibson was making a movie that portrayed Jews as they were portrayed in the passion plays of the past - as hook-nosed monsters).

"During the course of that, I think I probably had my rights violated in many different ways as an American. You know, as an artist, as a Christian. Just a human being, you know." (There is no right to expression of bigotry without the corresponding right of others to call you on it in the Constitution - and those who do not understand this - who do not understand the value of competing speech - fail to understand it because of deficiencies in understanding of the First Amendment generally - including its, shall we say, other clauses).


At the time, some critics worried that the film could incite violence against Jews, although Gibson insists that didn't happen and that he is owed an apology. (What exactly should the apology sound like? The concerns were legitimate. Jews have been the target of pogroms for millenia; they have been targets of violence as a result of bigots getting stirred into frenzies upon seeing passion plays. Even when this film premiered, any number of "good Christian" churches pointedly, through signs annointing their hallowed halls, "reminded" us that Jews were "Christ-killers" - an absurd non-sequitur. The more accurate term would be "killers of one of their own," and since the Gibson types hate Jews anyway, why should they care about intra-family violence? Aaah, religion. It's like its own form of mental Raid: it kills thought dead).

He adds, "The film came out. It was released, and you could have heard a pin drop, you know. Even the crickets weren't chirping". (Of course, Gibson knows this not to be true, but when you don't think, your memory gets rusty).

"But the other thing I never heard was one single word of apology."

What point would an apology have served? Would it have caused a diminution in his hatred of Jews? Would it have caused him to go back on the wagon? Would it make him more respectful of women or gays? A man so brimming with hate for hate's sake does not even know how to process an apology so as to gain the sense of requisite "peace" from it.

This man is sad and pitiful. There's nothing more sad than an old-school bigot who "cannot find a role for himself in peace" (well, relative peace, anyway). Such a man should be pitied. Dismissed, yes - because he does not fight fair - but pitied.

A "PAT" CONCLUSION

A former House page said he witnessed inappropriate contact between former Republican Congressman Mark Foley and another page in the back of the House floor in early 2001. The page, Richard Nguyen, a first-year student at the University's Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, said he saw Foley pat a male page's behind.Foley's attorney did not return calls for comment.Nguyen said he was not sure during which month the incident took place. He was a page between January and June of 2001. Nguyen did not report the incident to authorities. At the time, the then-16-year-old thought it was "questionable activity," but he was unsure how to interpret it. "I wasn't sure if it was a social norm I wasn't accustomed to," Nguyen said. "I mean, you see athletes patting each other's asses all the time on the field."
***********************************************************************************
Memo to a certain someone: note the usage of the word "pat," not "grab". And even a "pat," as we see here, may not be such a pat thing.

DIM, ILL, DUNG

...are all words that can characterize John McCain's recent "straight squawk express" attack on Bill Clinton for his alleged failure to thwart North Korea's nuclear ambitions:

The Slime Talk Express
McCain is dead wrong about Bill Clinton and North Korea.
By Fred Kaplan, Slate.com
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006, at 4:32 PM ET

Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime. The moment came Tuesday, when he responded to charges by Sen. Hillary Clinton, his potential rival in the 2008 presidential election, that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's newborn status as a nuclear-armed power.

Here, according to the Washington Post, is what McCain said in a campaign speech near Detroit:

"I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated [with North Korea] was a failure. Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something—not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor—they did it. and they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks." (those "unacceptable" bilateral talks the Bush administration has mocked so much - as if this tone-deaf, diplomacy and reality-hating cew genuinely believes there's a difference between two-way and six-way talks. What is, after all, the difference between the two, when the biggest player in the room is asleep at the switch?)


McCain's version of history goes beyond "revisionism" to outright falsification. It is the exact opposite of what really happened. Let's take a look at the plain facts.

In the spring of 1994, barely a year into Bill Clinton's presidency, the North Koreans announced that they were about to remove the fuel rods from their nuclear reactor (as a first step to reprocessing them into plutonium), cancel their commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (which they had signed in 1985), and expel the international weapons inspectors (who had been guarding the rods under the treaty's authority).

Did Clinton "reward" them for doing these things, as McCain claims? Far from it. Not only did he push the U.N. Security Council to consider sanctions, he also ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans to send 50,000 additional troops to South Korea—bolstering the 37,000 already there—along with more than 400 combat jets, 50 ships, and several battalions of Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, multiple-launch rockets, and Patriot air-defense missiles. He also sent in an advance team of 250 soldiers to set up logistical headquarters for the influx of troops and gear.

He sent an explicit signal that removing the fuel rods would cross a "red line." Several of his former aides insist that if North Korea had crossed that line, he would have launched an airstrike on the Yongbyon reactor, even knowing that it might lead to war.

At the same time, Clinton set up a diplomatic backchannel, sending former President Jimmy Carter to Pyongyang for direct talks with Kim Il-Sung, then North Korea's dictator and the father of its present "dear leader," Kim Jong-il. (The official Washington line held that Carter made the trip on his own, but a recent memoir by three former U.S. officials, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, acknowledges that Clinton asked him to go.)

This combination of sticks and carrots led Kim Il-Sung to call off his threats—the fuel rods weren't removed, the inspectors weren't kicked out—and, a few months later, to the signing of the Agreed Framework.
McCain called the accord a "failure." This appraisal isn't quite as dead wrong as his claim that Clinton did nothing but toss Kim flowers. But it's highly misleading, to say the least.

The Agreed Framework of Oct. 21, 1994—a document that many cite but almost nobody seems to read—actually bottled up North Korea's nuclear program for eight years. Under its terms, Pyongyang kept the fuel rods locked up and kept the international inspectors on-site. In exchange, a multinational consortium, led by the United States and South Korea, was to provide North Korea with two light-water reactors to generate electricity. Gradually, Washington and Pyongyang were to establish diplomatic and trade relations.

In an annex to the accord, drafted by the consortium and signed by all parties in June 1995, it was agreed that the nuclear fuel from the light-water reactors would be exported to a third country for recycling. (This, by the way, is what President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin recently proposed that Iran do with its nuclear fuel.)

The accord fell apart, but not for the reasons that McCain and others have suggested. First, the U.S.-led consortium never provided the light-water reactors. (So much for the wild claims I've heard lately that North Korea got the bomb through Clinton-supplied technology.) Congress never authorized the money; the South Koreans, who were led by a harder-line government than the one in power now, scuttled the deal after a North Korean spy submarine washed up on their shores.

Second, when President George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he made it clear, right off, that the Agreed Framework was dead and that he had no interest in further talks with the North Korean regime; his view was that you don't negotiate with evil, you defeat it or wait for it to crumble.

Third, a few months into Bush's term, evidence mounted that the North Koreans had been … not quite violating the Agreed Framework but certainly maneuvering around it. Confronted by U.S. intelligence data in October 2002, Pyongyang officials admitted that they'd been enriching uranium—an alternative route (though much slower than plutonium) to getting a bomb.

It should be noted that the bomb that the North Koreans set off on Sunday was apparently a plutonium bomb, not a uranium bomb. In other words, it was a bomb made entirely in Bush's time, not at all in Clinton's.
After the disclosure about the uranium, Bush hardened his stance against negotiations. The North Koreans tried to replay the events of 1994. They threatened to unlock the fuel rods, expel the inspectors, and quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, through back channels (former ambassadors Bill Richardson and Donald Gregg), they signaled a willingness to back off if the Agreed Framework was resuscitated. Bush wasn't interested in playing the game. Everything fell apart.

At the end of 2002, when the North Koreans really did unlock the rods and kick out the inspectors—when they crossed what Clinton had called the "red line"—Bush didn't take military action, he didn't call for sanctions, nor did he try diplomacy. It's Bush, not Clinton, who did nothing.

And while we're on the subject of Bushes doing nothing, George H.W. Bush, the president's father, had just moved into the White House in 1989 when the CIA discovered that the North Koreans were building a reprocessing facility near their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon—the facility that could manufacture plutonium from the fuel rods. Five years later, Bill Clinton stopped them from moving the rods into this facility. Eight years after that, George W. Bush let them go ahead.

The rest is history. John McCain would do well to read up on it sometime
********************************************************************************
Why should he bother? Reading, after all, may cause spontaneous and highly volatile bursts of thinking.

AND THEN, WHEN THEY CAME FOR ME,.....

Torturing an American
11 Oct 2006 02:38 pm
Andrew Sullivan

The U.S. Congress has approved this president's extraordinary powers to detain any one at will (in violation of the Supreme Court's holding in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and in Rasul v. Bush), without charges (in violation of what a majority of the Court implicitly held in denying Jose Padilla's latest writ for certiorari), keep them indefinitely (same), and torture them if the president wants to (in violation of the holding in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld). Some have argued that this can only happen to non-citizens.

That is untrue. (After all, in Hamdi, the Court held that citizens, as well as non-citizens held at Guantanamo, had the right to challenge their detention as enemy combatants, in proceedings containing a sufficient quantum of procedural safeguards so as to make the at-will, ad hoc designation of someone as an "enemy combatant" unlawful, so who could forgive people for "thinking" this?)

Glenn Greenwald has new and important data on what was done to Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen and terror suspect, captured by the government, detained for almost three years in isolation (and moved from a military brig to civilian custody when the government realized it could not come up with a charge against him) with ever being formally charged, and, of course, tortured on the president's orders.

Money quote from his lawyer's brief (latest petition for cert, I guess; the Rehnquist five made up a law that "prevented" the Court from deciding upon the merits of Padilla's case in 2004, thus sanctioning the government's duplicity):

Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors...
He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long durations of time. He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios, and documents to further disorient him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake, and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla.

Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

Andrew concludes:

We live in a country where one man - the president - now has the power to detain any one at will, without being charged for years at a time, and tortured. This isn't an emergency provision, to be revoked when a conflict ends. Since this war has no fixed enemy and no fixed end, it is now our permanent reality. America as we have known it, is over. Al Qaeda never had the power to do this damage to constitutional liberties. We did it to ourselves.

********************************************************************************

Or, as a famed comic strip concluded, "We have met the enemy, and it is us". It's not too late - there is still a glimmer of hope. But to prevent that glimmer from fading into the void, we must, as a start - as a mere throat-cllearing - vote the bums out this November. History has shown that the greatest damage done to our liberties has not been inflicted by foreign invaders, but by us. It's not that some don't understand this lesson. They understand it all too well.

GOOD THINGS COME....

5th grade... 1988. Basically, the first year, the events of which, my mind can recall with anything approaching vividness. In fact, the first year that I began to wax sentimental about how I wished I were young again (I was only ten in 1988 - eerie, if I didn't know myself better).

The Mets were 100 and 62 that year. I attended quite a few games during the regular season. One day in October, as Halloween approached, my 5th grade teacher at Sawmill Mandracchia High School - a school within walking distance of my house - wanted to know something. A bunch of students started talking, interfering with Mrs. Smith's lesson. Mrs. Smith, an exceedingly wise woman (she is the exception to the rule about what I believe - know - about teachers - the exception that proves the rule), instead of trying to quiet us down, tried a different approach. "What is it all of you are talking about?" she asked, matter of factly. "What's going on outside of school that you're talking about?" "Halloween," one student said. "The Mets," replied another. You see, the evening before, the Mets had won the first game of the NLCS against the Dodgers, eking out the win with a Gary Carter single at Dodger Stadium. The good times were rolling again, I thought, given how the Mets invincibly plowed their way to becoming World Series Champions in 1986.

And so my class thought as well. A couple of people "seconded" the student who said "the Mets." 1988 was, after all, to be the Mets' year again - after their devastating - and devastatingly close - attempt to clinch the NL East. (One word: Terry Pendleton. More later). The Mets not only finished the regular season well ahead of the Dodgers, they had the Dodgers' number that year, having beaten them 10-1 in the regular season (back then, NL East teams played NL west teams twelve times a year. The Mets played a complete season - 162 games - yet somehow did not play that twelfth game against the Dodgers. A mystery, that's for sure - one that I'm sure I could solve if I looked hard enough). The Dodgers had barely made the playoffs.

After Carter's magic night, though, the magic began to shift elsewhere. The Mets lost game 2 at Dodger Stadium. They then were back on their home field - for three games as in 1986, and hopes were high that the Mets could win 3/3 at Shea and advance to the World Series again. And yet..... the Mets won game 3, but lost game 4 - devastatingly, thanks to a Mike Scioscia (pronounced SO-sha) home run. Game 5 thus became critical. That game aired - astonishingly - in the afternoon. I remember sitting in the house watching the game in my pajamas. I believe the game was on a day in which we had a school holiday (but which one? What holiday is in late October? I could find out the answer to this question too, and will. What's the fun of trying to fill in all of the details in a blog entry when your real goal is to just recount a memory?) I was getting restless - the Mets were being shut out, and badly. Then, I perked up. Lenny Dykstra smacked a three-run home run in the middle of the game. The Mets suddenly were only 4 runs behind. And yet, no more home runs that day... Suddenly, the unthinkable presented itself - that the Mets would lose this series. That they had to play game 6 away from home enhanced the alien-ness of the situation. I did not watch that game - at least not all of it - because I did not learn the Mets had won it until the following morning. What a relief, I thought. So, it would all come down to game 7. The last game 7 in the playoffs the Mets played was game 6 of the 1986 World Series, and the Mets seemed to conjure a win from that game out of the ether. Surely, the magic would work, one more time.

But Orel Hershiser, the Dodgers' ace in 1988, had other ideas, when he shut the Mets out in game 7, thus banishing them from the playoffs. I was devastated - the first time I ever was really devastated by a favorite team's loss of a game. I remember being quite sad for at least a couple of days, and I remember that during those days, there were reports of other fans "being depressed."

Things didn't get better from there. The Dodgers then went on to face the A's in the World Series that year. The A's were expected to win. Again, though, the Dodgers played in blissful ignorance - defiance - of that fact. Yet it was hard for me to hear the first roar of defiance, belted out in game 1. That night, I was in Hecksher State Park, camping out (I was a Webelo then). The tent in which I was trying to sleep was being pounded by the rain. My father just told me to hang tight in the tent as the storm spent itself out. He gave me a radio, and told me to listen to the World Series. And so, to keep my mind off the thought that the tent might blow away, I turned the radio on and found the channel broadcasting the game. By this point, it was rather late at night. The game was hard to hear, what with all of the noise of Scout leaders moving about, the rain pounding, and the crummy earpiece. Yet I remember something - very clearly - that I knew even at the time was quite special - happening. Kirk Gibson, limping to the plate, late in the game, saddled by injury, smacked a home run off A's reliever Dennis Eckersly (hey, I just remembered this last fact right now!). As Gibson limped his way around the basis, an immortal announcer utterance filled the TV airwaves (but not my radiowaves - which themselves were tingling with the roar of the Dodger Stadium crowd and the announcers' shock at what had happened): "I cannot believe.... what I just saw."

Nor could pretty much anyone who was following these teams. The Dodgers later dispatched the A's to become 1988 World Champions - and history remembers this team as the "Cinderella Story" Dodgers (Los Angeles ones, anyway).

Of course, to me, the team was more akin to Cinderella having been given an unfair extra amount of time to keep her glass slippers. I developed an intense hate of the Dodgers in years to come. In 1999 and 2000, I didn't get to orchestrate this hate, because although those were the first times after 1988 in which the Mets made the playoffs, the Dodgers did not. As the 2006 baseball season came to a close, a terrific surprise unfurled: the Dodgers, who won the last seven regular season games, would be the NL Wild-card winner. Since that team faces the best team in the NL in the division series, the Mets would FINALLY - 18 years later - get their rematch. No players from either team, as far as I know, are even still playing baseball, let alone ON the same team. Yet I was reminded of how the need for revenge occurs against a backdrop of continuity when I saw, sitting in the stands, Tommy Lasorda, the 1988 Dodgers manager. God, I wanted the Mets to win this series. Again, the Mets were the favorites and had the better head-to-head record. Wags were reminding television audiences of what happened in 1988. Would history repeat itself?

No, wonderfully no. This year, the Mets swept the Dodgers - completing the sweep tonight - to advance to the next round of the playoffs. 4 Mets had recently been traded from the Dodgers in a move that suggested the Dodgers wanted to shoot themselves in the foot, and one of them, Shawn Green, made the game-ending catch.

This win was 18 years in the making. In 1999, I remember winning a $50 bet over the 1988 World Series. Two Mets fans at the law office at which I worked that summer - fans much more knowledgeable than I about the Mets - insisted, in a casual discussion that was about - what else? - how the Mets might make the playoffs for the first time in 11 years - that the Mets lost the 1988 series in 6 games. I've never bet on a sports game in the way such betting is normally done - i.e. I'll bet you two dollars that the Mets will win tonight. Yet I made this bet on and about history. I knew I was right. My memories of anguish finally produced something positive - $50 - as I collected $25 from the two fans. The $50 was sweet (especially considering one of the people who gave me the money was beyond an asshole, and mewled, "I'm offended!" after he didn't pay up for over four days). But revenge is sweeter.

WITH LIBERTY AND TORTURE FOR ALL

I'll just leave it at that.

THE PEN TRULY IS FRIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

Aspiring young wankers, this one's for you! Want to join the fast-paced, no-fact, no-thought world of conservative journalism? Check whatever brains you have left at the door, read this article, apply its tips, and you'll soon have your own "book" selling for $1.99 a week BEFORE it has come out on every reputable conservative website (i.e. World Nut Daily, Inhuman Events Online, Powerswine) in America!!

http://oldamericancentury.org/bb/index.php?showtopic=1960

YEAH, BUT THEY'RE "PRO-ISRAEL"

Last week, Congress eliminated the right of habeas corpus for non-citizens accused of being "enemy combatants," and, in the same piece of legislation in which they eliminated this, basically permitted the torture of suspected terrorists. This country, quite simply, is out of control, and I don't even know what to say on this point. This is one of those times where I do truly feel ashamed to be American. "You have no civil liberties if you're dead," squawked the NY Daily News, another newspaper that worships Bush because he's all terra terra terra all the time. There's another saying that I think is more apt: "Better to die on our feet than live on our knees." If the Constitution continues to be shredded in this matter, we are in a very real sense "dead already"; all it would take at that point is for a terrorist to just finish the job.

On September 11, 2001, 2,700 innocent people died. It was a horrible day. Yet this nation has gone through a civil war, two world wars, two wars against the British, and wars in Southeast Asia - wars with a higher death toll than that - and somehow managed, up until now, to keep its head on its shoulders. To paraphrase Captain Picard as he described a con artist, "She so thoroughly played on your fears that your people were all but ready to surrender to her." This country's collective ignorance, sloth and stupidity has given it, alas, no better than what it deserves. But those who care at all about "getting busy living" instead of "getting busy dying" have been screwed to at the treshold of being beyond the point of recognition.

I weep, and pray, for us.