Fisking of the President

[Fisking is a term invented by right-wingers that means doing a close and detailed examination of someone else's speech, article, etc. For some reason, right-wingers use the term in a disparaging manner.]

We must address the root causes that are driving up gas prices.

In the past decade, America's energy consumption has been growing about 40 times faster than our energy production. That means we're relying more on energy produced abroad.

To reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, we must take four key steps.

First, we must better use technology to become better conservers of energy.

And secondly, we must find innovative and environmentally sensitive ways to make the most of our existing energy resources, including oil, natural gas, coal and safe, clean nuclear power.

Third, we must develop promising new sources of energy, such as hydrogen, ethanol or bio-diesel.

Fourth, we must help growing energy consumers overseas, like China and India, apply new technologies to use energy more efficiently and reduce global demand of fossil fuels.

I applaud the House for passing a good energy bill. Now the Senate needs to act on this urgent priority.

American consumers have waited long enough. To help reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, Congress needs to get an energy bill to my desk by this summer, so I can sign it into law.

Back in the early days of Bush's first term, I was amazed to, all of the sudden, start hearing talk about an energy crisis. I tend to pay pretty close attention to the news, so this was a surprise to me. Now, could it be that Bush and his people were more informed and aware than I was? Consider that Bush was Vice-President of Arbusto Energy, which nearly went bankrupt and had to merge with Spectrum 7, after which Spectrum 7 reported a net loss of $1.5 million. Bush than joined the board of Harken Energy, where he attracted the attention of investigators due to the loss of $23.2 million and his suspected involvement in insider trading. So yes, with Bush's career being heavily involved in energy exploration, it's entirely likely that Bush & Co. were more informed on the energy problem/crisis than I was. But if the problem has been growing “over the past decade” and he's only been president for five years, then that suggests he had five years to plan for an energy strategy upon coming into office. Yet at his press conference of 28 Apr 05, he complains that “American consumers have waited long enough.” and that an energy bill is needed on an expedited basis.

Bush's desire for a “good energy bill” that includes “innovative and environmentally sensitive ways to make the most of our existing energy resources” is not a bad thing in and of itself, but where has this idea been for the past five years? In 2001, Vice-President Cheney's energy task force rather famously stiff-armed the renewable energy lobby. In the 2005 House energy bill, “Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass, ...noted that the bill does nothing to improve the fuel economy of automobiles.” and with $8.1 billion in tax breaks “going to promote the coal, nuclear, oil and natural-gas industries.” this is hardly a conservation-aware administration. As Business Week puts it:

Sadly, the plan Bush proposed would do little to increase existing supplies of oil, gas, or electricity, or decrease domestic demand for energy -- the two steps that would really make a difference.

They also point out that giving assistance to the nuclear industry is a waste of money as long as the issue of nuclear waste remains unresolved. “But the waste issue is a political hot potato, so Bush steered clear of it.“

Here's a classic:

"There will be no price gouging at gas pumps in America," Bush said.

He spoke on the same day the world's largest publicly traded oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp., announced that its profit for the first three months of the year had risen 44 percent to $7.86 billion from the corresponding quarter a year ago.

Sorry, but the new attention Bush is paying to energy policy priorities like renewable energy, public transportation, etc., is mostly just PR boilerplate. I'm prepared to give him credit for being serious when I see actual policy result from all of his wonderful words and hazily-defined good intentions.

Social Security

Franklin Delano Roosevelt testified in 1941 that the Social Security program initiated in 1935 was designed in a very deliberate and conscious way:

Those taxes were never a problem of economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those payroll taxes there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.

The Wall St. Journal editorial complains that FDR decided to make participation in Social Security universal (Wrongly suggesting that rich people stay in the program because they're stupid and don't know any better.) so that wealthier people wouldn't abandon Social Security. The editorial quotes Wilbur Cohen, who argued in 1972 that:

I am convinced that, in the United States, a program that deals only with the poor will end up being a poor program. . . . Ever since the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, programs only for the poor have been lousy, no good, poor programs. And a program that is only for the poor--one that has nothing in it for the middle income and the upper income--is, in the long run, a program the American public won't support.

Contrast that with Bush's proposal:

We also have a responsibility to improve Social Security by directing extra help to those most in need and by making it a better deal for younger workers.

In other words, Bush would toss the whole Social Security program overboard by first turning it into a “program that deals only with the poor”. This would reduce the stake of all other Americans in the program and revive the old charges of welfare abuse that were such a staple of American politics before Clinton's welfare reform. To argue that either FDR in 1941 or Bush in 2005 are being cynical about human nature is 1. Entirely correct and 2. Beside the point. FDR was doing something good, creating a program that Americans have shown strong support for over the 70 years that it's been in existence. Bush is trying to destroy that program so that only the rich will retire in comfort. For everybody else to finish out their days living in a one-room apartment heated only by a single candle and eating cat food is obviously a scenario that Bush and Co. are perfectly comfortable with.

I'm also puzzled by this section:

First, millions of Americans depend on Social Security checks as a primary source of retirement income, so we must keep this promise to future retirees as well. As a matter of fairness, I propose that future generations receive benefits equal to or greater than the benefits today's seniors get.

Secondly, I believe a reformed system should protect those who depend on Social Security the most. So I propose a Social Security system in the future where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off.

By providing more generous benefits for low-income retirees, we'll make this commitment: If you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty.

This reform would solve most of the funding challenges facing Social Security.

But both provisions would increase the cost of Social Security. By retaining benefits for older Americans and by having a system where “benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off“, Bush appears to be suggesting something for everybody. But a problem with Bush's proposals that the media usually ignores is that the cost of establishing privatized accounts would hugely outweigh any potential benefits. Bush's plan is guaranteeing that Social Security would be more expensive, not less. Once the aware citizen includes the costs as well as the benefits of privatization, it becomes clear that no, Bush's “reform” does not solve any of the funding challenges.

Iraq

I just can't come up with the motivation to read anything Bush has to say on the issue after this:

But, nevertheless, there are still some in Iraq who aren't happy with democracy. They want to go back to the old days of tyranny and darkness and torture chambers and mass graves.

This sort of straw-man arguing has been a staple of Bush's political arguments for his entire presidency and probably well before that. This argument treats Iraqis as stupid, moronic dolts who can't tie their own shoes without assistance from “Dear Leader” Bush. It's a cowardly way to argue because he completely dodges the very real problems Iraqis have with the American occupation of their country. As the vile atrocities comitted in the Abu Ghrab prison showed, Americans did not leave the “torture chambers” of the old days behind at all.

Nothing else he says on the issue can possibly be of any significance.

Interesting view on Vietnam War

David Horowitz has an interesting view on the American Left and domestic opposition to the Vietnam War:

In the Vietnam War the United States was supporting a dictatorship in South Vietnam on the grounds that the dictatorship was anti-Communist. “New Leftists” who believed by and large that Communism was a flawed attempt to create societies governed by the principles of equality and justice had an argument (whether one considers it plausible or not) for opposing the United States defense of the South Vietnamese regime. Perhaps (so they reasoned) a victory for the guerrilla forces of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam would mean the emergence of a society that honored the principles of equality and justice. This was an incentive to see that America was defeated. And this indeed is the delusional vision that motivated people like Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda other anti-war activists.

First off, Edward Herman wrote in Demonstration Elections about the US-staged elections in Vietnam:

Staged elections are not new. They are “demonstration elections” and have been around for a long period of time. From Vietnam in the 1960s to the recent Afghanistan elections. “The purpose of these elections - crafted by the US - was to persuade US citizens and especially Congress that we were invading these countries and supporting a savage war against government opponents at the invitation of a legitimate, freely elected government. The main purpose of a demonstration election is to legitimize an invasion and occupation, not to choose a new government”, wrote Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead.

For the Americans, “what happens before or after the elections concerns them not one iota. What matters is that the elections become a good PR exercise for the Bush administration”, Wamid Nadhim of Baghdad University told Al-Ahram Weekly. Furthermore, these elections are also seen as an excuse for Tony Blair and other “coalition of the willing” leaders to justify their support for Washington’s illegal war of aggression and occupation.

So yes, Horowitz' statement is literally correct, the US was supporting a dictatorship in Vietnam, but as Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead point out, the US leadership expended a good deal of time and effort to convince the American people that they were supporting a democracy there.

The idea that leftists among the American opposition to the war were trying to defend Vietnam's independence because Vietnam was trying to defend “the principles of equality and justice” is an interesting notion. Personally, I was only 15 when Saigon fell, but I've read a great deal about the Vietnam War since then and I'm still under the impression that I developed at a young age when I concluded that Americans were simply not wanted in Vietnam. The American soldiers were not welcome there, even though American soldiers, as individual persons, demonstrated all of the fine qualities that US myth and legend have talked about for the past two-plus centuries.

I also read the Port Huron Statement a few years back, the philosophical basis for the leftism of the 60s and I don't remember much there about anyone defending Vietnam because it was such a marvelous society. I remember the radicals of the 60s being very concerned about American society and how it could be improved.

Seems to me that the Left wanted the US out of Vietnam as 1. American troops were not wanted there and 2. Because America was expending a huge amount of blood and treasure there for no discernible purpose. As Steve Gilliard points out, there are also many other purely military problems with Vietnam then that are hurting us in Iraq now.

Social Justice Sunday

"We religious progressives value the diversity of thought and opinion among people of faith. We agree that no individual, group or side of any issue owns our faith. As people of faith, we find hope and compassion in witnessing the questions and answers of others and honoring their struggles.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln: My concern is not whether God is on our side. My great concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."

--Clergy and Laity Network

WHAT: Social Justice Sunday - Faith and Freedom Vigil

WHEN: 2:30 pm, April 24, 2005

WHERE: Central Presbyterian Church
318 W. Kentucky St. Louisville, Kentucky

CONTACT: Clergy and Laity Network and DriveDemocracy

Progressive Religious Communities, our leaders and our community friends are gathering to witness:

OUR OUTRAGE over the attempt by the Family Research Council and its radical Christian Right colleagues to highjack the judicial selection process for their politiclal/theocratic agenda

OUR DISMAY Senate Majority Leader, Senator Bill Frist, is lending his name and influence to the Family Research Council's claim of universal support from "people of faith" for its strategy, thereby giving false religious credentials to a thinly veiled political agenda

OUR POSITIVE COMMITMENT to defend and strengthen our social context in its commitment to fairness for all people, free of biased religious doctrines and prejudiced attitudes which are inimical to a mature religious understanding of the standards of inclusiveness and justice in American life

The Social Justice Sunday invitation is available at the Building the Beloved Community. Please distribute the invitation to all progressives. You can download the invitation as a word document here.

Senator Frist's Cynical Use of Religion and Politics

Senator Bill Frist has joined with this organization and they are attacking the faith of Democrats and progressives in a cynical, partisan effort to win support for a handful of extremist judicial nominees. The Council is on record saying that Democrats are "against people of faith."

For more information on the disheartening comments that Senator Frist supports, read the article at the New York Times.

Click here to download Clergy and Laity Network and Drive Democracy's press release.

Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs, Rabbi of Kol Tikvah Synagogue in Woodland Hills, California and Dr. Nazir Khaja, Chairman of the Islamic Information Service, have authored a joint statement in response to Senator Frist's actions. The statement is posted on the Building the Beloved Community website.

Peace not Poverty Declaration

Thank you to all 13,287 participants of the Peace not Poverty write-in. The successful Peace not Poverty Declaration was completed on April 2. It was read for the first time in Riverside Church, New York, on April 4 by the final consensus leader, Kelley Ogden, of Houston, Texas. Visit Building a Beloved Community to read the completed declaration. And while you're there don't forget to register and join the Beloved Community.

Contribute and Learn More

To contribute and learn more about this emerging progressive interfaith movement, visit Building a Beloved Community, Peacenotpoverty.org or DriveDemocracy.org.

Co-sponsors include the National Council of Churches, United for Peace and Justice, Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq (CALC-I), Fellowship of Reconciliation, Unitarian Universalist Association, The Shalom Center, Faith Voices for the Common Good, Drive Democracy, Disciples Justice Action Network, Pax Christi USA, Progressive Christians Uniting, Baptist Peace Fellowship, Christians for Justice Action, Rainbow-PUSH Coalition, World Sikh Council - America Region, Faithful America, True Majority, Tikkun Community, Bruderhof Communities, Protestants for the Common Good, WHALE Center, Call to Action, Church of the Brethren Witness / Washington Office, The Witness Magazine, Global Justice and Peace Ministry - Riverside Church, Episcopal Divinity School, Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education, Lutheran Human Relations Association, People for Peace and Justice, Gold Star Families for Peace, Peace and Security Project of Iowa, Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Mercury Public Media, House of Imagene Shelters, Jewish Voice for Peace, African American Women's Clergy Association, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Disciples Peace Fellowship, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Episcopal Peace Fellowship of East Carolina, Plowshares Institute, The Witherspoon Society, United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, Independent Anglo-Catholic Church of America, OneLife Institute for Spirituality & Social Transformation, Jewish Peace Fellowship, American Ethical Union, Dare to Dream Network, Interfaith Alliance, The Mountain Retreat & Learning Centers, South Texas Alliance for Peace and Justice, Word and World, Sojourners, Starr King School for the Ministry, Topia.net, Peacecentral.org, South Texas Interfaith Coalition, Erie Benedictines for Peace, Lexington Diocesan Council for Peace and Justice (Catholic Diocese of Lexington, KY), Peace and Justice Committee of the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, CA, and a growing number of religious and social justice bodies. The Riverside Church is graciously serving as the April 4 host church. Clergy and Laity Network (CLN), also a co-sponsor, serves as coordinator. A regularly updated word document is also available that contains the growing list of co-sponsors. For links to the co-sponsoring organizations visit Building a Beloved Community.

Having conversations with polemicists

How does a right-winger go about having a conversation with that extremist fellow of the left, Michael Moore?

Maloney began his film career by "staking out" Michael Moore "for four days," hoping to confront him and "provok[e] a flustered reaction," which he would then post on his weblog Brain-terminal.com. Moore didn't flinch; instead he told Maloney that documentary filmmaking "should be open to all people of all political persuasions." "It should not just be people who are liberal, or left-of-center, or whatever," the Oscar-winner said. "Make your movies, and then the people will respond or not respond to them."

Sounds to me like Michael's a pretty reasonable kind of guy, one who believes in free speech, the legitimacy of political opposition, etc. Eric Alterman takes some grief from the author of the execrable Time Magazine piece for being mean to Ann Coulter:

I think a pertinent thing about Alterman is that he has said publicly that he will not engage Ann Coulter in debate. He won't go on television with her. So his solution to Ann Coulter is to act as though she doesn't exist ... I don't agree with that approach to people that we don't necessarily like. I think you engage those people in open debate, you get those people to talk about their ideas, and then you weigh those ideas.

Sounds like an eminently reasonable position. But I wonder how to debate someone like Coulter:

COULTER (Slander; page 205): Except for occasional exotic safaris to Wal-Mart or forays into enemy territory at a Christian Coalition dinner, liberals do not know any conservatives. It makes it easier to demonize them that way. It’s well and good for Andrew Sullivan to talk about a “truce.” But conservatives aren’t the ones who need to be jolted into the discovery that the “bogeyman” of their imagination are “not quite as terrifying as they thought.” Conservatives already know that people they disagree with politically can be “charming.” Also savagely cruel bigots who hate ordinary Americans and lie for sport. (emphasis added by DailyHowler.com)

Is this really someone that one can possibly hope to have a reasonable discussion with?

COULTER (Treason; page 1): Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love American, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence.

Keep in mind that liberals, according to how one defines the term, compose somewhere between 50 and 120 million Americans! I agree with Alterman, publicly debating Ann Coulter sounds to me like a complete waste of time. When someone begins her argument by claiming you're a traitor who sides with "the enemy", there's simply nothing more to say.

The DailyHowler piece goes on to describe how Ann's hysterically rude and coarse comments are all meant in jest, Sorry, but I agree with the Daily Howler folks I saw the clip where Ann is interviewed by Katie Couric on the Today Show and Coulter is completely drop-dead serious. There's absolutely no question that she means every single word. Eric Alterman specifies

Coulter has twice either wished for, or joked about the mass murder of American journalists. She has called for, or joked about, the assassination of a sitting American president. She has called for, or joked about, the mass murder of entire populations of Moslem nations. She has referred to the president of the United States and his wife as “pond scum,” among many other things. She has called Christie Todd Whitman a "birdbrain" and a "dimwit"; Jim Jeffords a "half-wit"; and Gloria Steinem a "deeply ridiculous figure" who "had to sleep" with a rich liberal to fund Ms. magazine--all of which makes her "a termagant."

Coulter humourous? Huh? On what planet?

UPDATE: Michael Berube reproduces Coulter's view on the Oklahoma City bombing of 10 years back.

My letter to Time Magazine

Every now and then, someone in the mainstream media scribbles out an article about how terribly unprofessional and unreliable the blogs are. As a lot of blogs are one-person shops that close down and reopen for personal reasons (A case in point is that immediately after the 2004 election, many liberal political bloggers ran recipes and cooking tips because they were burned out on politics. Within a week or so they were back to their old selves.) and as their fact-checking/correcting depends entirely on how conscientious the blogger is, a lot of this criticism is valid.

But when mainstream media criticizes the blogs and then prints up complete junk like the 6,000-word-with-pin-up-cover of a whack-job like Ann Coulter, they completely forgo any claim to be putting out any kind of superior product.

This is a woman who refers to “liberals” as traitors. Now, being a traitor is defined in the US Constitution as a specific crime. According to one's definition of “liberal”, whether someone self-identifies as a liberal or whether one (or one's parents) voted for John Kerry, liberals make up between 50 to 120 MILLION people!!! A conservative referred to Coulter as engaging in “parody”. Having read some of her writing, I assure you she is not engaged in anything of the sort. She writes with the complete conviction that what she says is true.

The article makes it sound as though Coulter's work on the Paula Jones case was something to be proud of. As I remember it, Ms Jones managed to prove that she and Governor Bill Clinton attended the same convention and, well, that was about it. Everything else that was reported about their encounter was 100% dependent on us taking Ms Jones' word for it. The judge in her case told her that even if everything she asserted were true, she still would not have an actionable case of harassment to lodge against Clinton.

April and May of 2004 were exceedingly bloody months for American troops in Iraq. For Coulter to assert in that June that the war was going “fabulously well” strikes me as the statement of a deranged lunatic, yet the Time article makes no comment upon the sanity of this statement.

The assertion that Coulter's long bibliography contains only one misstatement of fact is simply a lie. One can't possibly be so ignorant of her writing as to think that her work is generally or even mostly accurate, There's also a reason I didn't repeat your term “mistake”. Coulter's misstatements are not “errors”. She knows full well that what she's saying isn't true. When her fellow polemicist Rush Limbaugh makes misstatements, it's far too kind to refer to them as errors as he doesn't even have a fact-checker on his staff. When he makes misstatements, they're the result of a deliberate and conscious policy. Both Ann and Rush engage in what can be legally referred to “reckless disregard” of the facts of the case. They just couldn't possibly care less about whether what they're saying is accurate.

And...wow...Coulter “...can write about gender issues with particular sensitivity.”?? Her statement on feminism begins: “The real reason I loathe and detest feminists is...” And refers to a “girl general”??? If THESE count as sensitivity...hoo boy!!

This letter is only tangentially about Ann Coulter, which is why I didn't. write it to her, but to you. Mostly, it's about Time Magazine's incredibly sloppy and careless editorial process. If the comment about Coulter's accuracy was not a deliberate and outright lie, then I have very serious concerns about the asleep-at-the-wheel editors and fact-checkers who work there. Media people have been heard to complain about how no one respects them, readership is declining, people don't believe them, etc., etc.

I assure you, this type of article is not going to help matters.

Further thoughts concerning war on terrorism

One Steven Bodzin goes through:

...tens of thousands of pages of strategy objectives from government agencies and think tanks filled with negative goals like "disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations," "conquer this enemy," and "defeat the forces of evil wherever they are."
But a definition of victory was nowhere to be found. (emp mine)

Bodzio locates a document that seems to provide a clear blueprint, but several phone and email queries fail to uncover just who or even what department composed the document. Finally, he asks a few pundits and gets the following response from Michael Ledeen:

Still, my question was: What would the world look like then? [That is, after victory in the war on terror]

"There won't be people blowing us up," he said. "They won't have a nation-state supporting them. That's very important."

"How will we know when we're getting close to victory?"

"We'll start seeing defectors," he replied. "It will be all the usual signs when someone's getting ready to lose a war. A drop in morale, recruiting getting more difficult. You'll see their followers throwing down their weapons, giving up."

The problem with this scenario, of course, is the same one that has made victory in Iraq so elusive. There's never been any indication that the insurgents or the resistance in Iraq has ever been organized in a top-down fashion. It's never been apparent that there has been anything like a centralized chain of command or a hierarchical structure. I've pointed out before that a Middle East think tank identified as many as 15 separate armed resistance groups as early as August 2003. Certainly, individual groups may conduct individual operations in an organized fashion, i.e., the assault on Abu Ghraib on 2 Apr 2005 most definitely shows organization, but that's a far cry from having an Iraqi "National Liberation Front". There has never been any sign of a country-wide organization coordinating resistance activities, either violent or non-violent. The idea that we'll see "defectors" and people "throwing down their weapons" is an appealing fantasy, but sounds to me like a vision far removed from reality.

The conclusion is that no one in the Bush Administration appears to have any idea how to even define what victory would look like in a war against terrorism.

So very, very sad.

The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

An appropriate point is made:

"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.

Not only does the Bush Administration refuse to admit that their policies have made things worse than ever before, they don't have the courage to admit what a complete disaster those policies have been.

Admitting a problem is the first step to solving it. The Bush Administration has demonstrated that they have no interest whatsoever in even attempting to solve this problem.

Fairness versus Balance

Major problem here, Media Matters quotes Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) as saying:

I wonder if there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence.

How to make this statement seem reasonable? How to make the Senator not sound as though he were advocating/justifying violence against judges who are performing their duties in a perfectly fair and respectable manner? How do we “balance” the conservatives versus the liberals and make it seem as though both sides are equally to blame? Why, that's simple! As DailyKos puts it, CNN decided to just “make shit up”.

Were any of the judges in the Terri Shiavo case “making law”? Were any of them engaged in “judicial activism”? According to 11th Circuit judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., no.

A popular epithet directed by some members of society, including some members of Congress, toward the judiciary involves the denunciation of "activist judges." Generally, the definition of an "activist judge" is one who decides the outcome of a controversy before him according to personal conviction, even one sincerely held, as opposed to the dictates of the law as constrained by legal precedent and, ultimately, our Constitution. In resolving the Schiavo controversy it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people -- our Constitution. [p. 3]

So what do we hear from the commentators at CNN?

In a segment that ran twice on CNN on April 5, on Inside Politics and on Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider repeated Republican charges that "activist judges" were to blame in the Schiavo case without questioning this formulation:

SCHNEIDER: Take the Terri Schiavo case. Republicans portrayed activist judges as the villains.

Media Matters then cites several more cases where Republican charges of “judicial activism” are repeated verbatim without the commentator ever giving a clear explanation of what is meant by this phrase, without going into Karl Rove's part in popularizing the phrase and whether or not the phrase is even accurate. Plainly, on April 5, when talking about the Terri Schiavo case, it wasn't.

The problem is one of fairness versus balance. It's nice to have both, but in this case, CNN clearly felt that they could either have balance, i.e. make both sides look to be equally at fault or they could have fairness, i.e. portray the judicial system as working the way it should and Senator Cornyn as a wildly irresponsible demagogue.

Blast from the past

In regards to the following quote from David Limbaugh (Is he related to Rush Limbaugh? Probably. They seem to have similar facial expressions. I could try looking it up, but I just can't get motivated to.)

It seems the Bush administration bends over backward to avoid placing its predecessor in a negative light. Remember the way it buried the trashing of the White House by the outgoing Clinton personnel?

No I don't and I paid close attention to the case at the time. Clinton's people left and a GAO investigation later established that the extent of the damage that could be blamed on the Clinton people was that a few computer keyboards were missing their “W” key. There was also some extremely minor damage of a similar nature. The Bush Administration blew this up into a minor-league scandal, accusing Clinton's people of “trashing” White House and Executive Building offices, without of course being able to produce the slightest shred of evidence to back up their accusations.

We were told that a group of Republicans took money out of their own pockets in order to pay for extensive damages. Further, we were to told that they didn't keep any receipts and could not identify where they had purchased the new office equipment and furniture that allegedly had to buy. Nor could they identify where all of the damaged items were disposed of.

This is not the slightest bit believable as I worked as a Personnelman in the Navy and consistently found that high-ranking personnel were extremely careful about money and always insisted on every last dime that the government owed them. I never worried about why this was so and simply accepted it as a fact of life. I noted at the time that by doing this, the Chiefs and Officers kept the Personnelmen and Disbursing Clerks on their toes and kept us sensitive as to how our jobs affected ordinary sailors. I simply can't believe that high-ranking government personnel of any branch or status would be so casual about money matters as to spend serious money out of their own pockets without worrying about being reimbursed. And had the described “trashing” taken place, reimbursment for replacing damaged equipment would have been granted without question, as a matter of course.

David Limbaugh takes the same casual, fact-free attitude towards the truth that Rush does. The Bush Administration did NOT “bend over backwards”, it did NOT “avoid placing its predecessor in a negative light” and did NOT bury any news about it. They instead MADE UP news and created a scandal out of thin air.

Krauthammer on the Middle East

I read this:

All this regional mischief-making is critical because we are at the dawn of an Arab Spring -- the first bloom of democracy in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and throughout the greater Middle East -- and its emerging mortal enemy is a new axis of evil whose fulcrum is Syria. The axis stretches from Iran, the other remaining terror state in the region, to Syria to the local terror groups -- Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- that are bent on destabilizing Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and destroying both Lebanese independence and the current Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement.

and thought "Where have I heard extremist, uncompromisingly black-and-white drivel like this before?" Then I remembered the anti-pornography feminists of the 1980s:

The year 1981 saw the publication of two major feminist attacks on pornography: Susan Griffin's Pornography and Silence and Andrea Dworkin's Pornography: Men Possessing Women. Griffin's study drew parallels between the porn industry's exploitation of women and the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Andrea Dworkin stated her case in the stereotypical and absolutist terms that would soon characterize the second wave feminist anti-porn crusade: "all pornography is made under conditions of inequality based on sex, overwhelmingly by poor, desperate, homeless, pimped women who were sexually abused as children".

The last figure in the equation of pornography = women hating was the idea that pornography was entirely produced and consumed by men with women as its hapless victims. According to Catharine MacKinnon, pornography is produced for, "men to masturbate to women being exposed, humiliated, violated, degraded, mutilated, dismembered, bound, gagged, tortured and killed". (emp mine)

First off, Krauthammer's reference to an "Arab Spring" evokes the term "Prague Spring" and images of Eastern Europeans struggling to cast off the communist yoke set upon them by the Soviet Union back in the glamorous and heady days of the late 1960s, when freedom was breaking out all over, only to be crushed by Nixon and Brezhnev, seemingly working together to snuff out the spirit of liberty and propel counter-revolution. As Professor Juan Cole points out, however, there is no single, monolithic enemy in the Arab world that comes anywhere close to playing the role that the Soviet Union played in Eastern Europe from the late 1940s to the end of the 1980s. Krauthammer's extremist and simplistic language evokes the anti-pornography feminists with pictures like "emerging mortal enemy is a new axis of evil whose fulcrum is Syria". This, for me, brings up images of hysterical, raving nutcases with wild hair, gleaming eyes and cries of "It's alive!", their background lit by flashes of lightning, rumbles of thunder and swelling organ music.
Unfortunately, Krauthammer's ravings would be amusing, but I fear he speaks for the Bush Administration and the Neocons who would like to extend "liberation" Iraq 2003-style over the whole of the Arab world, with Iran and Syria merely representing the enemies of the moment, with the guiding question on their part being "What is our oil doing under their sand?"
I was especially struck by the comment that: "Everyone also knows that Syria is abetting the terrorist insurgency in Iraq." Retired General Wesley Clark appears to leave open the possibility of a connection there:

Engage neighbors for better border security. Iraq is now a magnet for every jihadist in the Middle East. Closing the borders requires cooperation from the countries bordering Iraq. But currently, Syria and Iran don't want us to succeed because they fear they are next on our invasion list. Wes Clark recommends engaging Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia with both carrots and sticks. We have serious issues with each of these countries, but closing those borders is the most urgent priority right now. We must show Iraq's neighbors that cooperation with us is in their interest and will help their region.

Clark obviously does not refer to what "everybody knows" because (A) there is simply no proof of any serious role played by either country in the Iraqi resistance to the American occupation and (B) simply looking at the fact that virtually no reconstruction has taken place in Iraq over the past two years, along with other factors, seems quite sufficient to explain the resistance. The fact that Iraq also has veterans of past conflicts who were abruptly dismissed from service shortly after the American occupation began seems quite suffficient to explain where the expertise in recent attacks like that on Abu Ghraib in the past week were staffed by. It's also noteworthy that Clark explains possible Iranian and Syrian help to Iraqis as being a reasonable reaction to America's aggressive unilateralism over the past few years.

"Curveball" and WMD claims

The Guardian story makes it absolutely crystal clear that the Iraqi agent named "Curveball" could not possibly have succeeded in convincing American intelligence that Iraq possessed WMD unless the Amercans were fully prepared to believe such claims. Such phrases as:

The commission concluded that Curveball's information was worse than none at all. 'Worse than having no human sources,' it said, 'is being seduced by a human source who is telling lies.'
------
It now appears there were problems with Curveball from the start, but the intelligence community was willing to believe him 'because the tales he told were consistent with what they already believed.
------
While the results were inconclusive, a US official was surprised to find Curveball had a hangover and said he 'might be an alcoholic.'
(emphasis mine)

These are not phrases one uses unless one is describing an agency that was in an extreme state of credulousness. And why would they be willing to be so gullible? Let's look at this passage:

[Curveballs] information was central to an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq 'has' biological weapons, and was widely used by President Bush and Dick Cheney to make their case for war.

People have previously noted that the NIE was widely used to justify the Iraq War, but that Cheney first began hinting at the "necessity" of going to war with Iraq as early as July 2002 and that Bush made a speech to the UN in September 2002 that purportedly made the case for going to war (My own personal estimation at the time was that Bush's speech didn't justify the death of a single person, American or Iraqi, solder or civilian My feeling afterwards was that "If he had a case to make, that was the time when he would have made it."), but that the NIE wasn't produced until a month after that. George Tenet, being a good bureaucrat, rather obviously decided that he had better get with the program and produce a National Intelligence Estmate that backed up what his bosses were saying.

Terri Schiavo vs Elian Gonzales

Well, old boy Jonah Goldberg is at it again, making points that I disagree with. His points tend not to be obviously wrong, they usually need some exploration and examination before we can dismiss them. So what can I say? Jonah's a good writer for me to beat up on.
BTW, I saw the comment "Can we beat up Jonah about the expansion of eligibility for join the Army? He can put on a uniform and fight in Iraq now!" We probably could, but the only people who would care are fellow progressives anyway. Here, Jonah disagrees with the notion that the legislative overreaching in the Terri Schiavo case will politically harm conservatives:

First, keep in mind that what has prompted the most recent bout of panic is the passionate — and legitimate — differences over the Terri Schiavo case. Just as hard cases make bad law, they also tend to make for bad analysis. Lots of people are pointing to the fact that the polls do not support Congress's decision to intervene on Schiavo's behalf (even as the nature of that involvement has been often wildly exaggerated). The Republican party has exposed itself, if these pessimists are to be believed, with a dangerous overreach that will haunt it for years.

Uh, not likely. Whatever you think of the legislative branch's involvement, it's doubtful the issue will be a political albatross for the GOP any more than, say, the Elian Gonzales scandal permanently tarnished the Democrats. Indeed, recall that the Clinton impeachment drive was far more deleterious for the GOP's standing in the polls over a far longer period of time, and if that effort did permanent damage to the Republican party, it's hard to find today. The federal government is run by Republicans for as far as the eye can see.

Was the Elian Gonzales case a matter of overreaching? Certainly it got people excitable, it prompted much hate and discontent towards President Clinton and Janet Reno, Clinton's Attorney General, certainly came in for her share of verbal abuse as well. There are extremely significant difference's in the two cases, though. One, the Gonzales case was not Clinton's idea. Elian was found at sea clinging to a raft. This was quite naturally seen as a dramatic moment and for his father, a patriotic Cuban who didn't object to Fidel Castro's rule over the island, to ask for his son to be returned was seen by "America the Beautiful" conservatives as an outrage. The seizure of Elian from his relatives in America was legally correct, but was seen as a betrayal of American values.
The Terri Schiavo case, on the other hand, was a case of Republicans President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Florida Governor Jeb Bush deciding to make a major federal case out of what should have remained a private family matter, a subject for the courts as opposed to being a subject for national debate.
Another problem is that the courts were very firmly on the side of the husband Michael Schiavo and against Terri's parents, the Schindlers. Republicans took the side of the Schindlers against the courts. In the Gonzales case, Clinton took the same side as the courts did. In both cases, Democrats stood for legal principles and the rule of law. In both cases, Republicans have stood for immediate political advantage, taking the easy, unprincipled and what they thought would be a popular position.

As I've mentioned in my occasional comments on the abortion issue, the Schiavo case for me boils down to "Who has the authority to make a final decision?" In both cases, authority cannot be split or shared. The final decision must be unambiguous and final. People can't "split the difference" and people can't reach a meaningful compromise. The fetus must either be brought to term or aborted, Terri could either hang onto life support forever or she could be allowed to perish.
The authority could have been placed in the hands of her parents, it was instead given to her husband. People have argued that as Michael had a relationship with another woman while Terri was in the condition of "Lights on, but nobody home", than he surrendered his right as a husband and authority should have instead gone to her parents. Law simply doesn't work that way. If the relevant law does not specify that adultery makes a husband ineligible to decide on his spouses fate, then Michael's adultery is legally beside the point. Michael was given the authority to represent his spouse and he was fully competent to exercise that authority. All the bitching and griping and whining and complaining about how he was unfit misses the point that legally, he never became incompetent to retain the authority to make the decision to withdraw Terri's life support. The fact that her life support was described as merely her being fed is irrelevant.
If people don't like his decision, then their only option is to rewrite the law to prevent a recurrence.

As far as the ultimate political impact of the Schiavo case goes, Jonah is correct that the impact may not amount to much of anything. What might make it matter is if the Democrats draw parallels, make explicit connections, present the Schiavo case as representing something larger, something that reveals something unpleasant and repellant about the Republican Party.
Winning a political fight is not enough. The victory must be exploited if it's to have any long-term impact.

Comments on latest Iraq War views from the top

As to the US political/military strategy in Iraq, leftists, liberals and progressives have long since concluded that the Iraqi resistance fights American troops using Fourth Generation or Asymmetric warfare. This should not have been a surprise as the State Department did a yearlong study from April 2002 until the fall of Baghdad that anticipated precisely such an insurgency. Considering that Iraq had gone through just such an insurgency in the years following World War I and that Algeria had driven out the French in the 1950s after a similarly long struggle, an extended insurgency was quite predictable and indeed, predicted by the Future of Iraq Project. A Report (PDF) from the Pentagon's Defense Science Board agrees that the insurgency is home-grown and that it proceeds from very real grievances and disagreements with US policy.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration appears to believe that the Iraqi resistance is a foreign entity or a group with a classic triangular chain of command that's tightly organized along traditional lines. This theory has come under considerable skepticism a great many times over the past two years, but somehow continues to fascinate our Secretary of Defense and presumably, most of our military chain of command.

-------------
Note: I've posted these two paragraphs on my photo-essay on the March 19th demonstration in New York. Check out especially the third picture here for a look at just why liberals are so skeptical about the even-handedness of the press.

Terri Schiavo case "America is watching"

Peggy Noonan is correct. Writing in Opinion Journal, she declares "America is watching" the Terri Schiavo case. But Peggy is wrong in thinking that Republican politicians are doing the right thing. We're instead watching Republican politicians make complete fools of themselves. Terri Schivao used to have a complete, healthy, functioning brain in her cranial cavity. Today, it's very largely spinal fluid that's up there. Mrs. Schiavo is not quite a vegetable, she is instead in a vegetative state. She's never going to get better. She will never advance beyond a living, but helpless and unaware state.
Once again, as it has so many times over the past five years, the media has disgraced itself by failing to point out the well-known facts of the case as seen by the reputable doctors and scientists who have examined her. No, I don't count Doctor/Senator Frist as being among that company.
Mrs. Schiavo's husband is the single person closest to Terri and has every right to speak on her behalf and make her life and death decision for her. Her parents have no such right as long as he is alive and capable.
UPDATE (05Mar23): Polls are running very, very strongly against the Republican Party on this issue. The utter hypocrisy of defending the precious sanctity of marraige against those "awful" gays who wanted to "degrade" marriage by getting married to each other is now considered irrelevant to defending the right of a parent to overrule a spouse in making life-or-death decisions.

Messing up a six-word phrase

Michelle Malkin quotes anti-war protesters as saying: "Oppose the war, support the troops". As a person who has taken part in over a dozen anti-war marches, I can testify that the correct phrase is “Support the troops, bring them home”!

Obviously, if a person can't even get a six-word phrase right, nothing else she says can be trusted.

ANOTHER "middle finger" appointment

DailyKos tells us that Paul Wolfowitz, the Assistant Secretary of Defense and second member of perhaps the three most incompetent men ever to serve in the Pentagon (Donald Rumsfeld is number one, Douglas Feith is number three.) . Again, as with the appointment of Alberto Gonzales to the post of Attorney General, this appointment is a big middle finger, not to the domestic opposition this time, but to the whole world.

Democrats scolded on Iraq

First of all, the writer Sebastian Mallaby comments on the Democrat's refusal to offer a detailed Social Security plan of their own. Atrios has a whole list of links to people who have commented on this. Basically, it's a stupid idea because after nearly five years of pushing for the privatization of Social Security, the Bush Administration is not offering a detailed plan either. For the Democrats to offer a plan in the absence of any plan by Bush simply makes their plan the target for attack ads. It's Bush's pet project, let him offer the plan. Mallaby says:

Last year Democrats impaled themselves on the Iraq war. They were so anxious to denounce the invasion that they failed to acknowledge the most basic point of all: that, having waded into Iraq, the United States could not leave prematurely. By attacking the Bush policy relentlessly, Democrats sounded negative. By refusing to say clearly that they would finish the Iraq job, they sounded irresponsible.

Now, when a person sets a price for a house or a car, a process known as negotiating takes place. The Bush Administration has shown absolutely zero interest in negotiating anything whatsoever about the Iraq War. One does not negotiate with bad, evil people (Well, in theory one does not negotiate with, for instance, Iranian hostage-takers, but somehow the Reagan Administration did so.) And the Bush Administration has demonstrated time and again that it considers opponents of the Iraq War to be bad, evil people.

Must the US "stay the course"? Is maintaining a US presence in Iraq at all costs something that the US must do? Here's a letter from a 60-year-old Iraqi citizen who was educated in the US:

We Iraqis are afraid to go out for fear of being kidnapped by criminal gangs roaming the country with an ineffective police force. We are also afraid of going out for fear that we might be killed by a bomb directed at your troops, or killed, or shot at by trigger-happy and nervous American troops.

The innocent Iraqi population is not using armored personal carriers, nor do they use armored cars to help them protect themselves. More innocent Iraqi civilians are killed by your troops shooting at them than those killed by the criminal gangs. You probably know, Mr. President, that your trigger-happy and nervous troops enjoy freedom from prosecution for these unlawful killings. From what I have witnessed those killers do not even stop to say "sorry" for their actions.

Allow me respectfully to remind you, Mr. President, that now more than 60% of the Iraqi work force in your "liberated" Iraq is unemployed as compared to 30% before your liberation. It looks like your action has doubled the number of Iraqis "liberated" from earning a decent pay or a decent work.

The U.S. Congress issued a report on Iraq at the end of June 2004. In that report they say that, in May 2003 (just after the invasion), 7 out of the 18 governorates had more than 16 hours of electricity per day. It also says that this number was reduced to one governorate in May 2004, one year after the invasion. Now, we are very lucky if we get 6 hours of electricity per day in Baghdad, a city of 5 million people.

Health services have continued to deteriorate during the past 22 months of occupation. Hospitals still lack even the simplest things. Drugs are not available. Fewer patients seek medical treatments or examination because of the security situation and the closed streets. Doctors are not safe at hospitals. They have been physically attacked by relatives of patients blaming, or venting their frustration on the poor helpless doctors.

Due to lack of security and poor police force, criminal gangs have kidnapped for ransom a few hundred doctors. Some were threatened. As a result, hundreds of highly qualified doctors have fled the country and it has resulted in a further deterioration of health services. These highly qualified doctors did not run away from the tyranny of the dictator, Mr. President, but because of the chaos and lawlessness in your "liberated Iraq."

Records show, Mr. President, that the Iraqi government smuggled up to a hundred thousand barrels a day of refined diesel fuel through Turkey, with your government's knowledge. These figures indicate that the Iraqi refineries had an excess refining capacity allowing the country to export refined oil products.

During the "liberation" of Iraq, refineries were not targeted as they had been In 1991, so one assumes that the damage was minimal. I wonder why refineries are not fixed yet after 22 months of "liberation." I still cannot understand why Iraq continues to import refined oil products from Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia -- and to my amazement from Israel. We Iraqis need to know why our money is being spent, unwisely, to import gasoline now, when we were an exporting nation. I might understand that Halliburton and KBR needed to import gasoline for a few months, but not after 22 months of "liberation."

In 1991, our refineries were severely damaged by the bombing. We the Iraqi people were able, despite the sanctions and without help from the Halliburtons, to fix the refineries in only a few months. We kept them working and going for 13 years and we were exporting products. Similarly the Iraqi people were able to restore the electricity in a few months. The Iraqi people reconstructed every building damaged by the war of 1991 in less than a year. Seeing the lack of any reconstruction efforts after 22 months of "liberation" makes me sad.

Mr. President, in 1991 America promised that Iraq will be returned to the "pre-industrial" age and they nearly did that by bombing and destroying everything. The Iraqi people surprised the world by reconstructing what was bombed. On top of that, new projects were implemented despite the sanctions. As an Iraqi this makes me extremely proud of our achievement in 1991. We the Iraqis set the standards of reconstruction. After 22 months of "liberation" and the lack of honest and visible reconstruction work I feel that America miserably failed to meet that standard.

For 13 years, Iraqis were living on food rations given by the government. We were told that our government was robbing us and providing us with only 2200 Kcal per day. The "liberated" government of Iraq after the liberation is still providing us with about 2200 Kcal per day of food rations.

The government of Iraq used to spend about $150 million a month to import and distribute the food rations. According to your CPA Inspector General, $8.8 billion dollars were unaccounted for in one year. Mr. President, these $8.8 billion are enough to feed all the people of Iraq for nearly 60 months. This fiscal irresponsibility and the lack of transparency in spending our money make me wonder about the aim of the "liberation" of Iraq. I'm sorry to say that the Iraqi people are being robbed blind. We are also being "liberated" from our wealth.

So what I'm not at all clear on is: exactly what constructive good are Americans doing in Iraq? What exactly are Americns accomplishing? We "must" stay in? Why?

Why Joe Lieberman is a traitor

Amazingly, this is a fact that requires explanation. There are still people out there who just don't get it. The Republicans put up S. 256, the Bankruptcy Reform Bill to make bankruptcy harder while of course making life easier for credit card companies. Thus, the citizen gets hit with reduced financial options, while the people profiting off of financial hardship get to make more money than ever. As the LA Times says:

The bankruptcy bill that passed a key vote in the Senate on Tuesday is driven by the premise that the nation is under siege by an army of deadbeats running up credit card bills, declaring personal bankruptcy and sticking honest Americans with the tab. That's the credit card and banking industries' story, and they're sticking to it. We can all guess who will profit from the bill.

Senator Joe Lieberman is identified as one of the Senators who made the bankruptcy bill possible. Apparently, he had second thoughts:

Lieberman Statement on Vote Against Bankruptcy Reform Bill

WASHINGTON - Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) today made the following statement on the passage of S. 256 the Bankruptcy Reform Bill by a vote of 74 to 25.

“I have always supported bankruptcy reform legislation in the Senate when it has reflected a bipartisan effort to enact a balanced bill for both debtors and creditors and I have opposed it when confronted with a bill that seemed one-sided. This is not a balanced bill. I voted against this bill because it failed to close troubling loopholes that protect wealthy debtors, and yet it deals harshly with average Americans facing unforeseen medical expenses or a sudden military deployment. The Senate simply rejected out of hand many worthwhile amendments that would have protected these and other working Americans who find themselves in dire financial straits through no fault of their own. As a result, I believe this is a seriously flawed bill and I am disappointed at its passage.”

The Bull Moose responds with a piece describing Lieberman's on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand, voting-versus-editorializing stance as:

This should be a lesson for all those lefties who have been in a full-throated fury against Joe. He is a Democrat in the proud tradition of Truman, JFK and Scoop. Unfortunately, some in the party are in a purge mode to ensure that the donkey will be in the wilderness as long as old Moses and the chosen ones.

As for the Moose, he prefers tough, independent and smart donkeys. Undoubtedly, apologies will be on the way to Joe from those misguided lefties.

Major problem here. There was an appropriate time and place to force the Republicans to go back to the drawing board and come up with an alternative to the bankruptcy bill. Senators (and Representatives) have frequently sent bills back to be re-thought, re-negotiated and re-justified. That time was during the time when the bankruptcy bill was being voted on. Now that the bill is law, it's a completely useless waste of time and space to say “Gee, I wasn't completely happy with that bill.”

Example of what I mean involve what some consider netiquette (Internet etiquette). When one posts a full article without qualifying it in any way, that's considered an endorsement in full. An acquaintance of mine sent out an email in 1998 calling Bill Clinton's behavior with Monica Lewinsky “disgusting” and that railed on about how awful Clinton was and how he should be impeached. My acquaintance was very distressed because liberals she had sent the email to “...acted as though I had written it! I was just passing it on!”. As we in the Navy say about various crimes and misdemeanors, she “knowingly and deliberately” passed it on. She passed the message on in the full knowledge of what it said and should have been aware of how people would take it. Another example is that I recently had a buddy pass on an email about how Giuliana Sgrena got shot at near an American roadblock in Baghdad. I hit the “reply all” button and said that I thought the headline blaming the Americans for deliberately opening fire went beyond the evidence provided in the piece (I've since concluded there is strong evidence to believe the accusation is true, but that doesn't excuse the headline as they still went beyond the evidence that was available at the time.) My buddy told me later that he had doubts about the article. Well, again, according to netiquette, the time and place to have said so was in the message that contained the original article. My buddy passed on the article wholesale and without comment, meaning he endorsed it in full.

By the same token, there was a time and a place for Lieberman to have objected to the bankruptcy bill. That was when the bill was being voted on in the Senate. For Lieberman to come out later saying he wasn't entirely happy with the bill was a classic case of “too little, too late”. Lieberman is a traitor to the Democratic Party and should be campaigned against in 2006.

Absolutely amazing incompetence

Amazing! Just absolutely amazing. Again, as we've often had, we have the question of “What does it mean to 'Support the Troops' “? Obviously to me and other progressions and I would hope to all true red-blooded Americans, it would mean to push for competent leadership and plenty of advice and criticism for leaders who are incompetent. Here's an article that calls that into question.

The war in Iraq was hardly a month old in April 2003 when an Army general in charge of equipping soldiers with protective gear threw the brakes on buying bulletproof vests.

The general, Richard A. Cody, who led a Pentagon group called the Army Strategic Planning Board, had been told by supply chiefs that the combat troops already had all the armor they needed, according to Army officials and records from the board's meetings. Some 50,000 other American soldiers, who were not on the front lines of battle, could do without.

In the following weeks, as Iraqi snipers and suicide bombers stepped up deadly attacks, often directed at those very soldiers behind the front lines, General Cody realized the Army's mistake and did an about-face. On May 15, 2003, he ordered the budget office to buy all the bulletproof vests it could, according to an Army report. He would give one to every soldier, "regardless of duty position."

The article then categorizes misstep after inexplicable delay after sheer idiocy.

In the case of body armor, the Pentagon gave a contract for thousands of the ceramic plate inserts that make the vests bulletproof to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He struggled for a year, then gave up entirely. At the same time, in shipping plates from other companies, the Army's equipment manager effectively reduced the armor's priority to the status of socks, a confidential report by the Army's inspector general shows. Some 10,000 plates were lost along the way, and the rest arrived late.

This just an absolutely staggering story. An unqualified person was just handed a contract that was critical to the lives and safety of our troops. The fellow not only had no experience, “He struggled for a year, then gave up entirely. “ The contract was limited to just this one fellow? Nobody in the Pentagon ever got back to this fellow to see to it that he could do the job? Nobody monitored his progress? Nobody gave a rat's patootie to see how the contract was going? DailyKos is right. “For this alone, Rumsfeld should resign. It is inexcusable. “

David Horowitz explained

Horowitz is a bit of a puzzle. He used to be a left-winger and is now a right-winger. What makes his case unusual is his apparent sincerity.

Back when I was in the Navy, I noted that people have the tendency to be very consistent. If a sailor took a careless, lackadaisical attitude towards swabbing the deck (mopping the floor) or filing records or keeping a sharp eye on watch, it was very likely that the sailor also wouldn't be very good at more urgent tasks like keeping a sailors pay accounts updated, making sure that the machinery that kept helicopters aloft were in good working order or seeing to it that items being craned up from the pier made it safely into our cargo holds. If a person could not be trusted to do one type of task, it was usually futile to hope they'd be good at another.

Conversely, if the sailor took a conscientious attitude towards non-vital tasks, treating them as though they were important, it was extremely likely they'd be trustworthy at tasks that truly were important. This fundamental attitude towards one's work was not something that fluctuated over time. Someone who took a good attitude last year usually had a good attitude this year and can reasonably be expected to maintain their good attitude next year. Of course their attitude can change, but if a change takes place, it's usually obvious why. A crisis has taken place in the sailor's life or a person in their life has had an effect on them.

Susan Faludi, author of Backlash and prominent feminist, wrote a piece on “faux feminists” who:

...define themselves as "dissenters" within the feminist ranks, but they never joined feminism in the first place; they have met each other mingling at conservative academic gatherings (like the "anti-P.C." National Association of Scholars) and conservative Washington networking circuits, not the feminist trenches of pro-choice demonstrations and clerical unionizing meetings.

Their slogan is "I am a feminist, but ... "--as in "I am a feminist, but ... I don't believe women face discrimination anymore; I don't see any reason for women to organize politically; I don't think the pay gap, sexual harassment, rape, domestic violence, or just about any other issue feminism has raised are real problems; I don't see why we even need to bother with gender analysis anymore; and, on the whole, I find feminists to be little more than victim-mongering conspiracy nuts." These are "feminists" who weigh in to the debate only to speak out against feminism's "excesses."

Faludi makes the case that women who play the game of pretending to have once been feminists do so for manipulative reasons, that there truly aren't many people who have undergone that sort of sea change in their ideology. The importance of this observation is to demonstrate that a person's political leanings are an essential part of their personality. Do people ever make an about-face in their elder years? Yes, but it doesn't happen often.

There are two public figures who have shifted from the left wing to the right wing, The comedian and former Saturday Night Live cast member Dennis Miller and the former writer for The Nation Christopher Hitchens.

In both cases, their motivations are pretty transparent. Miller moved on from SNL to be a movie actor whose characters usually got killed off and a comedian who couldn't get a good gig. People from the right wing made an offer and he very pragmatically took them up on it. Hitchens appears to have adopted a real fondness for alcohol and it seems to have affected his judgment along with his general physical health.

As neither explanation appears to apply to Horowitz, the former 60s activist who once edited the magazine Ramparts, I was most intrigued by the explanation offered in a blog commentary section by Michael Berube. I've reproduced our discussion on because he had technical problems with his blog that erased the reference I was going to use.

• Pooey! I was in the middle of a blog post where I pass on the revelation that Horowitz is still conflicted because he continued to support the Weathermen long after more respectable leftists gave up on them. If anyone has the source for that quote, I’d like to get that. Relatedly, Horowitz’ indiscriminately sweeping up everything (Katie Couric as a leftist!?!?!) fits in with the idea of his feeling guilty over supporting a group of thugs as the Weathermen had become.

Personally, I went over to discoverthenetwork and found an entry where he lumps in the entire Iraqi resistance with Saddamist thugs. I wrote him an email questioning his sanity. He hasn’t responded. Dunno why not.

Posted by Rich on 03/04 at 09:15 PM

• Actually, I don’t believe Horowitz ever lined up with the Weathermen. His late-in-the-day infatuation with the Panthers was, in fact, all the stranger precisely because he’d been reasonably skeptical (up to that point) of the cults of violence and of personality that defined and destroyed the furthest fringes of the New Left.

Posted by Michael on 03/04 at 11:14 PM

• So you don’t think that David has difficulty drawing distinctions between different kinds of political actors in general? It appeared to me that lumping in all sorts of leftists with Islamic “bad guys” was of a piece with failing to distinguish between “New Left” people back in the old days.

Posted by Rich on 03/05 at 10:13 AM

• Yeah, actually I do think he has trouble making those distinctions. He just never signed up with the Weather Underground, that’s all. I believe he was in England when the Weathermen split off from the SDS (which amounted to, what, 200 people out of a membership of 100,000), and according to someone who was around at the time, he never really understood the phenomenon by which the other 99,800 stayed on the left while not sliding off into sheer barking New Far Left lunacy.

Anyway, my initial point about Horowitz and leftist distinctions was simply that he demands we make them in his case (he was never a Stalinist, never a member of the Weathermen or the SLA, etc.) while stitching together Ramsey Clark and Katie Couric.

Posted by Michael on 03/05 at 10:56 AM

And as an added bonus, someone else added:

• Rich:

Not quite. The right actually believes that 60’s leftist groups and radical Islamist movements are literally one and the same. From Thomas Y M Barnett’s best-selling “The Pentagon's New Map:”

What really happened in the 1990s is that many of these [sixties extreme left ] terrorist groups, cut off from Soviet material and ideological support, fundamentally reinvented themselves as religiously motivated terror movements.”

Apparently, Horowitz doesn’t go this far, but he’s trying to make this association in people’s minds without being held responsible for saying it. (Needless to say, Barnett’s assertion is insane. I checked with a genuine expert on the extreme left in the 60’s and he agreed. )

By the way, the context has not been distorted for the Barnett quote. A longer excerpt can be found here. Hard to believe this book is being taken seriously, but it is.

Posted by tristero on 03/05 at 10:55 AM

So unlike the Faux Feminists examined by Susan Faludi and the pragmatic side-switchers exemplified by Dennis Miller and the physically and morally declining Christopher Hitchens, Horowitz was awfully confused to begin with. He ceased to draw careful distinctions between different kinds of lefties back in the old days and judging by the statement I've copied below, doesn't really draw distinctions between foreign opponents either:

What has now changed is not the intention of the leaders of the anti-American peace movement. What has changed is that the enemy is so nakedly the aggressor against us (and not some hapless Third World people like the South Vietnamese). What has changed is not that the enemy is more evil, but that he is more transparently evil. But that is all. The totalitarian agendas of Saddam Hussein and Yassir Arafat are no different from those of Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il Sung --- or Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega for that matter.

I couldn't resist copying items from the following as well, just to demonstrate how far Horowitz has declined in understanding:

During our lifetimes the so-called "progressive" Left opposed:

4.The Vietnam War (to save South Vietnam and Cambodia from Communist conquest) (1964)
7. The War to liberate Central America from Communist dictators and guerillas (1983)
11. The Bush Administration's plan to finish the War to liberate Iraq (2002)

Horowitz lists several not-so-bad wars along with justified wars, but these particular items really jumped out at me