Res Ipsa Loquitur

Hunter sums up our times in a single paragraph:

It's so painful, it burns. Perhaps "leaders of any group will turn out to be liberals" is indeed true, and perhaps there are a hundred perfect reasons for it to be true that are not part of an insidious secret plot by All Those That Oppose Us. Jesus McCracker McBain, it has been shown time and time again that liberalism is directly correlated to knowledge. I'm going to tattoo it onto my forehead, or paint it on my car: It's not a conspiracy, you're just stupid.

The Thing Speaks For Itself.
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(/) Roland X
Go read the whole thing. Seriously.

Promoting Linse's Law

This meme is sheer genius, so I thought I'd share:

As a corollary to Godwin's Law, I propose "Linse's Law":

As a debate between pro-war and anti-war pundits grows longer, the probability of the pro-war side accusing the anti-war side of being unpatriotic becomes 1.

I heartily recommend the rest of the post, particularly the quiz: do you know the difference between patriotism and jingoism? Well, sure, you do, but I have to wonder: do they?
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(/) Roland X
jin·go·ism n. c.f. Republican Party.

Pegging the Hypocrisy Meter...Again

You know, I think I've finally figured out what Duby'a true talent is: reaching new heights of sheer, unadulterated hypocrisy.

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges," the president said in his combative Veterans Day speech.

Yeah, no kidding, Dubya. Imagine starting a war with the wrong friggin' country based on exaggerations and outright lies. A war that virtually eliminated our ability to fight terrorists in their real centers of power and allowed enemies who have openly stated their hate and fear of America to build nuclear weapons. A war in which our leaders then compromised our moral authority (when they realized how badly they screwed up) by encouraging and possibly ordering the torture of POWs, most of whom are innocent civilians caught in poorly conducted sweeps run mostly by teenagers who don't speak Arabic. Oh, and throw melting children with phosphorous on top, and covering it up for a year.

Yeah, I think the national interest is kind of important to be letting that kind of crap happen.

Mmmaybe Bush shouldn't be talking about the stakes of a conflict he's all but conceding to the enemies who, you know, actually want to kill us.
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(/) Roland X
Okay, this time Res Ipsa didn't quite Loquitur. Even I still need to rant about these nutjobs sometimes.

Politburo Leader Frist Backs Gulags

Bill Frist (R - Siberia): objectively pro-gulag:

Bill Frist on the existence of overseas "black sites" where the Bush administration secretly holds detainees in the war on terror:

I am not concerned about what goes on and I'm not going to comment about the nature of that.

Well okay then.
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(/) Roland X
Once again, Res Ipsa Loquitur.

Governor Girlie-Man

Yeah, America's moral authority is in the toilet and the focus from the good news is rightly on our victory in Virginia. Still, I want to take a moment to do the happy dance here:

To call California a disaster for Arnold is the biggest understatement of the year. Schwarzenegger spent $50 million of taxpayer money in an election in which every single ballot initiative failed, and failed handily (the closest prop, the parental notification one, failed by over 5 percent).

Pwn3d.

The Governator now has to decide whether to follow his brain or his ego in leaving Sacramento. He can do the smart thing, declare "mission accomplished," and go back to his movie career, or he can run for reelection and be totally spanked and humiliated by whichever otherwise-unknown Democratic apparatchik ends up winning the nomination.

Either way, I'm looking forward to '06. ;-)
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(/) Roland X
Pwn3d: to be beaten, dominated, or made a fool of in any contest, especially in a Net-related context. *eg*

Feel the Love

Opera's being flaky; let's try this again.

DeLay's cronies admit the truth: they think their right-wing theocon sheep are wackos too:

How anybody could vote Republican until they do a full fumigation to get rid of DeLay and Co. is beyond me. Check out what (indicted) DeLay aide Mike Scanlon says here:

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

As is rapidly becoming the Justice Log tag line, Res Ipsa Loquitur.
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(/) Roland X
"Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope. The death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender." -- the Book of G'Quan

Moonbat Conspiracy Theorists

...yeah, that's us:

This powerful and probing report takes a hard look at the election of 2004 and supports the contention that the election was stolen. The report has received almost no coverage in the national media.

The GAO is the government’s lead investigative agency, and is known for rock-solid integrity and its penetrating and thorough analysis. The agency’s agreement with what have been brushed aside as “conspiracy theories” adds even more weight to the conclusion that the Bush regime has no business in the White House whatever.

Almost a year ago, Rep. John Conyers, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, asked the GAO to investigate the use of electronic voting machines in the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election. That request was made as a flood of protests from Ohio and elsewhere deluged Washington with claims that shocking irregularities were common in that vote and were linked to the machines.

...

Online Journal.com reported that the GAO report stated that "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."

...

The chief executive of Diebold, one of the major suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren "Wally" O’Dell, went on record in the 2004 campaign vowing to deliver Ohio and the presidency to George W. Bush.

Emphasis mine.

Some of the GAO’s findings are: 1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected." In short, the machines; provided a way to manipulate the outcome of the election. In Ohio, more than 800,000 votes were cast on electronic voting machines, some registered seven times Bush’s official margin of victory.

2: the report further stated that: "it was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works, so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate." Very many sworn statements and affidavits claim that did happen in Ohio in 2004.

As some readers may remember from the time.

These findings are even more damning when we understand the election in Ohio was run by a secretary of state who also was co-chairman of Bush’s Ohio campaign. Far from the conclusion of anti-fraud skeptics, the GAO’s findings confirm that the network, which handled 800,000 Ohio votes, was vulnerable enough to permit a handful of purposeful operatives to turn the entire election by means of personal computers using comparatively simple software.

As a recent commenter said, "Res Ipsa Loquitur" (The Thing Speaks For Itself).
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(/) Roland X
George W. Bush: The only two-term president to lose both elections.
Or: Worst. President. Ever.

Republicans Declare War; Democrats Strike Back

As pretty much everyone who reads this blog no doubt knows, Bush nominated Scalito to replace O'Connor. Not only should this have shored up his base (though there's reason to doubt that he succeeded), it also distracted nicely from the whole Plame game scandal.

Fortunately, Minority Leader Reid was having none of it. In a brilliant piece of political theater, he forced the Senate into a closed session to discuss the virtual rape of pre-war intelligence, which ties back to the Plame scandal, the whole Iraq mess, and why we're trapped there instead of focusing on Al-Qaeda and its vile cousins.

Not that Democrats are necessarily rolling over on Alito, though the early news is discouraging. In spite of Armando's note of optimism, the article in question (warning: it's the NYT, so the link may not be good for long) isn't as promising:

"I have not heard any of my Democratic colleagues in the Gang of 14 talk of using the F-word - filibuster," Mr. Nelson said, adding that he hoped that the coalition ends up playing no role in the Alito nomination. "We would hope that the process would work without requiring anything from us."

Let's just say the article isn't about "give 'em Hell Harry."

Nevertheless, it looks like we're on the brink of total political warfare here. The theocons clearly believe they're about to break Roe v. Wade, and it's equally clear that the plethora of scandals dogging the steps of the GOP make a Democratic resurgence a real possibility in 2006. That would, essentially, put an end to their dreams of theocracy.

The last time the stakes were this high, Robert Kennedy and Rev. King were assassinated. We still won. This may be the last gasp of reactionary madness, but only if we beat it back. Otherwise, we could be looking at The Handmaid's Tale. All the commentary on the nomination indicates that this is the fight the theocons wanted, though they may be unhappy to learn that Alito's anti-choice stand is being heavily downplayed by the White House. Regardless, they got the fight they wanted. It's time to make them regret it.
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(/) Roland X
Hope is a phoenix

Class Act

George Takei came out of the closet today, or at least the story hit the wires today. Now, I'm one of something like three people for whom Sulu was my favorite character in classic Trek. (I imagine that's about to change. 8^) So for me, this is a bigger deal than most, though as a caveat I feel honor-bound to add that I'm also not as big a Trek fan as most Trekkies. I just have too many interests to get really involved with just one.

Still, this grabbed my attention. I love the character of Hikaru Sulu -- the quirky background character who was more D'Artangan than Bruce Lee (that would have been so easy in the 60s, but Gene had balls the size of suns), quiet and unassuming yet was in command of the Enterprise during what may have been the greatest fleet battle of their time (Organia), and surprisingly multitalented for anybody, let alone a second banana in an old TV series. However, I try to be careful not to idolize actors. While I've always liked George Takei in an abstract sense, I also tend to wait until I see some real evidence of a celebrity's integrity before making a judgement.

Well, I just saw integrity in spades today. To reveal his homosexuality in the current social climate took extraordinary courage, and this quote (found on Wikipedia, though it obviously has a separate origin) shows admirable insight:

"It's not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen."

From a personal standpoint, Mr. Takei had every reason to just continue living his life quietly -- his revelation involves considerable risk for no tangible gain. He did the right thing solely because it was the right thing to do. I can imagine no higher praise for anyone than to make such a statement about them.

On the other hand, the number of Sulu slash stories is about to explode, so it's not all good. ;^)

Kudos, Mr. Takei, and may you and your partner live long and prosper for many years to come.
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(/) Roland X
Straight but not narrow

Let Them Eat Cake

No, really.

On Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands of evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote. "The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out."

A short time later, Brown's press secretary, Sharon Worthy, wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes," Worthy wrote.

"Restaurants are getting busy," she said. "We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

Seriously, this deserves to go down in history right alongside the famous encapsulation of epic, detached cluelessness in the title. I'd go on for quite a while about how horrifically this shows how little those in charge cared about the thousands of (black/poor) people suffering and dying, when it was their job to protect those people...but really, what can I add? This speaks for itself.
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(/) Roland X
Just when I thought I couldn't be any more disgusted...

Criminalization of (Iraqi) Politics

This article is on the Guardian, but as I write this, it's the top story on Excite:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's election commission announced Monday that officials were investigating ``unusually high'' numbers of ``yes'' votes in about a dozen provinces during Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution, raising questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Word of the review came as Sunni Arab leaders repeated accusations of voter fraud after initial reports from the provinces suggested the constitution had passed. Among their allegations were that police took ballot boxes from heavily ``no'' districts, that some ``yes'' areas had more votes than registered voters and that supporters of the charter were allowed to vote in crucial provinces where they do not live.

American-style democracy, indeed. If it's good enough for Bush, it's good enough for the Iranian-backed politicians the Cheniacs support as well.

Honestly, does this surprise anyone? After Florida and Ohio, I find the notion that the administration's party operatives disguising themselves as advisors in Iraq would have the slightest qualm about voter fraud laughable.

The good news: this is actually being covered by the American media. Is our once-pathetic Fourth Estate finally struggling to free itself from bondage, perhaps shaking off (at last!) the Svengali-esque control of Rove and his ilk? Only time will tell.
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(/) Roland X
Zoe: "It's a fair bet the Alliance is going to know what's coming."
Mal: "No. They're not going to see this coming."

Not Getting It

Jonah Goldberg proves how completely he doesn't get it by getting it this once (linked to Washington Monthly because I try not to link directly to Wingnuttia):

We already know that lots of conservative are skeptical about Harriet Miers, but what's more interesting is the number of conservatives who are turning their guns on George Bush himself. Here's a sampler:

...

Jonah Goldberg: Bush's instincts about where his principles should be are often right. But in this case the principle seems to be that Bush's instincts are principle enough.

The last sentence is all you need to know about both George W. Bush and the rutting morons who have placed their faith in him for the last five years. "The principle seems to be that Bush's instincts are principle enough" is the defining trait of George W. Bush's vision of the presidency. He has no other principles, which is the entire gorram problem.

(Oh, and for the record, I feel compelled to add that the idea of Goldberg's statement about Bush's principles being "often right" is so laughable, given the unbroken string of policy failures this administration has presided over, as to border on self-parody. What, was this culled from the Onion or something?)

Ye gods. I was stunned by the attacks on 9/11 -- I have an uncle who works at the American Stock Exchange about a block away from the site, and my father used to work there -- and even now, I kick myself for the second chance I gave this idiot. The difference is, I learned my lesson (and fast). Liberals and conservatives alike have been making excuses for this shaved chimp for years, like battered wives saying how their abusive husband is "really a good man" and he's just doing what he has to do.

Democrats have to win in 2006 if there is to be any hope for the republic in the foreseeable future, but IMHO it would behoove Republicans to disavow this venal, corrupt administration ASAP. Then again, what do I know? Whenever movement Republicans give Democrats "advice," all I see is them throwing a drowning man an anvil.
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(/) Roland X
Which I must admit, I'm not averse to doing in this situation... *G*

Don't Mince Words

Hunter of Daily Kos tells us what he really thinks of those who prostitute their minds and souls to the evil, corrupt SOBs running our country:

At Blogs For Bush, which bills itself as the Whorehouse... er, "White House" of the Blogosphere, the ever effervescent Mark Noonan writes about the DeLay indictment:

...

This is not the actions of a political Party engaged in seeking a majority - it is the action of a Party determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself...it is, in short, the stuff from which civil wars are made...

I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge - you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received.

...

Mark... may I call you Mark? I feel when someone has shown me the insides of their own rectum, we're pretty much on a first name basis... I have some words for you.

Whitewater. Rush Limbaugh. "Drug Dealer" Bill Clinton. Swift Boats.

Vince Fucking Foster.

Playing with fire, you say? Because the indictments ringing Tom DeLay finally reached up that one, final step from his ring of closest advisers to DeLay himself? Because the SEC has launched a formal investigation into the same behaviors by Bill Frist that put Martha Stewart recently in prison? Because one of the single most visible, highest profile Republican money men has been indicted for fraud, is being investigated for client shakedowns, and has his close business associates being investigated for a mob-connected murder?

What utter cowardice. What pathetic anti-American pedantry. What laughable protestation. The crimes of campaign money laundering, of fraud, of conspiracy, the violation of the laws of the nation, to be answered with stern visions of potential gunfire if Democrats have the audacity to pursue it.

...

Your party has set aflame the entire political landscape, and now, once burned, you warn sternly from the branches of a burnt-out tree about "playing with fire". You used the ashes of one of the great liberal cities of America, New York City, as war paint for your own sick, racist dreams. You shudder at a burning flag, yet are willing to snip-and-cut basic tenets of the Constitution as needed or convenient.

...

Welcome to the world of the politics of personal destruction, you tubthumping, chin-jutting, Bush humping gits. Welcome to the nasty and partisan world that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and a legion of insignificant lowest-rung toadies like yourselves nurtured into fruition daily with eager, grubby hands, and now look upon with dull-faced faux horror.

...

Step back from the edge? You poor boy, asleep in the back of the car the whole trip, finally waking up and wondering where you're at.

...

You can't even see the edge from here. You left it behind a hundred miles back.

So don't give me chest-thumping crap about civil wars, if your politicians are indicted. Don't give me visions of a lake of fire, if all those who find you loathsome refuse to suck at your teats of scientific ignorance in the name of religion, racism in the name of freedom, and corruption in the name of the New World Order.

Or, as a great playwright once put it:

"Oh? And when the last law was down, and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws being all flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it) d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

DeLay has no place left to hide from his crimes, and the poor sods who have sold their souls to this monstrous pack of traitors have no place left to hide from the truth, except in citadels built from the mortar of their own frightened denial. They want to believe that they are righteous when they are only self-righteous, that their leaders are virtuous when they are corrupt, that their beliefs are noble when they are vile, and that all their enemies are cut from the same cloth. Wish as they might, however, John Kerry is not Osama bin Laden and George Bush is not Thomas Jefferson.

I truly do believe that we can alter what is possible through perception and will. But such power comes from wisdom, and whenever someone tries to alter reality from a place of towering hubris, Truth will repay such arrogant folly many times over. They have sown the wind, and now they decry the whirlwind as partisan?

No. This is not backstabbing, revenge, or even justice. This is simple physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The madmen who have hijacked the once-noble institutions of the Republican party and the government of the United States have acted with absolute contempt for honesty. The bitter harvest is clear for all with eyes to see: the death and tragedy in Iraq, the return of the drug lords in Afghanistan, the price of blindness and neglect in what was once New Orleans, $3 a gallon gasoline, a government deficit so massive it beggars the imagination and the near-universal hatred of a world that gave us nearly universal, unconditional support a scant four years ago.

And the storm is still just now breaking.

I am saddened that so many -- a full 40 percent of the American people -- still don't want to see the truth. I can't blame them, though. It is something terrible and painful to see, like watching a beloved uncle slowly dying of a cancer he refuses to admit exists. But our Uncle Sam does have a cancer, and only by confronting him with the truth can he be saved. Joining in his denial will only prolong the pain, and if we wait too long, even that mightiest of relatives may perish.

The time to awaken is upon us. Either this country chooses to face the consequences of its leaders' actions, allowing us to begin to face their mistakes, or it will remain blind and embark on a path that ends in a nation indistinguishable from Oceania.

There's just one problem for the would-be Big Brothers of God's Own Party: there is a real resistance out here. We pay attention to facts, rescue the past from the memory hole and continue to point out inconvenient truths. The simplest and most important one is this -- they are not America, no matter how much they pretend to patriotism and decry their enemies as 'anti-American.' We are all America, and their delusional, hateful Frankenstein's monster of corporate mega-greed, xenophobic bigotry, and budding theofascism is only a tiny, insignificant portion of the legendary Melting Pot.

Most Americans would be shocked if they saw it for what it is -- their dropping poll numbers are the result of a few more coming around to the truth all the time -- and the monster is coming apart at the seams. If it weren't, would they be desperately be threatening violence like Chicken Little screaming about the sky falling? Then again, for them, the sky is falling, but it's really just the ceiling of their little bubble of falsehood caving in. And really, what's one more lie among friends after so many?
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(/) Roland X
And the Truth Shall Set Us Free
(those poor bastards are on their own, though)

Rules

I've thought a lot about the strain of Republicans that we oppose -- the Cheney/Rove axis that threatens both the systems and ideals that make up America. They play the rules like the worst sort of lawyers, bending them into pretzels when convenient and breaking them whenever they can get away with it, but holding their opponents to the most minute definitions whenever it can provide them an advantage. (See Clinton, William J.) And the basic definition of this sort of Republican is simple. For them, there are no rules.

To be sure, there are guidelines. Win at all costs. Never let the marks see past your image. Spin can beat any truth if you're shameless enough and persistent enough. No slander is too foul, as long as it works. (See Kerry, John F.) Loyalty is the only important trait for office holders. Hypocrisy is a virtue. "Orwellian" is an ideal, not an insult. And finally, if you do lose, never admit you lost, pretend it never happened, and immediately go back on the attack, preferably on another flank. When it comes to the "lost" issue, there's always tomorrow.

It's easy -- too easy -- to give in to anger or despair when faced with this sort of villainy. It's like being ruled by the Legion of Doom (but I'll get to that in another post :-). They must be stopped. They must be beaten. They must be driven from power, discredited, and the memory of their administration recorded solely as a lesson for future generations of the ways evil can hide behind an innocuous face.

Yet we must adhere to a higher standard than the pseudo-cons. Most of us disagree with their actual ideology, true, but that's not what makes them so poisonous. It's their lies, incompetence, cronyism, and worst of all, their sheer willingness to turn American against American. Nothing is too low for them if Rove can use it to squeeze a few more votes out, whether in the House of Representatives or among regular people.

They used the attacks on September 11, 2001 -- the single most unifying event in American history since Pearl Harbor, its one silver lining -- and used it to club their political rivals over the head. They started an unnecessary war for a variety of reasons, but one of them was for the exact same purpose. And now, with an entire city under water and massive amounts of the deepest of red states left in disarray thanks almost entirely to their incompetence in the one area they claimed as their sole bailiwick, they decry the "blame game" while playing it for all they're worth.

J'accuse!

It is our duty as Americans to cry out at this injustice. We must speak out, resist to the best of our ability, this obscenity. I firmly believe it makes the most sense, strategically and morally, to proclaim their mendacity, greed and heartlessness at every opportunity. Find decent people and run them against the vermin that walk like men (See Hackett, Paul). Decent Republicans, I'm looking at you, too -- Democrats of conscience are working to take back our party, and yours is in greater need of you.

What we cannot, must not do, however, is allow ourselves to stoop to their level. Will it make any real difference if liberals or moderates return to power if back room deals and political payback define our governance? What good will restoring balance to government finances if health care and welfare become Democrats' ways of rewarding our friends and punishing our enemies? It may be possible to bring down Bush with a lie, or an irrelevance (yeah, the bathroom note is fun, but can you imagine impeaching him over it, even if he were to lie to Congress about it?), but what would that turn us into?

The subtitle of this blog is "proud supporter of the reality-based community" because I believe that reality is far more malleable than most believe. (I find it most ironic that the "Vulcans" of the modern Republican party have done more to undermine the concept with their hubris than the flakiest New Ager ever could.) I've seen/read The Matrix, What the Bleep Do We Know, Stranger in a Strange Land, and a variety of books on the implications of quantum physics to what we think of as a hard and unyielding universe. As a result, I have a healthy respect for those who see rules with a skeptical eye, and those who break them with style can be quite noble. After all, I look forward to a day when humanity can twist the 'rules' of reality itself into proverbial knots, making of it what we will -- who am I to denigrate the honorable rogues among us?

The thing is, honor is the key. Even if we overturn every law of physics and make a game of existence itself, there must still be some codified limits to behavior for people to get along together. If anything, rules of honor and decency are far more important than mere laws, whether of government or physics. These are the rules for which the Rovians have so much contempt, and the ones we must hold on to in spite of their outrageous flaunting of them if our victory is to mean anything.
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(/) Roland X
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fail. Think of it...always." -- Gandhi

Political Emergency Management Agency

So much for the defibrillator.

To paraphrase a friend of mine (who apparently takes exception to my giving Dubya the least amount of credit -- with good reason, it turns out), he's still trying to weasel his way out of admitting he screwed up. To quote COBRA's Baroness, "I take the responsibility, but not the blame! It's [his] fault!"

As others have pointed out (the brilliant Digby in particular), Bush has used liberal rhetoric before (anyone remember No Child Left Behind?) to cover up his fringe pseudo-conservative agenda, and he's doing it again now. If anything, the lies and greed are worse than ever. As Digby notes:

I missed the speech last night but I was on the road and tuned into KTALK, the liberal talk radio station here in LA shortly after it was over and heard Johnny Wendell, whom I usually quite like, saying that he hadn't heard a politician say anything like this in 30 years. And he thought that it was such good news that we should give George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt. It just proved that the era of Republican small government conservatism was over and liberalism was back, baby!

I was confused. I had read that article in the morning, after all. Then I came home and fired up the creaky computer and saw that Karl Rove was in charge of the rebuilding effort. Ah.

Read the whole thing -- Digby quotes an article on how the reconstruction effort is already being turned into one gigantic boondoggle combining radical conservative "free-market" theology and cronyism on a $200 billion dollar scale.

Okay, so he hasn't learned anything about the effectiveness of laissez-faire policy and placing spin doctors in charge of actual organization. I mean, ye gods, Karl Rove in charge of reconstruction efforts? Karl Rove?!? Given that they called it "reconstruction" in the announcement, I imagine for Southerners, even white fundamentalist men have to be twitching while they wonder what Cheniac is really up to. (Hint: expect a lot of Halliburton employees to make suitcases out of rugs.) But hey, he must realize that we have to start paying for this stuff, right?

To quote the title of another great blog, sadly, no! Read his lips, no new taxes. No old taxes, either -- don't worry about him even slowing down on tax cuts. After all, we can't hobble our brave, can-do billionaires as they feast at the trough of federal recon...er, I mean, rush in to bring that capitalist ingenuity to making money hand over fist...um, that is, creating a Brave New City built on conservative ideology and a whole new demographic. (IOW, no blacks need apply. Unless they're rich wingnuts.)

Even Prescott "The Profiteer" Bush would blush at the shamelessness of making money on the dead and destitute of a devastated American city. The debate is over: Bush is unbelievably stupid and amazingly evil. He is the front man for the Cheney/Rove axis, the living veil for a toxic stew of domestic piracy and foreign conquest. In spite of his stupidity, on some level he is clearly aware of this. It's time for Democrats to stop pussyfooting around this trained ape and wage politics with the same intensity (albeit not with the same mendacity) the Republicans do: as the small-d democratic equivalent of total war.
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(/) Roland X
Theoden: I will not risk open war.
Aragorn: Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.

Get the Defibrillator

Bush admits to failure?!? I think my heart stopped:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

He even spins remorse -- "all levels of government" and "didn't fully do its job right" sound like he's trying to dodge as much of the "responsibility" as he can -- but this is still an unprecedented step for an administration that has remained unrepentant on even its most epic failures. Of course, even on 9/11 we didn't lose an entire city, so I guess this proves that even Rove has his limits.

On the other hand, the administration is rapidly running out of scapegoats. Gov. Blanco has been officially declared to have done her job properly by what may be the last genuinely nonpartisan government commission in DC, and Mayor Nagin is proving increasingly difficult to blame. Now Bush can't be held responsible for the actions of a bunch of racist cops in Gretna, aside from doing something about them at the time, but they messed up in so many other ways that I'm willing to chalk that up to the same incompetence they displayed everywhere else. Otherwise, it looks like nearly the whole mess ends up in their laps.

(And I hate being so cynical that I wonder about how much of the 'fewer deaths than expected' news is good, and how much of it is cover-up.)

So Bush actually took responsibility for something. Well, that is to be commended as far as it goes. Now that we've had some truth, let's start talking consequences. Responsibility means you deal with what you did. Maybe it's time to repeal a few of those tax breaks for Bush's super-rich buddies to pay for this mess. Or perhaps the administration should be forced to eat some crow by having someone with brains replace the cronies in FEMA and other emergency organizations. Ideally, Bush should be forced to resign by overwhelming outrage, but we're the reality-based community, so one step at a time. Besides, that would just leave us with Cheniac, which wouldn't improve matters anyway.

They're starting to sink. As Carville would say, time to throw them an anvil.
--
(/) Roland X
Luthor/Brainiac amalgam: "I kill you, and then...Armageddon, right on schedule."

Gods Bless Newsweek

We rip the media so often here on the lefty side of the blogosphere (not as bad as the right's paranoid "MSM" fantasies, but still...), so I thought I should give kudos where they are richly deserved:

It takes a hurricane. It takes a catastrophe like Katrina to strip away the old evasions, hypocrisies and not-so-benign neglect. It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again. For the moment, at least, Americans are ready to fix their restless gaze on enduring problems of poverty, race and class that have escaped their attention. Does this mean a new war on poverty? No, especially with Katrina's gargantuan price tag. But this disaster may offer a chance to start a skirmish, or at least make Washington think harder about why part of the richest country on earth looks like the Third World.

It shouldn't have taken a hurricane. America should not need a disaster of Biblical proportions to wake us up from our complacency and sloth. Other than that, Newsweek -- the source of the paragraph quoted above -- nails it on the head. This is their cover story. The text of the cover?

Poverty, Race & Katrina
Lessons of a National Shame

Now that's the so-called "MSM" doing its gorram job.

We can, of course, expect the usual suspects to scream their usual slanders. "Bias!" "Liberals!" "Bush-haters!" To which I can only say the following, courtesy of Fox News:

SMITH: They won't let them walk out of the…convention center. .. they've locked them in there. The government said, "You go here, and you'll get help," or, "You go in that Superdome and you'll get help."

And they didn't get help. They got locked in there. And they watched people being killed around them. And they watched people starving. And they watched elderly people not get any medicine..

And they've set up a checkpoint. And anyone who walks up out of that city now is turned around. You are not allowed to go to Gretna, Louisiana, from New Orleans, Louisiana. Over there, there's hope. Over there, there's electricity. Over there, there is food and water. But you cannot go from there to there. The government will not allow you to do it. It's a fact.

HANNITY: All right, Shep, I want to get some perspective here, because earlier today...

SMITH: That is perspective! That is all the perspective you need!

So anyone want to tell me that Fox News is part of the liberal media? Watching the video, watching Geraldo Rivera in tears as he held up babies gone four, five, six days with little or no water, watching Shepard Smith screaming at Sean Hannity...Smith was right. That's all the perspective you need.
--
(/) Roland X
"WAKE UP!" -- Rage Against The Machine

Public Service Announcement For The Bushista Resistance

I've been hoping someone would do one blog/web entry that covers all the major malfeasance of the Resident and his cronies.

http://www.bobharris.com/content/view/636/1/

Mr. Harris does it so the rest of us don't have to. I wish I could smiley this, but the reality is just too...real. Still, kudos to Bob for wading through the virtual muck to give us the rundown on the real stuff along the Gulf Coast. As he puts it:

The lies are numerous, repeated, obvious, and easily documented.

Not to mention shameless, self-serving, vile and inexcusable. I wish I had more hope that America would wake up and realize what an obscene little man is running our country, but I have a little, which is more than I've had for a while now.

It shouldn't have taken losing an entire American city, a situation in which less than ten thousand deaths is a good thing, for us to get here. And the price is too high. But that there is hope at all is a good start.
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(/) Roland X
Hope is a phoenix, after all. Whattaya know.

The REAL Core of Bush Loyalty: A Paper Tiger

Gakked from Daily Kos, a poll from AP/Ipsos:

Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling his job as President?

Strongly Approve 20 (23)
Somewhat Approve 11 (10)
Lean Toward Approval 8 (9)
Lean Toward Disapproval 14 (13)
Somewhat Disapprove 5 (5)
Strongly Disapprove 40 (38)

Total

Approve 39 (42)
Disapprove 59 (55)

Italics theirs. Bold emphasis mine (and other boldface removed). Numbers in parentheses are from the previous poll.

Bush has dropped below 40%. He's officially tanking. The "popular wartime Preznit" BS is long since dead. (Of course, that's what you get for invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor -- I mean, Iraq after 9/11.)

More importantly, however, the strong approval rating is a mere 20%. Just half of the strong disapproval. That, my friends, is the solid, unshakeable core of the willingly deluded who continue to believe Bush anointed by God. That's it. And you can get 20% of Americans to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Hey, Democrats. You can call out the Bush Cultists for being lying, corrupt traitors. Honest. It's safe now.
--
(/) Roland X
O.D. (Original Deaniac)

Now IS the Time; Now HAS To Be the Time

So the adults are in charge, huh?

With everything from death to thuggery to sexual harrassment taking place at the hands of the government, give me one good reason not to play the "blame game."

I don't give a damn if Democrats go down too, if they're partly responsible for the horror that is Lake New Orleans. Now, Governor Blanco has unquestionably been slimed in an outright lie by the administration, which claimed she did not declare a state of emergency when it is a matter of record that she did on the 26th. However, criminal negligence is criminal negligence, and one slander does not an innocent make, so I reserve judgement.

Nevertheless, the evidence is overwhelming that Bush, the DHS and FEMA failed miserably. While Bush let them eat cake and fiddled, New Orleans drowned and the entire Gulf Coast was swamped.

As the entire sane blogosphere is pointing out, no one is responsible for an act of nature. They are responsible for their preparations for it (and lack thereof), criminal negligence during, and obscene neglect bordering on manslaughter afterwards. Thousands are dead because of these soulless fools. The buck stops now, or the next time will only be worse.

(/) Roland X
Bin Laden must be laughing his evil @$$ off...

9/11 Really DID Change Everything

Just not the way we thought:

The killer hurricane and flood that devastated the Gulf Coast last week exposed fatal weaknesses in a federal disaster response system retooled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to handle just such a cataclysmic event.

Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.

...

"We've had our first test, and we've failed miserably," said former representative Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. "We have spent billions of dollars in revenues to try to make our country safe, and we have not made nearly enough progress." With Katrina, he noted that "we had some time to prepare. When it's a nuclear, chemical or biological attack," there will be no warning.

Indeed, the warnings about New Orleans's vulnerability to post-hurricane flooding repeatedly circulated at the upper levels of the new bureaucracy, which had absorbed the old lead agency for disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among its two dozen fiefdoms. "Beyond terrorism, this was the one event I was most concerned with always," said Joe M. Allbaugh, the former Bush campaign manager who served as his first FEMA head.

...

"It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11," said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. "We are so much less than what we were in 2000," added another senior FEMA official. "We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then."

...

"The federal system that was perfected in the '90s has been deconstructed," said Bullock. Citing a study that found that the United States now spends $180 million a year to fend off natural hazards vs. $20 billion annually against terrorism, Bullock said, "FEMA has been marginalized. . . . There is one focus and the focus is on terrorism."

...

Others who went out of their way to offer help were turned down, such as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who told reporters his city had offered emergency, medical and technical help as early as last Sunday to FEMA but was turned down. Only a single tank truck was requested, Daley said. Red tape kept the American Ambulance Association from sending 300 emergency vehicles from Florida to the flood zone, according to former senator John Breaux (D-La.) They were told to get permission from the General Services Administration. "GSA said they had to have FEMA ask for it," Breaux told CNN. "As a result they weren't sent."

Emphasis mine in all cases.

The Washington Post has been absolutely amazing about this story. I highly recommend the entire article.

Kevin Drum, who (after a brief hiccup) has been the voice of moderates' outrage over this fiasco, has this to say about the article:

Here's the part I don't get — and I mean I genuinely don't get it, regardless of who's at fault here. Everyone suggests that part of the problem is that FEMA's focus was redirected toward terrorism after 9/11. In and of itself, this is neither surprising nor wrong. But the requirements to respond to a major terrorist attack on a U.S. city are largely identical to the requirements for responding to a hurricane like Katrina: food, medicine, maintenance of order, evacuation, and temporary shelter. So what are FEMA's plans for responding to, say, a large scale chemical weapon attack on Chicago? They'd have less warning than they did with Katrina and the requirements for aid would be largely similar. What would they do?

Exactly what they have done, Kevin -- spin for all they're worth, abandon the "poor, huddled masses" to whatever fate befell them, and send Halliburton in to profit off of the misery. (Oh, and Brown's predecessor as head of FEMA is now a lobbyist for Kellogg, Brown and Root. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.) With the obvious difference of being able to start wars over it instead of having to beg off on the whole "act of God" thing.

I understand the impulse to avoid "partisanship" during this terrible time, I really do. But with the Cheney administration desperately trying to pawn off responsibility for this fiasco on the Governor and Mayor (with outright lies in some cases), and with the clear and present dereliction of duty on the parts of the responsible parties (the DHS director and the head of FEMA in particular), we need to keep shouting this from the rooftops until the American people finally hear us -- because something has to be done about them before the next disaster.
--
(/) Roland X
Hope is a phoenix...
but before the phoenix can rise, first it must burn.

So Where's The Foreign Money?

Right here:

By Friday, offers had been received from Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Belgium, Britain, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates.

My faith in America is shaken. Humanity in general, OTOH...after everything this country has done, especially considering these are red states...this is really heartening.
--
(/) Roland X
Hope is a phoenix

Because I Have To

...I'm still in shock over New Orleans.

I was born in New York. 9/11 is still the only day I have ever just not gone to work -- called in sick, sure, but I just couldn't move from my television, watching my beloved city scream in agony as a monster stabbed a poisoned blade through its heart.

This is worse.

The unimaginable, breathtaking corruption and incompetence of the Bush administration throughout all this has made me purely ill, but right now even their responsibility for FEMA's sorry state pales to near-insignificance in the face of the massive death, destruction and suffering in the city. Babies dying of dehydration. Bodies floating in the streets. Thousands of people trapped, stranded, with no food or water because no one can get their heads out of their butts long enough to help them.

Politically, this is the right response:

No whitewashes. Find out who fucked up. Republicans, Democrats, I don't care. Anyone who screwed up should be tarred and feathered.

Yes. Absolutely. We need to find out what went wrong and make sure it never happens again.

LATER.

(Though yes, there is a place for keeping the heat on the blood-sucking monsters who drained the defenses from the Big Easy to play God and pork with.)

Right now, however, anyone who can do something needs to do it. I don't care whether you're red, blue, purple or rutting chartreuse. Right now, you help and you're on the side of the angels as far as I'm concerned. The rest of us need to give whatever we can. While we're in sufficiently dire straits monetarily that we can't match the full Skippy challenge, we are donating what we can through my office, which has a matching fund. Best Buy has one as well, but given the rapidly increasing outpouring of donations, I suspect they'll hit their million dollar cap soon, whereas my office has not listed a donation cap of their own.

I'd ask everyone reading this to do what they can, but I'm certain that all of you already are.

That's what's really tearing me up, ironically enough. Emotionally, I don't know which way to jump. There is so much that is wrong and ugly about this horror. The government knew this disaster was coming. We knew. And the sheer callousness of so many...yeah, I expected a few epic cases of jerkus maximus, but the pure, unadulterated bile aimed at people too poor to get out and who had to salvage what they could to survive...there are no words. I won't call it stealing or looting when the city is all but destroyed, and what was taken was solely for survival; call it "salvage rights" and be done with it, considering that most of what was taken out of need would have been destroyed anyway. But some people have to blame anyone and everyone but their Dear Leaders, even if that means pointing the finger at dying infants and senile grandparents.

On the other hand...so much giving. So much caring. So much not caring who's in need, or how much, just seeing the need and filling it. It's a feeling I thought we lost when Mr. Uniter took a sword to this country and cleaved it in two. And maybe...just maybe...people are actually waking up to how badly our system is messed up. It's horrific that we had to lose an entire major American city for this to happen...and that even then, it might not be enough. But when Fox correspondents tell Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity to get a gorram clue, maybe there's hope after all. "The best of times, the worst of times" indeed.
--
(/) Roland X
Hope is a phoenix

President Spoiled Brat

Not that I exactly have a problem with Mr. "My Pet Goat" gets into a whining contest with the psychotic far right, but this is really pathetic, even for Bush:

"I don't like it when a friend gets criticized. I'm loyal to my friends," Bush told reporters in Copenhagen, Denmark. "All of a sudden this fellow, who is a good public servant and a really fine person, is under fire. And so, do I like it? No, I don't like it, at all."

Well, gosh, I don't like it when a friend of mine gets criticized either, but you know what, I'm not nominating one to be a bloody Supreme Court justice.

And you know what else, maybe getting a nomination to the most powerful judicial body in the land shouldn't come about because you're somebody's drinking buddy or whatnot. Even if said buddy is the President of the United States.

The really sad thing is, Alberto "Captain Torture" Gonzales just might be the best we in the sanity-based community can hope for. And that, more than anything else, says all anyone needs to know about how far our great nation has fallen thanks to the W era.
--
(/) Roland X
"Blood at the polls and blood in the streets, but Scudder won the election. The next election was never held." --Robert A. Heinlein, 1952, "Concerning Stories Never Written: Postscript" in Revolt in 2100

And So It Begins

This is it:

Yes, it's true:

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and a key swing vote on issues such as abortion and the death penalty, said today she is retiring.

Well, everyone's making predictions. Here is mine:

It's all over the country. You can almost smell it. Coming off people like gas fumes. All it'd take is a match.

The story above -- Astro City's "Dark Age" -- is about an explosive conflict between the superhuman "freaks" (as well as those who believe in them) and the "normal" people who lose faith in them. The story ends with the match being thrown into the gas fumes -- the arrest of the world's most beloved hero for murder. "That's the match."

Justice O'Connor's retirement is ours. Liberal and "conservative" movements are ramping up -- the liberals trying to get Bush to not name a total wingnut, and the religious radicals trying to get a super-wingnut. As the most important swing vote on the bench, most recently highlighted by her split decisions on the church-state cases, the character of Bush's nominee will fundamentally shape the court's decisions for years to come.

Given W's history, I think it's safe to say that he'll go with the hyper-wingnut choice. With his poll numbers plummeting, his second-term agenda in tatters, the war in Iraq increasingly disastrous and Democrats more emboldened than they have been since 1994, he's going to want a victory. In his typical childish manner, he's going to want to "stick to his guns" and show everyone that he's still a "tough guy." I don't know if it'll result in real violence, but W has been steadily increasing the rift between the two sides, and this is his chance to sunder the nation entirely.

So much for the "uniter, not a divider" who was handed the most unifying moment in American history since Pearl Harbor. This is what he wants. This is what Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, and the entire corrupt, evil crowd wants. The real enemy was never bin Laden or even Hussein. It was us -- not just liberals, but the entire "reality-based community" that refused to accept their lies, their hegemony and their One True Way(tm).

I pray I'm wrong, but I doubt it. Unless a miracle happens, this is the end of the America that was, and the beginning of an all-out conflict to determine the future. Whether that future is the dominance of their Orwellian state dream, a renewed embrace of sanity and liberty, or a final sundering that began with an assault on a fort in 1861, remains to be seen.

Suffice to say I'm not hopeful.

(/) Roland X
"You have...forgotten something." --Kosh, Babylon 5

Good vs. Evil

Troll repellent: Yes, Osama bin Laden is an evil SOB who needs to be brought to justice, or barring that, gunned down. Saddam was a psychopathic, merciless tyrant. Etcetera.

That doesn't make everyone who fights them good. Stalin fought Hitler tooth and nail when he had to.

Compare and contrast the Bad Guys:

Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war. Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies.

...and the Good Guys:

I am deeply disturbed and disappointed that the Bush White House would continue to use the national tragedy of September 11th to try and divide the country. The lesson our country learned on that terrible morning is that we are strongest when we unite together, that America's power is in its common spirit of democracy and freedom.

I will say this about our side -- we are often reluctant to use the language of good and evil, particularly now, when the Shrub has tainted the concept of such stark contrasts. In this case, however, it's really simple. One side has routinely attempted to put aside the partisan crap when it comes to defending our country and its ideals. The other has done everything it can to drive a wedge between Americans in the hopes of scraping a few more voters into its corner.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader which is which.
--
(/) Roland X
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803

I almost cried...

...when I read this:

Via Ivo Daadler at TPM Cafe, text from Barack Obama's recent commencement address at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois (full text of speech here):

[America is a] place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that, against all odds, they could form "a more perfect union" on this new frontier. And as people around the world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come. Across oceans and the ages, they settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St. Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American Dream. This collective dream moved forward imperfectly--it was scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery, clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression. And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching, and petitioning their government, until they made America a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us. It's answered by us.

What Obama suggests is truly something that moves me. In short, he tells a narrative of American greatness in profoundly liberal terms. This is not the kind of patriotism that has been in vogue in recent years, certainly not the kind of national greatness propogated by folks on the right. Indeed, in the liberal narrative, America is great, or is special, or is an example to the rest of the world because being American is a process, it is never fixed. On the one hand, this is why America deals better with immigrants than virtually any other industrialized society I can think of, but also why the culture wars here rage so fiercely, and why liberals constantly have to hear that they are "unAmerican" or "don't love America enough." Because what being American means is fundamentally never a settled question. Much of American literature and autobiography gets to the heart of this idea: from Crevecouer's Letters from an American Farmer and Ben Franklin's Autobiography forward.

For a liberal to believe in America's exceptionalism, it can't be "America right or wrong," as conservatives were wont to say during the Vietnam era and are essentially saying again today. Hence, the divide over Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, where conservatives can't comprehend - and think even borderline traitorous - shining a light on and condemning the practices perpertrated by Americas here. For them, American exceptionalism is inherent. In this sense, the conservative version of patriotism/exceptionalism is much more like - ironically - European nationalisms. And thus, something like Abu Ghraib is essentially irrelevent.

For liberals, however, greatness is something that must constantly be created and reconfirmed. It is never a settled a matter. And indeed, it is this various unique process through which America is always/constantly defining and redefining itself that makes America exceptional, not the simply the existence of America and Americans.

I'm not sure whether the tears that formed in my eyes were at the beauty of this vision...or at how close we are to losing it completely as a significant force in America. Perhaps both.

To me, to speak of "the American Dream" is a redundancy. America is a Dream, a beautiful and glorious dream every bit the equal of Atlantis or Camelot or Shangri-La. This land we live on, the laws we live by, the flag we wave...those are the mere trappings of a mortal nation. The Dream will live forever, for it is rich and complex, yet exquisitely simple: liberty and justice for all. For all.

This means that a KKK fanatic can rant on his own time all he wants, true. It also means that the government has to leave Paul Krugman alone, and that Randi Rhodes is as inviolate as Dennis Miller. All things flow from those two basic principles. Liberty means the right to write what you want, play what you want and believe what you want, as long as you respect others' freedom in the process. And that is where justice comes in. Even though liberty is threatened now, it is justice that has come the farthest, and has the farthest to go. Slavery was a vast, horrific injustice -- but it has been undone. Equality for women and minorities is as yet unrealized, but so much has been accomplished since the revolution. We keep most of our seniors from starving, but children still die needlessly from preventable illness and treatable injury.

For all Bush's mad, idiotic hubris, for all Cheney's greed and evil, for all Rumsfeld's treachery and betrayal of our military, even they have tread lightly on this Dream. As deeply as the American people have been hypnotized, the power of the Dream that is America is enough to shake the world, and it lies within the vast, great majority of our people. It is merely quiescent in most, sleeping, waiting to be awakened and realized. Even as insane, arrogant and incompetent as these fools have proven, even they have had enough survival instinct to avoid truly waking it. And yet it stirs. The Dream sleeps uneasily, knowing it has been deeply and fundamentally betrayed.

"Ben P" strikes brilliantly on a primal aspect -- perhaps the primal aspect -- of the Dream when he says that America is the process of redefining (and in an almost alchemical sense, purifying) our nation. Ironically, what I call purification (here meant in a moral, almost spiritual sense) the most radical of our enemies call dilution or defiling. To them, allowing differing, "alien" elements weakens America, not realizing that this constant recreation is what the Dream is fundamentally about: the process of continual rebirth. Heh. Perhaps our national bird should be the Phoenix instead of the Eagle.

Hopefully, this Dream will one day encompass the world. When it does, however, it should not -- must not -- be represented by one nation's flag or people or military. Indeed, that would be to betray it at the deepest level -- which in many ways is what the Bush Administration is doing. That may be the most tragic result of the deep alienation the world is developing regarding the nation of America, as it rejects the Dream along with crude military efforts and selfish corporate gluttony. And yet, if we are ever to transcend politics of division and bigotry, foolishly pitting one ideology against another, we must embrace that Dream. To surrender it is to surrender the future, giving it to the power brokers and fanatics until they finally get us all killed.

Tomorrow can be better than that. Our legacy can be one of tolerance, freedom, opportunity and plenty. That is the very substance and promise of the Dream that is America, which is why the greedy and hateful fear it so much. No matter how badly under siege it may seem, no matter how deeply corporate machines and theocrats and Faux news outlets try to bury it, as long as one person remembers, we keep the flame alive. Even now, when I despair on a regular basis, I still believe that one day, it will light our way to a better world, and then to the stars.
--
(/) Roland X
Hope is a phoenix

Darth Idiot

The Trade Federation:

"My lord, is that...legal?"

"I will make it legal."

Nute Gunray and Darth Sidious, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

The Coalition of the Willing:

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

Sure, Iraq isn't Naboo. Still, given that our Vice President is proud of being the "evil genius in the corner," I have to wonder what it will take for the bare majority who voted for these guys -- evil and stupid, what a combination -- and the 40% who didn't vote at all to wake up and smell the fascism.
--
(/) Roland X
"Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you." -- Londo Mollari

Selling Their Souls

Ye gods, has it been that long (again)?

Well, anyway. This bit of brilliance has been making the rounds thanks to Atrios:

It's not true that the Conservatives I know don't give a damn so much as they are terrified that they were wrong.

Deeply, primally terrified. Their whole psychological infrastructure is cobbled together out of half-baked conservative bumper-sticker ideology, gun lust, socially illiterate hatred of "welfare cheats" and other largely fictional or apocryphal lazy people (read: niggers and other swarthy folk) who want to leech off of them while they work harder and harder for less and less. Despite a lot of bluster about Freedom and Individuality they are, at heart, happiest when they are conforming to the wishes of the Strong Man; when they know exactly their place in the hierarchy.

...

But in exchange for all of this wonderfulness, they have to hand over their souls to truly evil men.

...

This is the ancient, unbridgeable and eternally hostile schism between their template for humanity and ours. This is, I believe, why sometimes we fundamentally cannot understand each other; because we are running two radically different and incompatible O/S's.

...

And because everything – their very souls – rest on the foundation of the infallibility of Dear Leader, they'll happily kill anyone in any numbers who might force them to face up to the fact that Dear Leader is a duplicitous, lying sleazebag who has played on their fear and ignorance and patriotism to turn them out like $2 crack whores.

...

The good news is, we are still 49% of the game; wake up and pick off a mere 100,000 and we can begin to turn a lot of thinks around. The more gooder news is that our O/S thrives best when saturated in pure, clean Reality, and theirs rust and rots and flies apart at the seams when the lies that insulate it are peeled away.

It was a bear choosing excerpts from this post. Go. Read.

The problem is, Reality really is fungible, albeit not nearly as much as the madmen in office would like it to be. And when you bend Reality for too long, at too arrogant an angle, it knocks you over all by itself, to steal and rework shamelessly from Santayana. Worse, their arrogant experiment in molesting an entire region threatens to knock the rest of us over with them.

There was a time when fundamentalist terrorism was on the run. After September 11, 2001, we were united as never before. All that would have been necessary for this brand of evil to be an endangered species was for the men in power to not be arrogant, greedy, psychopathic fools.

Alas, they are.
--
(/) Roland X
"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." -- Santayana (again)

The War On Choice

I'm not talking about abortion, but rather an interesting form of a nigh-invisible double standard Orcinus brings up:

Ah yes. We've heard this line before. Because being gay is a "chosen behavior," it is undeserving of civil rights protections.

It's the same reason given by many evangelicals -- and particularly black and minority evangelicals, and people who claim they support civil rights -- for not supporting gays and lesbians in hate-crime protections: "You can't compare being gay to being black. One's immutable, one's chosen."

Well, yes, this is true when it comes to race. And even ethnicity. These are, after all, two of the three main legs of anti-discrimination and hate-crimes laws.

But it's not true of the third leg of these laws: religion. Last I checked, this too was a "chosen behavior."

Hmm. Okay, so let's review. Homosexuality is not deserving of anti-discrimination protection because it involves "choice." So does religion.

Of course, most of the anti-rights jihadists who hate gays would gleefully purge the country of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, neo-pagans, agnostics and liberal Jews and Christians – and an awful lot of them would happily turn their guns on Catholics (they're "Papists," after all) and all Jews. Can't be too careful, you know. So I guess this one isn't really about hypocrisy so much as resentment of that annoying First Amendment that protects freedom of religion. They can't legally discriminate against the heretics, but by God they can persecute the homos.

Unless they’re Republicans, that is. IOKIYAR, after all.

(/) Roland X
Who apologizes yet again for the incredibly long dearth of posts, but isn't going to waste lots of bandwidth on the subject.