In a parody of Rush's far-right nuttery, she should simply release a statement that she meant the policies of Rush's kidneys.
It is lamentable that these events, designed to help break the everyday barriers and constant political tensions, have gotten so politicized.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Wanda Sykes
The Donald and His Beauty Pagent
FIRE!
The Donald will making a ruling, today, reportedly, on Ms. California.
We can guess that he'll fire everyone. It seems to be what he knows (his show should have been called 'you're fired'). It's odd that people would look to him for moral compass or subtle management skill ...
In any case, turning Ms. Prejean into a martyr for the cause is a bad outcome. Letting her continue is almost untenable for everyone. Mr. Trump will help her to "graduate" to issue advocacy, I'll bet, and clean-out the Pageant hierarchy, so he can keep watching young women parade across the stage, well into his most senior years ... because of the cross-selling opportunities it provides his real-estate empire (of course!).
HOW MUCH A DIFFERENCE?
The margins are so thin, it all could actually mean something, other than just an ugly usurping of the Pageant limelight by marriage foes.
This is what I'm reading about how Maine could go the way of California:
In 2005, Maine voters rejected an effort to repeal the law that added sexual orientation to the Maine Human Rights Act, 55 percent to 45 percent. That vote came seven years after they repealed a gay rights law at the polls, 52 percent to 48 percent.
This makes it look like Maine is a 50% state... 1-2% at the margin is non-trivial.
Meanwhile, N.H. is fighting back against the influx of non-declared money, trying to push the electorate:
(h.t JMG)
Monday, May 11, 2009
Ready, Set, Tested
Sorry for the unavoidable adverts, but here is a commentary on the weird state of banking, today:
What if it hadn't "worked"?
Among the many circularities to emerge from the Bush-Cheney era is the alleged notion of "successful torture". Of course, we know there is no such thing as a successful torture program, but follow the argument.
They set out to torture, most likely, but the question is why?
After the fact, they say it was successful, but what did they say before the fact?
They must have said it was necessary. The question is why they said that.
We already have ample evidence of the ideological and political impetus, but one other way to answer that question is from prior intelligence-gathering experience with torture.
Strangely, the CIA and the OLC limited their inquiry into the matter to SERE techniques.
Yet, people still see no evidence of a conspiracy ...
Cheney, Still Waving the Mushroom Cloud
CHENEY ESTIMATES THAT TWENTY-FIVE 9/11's STOPPED BY TORTURE, INC.
If you thought people were ga-ga about Obama, it is Cheney who has a Savior-complex:
CHENEY: No regrets. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I'm convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.
ALL THE SELF-LAUDATORY FOCUS ON SECRET TORTURE TOOK OUR EYES OFF OF PREPAREDNESS
What will save hundreds of thousands of lives, rather than vainly hoping to catch a terrorist ticking-bomb scenario, is to have a national readiness.
I know numbers are hard, but hundreds of thousands?This narrow definition of "safety" as "savings lives" is deeply politicized and problematic.
We are never 100% safe; therefore, we cannot be "kept safe". Period.
What will save hundreds of thousands of lives, rather than vainly hoping to catch a terrorist ticking-bomb scenario, is to have a national readiness.I'll take the gay translators, expelled by Bush-Cheney.
I'll take a hospital system that is flexible to high capacity; a response-force that is tested and trained; a policing force that has true communications interoperability and mobile central command. The list goes on.
All these things, long before a cheap torture program.
Cheney And His One-man Side Show, "We Got 'em!"
Essay topic: compare and contrast the following two statements in the context of the criminal probe that appears warranted:
CHENEY: ...and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is the man who killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11, blew up the World Trade Center, attacked the Pentagon, tried to blow up the White House or the Capitol building. An evil, evil man that's been in our custody since March of ‘03.
So, what do you do with "evil men", let alone "evil, evil men"? What implication left unsaid and unexposed by Shieffer?
There is no peaceful co-existence with "evil", so ... Nothing is unjustified in fighting "evil" is the sordid implication, right? Torture is to be justified in the public's mind as a necessary, not cheap, component of confronting evil in the world (in the 'foreign world'?). Ever-Catholic Bill "The Warrior" O'Reilly has propagated the same view, so don't laugh.
Anyway, here is the contrast (the cover-story?):
CHENEY: Well, at the heart of what we did with the terrorist surveillance program and the enhanced interrogation techniques for Al Qaida terrorists and so forth was collect information. It was about intelligence. It was about finding out what Al Qaida was going to do, what their capabilities and plans were. It was discovering all those things we needed in order to be able to go defeat Al Qaida.
Do you have confidence that a dispassionate intelligence-gathering operation was constructed or run?
Do you share the misgivings of others that a RULE approach, regulate und legalize, is highly unworkable? Remember, this is an operation that by law conflates prosecutor, judge and jury AND does it behind a cloak of non-accountability called secrecy - how many of those systems function swimmingly?
Bonus part, below the fold
CHENEY: ...we were absolutely convinced, the country was convinced, that there was a very high likelihood of a follow-on attack, a mass casualty attack against the United States.
Since the premise above is that we were seeking intelligence, in extra-ordinary ways, because we were 'caught flat footed', what was the evidence that convinced anyone of an imminent attack in advance of actually gathering the intelligence on the matter?
Al qa'ida's hallmark has been simultaneous attacks, not rapid fire, so ... Say again? Isn't it true that they were "convinced" by their fears and suspicions, mostly the hallmark of weak leadership?
More:
CHENEY: ...The reason we went to the Justice Department wasn't because we felt we were going to take some kind of free hand assault on these people or that we were in the torture business. We weren't. And specifically, what we got from the Office of Legal Counsel were legal memos that laid out what is
Why no free-hand assault on "evil"? Now, we are peddling back the Al qa'ida - Iraq link ...er, I mean, the evil-torture link?
Isn't it plausible that the reason they went to OLC to "get" a "memo" was so that the conspiracy could move forward, not that it would be restrained? Notice especially Cheney's word choice - it's not legal "advice" he was after, it was a memo. He knows that OLC "memos" are special inside the Executive, right?
All the voices of policy restraint, until then, had been ignored (they certainly weren't provided to the Congress...). And where is the historical context, now, completely dropped, that al-qa'ida was to be treated as external to the laws of war, precisely so that a free hand was permitted?
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Cheney And His One-man Side Show, In and Out of Office
'WEAPONS-RELATED PROGRAM ACTIVITIES' REVISITED
Just like the prior "weapons-related program activities", we now have terrorist-related program activities.
It seems to make the most sense for Dick Cheney to be talking to lawyers, at this stage.Yet, he's out with a 'no regrets' statement about it all, explained away as the necessary shortcuts to having been caught on 9/11, after which we were made "safe".
THEY DIDN'T 'MAKE US SAFE' and the FOX PROPAGANDA OF THE TICKING BOMB
Bob Shieffer doesn't play hardball, but he does ask about the politicized and politically self-serving ideas on safety.In Cheney's reply, notice no ticking bomb, no Krauthammerian excusionisms:
CHENEY: That's what's in those [yet unpublished] memos [from the CIA, only]. It talks specifically about different attack planning that was under way and how it was stopped. It talks about how the volume of intelligence reports that were produced from that.
SCHIEFFER: Does it talk about planning for attacks or attacks that were actually stopped?
CHENEY: Well, I need to be careful here, Bob, because it's still classified. The way to answer this is give us the memos.Just like the prior "weapons-related program activities", we now have terrorist-related program activities.
All his pop-up passion on the issue, yet this reply is all he can muster? Terrorist-related program activities?
Friday, May 8, 2009
Is Bob Shieffer Up To It?
CHENEY TO TALK WITHOUT ANSWERING QUESTIONS
Ahead of the next week's hearings on Bush-era torture, Dick Cheney will take to the air, to countermand the sitting President and undermine the current "war effort", as he and his conceive it.
I wonder if Bob Shieffer knows he's in one of the toughest spots, with this interview, possibly, of his entire and long career?
ANOTHER REASON WHY THERE SHOULD BE A PROPER CRIMINAL PROBE
You can bet that Cheney wouldn't be on the airwaves, quite like this, if there were, right?
I have strong feelings about what happened and what we did or didn't do and what's happening now. And I don't have any reason not to forthrightly express those views.
-Former VP, Dick Cheney, WaPo
-Former VP, Dick Cheney, WaPo
We all have strong feelings, but it's time that you put yours to the test in front of a jury, maybe? Unless, the intent of "Facing the Nation" is to make that almost impossible?
WHY DOES CHENEY HATE OUR TROOPS?
We're just getting to the point at which the Bush-era doctrines are behind us, with the undisciplined taking of detainees, with a new Army Field Manual, one that is synced with the overall effort in ways that our sitting Generals all believe is apt prosecution of the war.
So why is Cheney out there, ready to undo all that has been achieved? At best, he's "unhelpful", as Rummy would say (did say, of others).
WHAT ARE THE QUESTIONS BOB SHIEFFER SHOULD ASK?
{next post}
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Obama Seizes Opportunity to Take Mantle of Fiscal Responsibility
BLUE BOOK POWER
I think it was Douthat comma Ross who wrote that he might recoil from exhaustion if he had to listen to one more screed on GOP "rebranding". I reached that point yesterday, with lead stories from Matthews and Maddow again on the GOP. Who cares, anymore, except as fascination with the macabre?
Coupled with the initiative to close tax loopholes, a pattern of steps to keep a firm handle on the politics of spending and collecting, emerges. One starts to sleep more assured.
Obama struck a blow for those who would move out of the block-and-tackle mode and actually move over into the fast lane that is governance, where setting the agenda and the debate are important.His team unveiled a 100-page book, outlining line-by-line $17 billion in cuts to the budget. Eat your heart out, John McCain, right? Each line-item contains a paragraph or two of "justification". Gnomes have been working hard to save dollars!
The media are downplaying it, and playing 5-second snips from the President's speech. Sadly, the Whitehouse doesn't have the video source on the website.
Coupled with the initiative to close tax loopholes, a pattern of steps to keep a firm handle on the politics of spending and collecting, emerges. One starts to sleep more assured. Readers here know that I'm one who would print up "I {heart} Peter Orzag" buttons, already, though, for how he has helped this Administration so far. Heck, I'm still waiting for the 10% that Rumsfeld said that anyone could get out of a budget, when he promised the same for the Pentagon ...
More on the Bush-era Failed Legal Strategies
THE COSTS OF THE BUSH-CHENEY CHEAP, FEEL-GOOD ERA ON SECURITY ARE COMING HOME
Senators Graham and McCain write at length about the mess that Bush-Cheney dumped on the next guy: hundreds (?) of detainees in a limbo created by a lack of prosecutorial discipline.
If Senators McCain and Graham come to grips with that, the more they might realize that stomping up-and-down about war powers didn't help Bush-Cheney and it won't help them (or anyone).
It's typical Bush-era "thinking": 'hope for the best and don't plan for the rest'; all benefits, no costs (that we can't push off to others or blame on the Democrats); etc., etc.As CQ Politics points out, the courts have been rightly uneasy about an Executive declaring a non-juridical "war" with people who it intended to treat as "non-warriors".
CAUGHT IN THE IDEOLOGICAL, LEGAL EDDIES OF THE BUSH ERA
If there were delicate balances and new methods to be tried out, hopes for them were dashed by the unidimensional arrogance with which Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld asserted Article 2 powers, perhaps, creating a need, today, to somehow 'transition' to a more far-sighted schema, even if there are short-term costs that are significant.
Scuttling the hopes for practical people to wrestle with real-world problems is the Bush-Cheney penchant for secrecy. The balances that were to be struck between secrecy and perceived fairness got dashed when secrecy was used to hide interrogation practices that were unsupportable, to ease accountability standards, possibly to cover-up treacherous detainee abuse, and possibly to wiretap journalists. (Let alone to create lies of omission required to win an election....grrr...).
Justice hates a vacuum and people hate a tyrant, even a "regulated tyrant".
If Senators McCain and Graham come to grips with that, the more they might realize that stomping up-and-down about war powers didn't help Bush-Cheney and it won't help them (or anyone).
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Resting Prosecution Too Early, Part II
Now, exceptions can be made, and the question of whom to prosecute is tricky. It seems unfair to prosecute CIA agents who tortured, as they had been specifically advised that techniques like waterboarding were legal.
- Johnathan Chait
- Johnathan Chait
Oh, those innocent 20-something interrogators that we put in the torture room and the outsourced operatives we put in charge!
Tell me, what is the long-term remedy for the proverbial CIA 'official' who comes along and says, to each President, "we can offer you the mother load, Mr. President, if only you would untie our hands!"
Isn't legal jeopardy of some kind perhaps as good as any?
THE ALLEGED BEGINNING
The meeting marked "the first time that the issue of interrogations comes up" among top-ranking White House officials, recalled John C. Yoo, who represented the Justice Department. "The CIA guys said, 'We're going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees'" if interrogators confined themselves to treatment allowed by the Geneva Conventions. - WaPo
If we really, really, really ever want a CIA worthy of the money that we spend on it, we have to stop the CIA from these requests and insist that they develop more comprehensive programs.
CORRECT PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
If we believe this account above (no reason to, especially), the problem isn't the civilian Congress who go back-and-forth with detrimental demands on the CIA, it is the demands of the CIA itself.
We Report, You Shut Up!
Media Matters on the job (report):
I have to say that the rest of the media often do variations of the same thing. With the interweb, however, it is possible to get original source, more often, but not nearly enough.
A Disaster on Wheels?
BILL CLINTON TO SHARE STAGE WITH FUTURE PIFWC
Something about the optics of sharing a stage, for money (?), with a potential war criminal that doesn't seem right.
Quick, if you were Obama's, Bill's, or George's PR person, would you go in for this, on foreign soil no less?:
Former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush will appear together in Toronto next month on a public stage for the first time since Mr. Bush ended his presidency, in a remarkable twist on the cultural cold war that Barack Obama and others are trying to lay to rest. The two will be appearing at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on May 29 for a moderated "conversation" that is expected to last about two hours.
Banana Republic/Republican Watch
The evidence keeps coming in.
Another Bush-era investigation that went on forever:
"The professional responsibility office first began examining the actions of the lawyers nearly five years ago." - NYT
Obama, looking a little feckless, himself.
Update: Getting away with it?
That’s because OPR’s five-year investigation—carefully timed for release only as Bush was leaving the White House and Obama was coming in—dragged on too long. As a result of that timing, OPR blew the deadline for referring possible misconduct allegations against Yoo.
John Yoo is admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania. But the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board, which would investigate any complaints against him, imposes a four-year limitation for complaints.
Yoo wrote the memos in 2002 and 2003. This is 2009. You do the math.
"Strong on Defense" Goes by the Boards with "Compassionate Conservatism"
THE 2004 ELECTION YEAR GOP FRAUD ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC
I'm reading, this morning, about all the "leadership strength" under the gun:
What has also been disclosed is that the former Attorney-General, Judge Mukasey, and his Deputy, did write a paper for the OPR [office of professional review] speaking of the extraordinary circumstances and pressure under which the [OLC] lawyers concerned were operating in the immediate aftermath of 9-11.
[see also, Condi Admits White House was "terrified"]
It is clear that this attitude resulted from fear of another terrorist attack and the resulting pressure that was felt throughout the administration to do anything that might prevent one.
[see also, Condi Admits White House was "terrified"]
It is clear that this attitude resulted from fear of another terrorist attack and the resulting pressure that was felt throughout the administration to do anything that might prevent one.
I'm sure everyone has their own, but here is one I picked up fast on youTube. Given what we now know, what a fraud:
Bad News for The Torturists Among Us
THE COSTS OF THE TORTURE ROOM - IM SHATTEN
Focusing on the purported benefits (of torture) without enumerating the costs is a typical slight of hand from the Bush-Cheney huggers, like Krauthammer.
Here is a shorthand (even though there are long alternatives).
- 1. The U.S. and our allies will likely be "hit" by some other act of terrorism.
- 2.Terrorists get out of jail, if you make Krauthammerian "exceptions".
There is no 100% safe, even if we wanted it. Al qa'ida is probably not the last terrorist network to ever arise. We have not seen the end of war or political violence.
Maybe, it's not until we let a terrorist go that we will be forced to understand that there ARE costs to Bush-Cheney safety, ...
Our hands tied, we will continue with the Bush-era tribunals-cum-detention-torture-cover-ups.
No way that Justice is served if you torture someone and get nothing of value. In fact, the grave injustice served on that person is of such a quality that they have a case for their release (and more). No prior crime, known or unknown, justifies torture, does it? To some unknown measure, all one creates, wittingly or no, is a blood-lust program, not a pick-me-up for Porter-Goss's 'global human condition'.Our hands tied, we will continue with the Bush-era tribunals-cum-detention-torture-cover-ups.
THE "GOOD NEWS" FOR TORTURISTS AMONG US
There is a lot more that can go under each of those paragraphs. But, it may not matter.
Our hands tied, we will continue with the Bush-era tribunals-cum-detention-cover-ups.
Maybe, it's not until we let a terrorist go that we will be forced to understand that there ARE costs to Bush-Cheney safety, and it could not have made us and our allies fully safe anyway.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Can We Ever Trust Another Republican President?
Andrew Sullivan writes,
This [investigating our torture regime] is not about vengeance; it's not about partisanship; it's about the integrity of the rule of law, without which we are all lost.
Ultimately, it's an American tragedy.
Face it, can we ever trust another Republican President? After Nixon, did you ever think you'd have to ask that again, in your lifetime?
p.s. My money-bet is on Addington, for the "smoking gun", so not much excitement there.
Tell me a little bit about the first White House Counsel's office meeting after the administration took office. Who was there, and what was laid out?
... Very early on Judge Gonzales outlined for the office what the president's priorities were for the counsel's office, and there were really two principal priorities. One was the speedy appointment of top-notch judges who were practitioners of judicial restraint and being ready to appoint a justice of the Supreme Court, should that become necessary. The other was, as Judge Gonzales related to us, to leave the presidency in better shape than he found it; that is, to try to restore some of the powers and privileges and prerogatives of the presidency, along with restoring its honor and reputation in the wake of eight years under President Clinton in which the presidency had taken a real beating, both legally and reputationally.
So this idea of executive power is on the table immediately?
It's on the table immediately. The vice president certainly, and a lot of the lawyers that were working in the White House Counsel's office, had strong beliefs about the importance of executive power and separation of powers and were very interested, not for the sake of George W. Bush the person, but for the sake of the institution of the presidency. ...
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