Month: November 2006

The Theocracy Movement, Ted Haggard Edition

by tristero

I’m sure that monumental examples of the hypocrisy of Ted Haggard, the president of the National Associations of Evangelicals (NAE), will be uncovered by the blogosphere in the next few days. And, by God, they should be.*

But that’s not the worst of it. Not by a long shot. I recently watched Haggard get interviewed by Richard Dawkins for the latter’s British tv special, The Root of All Evil? The subject was “intelligent design” creationism and Haggard was both woefully ignorant and incredibly arrogant.** Dawkins provoked him into a genuinely embarassing display of hostility, not only against Dawkins himself, but the very notion of rational inquiry.

And, of course, there’s more. Haggard actively supports efforts to advance a United States theocracy. A year ago, a graduate sued the Air Force Academy “claiming Air Force Academy senior officers and cadets illegally imposed Christianity on others at the school. “:

Weinstein claims that evangelical Christians at the school have coerced attendance at religious services and prayers at official events, among other things.

“It’s a shocking disgrace that I had to file this thing,” Weinstein told The Associated Press.

The Air Force declined immediate comment.

Cadets, watchdog groups and a former chaplain at the academy have alleged that religious intolerance is widespread at the school. On Aug. 29, the Air Force issued guidelines discouraging public prayer at official functions and urging commanders to be sensitive about personal expressions of religious faith.

There have been complaints at the academy that a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and that another Jew was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet. A banner in the football team’s locker room read: “I am a Christian first and last … I am a member of Team Jesus Christ.”

Also, there have been complaints that cadets were pressured to attend chapel, that academy staffers put New Testament verses in government e-mail, and that cadets used the e-mail system to encourage others to see the Mel Gibson movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

…

The lawsuit, which names the Air Force and its acting secretary, Pete Geren, as defendants, asks the Air Force to prohibit its members — including chaplains — from evangelizing and proselytizing or in any related way attempting “to involuntarily convert, pressure, exhort or persuade a fellow member of the USAF to accept their own religious beliefs while on duty.”

Guess who rose to defend the prosletysing? None other than Ted Haggard:

“If this lawsuit prevails, we’ll have increased government supervision of religious speech,” Haggard said.

Weinstein said Haggard has mischaracterized his suit, which he says aims to protect men and women in uniform and on duty from being pressured to change their faith.

Weinstein is exactly right, as any fair reading of the lawsuit will confirm. Weinstein continues:

“I think Ted Haggard is the Prince of Darkness when it comes to religious freedom,” said Weinstein, reached by phone in Albuquerque, N.M.

“He’s the one who’s really trying to suppress religious freedom by ensuring that one particular biblical worldview becomes the official biblical worldview of the U.S. government, and particularly the Department of Defense.”

But why damn Haggard with Weinstein’s words when Haggard damns himself easily enough?

Asked about evangelicals’ reputation for a “my way or the highway” view about their beliefs, Haggard said evangelicals can be strong in their beliefs but yet protect the beliefs of others.

“We feel comfortable in a guaranteed right to heaven,” he said.

“We feel comfortable in a guaranteed right to heaven.”

And you thought white men had a burden. Imagine Ted Haggard’s. Secure in his faith that he and those who believe what he believes will go to heaven. And the unspoken corollary: Those who believe differently will go to Hell. Haggard has a solemn duty to save those souls from eternal fire and brimstone, the Constitution be damned.

Fair enough, if Haggard goes down because of his hypocrisy, good riddance. Hell, they got Capone for tax evasion, after all. But regardless of the hypocrisy of his alleged personal proclivities and his public posturing, his views are so bizarre and so odious they have no business having anything close to mainstream influence in American political discourse.*** But they do. As Digby notes below, Ted Haggard speaks to the president of the United States once a week.

Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with a country that would tolerate a leadership that not only respects but regularaly listens to an intellectual and spiritual midget like Ted Haggard?

*I’m assuming the assertion by an admitted male hooker that Haggard was a longtime client are substantive, as many appear to believe now.

**And Haggard’s not only a scientific illiterate. He claimed to Dawkins that the Bible is entirely free of contradiction. Apparently, Haggard has never read the early chapters of Genesis, with its two different creation stories.The question arises, “What does Haggard know anything about?” Well, he knows how to separate working people from their hard-earned cash so his megachurch can buy state of the art video projections for his services. And he also knows about…well, I’ll get back to you.

***Have you heard about the demons that infect people with homosexuality and other vices? You will, soon.

[Updated to include the observation of Haggard’s biblical illiteracy. Updated also to clarify one sentence. Haggard’s alleged “personal proclivities” are not the issue. The issue is his hypocrisy and the original version of the sentence made that point less clear than it should be.]

It All Falls Down

by digby

When you listen to this tape, it sure sounds like Pastor Ted Haggard and it sure sounds like he was setting up a drug buy with a gay hooker.

I think we may be at a point at which it would be easier to assume that all the most virulent gay marriage opponents and staunch family values conservatives are in the closet. Then we can get past all this ridiculous posturing and deal with their true issues. As it is they are all playing them out in destructive, sublimated fashion in politics and it’s hurting a lot of people.

Come out. Join the Log Cabin Republicans or dress in drag, we don’t care. Really. You’ll feel better and a grateful nation will appreciate it.

Btw, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Ted Haggard, the head of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals, jokes that the only disagreement between himself and the leader of the Western world is automotive: Mr. Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas he prefers a Chevy.

I don’t doubt it.

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Keeping Us Safe

by digby

Well, this is awfully good news:

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

Does everyone remember Pete Hoekstra’s call to unleash the blogosphere last spring? It sent the wingnuts into a tizzy:

Three years after the war in Iraq began, there is so much information about prewar Iraq that people have yet to see. The Iraqi Survey Group provided some answers, but it left open as many questions.

Sitting deep within a warehouse in Qatar are millions of documents that may shed some light on the issue.

Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte recently delivered meaningful news when he agreed to initiate a process that would declassify the 48,000 boxes of documents and hundreds of hours of taped conversations with Saddam Hussein and his key advisers.

Documents that I have personally reviewed reveal notes about Kuwaiti prisoners of war used as human shields in 2003 and missiles and chemical and biological weapons buried 40 feet below ground. They are not definitive. However, they are enough to raise eyebrows.

I can only speculate on exactly what the rest of the nearly 2 million documents will contain — perhaps very little new information but potentially a very great amount. The American public should have access to it now.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has indicated that he will post the information on the Internet so the public, the press and academics can read, study and understand it.

The approach carries with it risks, but such risks are minimal. It will enable us to better understand information such as Saddam’s links to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and violence against the Iraqi people.

[…]

Such material requires the entrepreneurial spirit of academia and others to help us to better understand it. It needs to be posted online so we can unleash the power of the World Wide Web and shine a spotlight on it.

The proposed approach will be a transparent process rather than one mired in secrecy. It will allow us to leverage the Internet to enable a mass examination as opposed to limiting it to a few exclusive elites. What would have once taken years and decades may now be done in real time.

We now only have a pixilated snapshot of Saddam Hussein’s regime prior to the war. As more of the information is posted online, we will begin to bring into focus the more complete picture of prewar Iraq that has thus far eluded us.

Yeah. That worked out well.

Hoekstra had actually been agitating for releasing the documents for quite some time. In February, Instapundit reported:

PAJAMAS MEDIA CORRESPONDENT Andrew Marcus interviews Rep. Peter Hoekstra about all those unread Iraqi WMD documents. Hoekstra suggests parceling them out to the blogosphere. Call in the Army of Davids!

Here’s the interview.

It looks like the ole perfesser and his pals didn’t realize that the Army of Davids might include a few soldiers of jihad. Ooopsie!

It’s a good thing the government is launching an investigation to find the dastardly bastards who leaked that Pentagon chart that realistically assessed the conditions in Iraq the other day. That puts America at risk. “Shining a spotlight” on nuclear bombmaking plans (conveniently written in arabic)by putting them all over the internet, on the other hand, is a terrific idea. That’s what the Republicans are all about — “a transparent process rather than one mired in secrecy.”

You can sure see why these guys have such a reputation for being good on national security, can’t you?

Update: Sadly No! has much more from last spring on how the blogosphere was unleashed. Let’s just say Red State and Powerline play a large part. Feeling safer?

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Warming Up The Freakshow

by digby

On MSNBC just now, Republican fascist Bob Dornan and an African American radio host named Joe Madison were talking about negative ads. Dornan said he wants the Republicans to hold on to the house by one vote so there will be new leadership. But he’s very afraid that the liberals will take over.

He backs that up with a little anecdote from his days in the house:

I don’t want to see that other team come in come in on the other side. I served with them … Joe, I’ll tell you Nancy Pelosi said to me once during a pro-life vote, I said, “Nancy, how can you as a Catholic” — we have the same number of daughters and sons, we each have five — “how can you vote for abortion, taking an innocent life?”

You know what she said? Brace yourself Joe. I’ll take an oath on this. She said, “Bob, what would you do if your daughter was raped by a black man?”

I said, “Nancy, what a racist statement!”

This from the same guy who famously said: “Every lesbian spear chucker in this country is hoping I get defeated.”

Bob Dornan was mercifully defeated in 1996 by Loretta Sanchez. (This in the same district in which the Republican candidate has been accused this cycle of sending out illegal mailers telling immigrants they cannot vote.) Dornan protested the results, claiming she won with the votes of illegal aliens, and the GOP House of repreentatives refused to allow her to take her seat while they conducted an investigation. She was eventually seated.

He was convicted of beating his wife in the 1960’s although for unknown reasons he never served jailtime. (She later took the blame admitting she asked for it.)He assaulted people on the House floor. He’s crazy as a loon. So why, you ask, would MSNBC have this seriously disturbed man on to discuss negative ads?

It’s a warm-up. The freaks are coming out of the woodwork and the cablers are combing their rolodexes for second tier Dem bashers who haven’t been allowed out of their cages while the majority Republicans tried to maintain a slight veneer of civilized behavior. There is an entire workforce of under-employed GOP wierdos like Dornan who are looking at a whole new life if the Republicans lose.

We’re gonna party like it’s 1998. It’s good for ratings — or, at least, they think it is.

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Gahhhhh!! Could Bush Be Doing A Really Good Job???!

by tristero

I just about had an aneurysm when I read this:

…eyebrows popped up last week when none other than Richard Perle , former Reagan assistant secretary of defense, former Bush brain-truster on the Defense Policy Board, and a key promoter of the war to find Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, blistered the administration as “dysfunctional…” [italics in original]

Oh. My. God. Do you realize what this means? Richard Perle, who has been right about exactly nothing in his long career, whose grasp on reality is so thin he thinks the UN is on the banks of the Hudson River, Richard Perle believes the present administration is doing a lousy job. And, gasp! there is only one conceivable conclusion to draw from this:

George Bush, we hardly know ye. You must be doing one heckuva job.

I staggered back from my computer, my entire world overturned. If Richard fucking Perle thinks the Bushites are incompetent, my God, have I been wrong about the Bush administration all these years? Could it be that no one could have prevented 9/11? Could the Bush/Iraq war actually be a great idea? Could the situation there actually be going “remarkably well,” as Cheney recently said? No. Wait. I can’t believe it. Well, shoot me in the face, but it’s inescapable. Perle’s angry, fearful criticism of the Bushites can only mean that – no, it can’t be, but logically it follows – Dick Cheney is as sane as you and I.*

Clearly, I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

But then, I read a little further:

…eyebrows popped up last week when none other than Richard Perle , former Reagan assistant secretary of defense, former Bush brain-truster on the Defense Policy Board, and a key promoter of the war to find Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, blistered the administration as “dysfunctional” when it comes to stopping someone from bringing “a nuclear weapon or even nuclear material into the United States…

“If [the Bush administration] can’t get itself together to organize a serious program for finding nuclear material on its way to the United States, then it ought to be replaced by an administration that can.”

But President Bush , Perle emphasized, is not to blame for this sorry state of affairs. “I haven’t the slightest doubt that if one could . . . put this proposition to the president, he would first be shocked to learn that we don’t have the capability. Secondly, [he] would immediately order that we develop it.” [italics in original]

Oh, thank God, thank Flying Spaghetti Monster, may offerings be proferred to the Cathode, the Anode, and the Holy Grid. Nothing to worry about. Perle’s still nuts, it’s just that the mad dog that is his paranoia is chasing its tail. And Bush is still the worst president. Ever.

Y’see, the Bush administration is dysfunctional to Perle because it isn’t totally freaked out, in a George C. Scott Strangelovian way about, get this, “finding nuclear material on its way to the United States.”

Man, dig it! The assumption implied by Perle’s deliberate grammatical choices is that there actually is terrorist nuclear material on its way here. Right now. Hiding in the Evian you now are allowed to carry on flights again.

Think about it. If Claude Rains in Notorious can stash uranium in wine botttles, why NOT plutonium in designer water bottles?

I feel, I smell the terror. Today, sez Perle, the nuclear material is on its way. Tomorrow, it arrives and gets unloaded by some of Ann Coulter’s foul-smelling men. And on Saturday, the bomb…no, THE Bomb…is gonna blast us all…you, too, Missouri…to hell and beyond. Impeach Bush now!

Okay, a reality check. Experts know a few things about the threat of terrorist nuclear explosions. First and foremost, certain terrorists, including the bin Laden gang, have sought nuclear explosives for years. This is serious shit and you damn well better believe it we should it be very concerned. Especially with lunatics like AQ Khan still on the loose…oh, excuse me, he’s under house arrest, I forgot. That’s stopping him.

But I digress, so before going further, let’s get this upfront and clear as a bell. No one seriously disagrees with the fact that nuclear arms in the hands of terrorists is an alarming proposition. Nor does anyone seriously disagree that security for nukes, especially in Russia, has been atrocious, alarmingly so. Nor does anyone disagree that more can and should be done to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on nukes.

The real question, the only question, is this: How likely is the threat of nuclear terrorism in 2006, and for the next four or five years? The answer seems to be, “very, very unlikely.”

Note: I am not saying the imminent threat of a nuclear explosion is very, very unlikely. Bush, after all, still is president, and I am convinced he wants to be the first since Truman to Push The Button, probably on Iran. And there are some other nuts in the world who also have nukes.

But nuclear terrorism, perpetrated by a McVeigh clone or al Qaeda? I can’t see it in the near future for many reasons. Let’s look at a few.

Indeed althought there have been efforts to obtian them, terrorists have, by all accounts failed to get usable “nuclear materials,” meaning stuff that goes bang, like plutonium. How have they failed? They’ve been played for suckers, for one thing. Like a 15 year old dork from the suburbs of New Jersey,* bin Laden thought he was copping the finest Mexican but ended up with oregano and toasted bananna peels.

And there are many good reasons why no one. at least no state, would be willing to sell nukes to terrorists. Do I have to spell them out? The moment they are traced back to the state – and they will be traced back, even given the poor accounting of nuclear stockpiles in Russia – that state has less than 48 hours of existence left. And that’s for starters.

What about non-state actors? Well, there are a lot of obstacles to that happening, too, when you think about it. First of all, y’gotta steal some bang-bang that’s been refined, processed, and ready to rock. Y’gotta know where it is. Now, it’s not that difficult to find that out, I’m sure, but what is difficult, especially if you have the kind of education even a Muhammad Atta had – and most rank and file terrorists don’t – is knowing what to look for, knowing how to steal it, how to store it, and how to transport it. And that’s over and above the ordinary risks a normal thief would have to go through, like the fact that the Man is after you, and unscrupulous competitors want to know where you stashed the goods so they can rip you off.

Again, for the less than fleet of mind, I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m saying that given what we publicly know about who is doing terrorism today – and I stress the “today” – it’s just not that easy to get their hands on the Big Bang. It just doesn’t seem that likely.

But let’s say they did. Let’s say that somewhere between bin Laden’s hideout and Cheney’s undisclosed location is a large stash of nasty stuff in the hands of nasty people. Remember, now. No current state, that’s right: no current state would be suicidal enough to sell a working bomb, or the makings of one, to terrorists. What that means is that you need people – plural – very conversant with Western physics to build the contraption. Sure, a pretty smart Princeton undergrad, say, can figure out how to design a nuke. But design AND build it? In complete isolation? Without reliable access to specialized supplies and test equipment?

Doesn’t sound that doable to me. But, let’s keep playing the game. They’ve built the bomb. Well, they can’t really test it, y’know. Come to think of it, how they gonna store and maintain the thing? Y’can’t just stuff it in the back of a cave wrapped in a nice rug and trust that two guys with a working knowledge of an ak-47 and a childhood education consisting of memorizing Qu’ranic suras are gonna know how to care and feed a nuclear bomb, for crissakes. That takes expertise which present-day terrorists don’t have. Remember: 9/11 was box cutters. Spain was cellphone detonation. London was timers. These are a far cry, technologically, from a nuclear warhead and don’t forget, Ramzi Yousef was captured because of an explosive accident. The bastards in al Qaeda may be among the worst people alive in the world, but they aren’t rocket scientists. Or nuclear.

And that brings up Perle’s bete noire. How do you transport a nuke? I have no idea, but I’m willing to bet that you don’t simply pack it up in a fedex shipping carton surrounded by a lot of old wadded newspaper and expect it to arrive in one piece at a pier on the Hudson River, next to the UN (to lapse into Perle’s geographical illiteracy). And even if it did arrive, it has to be picked up, at least partially assembled, then tested, deployed, and detonated. And I strongly suspect that arming and firing a nuclear weapon, even a small one, is a lot more elaborate than twirling your moustaches, shouting “I’m king of the world!” and pushing a big red button.

Could a terrorist nuclear explosion happen in the US in the next four years? Yes, it could. Is it very likely? I can’t see how anyone can say that with a straight face.

Should the US take the threat of future nuclear terrorism seriously and institute serious efforts to prevent it?

Of course we should. And you know what would be the most effective way to prevent a nuclear terrorist act in the next ten years, other than more effective port screenings, and the like? Elect American leaders who understand that it is sheer insanity to invade other countries unilaterally, to prop up corrupt oligarchs like the Saudis, and behave as if the United States is the Roman Empire Reloaded. Why is all this crazy? Because the US today is not only breeding more terrorists in Iraq, it is breeding more sophisticated ones.

With every death caused by an American, or blamed on an American, virulent, highly personal hatred of America and Americans spreads. And don’t kid yourself. “They” may already hate us, but atrocities like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo make it quite clear that the present US government has demonstrated that anti-Americanism is infinitely expandable.

I’m not naive. The US will never be the city on a hill. I’m not talking Cumbaya. I’m talking commonsense. If you were bin Laden, and you wished to expand the pool of potential violent opponents of the US, if you wanted to recruit among the best and the brightest, those that could build and deploy an atomic bomb, what could you possibly do better than what the US is already doing in Iraq? In Afghanistan? In Israel/Palestine? And so many other places?

Perle, of course, is totally paranoid, in a Bircher kind of a way. But paranoids have a creepy habit of generating self-fulfilling prophecies. The longer the US continues to privilege the paranoids like Perle, by demanding an “end to evil” and trying to rule the world by hard force, the sooner Perle will be right.

And believe me, you don’t want to live in a world where a man like Richard Perle is right. A Hobbesian world would be paradise by comparison.

Special Note: Obviously, this is all my speculation, but it is something I looked into at one point in some detail. I believe if you search my blog, you will find links to articles and books that make the following points: present-day terrorists are not that well-educated in Western science, especially physics, terrorists generally prefer low-tech strategies to high-tech ones, and the barriers – financial, intellectual, strategical, and practical – to the successful deployment of a nuclear weapon, even the lower tech so-called “dirty” bomb, are formidable. If people are interested, I’ll try to scare up new links, but there are experts who have publicly said as much as I’ve said: Nuclear terrorism is a serious threat, but it is unlikely, at present to be an imminent one. That does not mean the US should do nothing. But there are far more imminent dangerous threats that the US faces, and Perle is wildly wrong to get so hysterical. As usual.

*Of course, I’m aware of the fallacy of the ad hominem here. Geez, not only on the internets does no one know if you’re a dog, but no one has any sense that you may not be a dog.

**I have the right to say this. I grew up in suburban New Jersey so I know whereof I speak, although I can honestly claim that I never bought bananna peels thinking they were something more potent. Whether I’m saying I never tried, or did but never got burned, I’ll leave for your fevered speculation.

ROTFLMAO

by tristero

Until it reaches its entirely unexpected Aristocrats-level punchline, this has to be one of the finest Times editorials of the past 6 years. Here’s a taste:

In Mr. Bush’s world, there are only two kinds of Americans: those who are against terrorism, and those who somehow are all right with it. Some Americans want to win in Iraq and some don’t. There are Americans who support the troops and Americans who don’t support the troops. And at the root of it all is the hideously damaging fantasy that there is a gulf between Americans who love their country and those who question his leadership.

And then, whammo! Here’s the entire last paragraph:

This is hardly the first time that Mr. Bush has played the politics of fear, anger and division; if he’s ever missed a chance to wave the bloody flag of 9/11, we can’t think of when. But Mr. Bush’s latest outbursts go way beyond that. They leave us wondering whether this president will ever be willing or able to make room for bipartisanship, compromise and statesmanship in the two years he has left in office.

Top that if you can, Stephen Colbert!

Now You’re Talking

by digby

Give me a second here, Rush, because I want to share something with you. I am deeply concerned about a country, the United States, leaving the Middle East. I am worried that rival forms of extremists will battle for power, obviously creating incredible damage if they do so; that they will topple modern governments, that they will be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West. People say, “What do you mean by that?” I say, “If they control oil resources, then they pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they will do so unless we abandon Israel, for example, or unless we abandon allies.

Huh? So he’s saying that oil prices will go up unless we abandon Israel and our allies? What the hell is he saying?

I have to give the Republicans credit, I really do. The head of their party, the president of the United States, the leader of the free world is virtually unintelligible when he speaks, he insults people, he creates international incidents and when not making gaffe after gaffe he is almost entirely incoherent. Yet they just got away with two days of wall-to-wall pearl clutching and hanky wringing over an irrelevant Democrats’ blown punchline.

They may not be able to keep their majority after this disasterous experiment in Tinkerbell governance, but they continue to impress with their gigantic brass… impudence. Gentlemen, I salute you.

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Consequences

by digby

Now this is funny…

Said Bush, in an interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh: “Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words. …

He knows whereof he speaks:

President Bush said Wednesday that American troops under fire in Iraq aren’t about to pull out, and he challenged those tempted to attack U.S. forces, “Bring them on.”

That worked out really well.

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Funding

by digby

John Fund responded to my post of last night by sending an email telling me that he is friends with a black GOP activist named Ted Hayes, who hails from Waters’ district. Good for him.

He also pointed out that Waters was, in fact, one of those who voted on one bill to cut off funds for the war, which means that his taunting had some basis in fact. What he doesn’t explain is why she should be ashamed of it.

This “cutting off funds for the troops” is an old Republican shibboleth going back to Vietnam. They use it very effectively to say that Democrats don’t support the troops, but it’s actually the only method the constitution provides for the congress to force an intransigent president to change course in a war when the people demand it. This is a democracy last I checked and we do have at least a little say in these things.

There are always a few who see the writing on the wall earlier than others. When Johnson wanted to escalate the war in Vietnam some senators famously demured:

Gaylord Nelson … as the junior Senator from Wisconsin in 1965, joined two others in voting against funding to escalate the Vietnam war. At the time Nelson said:

“At a time in history when the Senate should be vindicating its historic reputation as the greatest deliberative body in the world, we are stumbling over each other to see who can say ‘yea’ the quickest and the loudest. I regret it, and I think some day we shall all regret it. . . .

“Reluctantly, I express my opposition . . . here by voting ‘nay.’ The support in the Congress for this measure is clearly overwhelming. Obviously, you need my vote less than I need my conscience.”

As time went on and the war became more and more untenable, more agreed with that argument. And finally, after years of protests and many tens of thousands more dead, a bi-partisan veto-proof majority voted for an amendment which forbade any further U.S. escalation of the war in Vietnam. The next year, after Watergate, a lame duck congress voted to cut off funding.

It’s not as if they were blameless. As Nelson said, in the early days they were “stumbling over each other to see who can say ‘yea’ the quickest and the loudest.” But after years of public debate and outcry, they finally heard what the people were saying and they did what they had to do. Too late, as it turned out, for a lot of people.

Morton Kondracke writes about this topic in this week’s column, bemoaning the fact that a Democratic majority may do the same thing. He believes in the simplistic fairly tale that we would have won Vietnam if it weren’t for the dirty hippies so he finds this a damning propect. But it is only a possibility because of the lies and strategic blunders that got this country into that misbegotten war and the bungling that’s characterized it ever since. At some point you have to do something. And the only thing a congress can do in the face of presidential intransigence and incompetence is deny the president the money to screw things up any further.

President Bush could make it easy on himself and the nation by listening to what the people are telling him, being honest and coming up with the least bad plan out of an array of bad options. But he won’t. He has said that he will not leave Iraq and he’s shown that his administation has no skill to do anything else. Unless he does, there will, by necessity, be more who will be forced to vote against funding, not because they don’t support the troops but because their constituents demand it. It shouldn’t have to come to that.

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Imagine That!

by tristero

How strange:

Florida voters using electronic ballot machines are having persistent problems choosing Democrats in early elections, the Miami Herald reports.

The touch-screen gizmos seem strangely attracted to Republican candidates. One voter needed assistance from an election official, and even then, needed three tries to convince the machine that he wanted to vote for Democrat Jim Davis in the gubernatorial race, not his Republican opponent Charlie Crist.

Another voter who went Democrat across the board kept finding Republicans listed in the summary screen. He made repeated attempts until, finally, the machine registered his votes correctly, and he cast his ballot.

Yet another frustrated voter who complained of difficulties selecting a Democrat was told that the machine she was using had been troublesome. Poll workers fiddled with it for a bit, and then it seemed to work properly.