Month: December 2006

Signing On

by digby

So the generals have done the big el-foldo and are going along with the McCain escalation plan. (I’m sure we’ll be hearing from these profiles in courage when they whisper in the ears of the media that they were only following orders.)

K-Drum says what I think a lot of us are reluctantly thinking:

Still, honesty compels me to say that I’m glad this is going to happen. I know this makes me a bad person with no concern for human life etc. etc. (feel free to expand on this sentiment in comments), but at some point we have to come to a conclusion on this stuff. Conservatives long ago convinced themselves against all evidence that we could have won in Vietnam if we’d only added more troops or used more napalm or nuked Hanoi or whatever, and they’re going to do the same thing in Iraq unless we allow them to play this out the way they want. If they don’t get to play the game their way, they’ll spend the next couple of decades trying to persuade the American public that there was nothing wrong with the idea of invading Iraq at all. We just never put the necessary resources into it.

Well, screw that. There’s nothing we can do to stop them anyway, so give ’em the resources they want. Let ’em fight the war the way they want. If it works — and after all, stranger things have happened — then I’ll eat some crow. But if it doesn’t, there’s a chance that the country will actually learn something from this.

I wish it were otherwise. But it isn’t.

There is no chance this is going to work, so I do not hold out even the smallest hope that this could be worthwhile in literal terms. It is purely to save face for George Bush. The American involvement in this war is over — they’re just delaying the inevitable until he can crawl back to Crawford and dump the whole disater in the next guy’s lap.

As for the long term, it doesn’t matter how spectacularly they fail, they will never admit it. We would have won “if only” no matter what actually happens. If only we’d put in more troops earlier, or more troops now, or reinstituted the draft or dropped some daisy cutters or whatever. These people live in a fantasy world in which they are always right but others are continuously conspiring to rob them of whatever they really need to prove it. In the long run, they will insist that the war could have been won if only the wimps hadn’t lost their nerve. And they will persuade a fair number of people that this was true — Americans don’t like losers and don’t like to think of themselves as losers. The paranoid strain will be happy to re-argue, re-litigate and re-write history down the road to say that America was betrayed from within. It’s what they do.

There is some short term political gains to be had, however sick it is to think in these terms. In the long run they will create their own myth but in the short term, they are going to have to deal with the reality that is going to continue to appear on people’s televisions every night. And that will rebound to St. John McCain and any other Republicans who jump on this bandwagon as it hurls over the cliff.

This is McCain’s plan. He’s been clamouring for more troops for a long time and he specifically says today that 20,000 to 35,000 will do the trick. He’s now going to have to get into those John Kerry style explanations whenever it comes up (“I was for more troops before others were for more troops and it would have worked if only they’d done it earlier but I thought that it was worth sending in more anyway and in fact we need more troops even now.”) There’s no pithy sound bite to explain why he still thought sending in more troops after the war was already lost would be a good idea.

So, there’s a very, very thin silver lining. Other than that, this is a disastrous failure on top of a disastrous failure and the military, which took great pride in learning the lessons of Vietnam, is once again playing the part of political pawn. Every American who dies from this point forward, dies for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s vanity.

Update: Haha. As usual, Atrios got there first.

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Good Neighbors

by digby

Everyone’s been following the saga of Representative Virgil Goode of Virginia, I’m sure. He and Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo are clinging to one another on the fainting couch, wringing their little hankies and whimpering over the prospects of the brownskinned hordes streaming into the country and ruining our fabulous “culture.”

TPM Muckraker has been stalking Republicans all day trying to get them to say whether they support Goode’s comments. None seem to be available. But the intrepid Terry Jeffries of Human Events Magazine did share the GOP talking points on today’s Situation Room:

JEFFREY: I’m someone who lived in the Muslim world. Twenty years ago I lived in Cairo, Egypt, studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo, had Muslim roommates. I believe Cairo may be the largest Muslim city in the world. It is a city that is very peaceful and not much crime there, a great place. I know that Muslims can be good neighbors. I know they can be good neighbors and Americans here.

So far so good. Very decent of him. But wait…

JEFFREY:I do think under Virgil Goode’s concern, there is something Americans should think about. America is a culture I think is basically rooted in the Judeo-Christian civilization of the West. Egypt is a country that is rooted in the civilization of Islam. I think history has shown where you have countries that are divided between those two civilizations it causes friction we don’t want to have in the United States and I think that’s a legitimate concern for immigration policy.

BLITZER: You think we should block Muslims from coming into this country?

JEFFREY: I think we need to have a immigration policy to make sure the immigrants we bring in are assimilated into our culture and become fully Americans.

And I think quite frankly right now we have a situation where we’ve had too many immigrants come in legally and illegally and the at the same time the engines of assimilation in the United States have been broken down by multiculturalism.

I think we need to solve that first… We have a First Amendment right to freedom of religion in this country that applies to everybody no matter what their religion is. This man has a right to put his hand on the Koran when he is sworn into Congress.

I do believe, however, that the United States has to worry about what this country is going to be like in the future and our immigration policies have to be calibrated in a way that remain one people and one nation. I do believe it’s a serious problem.

Jeffrey is basically saying that he doesn’t care who these people worship, he’s just doesn’t think they are “our kind.” This guy would agree. Good to know.

And to think his fearless leader worked so hard to hide this sentiment. (That was when he was running for office, of course.) But every once in a while his little white slip would show. Remember this?

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.

Don’t you just love these color-blind Republicans? It sure is a better place since they eliminated racism in this country, isn’t it?

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Yer On Yer Own

by digby

Now they’re worried about costs…

Republican House staff members who are losing their jobs in the aftermath of November’s loss of control are hoping Democrats will re-extend the hand of largesse to them next month.

As the old Congress wound down in a scramble of post-election activity, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered to pay two months’ severance to staff members working on some committees and in House leadership offices. But her offer was scuttled — by Republican lawmakers, who complained they didn’t have the opportunity to study the proposal and look at costs.

The Senate already provides two months pay for displaced staff members. One of the affected House staffers said his comrades are mystified that a plan that would benefit employees of Republicans would be killed by Republicans: “We hope the Democrats revisit it.”

Well yeah. Most of us learned a long time ago that if you want to be treated decently by your employer, you always have to depend on the Democrats. Republicans just don’t give a damn about working people — especially the “help.” They’ll just tell you to sell your copy of “Atlas Shrugged” on e-bay or get one of those great new jobs that just opened up at the Swift meatpacking plants if you need money.

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Dissolute Rage

by digby

The last thing I want to do is re-open any self-inflicted wounds on the Christopher Hitchens front — but I just can’t help myself.

There is a long and interesting article in the October issue of New Yorker called “He Knew He Was Right” which is really worth reading. (Sadly, it’s not online.) Perhaps his ranting represent some overaching philosophy that is above my head, but frankly, I just find the man incoherent — if fascinating, in a trainwreck sort of way.

He’s also such a monumental prick that I’m very hard pressed to care whether I slander him or not:

In the noisy front room of the North Beach restaurant where the friends had met, Hitchens made a toast: “To the Constitution of the United States, and confusion to its enemies!” The conversation was amiable and boozy; Hitchens might be said to care more for history than for individual humans, but he was in an easy mood, after a drive, in beautiful early-evening light, from Menlo Park. (He and Blue, a writer working on a novel, live with their thirteen-year-old daughter in Washington, D.C., but spend the summer in California, where her parents live.) During the ride, he had discussed with the Pakistani-born taxi-driver the virtues and vices of Benazir Bhutto, while surreptitiously using a bottle of Evian to put out a small but smoky fire that he had set in the ashtray.

And then the young doctor to his left made a passing but sympathetic remark about Howard Dean, the 2004 Presidential candidate; she said that he had been unfairly treated in the American media. Hitchens, in the clear, helpful voice one might use to give street directions, replied that Dean was “a raving nut bag,” and then corrected himself: “A raving, sinister, demagogic nut bag.” He said, “I and a few other people saw he should be destroyed.” He noted that, in 2003, Dean had given a speech at an abortion-rights gathering in which he recalled being visited, as a doctor, by a twelve-year-old who was pregnant by her father. (“You explain that to the American people who think that parental notification is a good idea,” Dean said, to applause.) Dean appeared not to have referred the alleged rape to the police; he also, when pressed, admitted that the story was not, in all details, true. For Hitchens, this established that Dean was a “pathological liar.”

“All politicians lie!” the women said.

“He’s a doctor,” Hitchens said.

“But he’s a politician.”

“No, excuse me,” Hitchens said. His tone tightened, and his mouth shrunk like a sea anemone poked with a stick; the Hitchens face can, at moments of dialectical urgency, or when seen in an unkindly lit Fox News studio, transform from roguish to sour. (Hitchens’s friend Martin Amis, the novelist, has chided Hitchens for “doing that horrible thing with your lips.”) “Fine,” Hitchens said. “Now that I know that, to you, medical ethics are nothing, you’ve told me all I need to know. I’m not trying to persuade you. Do you think I care whether you agree with me? No. I’m telling you why I disagree with you. That I do care about. I have no further interest in any of your opinions. There’s nothing you wouldn’t make an excuse for.”

“That’s wrong!” they said.

“You know what? I wouldn’t want you on my side.” His tone was businesslike; the laughing protests died away. “I was telling you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a fraud, and you say, ‘That’s O.K.’ Fuck off. No, I mean it: fuck off. I’m telling you what I think are standards, and you say, ‘What standards? It’s fine, he’s against the Iraq war.’ Fuck. Off. You’re MoveOn.org. ‘Any liar will do. He’s anti-Bush, he can say what he likes.’ Fuck off. You think a doctor can lie in front of an audience of women on a major question, and claim to have suppressed evidence on rape and incest and then to have said he made it up?”

“But Christopher . . .”

“Save it, sweetie, for someone who cares. It will not be me. You love it, you suck on it. I now know what your standards are, and now you know what mine are, and that’s all the difference–I hope–in the world.”

How’d you like to face that over Christmas turkey?

I took very seriously the charge that I was lowering myself to his level by saying he was open to the idea that the holocaust was a hoax and I apologized for it. But I would have to have completely lost my standards, my humanity and my mind to have fallen as low as that asshole. I still regret the imprecision of my comment — but not quite as much as I did.

*Ezra wrote more about this back in October.

Update: To be clear: I’m not saying that Hitchens is a monumental prick because he thinks Dean is a liar. He’s a monumental prick because he says that Dean is a “raving, sinister, demagogic nut bag” who he and a “few other people” saw should be “destroyed.” (Who the fuck is he?)

He is likewise a monumental prick because he behaved like a complete asshole to the woman in the story:

“I was telling you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a fraud, and you say, ‘That’s O.K.’ Fuck off. No, I mean it: fuck off. I’m telling you what I think are standards, and you say, ‘What standards? It’s fine, he’s against the Iraq war.’ Fuck. Off. You’re MoveOn.org. ‘Any liar will do. He’s anti-Bush, he can say what he likes.’ …. etc.

Whether or not Howard Dean told the story properly or lied about it seems somewhat trivial in light of Hitchens’ inappropriate vomitous verbal explosion. Particularly when he’s staking himself to the moral high ground by defending that paragon George W. Bush, the man who made hundreds of speeches in which he made sure that a majority of Americans believed that Saddam was involved in 9/11. I don’t remember Hitchens setting the record straight on that one.

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Not Grandma! Ewwww

by digby

I remember reading a review of “Titanic” that said the movie was unbelievable because young ladies of that era did not have premarital sex. It made me laugh. Now I see that a new study says that 95% of American adults have had prermarital sex, and I’m laughing again:

More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

Contrary to every generation’s belief (mine most especially), they did not invent sex. Women who were born in the 40’s came into adulthood in the late 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, for crying out loud. I thought everyone knew that people were fucking like crazy during that era. (It wasn’t called the sexual revolution for nothing.)

But then people have always been doing it. A lot. It’s just that before modern feminism and the pill and the right to choose, there were “good girls” and “bad girls” and shotgun weddings and back alley abortions and lots and lots of guilt and shame about doing what humans have been programmed to do since we emerged from the primordial slime. You can’t talk people out of having sex. But you can allow society’s moral scolds and hypocritical busybodies to make everyone miserable about it.

I’m sure that today’s society has problems with sexual issues that are of concern. But going back to the days when society enshrined lying and guilt as a positive social value is hardly going to solve them.

Not that that they won’t keep trying…

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Smart Politics

by digby

I read that Jon Corzine signed the new civil unions bill in New Jersey yesterday as a result of the NJ supreme court ruling that the state had to create marriage equality for gay people. There is an interesting story about this that I think is instructive for progressives as we start to dig our way out of this conservative era.

First, I should say that I don’t have a big problem with civil unions in that I think they should be available everywhere for people who aren’t religious. I’m happily married, but I would have been very glad to have had a civil union if there had been such a thing available and it offered exactly the same legal benefits. The word “marriage” holds no particular significance for a godless, dirty hippy like me who believes in all kinds of non-traditional social arrangements.

Having said that, this country’s legal system and social traditions are all designed to benefit people who are “married” and there’s no sense in denying that. So I’m sympathetic to the notion that civil unions for gay people are a separate-but-equal concept that relegates gays to a different standard than straights for no good reason. Many are religious and would like the option of a legal religious ceremony, and basically they just want society to recognize that they have the same right to create a family as anyone else. I understand that, and if I were gay I might very well insist on the right to “marry” rather than accept a civil union compromise.

Unfortunately, the nation is slow to embrace that wholeheartedly, so a series of interim steps seem to be the most logical way for people to grapple with this. The question for progressives is how to keep the momentum going so that the idea of marriage is not foreclosed. I think what they did in New Jersey is a valuable primer on how these things are done.

First, it’s important to recognize that the court gave the legislature no choice but to come up with some sort of scheme that would allow gays the same legal benefits of marriage as straight couples. The question was whether the legislature would go full out and open the doors to marriage or create civil unions. But another question lingered as well — would they create civil unions and also foreclose the possibility of marriage, something the court did not preclude them from doing.

Some progressives and gay rights advocates in New Jersey made the decision to apply as much pressure as they could on the legislature to go for marriage, and in the process moved what was almost pre-ordained to be a civil union bill, to one that would cause some pain on any legislators who tried to mollify their right flank with an accompanying vote to take marriage completely off the table. It left the door open and that means that progressives won’t have to reinvent the wheel when the time comes around to revisit the issue. This is smart politics.

Speaking at the signing of the civil unions act in Trenton this morning, Senator Loretta Weinberg told the audience she looks forward to revisiting this issue. Weinberg also said she believes the state will achieve marriage equality by the end of her next term (January 2012).

Steven Goldstein of Garden State Equality had this to say:

Today we celebrate not a destination, but a journey.

Gay marriage wasn’t even on the radar 20 years ago and I expect in 20 more years it will be legal. This is social progress that cannot be held back. But it pays to be always thinking one step ahead with these things, paving the way for it to be easier on the next round —- moving the goal posts back our way with each move.

A lot of credit for redicovering how progressive politics are done can be given to young, smart activists like Juan Melli, the man behind Bluejersey.com, who has been named New Jersey politician of the year. He and his cohorts did amazing things during the election season in New Jersey — and they came up with a very effective series of web ads on the gay marriage legislation that were designed to appeal to the common sense and decency of people who are just now figuring out what they think about all this — including the legislators who voted on the issue.

This is progressive politics today. It’s happening all over the country. Give it up for the new kids.

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Where’s Rover?

by digby

One of he things I always wondered about the Rove-as-genius myth was why Bush’s adminstration was so lame if Rove was so great. It’s true that Junior was very popular for a while after 9/11, but any president would have been. He was good at pretending he had won a mandate, but he never actually did it. He’s a ruthless, slimy Republican operative, but no better than many other ruthless, slimy Republican operatives.

So what’s the “architect” of this failed Republican realignment doing now that he’s been shown to be a loser at the one thing he’s always supposedly been good at?

Since the November election, Rove has been promoting the contrarian idea that the Republicans lost their majorities in the House and Senate not because of Bush’s unpopularity or because voters turned against the Iraq war but because congressional Republicans didn’t sufficiently live up to their core ideals, such as a commitment to spending restraint, a muscular foreign policy, and strict ethics. In other words, associates say, Rove is arguing that the GOP lost control because congressional Republicans weren’t conservative enough.

White House insiders say Bush is counting on Rove, who is the president’s main political adviser and deputy chief of staff, to define “common ground” in dealing with the Democrats who now control Congress. In Rove’s view, that means the White House shouldn’t stray too far from the conservative base and should continue making policy from the political right–and not give too much ground to the Democrats. Rove argues privately that the Dems should also reach out to the White House and that Bush shouldn’t do most of the compromising. One of Rove’s theories is that the Democrats can be maneuvered into a series of difficult choices next year as they try to enact their legislative agenda and pass the federal budget.

The central choice, according to Rove, will be to cut spending or raise taxes. If congressional Democrats cut spending, their liberal base will be alienated. If they raise taxes, rank-and-file voters will be unhappy. GOP insiders suspect that Rove also had a big hand in distancing Bush from the Iraq Study Group because he believed the bipartisan panel was too critical of current Iraq policy. Rove, insiders say, believes that victory is still achievable and that Bush should pursue it as vigorously as he can. The president made those points at his news conference today.

It’s typical of Rove to project Bush’s weakness on to others and then attack it. Here he’s blaming the congress for not being “conservative” enough, which is the standard rap on Junior. I doubt that the Republicans are buying it. The Bush family will not ever be given another chance after two failed presidencies.(“I have no future,” says Jeb Bush) Rove is a member of the Bush clan and he won’t be forgiven. All that self-serving mythology he created about his power and his genius is coming back to bite him.

I won’t even address his plans to corner the Democrats. If they are stupid enough to let this happen then they deserve what they get. Bush is the most wounded president since Richard Nixon; there’s nothing to fear from him. (And Rove’s talent has never been this kind of politics. He’s an election strategist and a smear artist, period.)

I have no idea if he believes that the US can still achieve victory in Iraq and is pushing Bush to escalate. It could very easily be some sniping among insiders. But it’s also possible that he’s pushing it because he’s still convinced that the problem is that Americans are just unhappy because they don’t think we are “winning.” It’s all about how people “feel” with him, never about what they see or think or know. The administration has never understood that when the people found out there were no WMD after the endless repetition of “with a coalition of the willing we will disarm Saddam Hussein” — “winning” lost all meaning.

It would be like Rove to marshal all the wingnuts and persuade Junior that a show of strength will impress all the screaming GOP fangirls if he just acts like a winner. Governance by PR campaign is his specialty. Whatever the case, Rove is now in the process of saving his own reputation and legacy along with Bush’s and his advice is political in ways that are far different than the electoral experience he’s known for. Escalating the war is the smart move for him. He’s got to shoot the moon or he’s finished.

The man should have been fired as Bush promised he would do if it turned out any of his staff had leaked the Plame information. But he’s still there, being paid by you and me to keep this country on its nightmare trajectory to perdition.

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A Christmas Blogger

by digby

Thank you, everyone, for all your generosity. It’s an indescribably wonderful feeling to know that so many people value the work you do. I am very, very grateful.

I must particularly thank all of my friends in the blogosphere who passed the Christmas stocking on my behalf. Thanks very much to my pals:

John Amato
Jane Hamsher
Atrios
Avedon at The Sideshow
Peter Daou
Glenn Greenwald
Steve Gilliard
The General
GOTV
Attaturk
Jeralyn at Talk Left
A Tiny Revolution
Dave Niewert
Lean Left
The American Street
Taylor Marsh
Mia Culpa
Colorado Bob
Middle Earth Journal
Blog Revolution
D-Day
Trekie Net Nerds
A Spork In The Drawer
James Wolcott
Unfutz
Driftglass (who also shared a heartwarming Christmas moment. I’m all that keeps Santa going…)
My Supreme Overlord Kos

Plus:

Street Prophets
The Broad View
Leftword
Norwegianity
SW’s Energy Gap
The ITT List
Après tout…
EZ Smirkzz 3.0
Sadly No!
Michael Berube

TBOGG!

Also thanks to the hardest working man in the blogosphere, Matt Stoller, who insisted that people want me to keep writing about politics (and perhaps finally getting around to penning the long awaited Rise and Fall of the Codpiece) and Rick Perlstein who granted me the great privilege of posting excerpts throughout the year of his upcoming blockbuster Nixonland: The Politics and Culture of the American Berserk, 1965-1972.

If there are any other bloggers I left out, please let me know. My good friend Santa is making a list and he’s checkin’ it twice.

Thank you all again and Happy Hollandaise everyone.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled hatefilled screeds against Rudolph and carols and puppies on Christmas morning. This is a secular progressive blog, after all and everyone knows that we hate Christmas. Bah Humbug.

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Update: New posts below

(hopefully) and you can get your necessary Atrios fix at http://eschaton08.blogspot.com/ temporarily because blogger is, unsurprisingly, bloggered. Fixed!

Dear Santa

by digby

Last year I asked my readers to put a little change in the kitty if they had it to spare and many of you did. It was a wonderful affirmation of what I do and I’m still basking in its glow. Well, it’s that time of the year again, and while we are all counting our blessings and fighting the war on Christmas and freedom, I’m here once again, stocking in hand, to ask that if you have your credit card out and it isn’t maxed, you might send a little Christmas cheer my way once again.

I wish the blog was a self sustaining commercial enterprise, but sadly, there are only a handful of them that can claim such success and they are much, much bigger than this one. So, I’m going directly to you, my readers, in the hopes that you’ll help me keep this little site rolling for another year.

I spent much of the last year working on deals to move the blog to various MSM-style projects that never materialized. As with so many things in life, big blog talk usually equals zilch when all is said and done. So we still creak along here on blogspot with respectable traffic and lots of great friends who often link here and give the blog good mojo. (But I hereby put out the call once again to designers who have ideas for Hullabaloo and we’ll try to get those going this year without the “help” of the legit media. Who needs ’em, I sez?)

However, I’m hopeful that I will be able to explore some very exciting opportunities to write a book, the details of which have not been worked out but which I may now have the time to do — with your help. With the Big Election coming up, this may be the right moment to write my magnum opus on the history of the codpiece.(Just kidding.)

And as we are entering into some very new and exciting territory for liberals everywhere, I want to keep blogging in any case. We have some power to do good and even more importantly — stop the insanity. It’s going to get a little bit crazy here in the blogosphere, what with the primary season soon upon us, but it’s all to the good. I want to stay in the game and see if we can continue to make the impact that I truly believe we are already making.

Many of my fellow bloggers will be raising money for candidates and doing many creative and exciting new forms of online activism. I have never done a lot of that sort of activity although I will certainly keep all my readers informed about the action and point them in the right direction. (I don’t raise money because, frankly, I suck at it, as you can tell by this post.)

What I may not suck so much at is observing and analyzing what’s going on in the press and in Washington from an outsider’s perspective. The mainstream media is reluctantly learning that they cannot get away with their lazy reporting and DC insider provincialism without incurring a rapid and energetic response. During the run-up to the next election, like all my lefty blogger brethren, this blog will deconstruct these cheap narratives and phony character attacks and we will alert millions of people all over the country. We are watching them and they know it.

We will also be watching the new Democratic majority. We will be here to praise them and spread the good word whenever we can. And we will also be here to hold their feet to the fire if they lose their nerve. The blogosphere and the netroots represent a vanguard of well-informed, highly engaged citizens who are not easily fooled. We are keeping score. The new technology allows us to research speeches and votes in an instant and we can track contributors and expenditures and travel — all that good stuff that starts to corrupt around the edges. We are sophisticated people who understand how the world works and we aren’t expecting “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” idealism. But this political culture that’s been awash in corporate money is ruining this country and we expect our representatives to honor their commitments to honest, clean government.

And finally, in the run-up to the next election, this blog will continue to discuss many other things, from politics in popular culture to political history to, hopefully, a bit more wonkery as we start to delve into issues for the first time in six years. I’m going to be extremely engaged, as always, in issues of civil rights and civil liberties and I will continue to write about the under-the-radar attempts to subvert them, whether it’s through religion or government or corporate hegemony.

And we will all try our best to entertain you and stimulate you and make you feel, as I do, that by learning and reading we are arming ourselves to be informed, engaged and active political citizens. I have no patience with people who think it is a waste of time to read blogs when people could be stuffing envelopes. Many of us will do both, I have no doubt, and god love those who do. But I want us all to be able to sit at that Christmas dinner table, around the water cooler or on the stump, armed with the arguments and information that can engage the apathetic and the young and fight back the stale political conventional wisdom that has brought us to the brink these last six years. It sounds corny, but if we can do that, we can change the world.

Finally, I cannot say enough about the writers who contribute to the blog — tristero, poputonian and Dennis. They will not share in the proceeds of this little fund raiser — I asked and they refused, so their contribution to my well being is enormous and I thank them. They are all first rate friends, writers and supporters.

So if you can and if you want, you can hit the little buttons to the left or use my post box address to send along a little stocking stuffer to keep the Hullabaloo homefires burning for another year. (I added a subscription feature at a couple of readers’ request, if you like to use it. You can cancel at any time, of course.) To those of you who have sent in donations during the year, thank you again. It’s like Christmas all over again when I get one.

And to those who cannot contribute, perhaps you would agree to comment once in a while. This little community has one of the smartest political dialogs around on any given day and I’d love to see more of you participate. It’s where I get some of my best ideas.

So, there you have it. (whew.) Have a great holiday everyone.

cheers — digby

*I’ll be posting as usual, but this post will stay at the top for a little while. (That’s what the pros say to do and who am I to argue?) So scroll down for new stuff.

** I’m not at home and my email address has been behaving strangely for weeks, due to a changeover to a new cable system, so please forgive me if you don’t hear from me immediately.

The Gulag Comes Home

by digby

The government is “keeping families together” in camps down in Texas while they await hearings or deportations. You can read all about it here .

The whole thing is an extrajudicial, privatized boondoggle (what else is new?) in which a bunch of people are basically jailed with little or no due process (what else is new?)

But can someone please tell me how this can be necessary?

Jeans and t-shirts have been replaced with jail uniforms; children are issued uniforms as soon as they can fit into them ? and everyone must wear name tags, even the babies.

Name tags, sure. Jail uniforms? Purely dehumanizing.

Keep in mind that these are all people from countries other than Mexico. It’s a result of the ending of the “catch and release” program that allowed these migrants, many of whom were seeking asylum, to be released on humanitarian grounds. The kids used to be sent to a residential facility where they went to school. Here they gt one hour of instruction (English) a day and are allowed on hour of indoor recreation.

Nobody knows how long these children will be kept behind bars. From an editorial in the Austin Statesman:

The backlog is so strained that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, noted: “The department and the federal courts are straining under the weight of an immigration litigation system that is broken. Under the current system, criminal aliens generally receive more opportunities for judicial review of their removal orders than noncriminal aliens.”

In short, illegal immigrants who commit crimes get speedier legal attention than these children, who have done nothing wrong other than follow their parents.

Nothing will change until reforms are initiated, and Congress has done little to fix a broken immigration policy and the machinery to enforce it. The result is the private prison facility in Taylor and a smaller one in Pennsylvania.

According to those familiar with the families in the private prison, children of those apprehended are dressed in prison jumpsuits and receive only one hour of schooling and one hour of recreation a day. The trade-off is that they get to remain with their families.

Hard information on the program and the private prison is difficult to come by. The company running the prison refers questions to the immigration office, and the immigration office has had little to say about the situation.

News of the 400 people — 200 of them children — being held in the T. Don Hutto unit in Taylor has sparked protests from several groups interested in immigrant issues. They are concerned about everything from care and feeding of those being held to the psychological effect of incarceration on children and families.

Federal authorities began detaining all unauthorized immigrants last summer. The reason for the detention was that so many who were charged with unauthorized entry into the United States never appeared for their court dates. They melted back into the population.

It is understandable in this age of terrorism that authorities want to keep tabs on illegal immigrants and ensure their appearances in courts. But there should be a way to see that they have their day in court without imprisoning their children.

Keeping families intact would appear to be a humane policy, as well. But the result of the new detention policy has been to jail children, and that is not acceptable. Those who have visited the detainees, some of whom are seeking political asylum, say the detention is damaging.

Little kids in prison jumpsuits and nametags presents a sad picture.

It’s more than sad. It’s sick.

Michael Chertoff and Julie Myers believe this is a great step forward and plan to build more of these for-profit facilities.