Month: January 2007

Self Stinger

by digby

Howard Fineman says that presidential elections are just like high school (in 1954, apparently.) Without irony:

Presidential elections are high school writ large, of course, and that is especially true when, as now, much of the early nomination race is based in the U.S. Capitol…

Of course.

As she saw it, she had outmaneuvered all of those big-talking boys who loved to hear the sound of their own voices (think Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and John Kerry). There was that handsome John Edwards to contend with, and he was as industrious as she was, but he was too handsome, and she assumed that she was tougher than he was. Besides, she had convinced that cute Evan Bayh to be her junior-prom date and escort her to the assembly in the auditorium.

Then Obama showed up. He was new, he was smooth, he was skinny, he was smart, but not in-your-face about it. The girls flocked to him, of course—that grin!—but so did the guys, because he had Game. His promised to Change Everything, and yet there was something calming about him—but also something that told you he might fade away as quickly as he materialized.

At least he was not like that crazy Al Gore, who had been the ultimate goody-goody but who had grown a beard, made a film and dropped out to attend the School Without Walls.

And then there are the useless and bitchy queen-wanna-bees like Howie whose main mission in life is to make fun of everyone they come in contact with except for the equally useless rich boy assholes who give the queenies the privilege of servicing them with blowjobs in the boys gym after the big game (and call them “pass around packs.”)

Are there any people on the planet who have less self-awareness than the Washington press corpse?

.

Mechanical General

by digby

Glenn Greenwald watched the Gonzales hearing today so we don’t have to. I’m glad I didn’t because it sounds like the kind of testimony that invariably makes me want to put a boot through the televison set. It’s a technique that the most closely aligned Bush sycophants have mastered, aping their fearless leader’s stonewalling gibberish, eating up time, boring everyone with mindless platitudes until they finally just give up in suicidal despair of ever getting a straight answer. I call it the McClellan Curse, named for the robot puppy they called Scotty.

This is what I have learned so far: All of the Senators are very “concerned” and sometimes even “disturbed” about many things, almost all of them different for each Senator. Gonzales definitely shares their concerns about everything, and assures them he takes it very seriously and he is happy to sit down with them and explore ways to fix/improve/think about it.

For any information the Senators want, Gonzales does not have it, but he will definitely endeavor to get it for them. When pointed out that he has made the same promises many times before and told them nothing, he assures them them he is working diligently to get it, but that it is a very complex matter, and they are entitled to it and will have it (sometimes he politely denies ever having promised it before but then says he will get it anyway).

Has anyone ever checked to see if he has an electrical socket in the back of his neck?

We bloggers should also be happy to know that we are the “some people” they were referring to when members of the administration claimed that “some people didn’t think the government should ever eavesdrop on anyone.” If by “eavesdropping” they meant spying on American citizens without a warrant or any kind of judicial oversight, then I guess I’m guilty. I’ve never been able to understand why in the hell it’s so hard for them to comply with the ridiculously compliant FISA court unless they were doing something nefarious. And since they are lying,despotic, incompetent sacks of shit I don’t trust them to take out the trash without running it past a proper authority.

Now that there is the promise of legislative oversight, they are running around saying that they will comply with FISA. We guess. The agreement is a secret, naturally.

I wonder what would happen if the Senators got angry and abused him the way they abused Anita Hill — or any number of Clinton’s staff members who were dragged before committees and treated like they were war criminals.

Update: Reports in the comments say the Senators did get hot under the collar. Good.

They also reported this:

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn’t say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

Depends on what the definition of “rights” in “the bill of” is, I guess.

Does Nino think this was the “original intent” of the framers?

.

Gotta Pay

by digby

As I sit here thinking sbout my pal Jane and what she’s facing I can’t help but reflect on just how fucked up this is:

It is expected there would be no problems securing funding to explore a drug that could shrink cancerous tumors and has no side-effects in humans, but University of Alberta researcher Evangelos Michelakis has hit a stalemate with the private sector who would normally fund such a venture.

Michelakis’ drug is none other than dichloroacetate (DCA), a drug which cannot be patented and costs pennies to make.

It’s no wonder he can’t secure the $400-600 million needed to conduct human trials with the medicine – the drug doesn’t have the potential to make enough money.

Michelakis told reporters they will be applying to public agencies for funding, as pharmaceuticals are reluctant to pick up the drug

.

More on this promising new treatment here. They are hoping they will be able to scrape up the money for the clinical trials through charities, universities and governments.

And here I thought the pharmaceutical companies had to charge such high prices because of all the research they were doing. Seems without the possibility of future revenue they can’t be bothered. Of course, a cheap cure for cancer would cut into profits in so many ways, wouldn’t it?

.

Impeach The Conquistador

by poputonian

Hooray for New Mexico:

Legislator seeks Bush impeachment

SANTA FE — The 60-session of the state Legislature convenes today with the agenda including … a call for the impeachment of President Bush and his vice president.
…
Sixty days also allows lawmakers more opportunity to present … platforms like the resolution asking congress to begin investigation and impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

The author, Sen. Gerald Ortiz Y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said he’s been getting calls and e-mails.

“Personal messages from people who said, ‘Wow, I’m glad you’re doing it; it’s something we should be doing.” Ortiz Y Pino said. “This particularly built up after the president’s speech last week when people began feeling like this guy is not listening to anything going on in the country.”

There are constitutional provisions allowing states to make such requests of Congress, he added.

Go for it.

White Man Encroaching

by poputonian

On Monday, the General departed from his normal ironic wit to post from MLK about the American presence in Vietnam. This passage is especially interesting where Dr. King is in turn quoting a Buddhist leader:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

That excerpt reminded me of Ben Franklin’s letter to a friend in Old England:

How long will the insanity on your side the water continue? Every day’s plundering of our property and burning our habitations, serves but to exasperate and unite us the more. The breach between you and us grows daily wider and more difficult to heal. Britain without us can grow no stronger. Without her we shall become a tenfold greater and mightier people. Do you choose to have so increasing a nation of enemies? Do you think it prudent by your barbarities to fix us in a rooted hatred of your nation, and make all our innumerable posterity detest you? Yet this is the way in which you are now proceeding. Our primers begin to be printed with cuts of the burnings of Charlestown, of Falmouth, of James Town, of Norfolk with the flight of women and children from those defenseless places, some falling by shot in their flight.

And of Tecumseh writing in 1809 to William Henry Harrison, the Governor of the Indiana Territory:

The being within, communing with past ages, tells me that once, nor until lately, there was no white man on this continent; that it then all belonged to red man, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit that made them, to keep it, traverse it, to enjoy its productions, and to fill it with the same race, once a happy race, since made miserable by the white people, who are never contented but always encroaching. The way, and the only way, to check and to stop this evil, is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided, but belongs to all for the use of each. For no part has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers who want all, and will not do with less.

Or U.S. Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey who in an 1830 speech protested the forced removal at bayonet-point of the Cherokee from Georgia:

Our ancestors found these people, far removed from the commotions of Europe, exercising all the rights, and enjoying the privileges, of free and independent sovereigns of this new world. They were not a wild and lawless horde of banditti, but lived under the restraints of government, patriarchal in its character, and energetic in its influence. They had chiefs, head men, and councils. The white men, the author of all their wrongs, approached them as friends — they extended the olive branch; and being then a feeble colony and at the mercy of the native tenants of the soil, by presents and profession, propitiated their good will. The Indian yielded a slow, but substantial confidence; granted to the colonists an abiding place; and suffered them to grow up to man’s estate beside him. He never raised claim of elder title; as white man’s wants increased, he opened the hand of his bounty wider and wider. By and by, conditions are changed. His people melt away; his lands are constantly coveted; millions after millions are ceded. The Indian bears it all meekly; he complains, indeed, as well, but suffers on; and now he finds that his neighbor, whom his kindness had nourished, has spread an adverse title over the last remains of his patrimony, barely adequate to his wants, and turns upon him and says, “away we cannot endure you so near us! These forests and rivers, these groves of your fathers, these firesides and hunting grounds, are ours by the right of power, and the force of numbers.” Sir, let every treaty be blotted from our records, and in the name of truth and justice, I ask, who is the injured, and who is the aggressor?

15,000 Cherokee died on the forced march to Oklahoma.

Or how about these quotes from an Ohio Valley Indian speaking to an English missionary in 1758:

“We have great reason to believe you intend to drive us away, and settle the country; or else, why do you come to fight in the land that God has given us?”
…
“Why don’t you and the French fight in the old country, and on the sea? Why do you come to fight on our land? This makes everybody believe you want to take the land from us by force, and settle it.”

The author who reported the above quotes also described how the invading whites overran the locals, but also identified how it was the boundless personal freedom of the encroachers that transcended any notion of community law:

White settlers and traders aggressively pushed into that region and prevented accommodation between the British and the Ohio Indians. These “Frontier People” sought not accommodation with the Ohio Indians but rather their removal. Compromise did not enter their thoughts, and magnanimity never governed their actions. Respecting personal freedom more than law and advocating their right to take unused land rather than to await negotiated settlements with trans-Appalachian Indians, these frontier people moved relentlessly into the Ohio Valley. By 1774, approximately fifty thousand whites lived on the trans-Appalachian frontier, and the British army could not control them. By that time, the British no longer remained the principal enemy of the Ohio Indians. Instead it was the relentless westward-moving Americans.

And then there were the Blacks in Massachusetts who in 1777 recorded this passage in the legislative journals:

The petition of a great number of blacks detained in a state of slavery in the bowels of a free & Christian country humbly sheweth that your petitioners apprehend we have in common with all other men a natural and unalienable right to that freedom which the Great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on all mankind, and which they never forfeited by any compact or agreement whatever. But they were unjustly dragged by the hand of a cruel power from their dearest friends and some of them even torn from the embraces of their tender parents–from a populous, pleasant, and plentiful country and in violation of laws of nature and nations–and, in defiance of all the tender feelings of humanity, brought here to be sold like beasts of burthen & like them condemned to slavery for life among a people professing the mild religion of Jesus–a people not insensible of the secrets of rational beings nor without spirit to resent the unjust endeavors of others to reduce them to a state of bondage and subjection. Your honours need not to be informed that a life of slavery like that of your petitioners, deprived of every social privilege, of every thing requisite to render life tolerable, is far worse than nonexistence.

Even the White Spaniard who led the invasion of New Mexico in 1598 confused the indigenous population with what today we would call an insurgency. When the locals responded violently by killing a handful of the the encroaching white man, the leader of the invaders — also known as The Last Conquistador — summarized the mission to his faithful followers:

Men! Heaven knows my heart bleeds at the loss of our valiant comrades. In the deaths of the Maese de campo and his companions we have suffered an irreparable loss. They cannot be replaced, for they had no equals. We have heard how nobly they died in the service of their God and of their King. Their work is done. It is essential now that our labors should continue.

I know of no one present who is not worthy of the name of a true soldier of Christ …. We have heard from eyewitnesses who came to us, grievously wounded in body and soul, the terrible fate our comrades met. They were beaten and torn to pieces. And they died like martyrs …

But, my soldiers, let us keep true Christian spirit. Whether death, hardships, or sufferings come, we shall meet them as behooves brave men … so let us lay aside our sorrow and place trust in the Almighty.

Exactly how many data points does it take to make a pattern?
At least it’s somewhat refreshing there are non-White, non-male candidates running for president, which perhaps provides an opening to elect someone whose cultural roots don’t include so much conquest.

FDL SOS

by digby

You all probably know that Jane Hamsher is facing a very tough time right now. FDL has put out the call for some help to keep the Plame coverage and everything going while she’s recuperating. Go here for the details.

.

It Was An Unprovoked War, People

by tristero

Without repeating what Digby and others have said recently, I’d like to jot down a few thoughts regarding the current discussion of opposition to the Bush/Iraq war.

Part I – We Were Right, But No One’s Gloating, Pal

By falsely accusing Schell, and by implication others, of “gloating,” Jonathan Chait demonstrates that he, not those of us who were right about the war, is deeply unserious.

Gloating… my God, I’m sure Schell understands what’s at stake as well as I do, but does Chait? No one with an ounce of humanity could possibly gloat about being right about something like Bush/Iraq. Chait fails to realize we understood all too well that this was a pointless invasion that could only lead to the senseless slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocents. Only a madman gloats about foreseeing the rampant butchery of humans, and Chait very well knows it.

Chait’s attitude, however, highlights the fact that disagreement over Bush/Iraq was, and is, at least from the point of view of those of us who opposed this disaster from the start, tragically serious. This is not a gentlemanly, academic dispute over something like the dating of Bach manuscripts. This argument is, as I see it, about truly understanding the scope of the monumental, egregious failure by the US government and the American media to recognize the basic principles of international relations, the laws of probability, and the nature of human behavior. It is about preventing a recurrence of a catastrophe that could easily have been avoided.

Gloating? I am sickened that I saw the disaster of Bush/Iraq coming. Worse, despite doing everything I could possibly think of to prevent it, to the point of damaging my career, I – along with the rest of us – failed to prevent it. Gloating? I will live always with the nagging sense that I could have done something more, something unknown that could have made a difference. Gloating is the last thing on my mind when I point out, as I’ve done numerous times to the hawks I know, that I was right and they should be listening right now to those genuine experts who were.

Part II – Yes, Kevin, We Were Right About The Right Things

Kevin Drum attempts to ask a more pointed and focused question than Chait. Were those of us opposed to Bush/Iraq right about the right things? He focuses on the notion that many of us objected to the concept of “pre-emptive war:”

The fact that Iraq is a clusterfuck doesn’t demonstrate that preemptive war is wrong any more than WWII demonstrated that wars using Sherman tanks are right. It’s the wrong unit of analysis. After all, Iraq didn’t fail because it was preemptive (though that didn’t help); it failed either because George Bush is incompetent or because militarized nation building in the 21st century is doomed to failure no matter who does it. Preemption per se had very little to do with it, and the argument against preemptive war, which is as much moral as pragmatic, is pretty much the same today as it was in 2002.

In an update, Kevin clarifies the difference between “preventive” and “pre-emptive” war. While that is an important distinction, it is more or less irrelevant to Kevin’s point, as he himself recognizes, because the clarification causes him to make no changes in his position.

That is because Kevin’s point itself is irrelevant. Many of us opposed to Bush/Iraq were opposed to it because it was an unprovoked war despite the Bush administration’s desire, along with the liberal hawks, to frame the argument in meaningless and hypothetical general terms, ie, whether there are times when a pre-emptive war, or in contrast, a preventive war, is any good. Bush’s line of reasoning, which many people including Kevin, found serious was one that I never bought for a second, nor did many war critics . During a speech in the fall of 2002, I mockingly characterized the Bush position as “preemptive unilateralism,” aka PU, and urged everyone to ridicule Bush’s arguments rather than discuss them.

In Kevin’s follow-up post, which Digby discusses below, Kevin continues to insist on discussing 2002/03 solely within the Bush administration’s public framing rather than grasping that those of us opposed to Bush/Iraq were opposed because it was an unprovoked war whose reasons were, at best, incoherent.

Kevin is also woefully mistaken when he argues that “the specific quagmire that we find ourselves in now has very little to do with the fact that the Iraq war was preventive,” which instead he blames on the Bush administration’s incompetence. What he fails to realize is that waging uprovoked war by a United States government in response to 9/11 is itself the height of incompetence. There would be no argument that unprovoked invasion was a competent policy if Bush had proposed invading, say, Madagascar, but Iraq had just as little to do with 9/11 .

In other words, the fact that the Bush administration ever seriously considered invading Iraq should have been enough of a forewarning that they would, inevitably as night follows day, wind up specifically in the precise quagmire we see today in Iraq.

Part III The Chuckle-Headed Flakes Were The Bush/Iraq Hawks. The Rest Of Us Had Both Feet On Planet Earth

Finally, I’d like to draw attention to some other ways the issues of 2002/2003 remain poorly understood.

It is absolutely ludicrous to characterize opposition to the war as a leftwing position. That is, unless people like the great John Brady Kiesling, who voted for Bush in 2000, is a leftist, which he emphatically is not. A corollary to that kind of stereotyping is to falsely characterize those of us who opposed Bush/Iraq as “anti-war,” ie, opposed to any war at any time.
Many people who knew Bush/Iraq was a terrible idea from the start supported the Afghan war and the 1991 war against Saddam.

To be blunt, it is the height of intellectual incompetence to describe those of us who knew Bush/Iraq would be a disaster in such simplistic terms. To do so is to make the same kind of category errors that led to the mistake of supporting the war in the first place and to dismissing those of us who were alarmed as the standard issue leftist anti-war crowd. Many people on the left and many peace activists were, naturally, opposed to Bush/Iraq, but the striking thing about the demonstrations of 2002/2003 was that opposition to the war was nearly universal, and far greater in this country than many recall (millions of Americans marched against the possibility of the Bush/Iraq war in February and March of 2003).

Most of us opposed to Bush/Iraq made the same arguments whether or not we were, in Kevin’s odd phrase, “prominent” critics. And, contra Kevin’s opinion that we didn’t foresee the specific quagmire the world faces today, in fact we did. We warned that if Bush invaded Iraq without provocation, without international backing from UN, the gates of Hell would be opened. That is exactly what has happened. And the worst is ahead of us.

That is nothing that any of us opposed to this insane war feel any desire to gloat over.

[Updated for clarity.]

Preventive Quagmire

by digby

Kevin explains further his position on the rightness and wrongness of liberal hawks and doves and makes a lot of sense. But on one point, I have to disagree completely:

I also made a specific comment about preventive war: namely that the failure in Iraq doesn’t especially vindicate the argument that preventive war is almost always wrong. It is almost always wrong, and the fact that Iraq was a preventive war was a good reason to oppose it. But the specific quagmire that we find ourselves in now has very little to do with the fact that the Iraq war was preventive.

Preventive war is based on the idea that an enemy (presumably) is preparing to do something that will one day threaten you and it is in your best interest to stop them before they achieve that goal. It requires a kind of intelligence that is so amazingly sensitive and prescient that we can see threats before they even emerge.*

This omniscience was what the Bush administration sold going into Iraq —- that we knew that Saddam was developing weapons that one day would threaten us. That, needless to say, was not true and we can hope that the Bush Doctrine is dead because of it. (I predict that they will look for a more traditional “provocation” from Iran.)

They had to tie in a future threat of terrorists with nukes to make the emotional and logical leap between 9/11 and invading Iraq. They had known for years that such an event could be a catalyzing event and even said it in their seminal PNAC paper in 2000 called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century”:

“the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”

They had to use the nuke argument and the only way they could do this was by evoking a doctrine of preventive war. They had nothing else to go on.

It’s true that on the whole the fact that the occupation has turned into a quagmire of epic proportions is not because of the preventive war doctrine. That cock-up was caused by dozens of bad decisions after the fact. But that argument is the very definition of the incompetence dodge.

There would be no Iraq war if it were not for the Bush Doctrine.

.

*I wrote in great detail through that period about what a terrible mistake it was for a great nation to risk being so wrong about something so important unless it had absolutely no choice. They have made us much more vulnerable by exposing our intelligence services as paper tigers. But that’s another argument…

Haloscan Problems

Haloscan is apparently working on this:

(1) Any attempt to leave a comment results in an error message; however, the comments are posting anyway.

(2) Comment counts on blog posts are not being updated.

So, if you fell like commenting, go ahead. But be aware that the error message is just gibberish and that your comment is posting anyway. I know nothing more.

.

We’re Rooting For You, Jane

by tristero

Dear Jane,

Best of luck with your surgery and recover quickly.

Love,

All your friends at Hullabaloo