Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Who Cares What We Think?

Matt Yglesias, blogging from his fancy new digs at the TPM Cafe, says today:

At today’s Take Back America conference I saw some interesting polling data from Diane Feldman on a subject I’d pondered now and again. Unfortunately, the written summary of the presentation doesn’t contain the exact numbers and I didn’t write them down because I assumed this question would be included in the summary. The point, however, was that when you ask if America is “the greatest country in the world” most voters say that it is. When you ask if Democrats believe that America is the greatest country, most voters say that they do not.

I think it’s clear that this perception creates some electoral problems. Indeed, it’s a particularly serious kind of electoral problem because my guess is that the perception is probably correct.

It seems to me that if you are a member of the “reality based” community, as so many of us liberals claim to be, that you can’t answer such a question without qualifiers. This means that we are unable to respond in appropriate knee jerk fashion and are therefore assumed to be unpatriotic. The question is simple minded and it demands a simple minded answer and that’s a problem for us. Perhaps we should just lie, like everyone already does about going to church or whether they are faithful or all the other things Americans are forced to lie about in our right wing PC times.

Patriotism is defined in the dictionary quite simply as “love of one’s country and a willingness to sacrifice for it.” That is not the same thing as believing that your country is the greatest country in the world. I love many things in life that aren’t “the greatest” and I don’t see the conflict. One doesn’t have to abandon all intellectual integrity to love something, imperfect and not-so-great as it may be. America is certainly the most powerful country in the world. One would think that people could be satisfied enough with that, but apparently not.

What does it mean to be the “greatest country in the world, or as I’ve heard it put, “the greatest country the world has ever known” anyway? Is it measured by how fair and just our system of government is or standard of living or military prowess, or what? Is it, as George W. Bush pushes incessantly, because its people are “good?” Or is it that by all measures of all things it is simply the best?

I raise this because I suspect that what people really want from liberals is not patriotism, but chauvinism, one important facet of which is characterized in this context by the belief that your national culture and interests are superior to any other. (Our vaunted “exceptionalism” is not made up of a whole lot more than that simple definition.) And, yes, some liberals do not sign on to that, for good reason. Because it’s bullshit. And America, the home of mutts from all over the world, the give-me-your-tired-your-poor immigrant nation, should be more aware of the shallowness and idiocy of this than any other country in the world. It’s not as if we are Germans trying to preserve the fairy tale of a thousand year Reich. It’s one of the good things about not being European, with all that baggage — or would be if we thought about it for half a minute.

Simple observation of the world shows that all nations are made up of human beings, which automatically taints the project. America and Iraq and China and everywhere else are comprised of this very flawed species. If you live long enough you see that, as much as our fearless leader likes to claim otherwise, Americans are not “better” and therefore our country is not “better.” Only individual people can be judged better or worse and it is without regard to nationality, culture or religious belief.

Our democratic experiment has been a worldwide inspiration and our Bill of Rights is one of the most important contributions any nation has made to mankind. This country has welcomed immigrants (in fits and starts) from all over the world and created a wealthy, successful nation because of it. I would easily sacrifice for the country, it’s my home. I love it the way anyone loves their home, with a deep and emotional connection that transcends intellectual thought. But I don’t need to suspend my judgement or my faculties and further say that this country is the greatest country on earth. There is no such thing as the greatest country on earth.

Matt feels that this presents an electoral problem. I would agree if people like me were expressing these views in a political campaign. (Just call me Ward Churchill, I guess.) However, the perception that Matt talks about isn’t fueled by some quasi intellectual argument about chauvinism. It’s fueled by Rush Limbaugh and his band of flaming gasbags who have spent the last fifteen years saying that liberals hate America day after day.

John Kerry volunteered for Vietnam, fought bravely, and came home and devoted himself to ending what he saw as an unjust war. Meanwhile his rival George Bush spent the war drinking beer and fucking off. Yet Kerry was made out to be a coward and Bush a hero. I suspect that my candidate, Wes Clark, would have been similarly reduced to sissy status despite the fact he was a four star general. Proof of love and devotion to country is not particularly relevant — just as what liberals really think about America is not particularly relevant.

Our political problems stem from some very deep and ongoing cultural anxieties that we need to think about and confront. What we can’t do anything about is the idea that liberals tend to be more — dare I say it — nuanced than conservatives. It is a characteristic not a policy. We’re stuck with that and we’re just going to have to find a way to make it work for us.

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Common Sense

Dear FEC,

I write to you today to request your kind advisory as to whether this pamphlet defines me as an ACTIVIST or a JOURNALIST. Whilst I am loathe to corrupt our pristine electoral system with my calls to political action, neither would I wish to cause our sanctioned press any undue hardship due to its perceived affiliation with rabble like myself. I do understand that “citizen journalists” not being PROPERLY CREDENTIALED creates terrible confusion amongst the leaders of government and society. I humbly request, therefore, that you peruse my pamphlet with an eye toward giving me the designation I shall need going forward if I wish to publish and disseminate my words without government interference. I anxiously await your verdict.

Sincerely,

Thomas Paine

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For The Record

Yesterday I mentioned the fact that that FoxNews had the incredible chutzpah to discuss openly why nobody is reporting the Downing Street Memo — without actually reporting on the Downing St memo. It turns out that there is a movement afoot to gain some attention for this thing and I think it’s worth doing, if only for history’s sake if nothing else. There should be a record of some Americans’ interest in such a damning document that proves the president of the United States knowingly took the country to war on false pretenses. It may come in handy someday.

Shakespeare’s Sister informs me that theBig Brass Alliance is a collection of bloggers who are supporting a group called After Downing Street that is dedicated to gaining exposure for this issue. One positive thing that anyone can do is sign (along with 88 members of congress) this letter that John Conyers has written to the president requesting some answers to the obvious questions this document raises.

This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky lefty kumbaya petition (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) This memo is smoking gun proof that Bush lied us into war. Many of us knew this from the get. But, I think it’s probably true that most others already know this on some level as well — a fair number are glad he did, a few more don’t care, and the rest just don’t want to confront their own bloodlust or willfull blindness. It’s hard to admit you were wrong about something so deadly.

The rest of us need to keep a clear head and insist that this not be swept under the rug to the extent that we can. We have to keep the idea that there will be some sort of rational accountability for such acts alive in this culture or we are goners.

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Losing Their Religion

Regarding right wing Christians putting their embryos up for adoption and insisting they not be adopted by gays or non-Christians (preferably not a working woman either) AMERICAblog wonders how this Bush promoted religious discrimination can get past the editors of the NY Times unaddressed.

I’ll tell you how:

Though we have our lapses, (pdf) individual news stories on emotional topics like abortion, gun control, the death penalty and gay marriage are reported and edited with great care, to avoid any impression of bias. Nonetheless, when numerous articles use the same assumption as a point of departure, that monotone can leave the false impression that the paper has chosen sides. This is especially so when we add in our feature sections, whose mission it is to write about novelty in life. As a result, despite the strict divide between editorial pages and news pages, The Times can come across as an advocate.

The public editor found that the overall tone of our coverage of gay marriage, as one example, “approaches cheerleading.” By consistently framing the issue as a civil rights matter — gays fighting for the right to be treated like everyone else — we failed to convey how disturbing the issue is in many corners of American social, cultural and religious life.

[…]

Too often we label whole groups from a perspective that uncritically accepts a stereotype or unfairly marginalizes them. As one reporter put it, words like moderate or centrist “inevitably incorporate a judgment about which views are sensible and which are extreme.” We often apply “religious fundamentalists,” another loaded term, to political activists who would describe themselves as Christian conservatives. …

The editors didn’t fail. They succeeded. They “re-framed” the issue of religious discrimination and gay rights. They are simply being “sensitive” and “conveying how disturbing the issue us in many corners of American social, cultural and religious life” when they uncritically report on a White House endorsed publicly funded group that enables Christian bigots to discriminate even though it’s clearly against the law.

I think it’s time we called out the PC police on the wingnuts. Nobody likes political correctness, not even liberals, really. And our day is long past. This is the new province of the right and they have finally hammered the press into thinking that discrimination and bigotry are really just normal expressions of religious belief and must be treated with kid gloves. I call bullshit every time one of these timorous cowards clutch their tiny lace hankies and blubber something about how they are being sensitive to the beliefs of bigoted assholes.

Just in case James Dobson and his new friends, the intellectuals at the NY Times, have forgotten their eighth grade American history class, Confederates used the Bible to justify slavery, too. Bin Laden uses the Koran to justify terrorism. Just because they wrap themselves in the Holy Books doesn’t mean these theo-fascists they aren’t breaking the laws of both God and Man.

For a more in depth analysis of the NY Times “credibility” report, see Reading A1
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Buy This Book

The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo : How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America’s Dominant Political Party

I have ordered it and await it eagerly. Rick Perlstein is one of the clearest observers of American politics around and one of the very few historians who really understands how the right wing works.

It’s only 8 bucks and I guarantee that it will be worth reading even if you don’t agree with his conclusions:

A majority of Americans tell pollsters they want more government intervention to reduce the gap between high- and lower-income citizens, and less than one-third consider high taxes to be a problem. Yet conservative Republicanism currently controls the political discourse. Why?

Rick Perlstein probes this central paradox of today’s political scene in his penetrating pamphlet. Perlstein explains how the Democrats’ obsessive short-term focus on winning “swing voters,” instead of cultivating loyal party-liners, has relegated Democrats to political stagnation. Perlstein offers a vigorous critique and far-reaching vision that is a thirty-year plan for Democratic victory.

If you are very good, I may even be able to persuade the author to do a little blogospheric interview if he’s so inclined. It’s long past time that liberals supported their writers and thinkers the way the wingnuts support theirs.

Update:

Speaking of books, are any of you libertarians out there a little bit discomfited by the fact that “On Liberty” by JS Mill got an honorable mention in the 10 worst books list by HumanEvents magazine? I mean, “Mein Kampf” and “Das Kapital” aren’t big surprises. I’m not shocked by “The Feminine Mystique” or even the inclusion of John Maynard Keynes (although you have to love this commentary: “FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.” Haha.)

But “On Liberty”? What, he wasn’t sufficiently agitated about stem cell research? The capital gains tax?

Jesus, I now have not one single intellectual connection to the right. Not one. They are aliens from another planet.

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The Party Of Krugman

Somebody asked me what my favorite columnist was the other day and I said that I thought most liberal bloggers like Krugman because he writes the way we write — he doesn’t suffer fools and he writes with all the righteous indignation he feels at what he sees. And, I suspect that this is why establishment journos like Daniel Okrent don’t like him. He just refuses to play the game by establishment rules.

This post by Brad DeLong exposes the entire silly social aspect of this and gives us a window into why liberals are being marginalized in the mainstream media. We are supposed to be nice. The other side is expected to be tough and uncompromising. Krugman is a fighter and he never gives ground when he thinks he’s right. That’s unbecoming in a liberal because it means that you have to engage in the facts and have a real argument instead of just hurling insults or bumper stickers as you can when dealing with right wing critics.

Daniel Okrent finds his behavior unseemly and annoying:

For a man who makes his living offering strong opinions, Paul Krugman seems peculiarly reluctant to grant the same privilege to others. And for a man who leads with his chin twice a week, he acts awfully surprised when someone takes a pop at it

[…]

On Prof. Krugman’s defense of his unfamiliarity with it, he’s effectively saying, “If I didn’t know about it, it must not be important.” This is a polemicist’s dodge; no self-respecting journalist would ever make such an argument.

[…]

Believe me — I could go on, as could a number of readers more sophisticated about economic matters than I am. (Among these are several who, like me, generally align themselves politically with Prof. Krugman, but feel he does himself and his cause no good when he heeds the roaring approval of his acolytes and dismisses his critics as ideologically motivated.) But I don’t want to engage in an extended debate any more than Prof. Krugman says he does. If he replies to this statement, as I imagine he will, I’ll let him have what he always insists on keeping for himself: the last word.

I hate to do this to a decent man like my successor, Barney Calame, but I’m hereby turning the Krugman beat over to him.

Oh Boo hoo hoo. God forbid a liberal should accuse one’s critics of being ideologically motivated. You would think that the ombudsman of the NY Times would have a slightly bigger bone to pick with the right wing which has been calling them ideologically motivated for 40 fucking years. But then, that would require they acknowledge reality and that is what cannot happen.

Paul Krugman is an in-your-face, unapologetic member of the reality based community. He calls it as he sees it and he doesn’t mince words in doing so. As he amply demonstrated in his response to Okrent’s shallow criticisms (which, even if true, would hardly back-up his calumnous accusations in his last piece) Krugman does not particularly enjoy being told he is wrong on the facts when he isn’t. World class economists may be used to being called to task for their conclusions or their predictions, but saying that he is cooking the numbers for partisan reasons are fighting words. His reputation rests on his intellectual integrity. Of course he is going to fight when challenged by lame conventional wisdom and spoonfed propaganda. If only more liberal pundits had his guts we might not be where we are today.

Paul Krugman is tough and fearless and we need more like him — people who are not part of the cliquish Sally Quinn social scene (it about made me puke to read that unctuous little screed again) and who do not depend upon the approbation of aging social mavens for their self esteem.

Tell me that the party of Krugman is a bunch of soft cowards who can’t fight terrorism or run a disciplined economic agenda. Tell me the party of Krugman doesn’t know what it believes in. The party of Krugman believes in reality, that the emperor has no clothes, that up is up and down is down. And it isn’t afraid to tell snivelling little babies like Daniel Okrent to stick it where the sun don’t shine. The party of Krugman doesn’t lay down and take it. It fights.

Update! Somerby takes Okrent, skewers him quickly and then slowly roasts him over a very high flame. It is awesome. Okrent, the Manhattan fop.

No Mirrors Available

This is too much. Shakespeare’s Sister spots a FoxNews headline that says: Downing Street Memo Mostly Ignored in US.

Can you believe it? And then Fox goes on to wonder why that might be. They simply can’t figure it out. They interview people and ponder the question and go to great lengths to explain why it isn’t being reported. I don’t see that they interview Roger Ailes or John Moody, however. Perhaps they were too busy.

They even point out that the left has been trying in vain to get attention for the issue:

Several popular left-leaning blogs have taken up the cause to keep the story alive, encouraging readers to contact media outlets. A Web site, DowningStreetMemo.com, tells readers to contact the White House directly with complaints.

“This is a test of the left-wing blogosphere,” said Jim Pinkerton, syndicated columnist and regular contributor to FOX News Watch, who pointed out that The Sunday Times article came out just before the British election and apparently had little effect on voters’ decisions.

“In many ways that memo might prove all of the arguments the critics of the war have made,” he added. “But the bulk of Americans don’t agree, or don’t seem that alarmed, so it is a power test to see if they can drive it back on the agenda.”

I guess the fact that most people don’t know is irelevant. Certainly, it can’t be because FoxNews itself isn’t reporting it. Except, of course, to report that nobody cares.

Even though Pinkerton is trying to turn this into a test of the liberal blogosphere for gawd knows what reason, it is an important story that we should continue to press. Sometimes these things take time.

Check out DowningStreetMemo.com. They’ll tell you where to send your angry lefty e-mail.

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Your Lovin’ Don’t Pay My Bills

John Aravosis wonders if liberals have “issues” with money — he sees a hostility toward money on the left and wonders where it comes from. His readers offer some very interesting opinions on the matter, so be sure to read the comment thread if you find this topic intriguing.

I have a slightly different perception on the matter than most, it seems. I admit to having issues with it, probably because I always valued time over money. (Of course, as you get older you begin to realize that you run out of that too.) However, I don’t harbor resentment toward others. I made my choices and I don’t live a life full of regret about much of anything. I have no moral qualms about making money (in a decent way) and I don’t think that it’s my business to judge others on what they choose to spend it on. I appreciate what it can do to make life comfortable for the individual and how it motivates people to work. I certainly accept that there is something intrinsic to human nature in the acquisition of wealth and the desire to succeed. But I do have issues, nonetheless.

John’s readers more than adequately explain what I think is the common liberal argument against money and it’s the general belief in egalitarianism — that it is not really moral to have too much when others have so little. These are ideas that, ironically enough, stem from Christian teaching. So much for the godless heathens of the left.

I don’t approach this from a moral standpoint, although I’m sympathetic to the notion just from a human empathetic standpoint. If you’ve ever spent much time in the third world, you realize right quick that human life is valued very differently on our planet and it won’t make you feel particularly terrific about your own (except, of course, for the South Park Republicans who apparently can’t think beyond their good luck — what they would call their natural superiority — at being American.)

It has been my experience that money confers power over others and that is where I personally get uncomfortable. This is not directly related to marxist theory, although I would suspect that there isn’t a lefty (or a righty for that matter) who hasn’t been influenced to some degree by it, so it’s certainly relevant to my thinking on the issue. (He diagnosed the illness, it was his prescription that wasn’t so hot.) Mostly,though, I think it’s a matter of human psychology. People who work for wages, particularly those lower on the scale, are simply not in control of their lives in the same way as are those who work for themselves or those who are independently wealthy. From being treated like a lackey by the boss to having to answer to your mother-in-law because she loaned you money for the down payment, there is a slight, and sometimes not so slight, corruption of your freedom every time you are dependent upon another individual’s goodwill. And it is a rare person who will not immediately exercise this power over others if they feel threatened or angry and a rare person who will not feel the metaphorical lash at having to answer for it.

As much as I am concerned as they are with individual freedom, this is why I find it so hard to relate to libertarians; I think that the common experience of working for wages and being beholden to another individual is more of a tangible infringement upon personal liberty than the extraction of taxes for the greater good. The infringement on personal freedom that is most immediate and constant in most people’s lives is having to brownnose another human being or play fast and loose with the rules because their financial survival depends upon it. It’s why I support unions and workplace rules and consumer rights. In the everyday lives of most people, the biggest limits on their freedom and challenges to their integrity come not from government regulators but greedy and powerful employers.

And yet, it is the way of the world and we each have to find a way to live with a modicum of decency and integrity within it. And I think it is a much more complicated and difficult row to hoe than we Americans think it is. It is not as easy to obtain financial freedom as some would have it nor is financial success a perfect illustration of an individual’s merit. That’s why I don’t much like money, in a general conceptual way. It has corrupted friendships, family, jobs and relationships in ways that nothing else in my life ever has. It can and is used as a weapon as often as a tool. In a hyper capitalist society such as ours, it’s perhaps the single most powerful method the individual has (or doesn’t have) to create his or her own destiny. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a good thing to think about how you really feel about it — most Americans never question their assumptions. In many ways, it’s probably easier that way. Bravo to John for bringing it up.

And by the way, I hope this makes it clear that I do not hold with the idea that because a blogger accepted donations that he or she is required to answer to the donors. Indeed, I think the opposite. People give money because they appreciate the work. When they don’t appreciate the work they don’t give money. It’s one of the cleanest exchanges of goods and services around, fully voluntary and without further obligation on either part.

This reminds me of a relative who wanted to help out her grandfather in his later years. He was living with an aunt who also had little money. This relative agreed to send a hundred dollars a month. When she went to visit she found out that granddad was drinking a couple of beers every night and the aunt played bingo on Saturdays. The relative considered these expenses to be a waste. She figured her hundred a month entitled her to straighten up these people’s bad habits and she insisted that because she had sent them, by this time, more than a couple thousand dollars that they already owed her quite a lot, even if she withdrew her monthly stipend. They gave up the beer and the bingo but the relative continued to find their spending habits objectionable and made sure that they knew it and did as they were told. Granddad was reduced to sneaking around and the aunt was isolated from all the friends she used to see at weekly bingo. They felt like children. Luckily they both died before long and ended the ritual humiliation the whole thing had evolved into. The money was not worth it.

If Aravosis wanted to blow all his donations on lottery tickets they’d be his to blow. If that bothers you, don’t donate again. But making a donation doesn’t entitle anyone to think they own John or his blog. He owns himself, always.

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Maybe He Won’t Be Back

Check out this fascinating pictorial deconstruction of Schwarzeneger’s ad on BagNewsNotes today. (Or just click the ad at left.) For those of you who don’t live in California, this ad is just pathetic, and it’s chock full of product placement. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many brand names in a political commercial before.

But, as BNN points out, it’s also aesthetically just a terrible ad — even by political ad standards which aren’t very high. It’s not that it has some sort of cinema verite authenticity in its badness. It’s just ugly and ineffectual.

This is the mega star of the 1980’s we’re talking about here. The man whose entire claim to fame is his celebrity. Yet his people produce an ad that could have been done by someone(with lots of high placed friends in the food and beverage business) running for the San Bernardino school board. And it comes on the heels of months of very effective ads done by the public employees unions featuring the the sunny smiles of elementary schoolteachers and nurses and the rugged all American features of heroic firefighters. (Jon Stewart said “those are some MILFS.”)

I think that people expect Schwarzenneger’s ads to be professional show business quality. That is, after all, the only thing he’s got going for him. Nobody voted for Arnold because of his great ideas or policy prescriptions. He didn’t have any then and he doesn’t have any now. They did expect him to at least play the part of the Governor well on TV. But then again, he never was the actor Ronald Reagan was in the movies, either. And that’s saying something.

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The Incredible Shrinking President

Funny how we haven’t seen any of the weekly news magazines do a cover story on the fact that Bush is the earliest lame duck in history. Considering that they were writing Bill Clinton’s epitaph within three months of his first term, one might conclude that they are using a different standard. How unusual.

But then again, it isn’t his fault and it isn’t his job. Unlike Clinton he doesn’t have a congressional majority of his own party to lead. Oh wait…

Bush Rejects Talk of Waning Influence:

President Bush dismissed yesterday suggestions that his influence is waning less than six months into his second term, blaming partisanship and timidity in Congress for the lack of action on his plans to bring change to the United Nations, restructure Social Security and enact a new energy policy this year.

“I don’t worry about anything here in Washington, D.C.,” Bush said during a news conference in the White House’s Rose Garden. “I feel comfortable in my role as the president, and my role . . . is to push for reform.” With Democrats and Republicans alike questioning the clout of a president whose approval ratings have sunk to new lows, Bush said it is Congress that must prove it is “capable of getting anything done.”

His job is to “push for reform?” I thought he was keeping the babies safe and fending off drone planes with his bare hands. What’s going on here? The man with the codpiece can’t get a Republican congress to enact his agenda? Man, those panting security moms must be disappointed. The difference between the 85% Collossus of 2002 and the petulant powerlessness of today is stark.

And he clearly didn’t like the way people were talking about his soul brother Vladimir:

Speaking a few hours after former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison after a trial that many democratic activists called politically motivated, Bush said he has expressed concerns about the legal proceedings to President Vladimir Putin and will watch the appeals process closely. “Here, you are innocent until proven guilty, and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial,” Bush said.

I guess he wanted to preserve his personal deniability for when he and Vlady next meet over beers and pork rinds at the ranch set. Or he just didn’t see the problem. After all, this is the man who said several thousand times that Saddam had to be disarmed and then pulled out the weapons inspectors when they didn’t find the proof. Seems to me that he has an affinity for the concept of judging guilty before having a fair trial.

And, of course he and everyone in the press corpse are too thick to see the utter vacuity of his statement in light of what he said just a few minutes before about alleged human rights abuses Guantanamo:

“It seemed to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth,’ Bush said.”

Yes, he actually said “disassemble” — and then had the nerve to be snotty about it and define it. There is no end to the man’s arrogance and ignorance.

Bush apparently has no idea that when he starts lecturing Moscow or Beijing about “fair trials” everyone now collapses in convulsive laughter. Guantanamo has changed forever the idea that Americans have a fair and impartial judicial system based upon the rule of law and the constitution. Bush and his cronies have shown that we are more than capable of suspending those things at will. If we ever had any moral authority, it has been officially flushed down the toilet.

Not that it really matters to these people. They don’t believe that it’s important to have moral authority. They only believe that it’s important to have big guns and a willingness to use them. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be all that good at the Empire building thing. Maybe keeping our moral authority backed by the threat of force rather than a clumsy and useless demonstration of our ineptitude might have been a better way to go.

This is going to be a long 3 and a half years. But I’m beginning to think I may enjoy them more than Junior will.

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