As the Iraqis Stand... down?

According to this story, the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting without U.S. support has now risen to.... zero.

That's right, for the last six months or so, there has been one Iraqi battalion rated fully trained and capable of independent operation, while the Administration has been touting the great strides we're making in training the Iraqi army and telling us repeatedly that we could expect soldiers to return home as the Army battalions progressed. The oft repeated soundbite is "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down".

Well, that solitary battalion was recently downgraded from "level one" to "level two", meaning it now requires U.S. military support to engage in operations.

So... we're making... progress?

A country spiraling down into civil war, our costs rising asymptotically, and oh yes, a whole new generation of America hating Muslims created.

Great job!

Liam.

Guantanamo Redux

More examples of the level to which this Administration has sunk in our names. I'm so tired of the lies, the torture, the lawbreaking, I'm too tired to even write much about it.

Read it here. NY Times article about a prison the U.S. is operating in Afghanistan which has many of the same problems I've spoken about in Guantanamo Bay.

Liam.

Dubai Ports, revisited

More information comes out. The first...

It now appears that President Bush first learned of the Dubai Ports deal not from the news but several days earlier from Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

I mention this for two reasons: One, to set the record straight (since I had previously mentioned Scott McClellan's assertion that the President learned it in the news after it was a done deal. Two, because it is yet another instance of this Administration being entirely unwilling to share anything like the truth. We now have official statements from McClellan that the President learned about it from two different sources at two different times. Which one is true? Is either one true? How much thought went into each option?

Again, it could be that McClellan just got a fact wrong. But given his reticence to answer questions about anything important in press conferences, and his tendency to dissemble whenever facts (or the official line) have not yet been determined, I find it hard to believe he would say something like that by accident. Again, not provable, but it fits the pattern I perceive from this Administration.

The second correction is from this article from UPI. Previously, it's been reported that the sale to Dubai Ports World (DPW) would affect six ports, New York NY, Newark NJ, Philadelphia PA, Baltimore MD, Miami FL and New Orleans LA.

Now, it turns out that the British company Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (P&O), the one that's being sold to DPW, is the parent company to P&O Ports North America (P&ONA).

P&ONA, according to the article, “leases terminals for the import and export and loading and unloading and security of cargo in 21 ports, 11 on the East Coast, ranging from Portland, Maine to Miami, Florida, and 10 on the Gulf Coast, from Gulfport, Miss., to Corpus Christi, Texas, according to the company's Web site.”

This deal would give DPW a toehold in ports across the entire east coast.

By the way, in the post 9/11 world we're told so much about, I'm not terribly happy with ANY company outside the US controlling our ports. It would seem to me that if national security is at as great risk as we've been repeatedly told by the President, Vice President, and on down, that having foreign control of our ports is a bad thing. So I want to be clear, while I don't like a company owned by a country which has a dubious record with regard to supporting al Qaeda and the Taliban owning these ports, it's not specifically a nationality thing (or if it is, only by degrees).

The bigger scandal here should be why haven't these ports been under American control thus far?

Liam.

Voting Machines and Trust

I was asked today why, if I so distrust the Diebold voting machines, I still use ATMs (many of which are manufactured by Diebold). "If Diebold can't be trusted," so the spurious argument went, "then why do you trust them with your money?"

The answer is simple: verifiability.

If anyone, from the maker of the ATM I'm using to its owner or even my own bank were to take even a penny more from my account than I authorized, I would catch it the next time I balanced my books. I have a paper trail which I can follow and verify that everything that happens in my account exactly matches what happened at the ATM.

The problem with the voting machines is that there is no such record. There is no receipt for the voter to indicate "You just withdrew one vote for Candidate X, your remaining balance is zero votes" or whatever. There's no independently created paper receipt which could be used for recounts. There is simply a number that comes out of the main computer, and we have only Diebold's word (or one of the few other voting machine manufacturers) that the number is at all accurate. Plus we KNOW that Diebold's machines, at least, are hackable in several ways, without leaving a trace.

I've mentioned before that just after the election, Howard Dean was shown on a PBS show how the results on the Diebold central tabulator machine could be changed using Microsoft Access to open the votes database, such that the software never knew anything funny had gone on, and it can be done in about 30 seconds.

I think I've also mentioned that a test of the machines recently showed that the cards on which votes are stored can be "pre loaded" with counts, even negative counts, but be tricked into reporting that they've been zeroed out. The machine certifies that the results are honest, but meanwhile the machines started out with extra votes for one party and a negative count for the other.

The fact is, electronic voting is not, by itself, a bad thing. But there needs to be a way to verify the results. Each voting machine should print out a receipt for the voter. The voter then verifies that his or her receipt shows the correct votes and places it in a ballot collector.

Then you have double certified election results. The electronic results are tabulated immediately and can give us relatively instant access to results, the paper ballots are counted separately in order to verify. And the printed receipts would be clear and unambiguous. No more "hanging chads" or ambiguous marks on the ballot making it difficult to determine who was voted for.

One of my friends, when I suggested this scheme, said "That would be way too expensive, having to double count every election." To which I say "Really? Just how expensive is too expensive to ensure fairness in the single most important part of our governance? How much do we spend going to other countries and helping to certify their election results? How stupid is it that we'll spend that kind of effort making sure a fledgling democracy has no voting irregularities, and then completely ignore our own?"

The problem with electronic voting machines is the same as the problem with the Unitary Executive having the power to do things merely because he says "trust me": there's no verification. And when you can't verify the results, you're just asking to be cheated.

Liam.

Small Wording, Big Implication

This is another one of those "little issue/big issue" things that depends on which side of the fence you sit.

It involves a small phrase buried in a statement by President Bush regarding the Dubai port deal, and I think it's pretty clear that the Left will be up in arms about it while the Right says "What? It means NOTHING!". I think it's also pretty clear that had Clinton used the same phrase, the reactions would have been the same with the roles reversed.

Given, however, my impression of this President, I think it is a slip of the tongue which probably speaks volumes as to his view of the world.

The phrase is "my government". (link here) It was said in the following sentence: "The more people learn about the transaction that has been scrutinized and approved by my government the more they will be comforted that our ports will be secure."

It's not worth making a federal case over, but it is worth noting because it is emblematic of how it appears President Bush views the power in this country. Not "my Administration" or "my cabinet", but "my government", as though rather than being at the head of one of the three supposedly equal branches of our federal government, he views himself as sitting atop the entire federal government.

If you don't agree that he feels this way, then you will likely not have any issue with the use of the words "my government". But you will understand why those of us who perceive that Bush seems to view checks and balances as unconstitutional impediments on his executive power might be a little bit more concerned about the world view behind the words.

In my view, in terms of Bush quotes, this goes not in the pile of "misunderestimations" and "subliminables", but in the same pile as "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!" (link here).

Liam.

American Ports run by WHO?

Apparently, the Bush Administration has approved a deal under which the company responsible for managing six major American ports, British firm "Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company", would be aquired such that they ultimately became part of "Dubai Ports World", a company based in the United Arab Emirates.

Forgetting for the moment that links have been identified between the 9/11 hijackers and the UAE, and some have suspected that the UAE may have other terrorist ties, at a time when there's already reason to be concerned with the level of security in our ports, does it make sense to be outsourcing security and management at those ports?

And at a time when large portions of the Islamic world view the United States as engaging in a wholesale war on Islam, isn't it problematic to put our already woefully inadequate port security into the hands of a company based in a country which may feel closer ties to our enemies than to us?

Hopefully the Administration has considered all of this and has some reason to believe this deal will ultimately be good for America, and I hope that it comes out that all of this has been considered. With the (meager) information we have now, it doesn't appear to pass the sniff test.

The six ports in question are in NY and NJ, plus Baltimore, MD, Miami, FL, New Orleans, LA and Philadelphia, PA.

Liam.

It's not the wire tapping...

Why is it that every defense I hear of the warrantless wiretapping program seems to miss the point of the argument?

The issue isn't over whether wire tapping is an important or necessary part of the war on terror. If you want to convince me that the President's program is legal, don't proceed from the premise that terror is bad and that it's bad for America not to be able to tap phone calls and e-mail to track down terrorist threats.

The point of the scandal isn't the tactic, it's the unregulated use of it. That's supposed to be what the FISA court is there for. Now, personally, I'm a little bit leery of secret courts anyway, but at least with the FISA court, SOMEONE is double checking the program, SOMEONE is making sure that the targets are legit, that the program isn't used to spy on political rivals or others not actually connected with terrorism.

Administration apologists paint a picture of those who have questions about the program as America haters who want the terrorists to win, or believing America needs to be punished, but in most cases, that's a spurious characterization.

Let's put this in different terms: If you're doing your laundry at a Laundromat, you have the right to use the dryers. You do not have the right to hotwire them so you can get a drying cycle without paying. And the argument I keep getting in favor of the current Bush program would be like defending hotwiring the dryers by saying "Hey, if we're not allowed to dry our clothing, it'll get wet and moldy! To protect ourselves from mold we HAVE to be able to dry our clothing!".

I'm not disputing that you have to be able to dry your clothing, I'm saying you have to follow the rules in order to do it. I'm not saying we should never wire tap anyone, I'm saying we need to follow the rules to make sure civil liberties are respected in the process.

Look, people my age and older remember Richard Nixon. He made it clear what illegal use unregulated wire tapping can be put to. NO President should have that level of power, not President Bush, not President Clinton, not President Nixon, not anyone. It has nothing to do with war time or peace time. It has nothing to do with hating America or the terrorists' rights.

Having a driver's license gives me a license to drive, but there's still oversight. There are still police officers tasked with checking to see if I and the other drivers are speeding, driving erratically or driving drunk. It's about the oversight. Having a driver license doesn't allow me to drive 150 mph down the road and complain that my license gives me inherent authority to operate my vehicle and that I should be allowed to circumvent the police oversight of my operation.

Is it starting to make sense? It's not the use of wire taps. It's making sure they're used in a lawful way, consistent with the Constitution, and protective of the civil rights of American citizens. Use the 72 hour retroactive FISA warrants when you have to. They're provided for in the law exactly so that in these sorts of cases, we don't lose vital time waiting for a warrant when time is of the essence.

But it is not up to the President to decide what laws he's going to obey and which he is going to ignore. FISA was set up to regulate EXACTLY the behaviors that are going on right now. Not prevent, regulate.

And when anyone makes an argument that they shouldn't have to submit to oversight or have anyone check the legality of the things they're doing, that should be a warning bell to everyone that this is a person who most needs oversight.

Liam.

Keeping 'em honest

Remember when Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats took the Senate into closed door session? For those who don't remember, the Democrats forced the Senate into closed door session in order (in part) to demand that the long-awaited Phase 2 of the Senate investigation into pre-war intelligence failures actually commence.

(You will recall that part of the complaint was that Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts had postponed phase 2 of the investigation over a year earlier for partisan reasons, due to the impending election. At the time of the Senate maneuver by Ried, it had been a year since the election with no movement on the second phase).

In response, Senator Roberts and others poo-poo'd the action, claiming the second phase of the report was under way, and if Reid had just asked, he would have known that it was just a couple of weeks from completion.

Really?

That was November 1, 2005. It's now been over two and a half months, and unless the media and all of the various political blogs I read all just happened to fail to cover it, no such report has been released.

This is why we can't have single party rule in this country. The Senate's job is to oversee the President, to make sure he actions are lawful and Constitutional. It is their job to look into warrantless wire tapping to determine its legality. It is their job to look into the outing of Valerie Plame. It is their job to look into the various indications (such as the three so-called "Downing Street minutes" memos) that the Administration may have lied in order to get us into war in Iraq.

It is their job to be a check and balance on the President, not a rubber stamp. You may agree with the President. You may do the investigation and determine that you don't believe he did anything wrong. But DO the investigation, don't merely brush the allegations under the carpet and refuse to let them see the light of day.

This is why it is vital that the Republican party lose control of the Senate and House in November, and do not regain it until a Democrat takes the White House. We need to do the investigations, even if the end result is that everything is fine in our national governance.

Otherwise, how can we really know?

Liam.

What Makes a Liberal?

I know that a 'liberal' is the insult that is often tossed about as the topper of all insults. I'm no longer a Republican, but I still hold the conservative values that the Republican Party used to represent: small government, church led charities, strong army, low controls on business, and prolife. I am now being accused of being a 'liberal' becuase I have no support for the current President and his administration. I guess now I am liberal, I want change. I want change back to small government, strong army, government staying out of business, prolife.

I am now a LIBERAL.

posted by Janet

Debate Invitation

I've been accused of being so far gone in my hatred of Bush that it isn't worth debating with me, and I think PART of the problem is that there are so very many items with which I have issue right now. I've covered elsewhere that I do not hate Bush, I hate what I perceive he is doing to the country.

So let's try an experiment. I'd like to have a debate on a single topic. I'd like to debate the Iraq war. This is, admittedly, a somewhat broad topic, but it is one which has been around for a while, so we've all had time to develop our opinions and justify our arguments. There are fewer "open questions" that are still developing for us to get trapped by differing assumptions as to what the end result will show.

To that end, I think we should have a structured, step-wise debate. The first step, I think, is to identify the list of objectives (justifications) for the Iraq war. I'll start by listing what I see as the objectives, and whoever steps up to engage in this debate with me can add any they think I've missed.

Once someone takes up the gauntlet and we come to an agreed list of the objectives, we can then debate whether these objectives: 1) Could reasonably have been expected to be met by this war, 2) Whether these objectives HAVE been met by the war (leaving out as best we can arguments over who gets credit/blame), and 3) Whether those which are Yes to 1 and No to 2 can reasonably still be expected to be met through continued operations there.

So, to start out, I believe the objectives for the Iraq war were as follows:

1) To protect America from Iraq's stockpile of WMDs.

2) To make America safer from future terrorist attacks.

3) To promote democracy in the region (believing that this would make for a more stable, safer region).


Now, I'm going to omit several others, unless whoever takes up the gauntlet argues in favor of including them. Among them:

1) To remove Saddam Hussein from power. I believe that as a goal by itself, this would never have been considered justification by the American public to go to war. Removing Saddam Hussein from power had to be a means to an end (removing a threat to the United States, for example). Thus, I do not think it stands as a goal in its own right.

2) Although I believe there were a lot of additional justifications for the war, they are not America's justifications, they are President Bush's, Vice President Cheney's and a number of other high powered people's, all behaving in their own self interest or the interest of their friends, not the American public. While I do believe these objectives were part of the reason we actually went there, the point of this debate is to debate America's objectives.

So, the next step would be for one of the Pro-Bush people who always accuse me of being unwilling to engage in a true debate (while never actually offering one) to step up and say "Yes, let's have this debate". Tell me whether you agree with my list of three objectives, or if not, how you feel the list should read. Once we agree on that, we can start an honest debate on the merits of each, and the merits of the Iraq war in achieving any of them.

Thanks,

Liam.

Introspection

If I come across as pretty confident that I'm open-minded and not merely proceeding from a knee-jerk hatred of Bush, it could be because of my level of introspection.

At least once a week, sometimes more often, I sit down and ask myself "Is it possible I'm wrong? Is it possible that everything I think I know about President Bush, his Administration, and the neoconservative movement is incorrect, and the country is actually NOT headed in the wrong direction?"

My wife can tell you, this is not a painless or quick process. She's been through it with me on several occasions. Ultimately, after throwing away everything I think I know and starting back in trying to find ways in which the right wing talking points could be correct (or largely so), I find no way to make that fit the facts as I believe I know them.

My question to everyone out there (on both sides of any issue) is this: Do you do the same thing? Can you honestly say you've sat down, done your best to clear your mind of preconceived notions of what the left and right represent, and taken a clear and careful introspective examination of your beliefs and how they match up to the facts?

My suspicion is that most of you have not. My guess is that very few people take the time to reexamine their beliefs from time to time to make sure none of their foundational assumptions, postulates and theories have been disproved, removing the underpinnings of the argument.

I'm pretty confident that I've examined my arguments, and that I continue to do so regularly. I'm confident that my position on the issues is the one which most closely fits the facts as I know them, and that I can tell the difference between a source which is repeating opinions without any justification vs one which has some substantive and genuine proof cited.

Can you say the same about your argument? Or have you built your entire argument on a shaky foundation such as "my party is good, the other party is evil, therefore President Bush is (a hero/the antichrist)"?

That's why I consider myself an independent, not a member of either major party (or any minor one). I don't have a "my party", so I know I can't be proceeding from the automatic assumption that one is the party of goodness and light and the other of evil and darkness.

Liam.

I Got Asked Again Today...

Once again, I got asked by a friend "Who would you rather have defending the country, a President who takes a strong stand on terror, or the liberals who have no ideas?"

Forgetting for a moment that this question uses the invalid logic technique of proceeding from an unproven assumption (the old "Have you stopped beating your wife?" question), let me answer honestly:

I would rather have a President who is not weakening us in the world. I would rather have a President who doesn't use threat of the bogeyman of terror to justify dismantling the very things that make our country worth defending.

I don't think the terms "torture" and "extraordinary rendition" being seen as synonymous with "U.S. foreign policy" abroad makes us safer. I don't think turning previously stable and not-particularly-threatening countries who never attacked us into havens and fertile recruiting grounds for anti-American jihadists makes us safer. I don't think giving every Islamic nation in the world reason to suspect we went after Iraq simply because they were a Muslim nation, rather than for cause, strengthens our position with that community.

I think it's ludicrous to think that any group organized the way we're told al Qaeda is organized would be so easily trapped into "fighting us there so they can't attack us here". Quite the contrary, the assumption that hitting them there so they won't attack here assumes that we're attacking their homes, that there is something there for them to defend. Any reasonably smart tactician defends home and supply lines first, and then goes after the opponents home and supply lines second. Since Iraq was neither home nor primary supply line to al Qaeda, there's simply no reason to believe Osama bin Ladin would commit all of his resources in Iraq when he'd rather be hitting us at home.

Speaking of Osama bin Ladin, I'd rather have a President who held true to his promise to hunt him (bin Ladin) down. "He can run but he can't hide" seems to have turned, ADHD-like, into "he's out of sight, I've forgotten about him."

I'd rather have a President who is well respected in the world community, so that if we DO get hit again, we will have a lot of allies to draw upon.

I'd rather have a President who was not bankrupting our nation, selling our debt in record amounts to the Chinese, and leaving us with ever fewer resources to fight terror. Think this is unrelated? What if we decide Kim Jong Il of North Korea is an immenent threat, and we decide to go after him, but he's made ties with Communist China, and they decide to tell us that if we attack North Korea, they will immediately cease any loans to the U.S. We literally would not have the resources to fight that war if the Chinese suddenly stopped funding us (or worse, started calling in their markers).

We are not safer than we were before 9/11. We have been weakened, fed a veneer of macho posturing while the rot at our core has been eating away at our strength.

I don't know how Katrina could have not opened everyone's eyes to the extent to which we are NOT prepared for further emergencies. Apparently we're fighting them over there so that *WE* have no resources to prepare for an attack over here. And since the counter argument is so often "Weather and terrorism are two different things" can you honestly tell me you think the response in New Orleans would have been any better coordinated if the levees had been blown up by a terrorist, rather than eroded by a hurricane?

No, we don't have a President who is strong on defense. We have a President who is corrupt and self-serving, appointing incompetant cronies everywhere he can in his administration, flouting the laws of our country and using "your safety" as a justification. When you let them get away with that lie, when you take it to heart and REPEAT that lie, you are not actually supporting safety, you are abetting someone in the process of dismantling our great country.

That, I think, is not what anyone wants.

Liam.

Scary scary thinking...

I heard someone yesterday defend extreme measures (even illegal ones) in the war on terror. In the process, the person in question used the phrase "What good are civil liberties if an American city is nuked?"

By no means is it an easy choice to opt for the nuking of an American city, and I pray it never comes to pass.

But terrorists hit us because they want to destroy us. Does it REALLY make sense to people to do their job FOR them?

Look, I don't want an American city nuked. I certainly don't want one I live in, or in which my friends or family members live or work, nuked. But our choice isn't between giving up civil liberties or having a nuked city. It's between giving up civil liberties and having a possible, theoretically marginally higher chance of being nuked.

We could give up all of our civil liberties and STILL be nuked. On the other hand, we could stay within the laws and safeguards of our country and foil every plot against us. But if we give up the foundations of what this country is all about, what is there left to defend?

To those who would so lightly give up civil liberties on the premise that it even marginally increases our chance of stopping a terrorist threat, I hope you have a chance to live without any civil rights. Not for any length of time, but for a month or two. See what life is like when you can be picked up and jailed or tortured simply because you looked askance at someone in authority. I've never lived that way. I hope to heaven I never do, nor have to watch my children or any of my loved ones subjected to that kind of world.

But if you honestly think throwing away the rights and liberties that form the foundation of this country is a good idea, think that giving them up in order to be a little safer sounds just dandy to you, I wish for you just a taste of what such an America would really be like. Just enough to appreciate how great this country is and what, exactly, it is that our armed forces men and women fight and die protecting.

Liam.

OK, just one more

Since I can't sleep with this one chugging through my head, I'll hit one more topic tonight.

This report from truthout.org (admittedly a left wing site, although Matt Drudge, one of the more conservative voices on the net, lends it credence by posting it as well on his site) is pretty interesting.

If true, it appears that the NSA wire tapping of American citizens began well before 9/11. In fact, according to the article, longstanding NSA protocol held that if the NSA spied on American citizens, the agency was to black out the identities if it did not immediately destroy the information.

Bush and his Department of Defense changed that BEFORE 9/11, so that the NSA kept a running list of names of citizens it had spied on, and made those names available to the Administration.

Read the whole article. It seems that one of the Administration's arguments in favor of the President having the authorization to conduct these warrantless wire taps, that Congress granted it (even though they say they didn't) when they granted him the power to use force while fighting terror, may be deflating. After all, they can't claim no law was broken because Congress granted him that power, if he started the program before Congress passed the force resolution (or indeed before there was any reason for passing it).

Oh, and by the way, if this is true, it kind of puts lie to another of the Bush talking points of late: That if we'd had such a program in place before 9/11, we could have stopped the attacks. Never mind that we now know of over 50 different sources of information that pointed to such an attack which were ignored, and now nevermind that they actually HAD such a program and it DIDN'T stop the attacks.

I'll tell you what, the more we learn of this Administration and the nut jobs who have taken control of the Republican party and the Congress, the more the early theoretical papers of some of the founders of the neoconservative movement resonate. I'm still not ready to say any of them had a hand in 9/11... but I'm not prepared to come to their defense, either. At best, scholarly papers that say the best way to grab and hold power in a Democracy is to have a "Pearl Harbor-type event" and keep the populace afraid are coincidentally timed. At worst, given that the authors of those papers are now running the government, they seem ominous.

Liam.

Ominous music swells...

There are a number of things I want to blog about tonight, and I'm too tired to really do it. News stories that Scooter Libby rolled on Dick Cheney and testified that Cheney ordered him to leak the classified information. Stories about Bill Frist adding text to a bill after the House/Senate resolution had happened. Stories about Michael Brown trying to extort the White House for a lawyer, or he'll testify before Congress (as if it were a good thing to avoid Congressional advice and consent). And one story I just heard that seems to imply that the NSA wiretapping program actually predated the Congressional resolution on Terror, which would kind of throw a monkey wrench into the White House's primary defense.

But as I said, I'll have to get to those tomorrow or another day. For today, let me just post this link.

And for those who hate following links, it goes to the Library of Congress. It is the text of a proposed Amendment, sponsored by Reps Hoyer, Berman, Sensenbrenner, Sabo and Pallone. That text is:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

`Article --

`The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is repealed.'.

And for those who don't wish to bother looking it up, the 22nd was passed in 1947, and it sets term limits on the office of the President.

Yep, they're actually proposing a measure that would allow President Bush to run again. And with their friends at Diebold, if they repeal that Amendment, President Bush would more than likely steal yet another election, no matter HOW low his approval rating was.

Watch this one carefully, folks. I don't know what the game is, but I don't like it.

Liam.

[UPDATE: It just occurred to me why this amendment thing would backfire. Who is the one Democrat that Republicans most fear? Bill Clinton. If they pass this amendment, Clinton could run again, and judging by the reactions each got at Coretta Scott King's funeral, and the extent to which Bush seems to be trying to tie himself to Clinton of late, I think even if they DID hack the voting machines, they'd have a hard time convincing the population that Bush legitimately beat Clinton.]

Another thought from the State of the Union

ISOLATIONISM- n. : a policy of national isolation by abstention from alliances and other international political and economic relations.

This is the word President Bush used to paint those who object to his policies in Iraq and elsewhere.

However, I object to the use of the word to describe those who don't support unfounded wars against countries that haven't attacked us. I think a much better example of isolationism is a foreign policy that thumbs its nose at any foreign country which doesn't fall into lock step with America, turning the good will of the world after 9/11 into a fairly widespread disdain for this country.

Yeah, telling the world "who needs you, we'll do it alone if we have to" (to say nothing of sending John Bolton to the U.N. to try to assert U.S. control over that body), that results in an isolationism far greater than simply wanting to bring our troops home as safely as possible from a war which by all trustworthy accounts is as much of a quagmire as Viet Nam was.

Liam.

Still don't think Bush lies?

For those who stubbornly refuse to accept that our President does not always adhere to the truth...

Last week, the President gave the State of the Union speech. In it, he decried America's addiction to oil and said we must break it. He said many pretty words about leading the charge for renewable sources of energy and specifically mentioned ethanol made not just from corn, but "switch grass" and other sources as well.

Which is all well and good, but... later that same week, the Department of Energy had to lay off a significant number of the scientists working on those self same renewable energy sources. Why? Because President Bush had cut the budget for that part of the department.

So let's be clear here. He said we needed to find renewable energy sources. He gave enough details to strongly imply that he was in total support for the search for these sources. Meanwhile, he's cutting the budget, axing the very thing he was trying to claim credit for.

His pants, clearly, are on fire.

Liam.

The Worst of the Worst?

AP has this article (posted at CommonDreams.org) detailing the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, based on a report compiled (at Seton Hall University) from declassified Defense Department evaluations.

8% of the detainees are classified as terrorist fighters.
30% are considered members of a terrorist group.

Fully 60% of the people we've been holding (some for more than four years) a considered "associated with" terrorists.

55% of the detainees are "informally accused of committing a hostile act", ranging from torturing and killing Afghan natives to "possessed a rifle", "used a guest house" or "wore olive drab clothing".

Seriously? We've got people in Guantanamo Bay for over 4 years whose main crime is waking up and putting on the wrong ensemble? And people still wonder why many question this whole "Enemy Combatant" dodge that the President whipped up to avoid the legal rights afforded "prisoners of war" and "criminals"?

Now, they do say that the declassified defense department reports omit some details about the prisoners, but still... remember that many of these people were not aprehended directly by the U.S. military, but were turned over by Pakistan or turned in by their neighbors at a time when we were paying large bounties for information leading to the arrest of "terrorists". I've mentioned before that there are documented cases of people turning in neighbors they didn't like, and in one case a son trying to claim a reward for turning in his father, largely because the father could no longer do any work and was a burden on the family.

We can't be that nation. We can't be the guys who will engage in questionable behavior and human rights abuses without any chance of justice.

And don't get me wrong, I do mean justice. The real terrorists in all of this deserve to be brought to justice. The terrorists who bomb buildings with airplanes and drive car-bombs up to buildings.

But true justice also requires freeing those who are actually innocent. True justice also might exact a pretty heavy toll on America, for Abu Ghraib and extraordinary rendition and torture and dumping phosphorus (a chemical weapon) on citizens. Our disgusting behaviors may have been in retribution for someone else's, but ours were not directed at the ones who hit us first, so even if you subscribe to the eye-for-an-eye theory, it doesn't apply here.

Liam.

You go!

From one white guy to another: You go, girl!

There is a Republican named Richard Tarrant running for Vermont's open Senate seat, and his big campaigning point (at least until the party chooses its candidate) is that he's fiscally responsible, campaigning against what he calls "Borrow-and-spend" Republicans.

This has long been an issue of mine, the Democratic party being tarred with the line "tax-and-spend", while the problem part of that wasn't the taxing, it was the spending, and Republicans did just as much of that as Democrats did.

Like taxes or not, "tax and spend" is a heck of a lot more responsible fiscal policy than "don't tax and STILL spend", at least until some shred of evidence shows up to lend credence to the Republican reliance on variations on the Laffer curve and supply side economics.

The fact is, in order to be the party of fiscal responsibility, either party has to reign in spending to match income, regardless of what their theories project SHOULD be the income resulting form policies.

A salaried worker bringing in $50,000/year can suppose that if 40 hours/week brings in $50k, then 80 hrs/wk should bring in $100k. He can then start putting in 40 hours of overtime each week, but at the end of the year, he'd better not have spent $100k because being salaried, his theory on compensation won't hold true.

The last time we had a balanced budget was under a Democratic President. He had a Republican Congress, but the minute that Congress got a Republican President, deficit spending shot through the roof.

I think it's great that Tarrant, along with Senator John McCain and Representative Mike Pence want to bring back the strength of the Republican party, the part of the collective conscience that keeps us grounded and responsible.

An article on the subject can be found on Bloomberg.com.

Liam.

P.S. In my view, the Laffer curve is a theoretical construct, graphically displaying a true but not easily quantifiable concept. The idea that there is some level of taxation which optimizes government income is probably true. Trying to decide what that level actually is can really only be done experimentally, and repeated tax cuts have shown that we were not past the peak of the Laffer curve. Thus, using it to justify more tax cuts shows a profound lack of understanding of economics.

A couple of rays of hope

There are a couple of rays of hope on the Judge Alito front this morning. Actually, I learned about one of them yesterday and forgot to write it up in my late-night, minor-depression-fueled blogging frenzy.

Anyway, in an affort to start today off on a hopeful note, as well as in the interest of truth...

The first glimmer of hope that Alito may not be what it appeared he was going to be: On his first ruling on The Court, he ended up opposite Justices Roberts, Scalia and Thomas (and with the rest of the Justices) in his opinion.

Now, I don't know enough about the case to comment on whether this is a ruling I agree with, and I still think it's possible that, although there is no earthly legal reason why he'd need to do so, it could be a psychological needs on his part to try to demonstrate his independence from the extremists he's been so closely tied to in the media.

Nevertheless, this bodes well for Alito perhaps not being the vote-in-lock-step-with-the-conservative-extremists that he's been portrayed as.

The second ray of Alito-related hope this morning is more information on the much-discussed Vanguard case in which Alito failed to recuse himself from a case "involving" Vanguard after saying on his confirmation statement that he would do so.

I finally found a site that had details on that case, and not merely a statement like the one above. It is true that the case in question DID involve Vanguard, but it did not have any stake in Vanguard's finances or the financial prospects of Vanguard investors.

Specifically, the case involved the widow of a Vanguard investor. An ex-business partner of her late husband had filed a 1991 suit against him (the husband) and, because there were appearances that the husband had tried to move assets around to try to hide them from attempts to collect the judgement, his assets had been frozen by the court, and Vanguard (managing company of two IRA accounts frozen by the judgement).

The 2001/2002 case involving Judge Alito was the widow, suing to have the freeze lifted from the accounts by suing Vanguard. The money didn't belong to Vanguard, so regardless of whether the freeze was lifted and the plaintiff claimed the money, or it was left in place and the money had been awarded in the earlier case, Vanguard's financial position would have been the same. As a result, there was zero financial stake to Vanguard, even less to Vanguard investors, and so there really was no conflict of interest. And in fact, Alito was not "the judge" on the case, he was one of a panel of three judges.

Certainly on the surface, I can see where an earlier promise specifically to recuse himself from cases involving Vanguard appears troubling in light of this case, but for the record, I also am a Vanguard investor and I can easily see not considering that relevant. An item to be disclosed, discussed and then dismissed as a minor (at best) violation.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe the Democrats had reason to be nervous during the confirmation hearings, if only because of the fact that the hearings and the "discovery process" regarding Judge (now Justice) Alito were clearly a dog and pony show, in which very little actual information was discovered. On that basis alone, I think the Democrats had a right to say "Whoa, hold the phone. If you won't let us have our input or learn anything about the nominee, we have to assume you're hiding something and oppose him!" Coming off the Roberts hearings and the Miers debacle and a proven record on the part of the White House to refuse access to certain information about the various candidates' records, there was every reason for Democrats to be skeptical.

Add to that the several references to the unitary executive in Judge Alito's (non-)answers to questions at a time when our President seems to use UE theory as justification for ignoring laws he doesn't wish to obey, and there's every reason for the party Grover Norquist said was the one we looked to to protect our civil liberties to be concerned. (In the interest of full disclosure, one of my friends has asserted that there is a less odious and frightening version of unitary executive theory to which some people subscribe. I have not had the opportunity to get more details from him, so I include that information just in case).

Finally, there's still the troubling fact that he used membership in a group with a racist, sexist agenda on a resume when he felt it would benefit him, but conveniently forgets any details on his membership when that might reflect poorly on him for another job. This also is good reason for the party of civil liberties to question his fitness to hold a lifetime position on our highest court.

Nevertheless, I am heartened by the two major points in this post, and hope this portends that Alito will be a more moderate voice than I had previously feared.

Liam.

Scary things tucked away in the Patriot Act

When you get a chance, Google for "House Report 109-333 - USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005", and then scan down to section 605.

Here's one link to it, for the lazy, although I'd prefer you find it yourself so you know I'm not pointing you to some bogus site. (link)

This small item tucked away in the re-authorization of the Patriot Act creates a permanent police force to be known as the "United States Secret Service Uniformed Division".

It's jurisdiction is, for the most part, where you'd expect the Secret Service, providing protection: At the White House, Treasury Building, anywhere the President or Vice President and their families happen to be, etc. Also included in their jurisdiction is "An event designated as a special event of national significance." The referenced statute defining such a "special event of national significance" says that this is any event so designated by the President, who is supposed to provide a report to Congress each year on what events during the previous year were so designated and why.

It goes on to say that this new force is authorized to make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony (bolding is mine)

There is no definition provided for "offense against the United States". What might qualify? Burning a flag? Protesting an unpopular policy? Disagreeing with the President?

As with so many things, it is possible that this is simply a poorly worded bill with good and reasonable intent. However, as phrased, it essentially creates a private Presidential police force, that he can send anywhere he deems appropriate, and that can arrest people without warrant on the basis of suspicion of committing undefined offenses against the United States, which presumably the President also gets to define.

In the wrong hands, this could be used to designate an anti-war rally as a "special event" and dissenting speech as "giving aid or comfort to the enemy" and therefore an "offense against the United States".

In a country where an American citizen can be arrested and held without trial or charges for about three years (in blatent violation of that citizen's Constitutionally guaranteed rights, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, read my previous writings about Jose Padilla), this is eerily reminiscent of something the politburo in the old Soviet Union might have had.

Liam.

It's a bad idea, unless it's ours

(Keep this article in mind, the next time someone repeats the old, false meme that Democrats have no ideas, no plan for the nation)

In the September 30, 2004 first Presidential debate, candidate John Kerry suggested a plan under which the U.S. would provide Iran with nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors, along with controls such that we had access to monitor the use of the fuel rods and ensure they were truly being used for energy production and not weapons. The spend fuel would presumably be accounted for and returned to us.

At the time, this was widely criticized in Republican circles as stupid, handing a loaded weapon to a dangerous nation (as though Kerry were advocating handing the Uranium over with no controls or strings attached). It was called "ignorant" and "dangerously wrong". One Bush ally wrote an op-ed piece in which he said "Mr. Bush understands the folly of going that route."

One enthusiastically pro-Bush site, littlegreenfootballs.com, had the following quotes about the Kerry plan on August 2 of 2004:

John Kerry regards an Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism armed with nuclear weapons as unacceptable. He has a multiple-part strategy that is much more realistic than the Bush administration’s. One is to rejoin and work through the international legal framework on arms control. That will give greater force to the major powers if they have to deal with violators. Secondly, he has laid out, I think in the most comprehensive way in modern memory, a program to secure nuclear materials around the world—particularly in the former Soviet Union but also in the places where research reactors have existed that could be susceptible to proliferation. The point is to try to prevent Iran from ever getting this material surreptitiously. Thirdly, he has proposed that rather than letting the British, the French and the Germans do this themselves, that we together call the bluff of the Iranian government, which claims that its only need is energy. And we say to them: “Fine, we will provide you the fuel that you need if Russia fails to provide it.” Participating in such a diplomatic initiative makes it more likely to succeed.

...and...

Iran claims that its nuclear program is only to meet its domestic energy needs. John Kerry’s proposal would call their bluff by organizing a group of states to offer Iran the nuclear fuel they need for peaceful purposes and take back the spent fuel so they cannot divert it to build a weapon. If Iran does not accept this offer, their true motivations will be clear.

(Link here if you think this was in any way SUPPORTIVE of the Kerry plan.)

As recently as Jan. 22 of this year, NewsMax.com (a highly conservative web site) was still talking (here) about how stupid this was.

Which is odd, because four days later, President Bush endorsed a plan that is almost exactly the plan he and his party have been sneering at since Kerry suggested it. Quoted from an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Bush said:

"I have made it clear that I believe that the Iranians should have a civilian nuclear power program under these conditions: that the material used to power the plant would be manufactured in Russia, delivered under IAEA inspectors to Iran to be used in that plant, the waste of which will be picked up by the Russians and returned to Russia," Mr. Bush said at a news conference yesterday. "I think that is a good plan. The Russians came up with the idea and I support it," he added.

So, apparently the plan is dangerous and ill conceived when it's time to paint Democrats with the "no good ideas" brush, but excellent when Bush decides to endorse it.

And they say Democrats are flip-floppy.

Liam.

How concerned should I be...

...that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) has been awarded a $385 million dollar contract to provide "detention and processing facilities" to be used in case of "an emergency influx of immigrants"?

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but this sounds an awful lot like a contract to build concentration camps like the ones Americans of Japanese descent were sent to after Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Reuter's article on the contract here.

Liam.

Domestic Spying

OK, for those who persist in believing that the domestic spying program is entirely legal, please read this article in the Boston Globe today.

Note that a group of 14 prominent law professors, from both Liberal and Conservative camps, have disputed Bush's version of the facts, including the legality of the program.

So this isn't merely a batch of liberal Democrats brewing up tempests in teapots. Legal scholars from both sides of the political spectrum are saying this was an illegal act in violation of the Constitution.

Liam.

Niger-ian scam

I'm not sure what the National Journal is, so I'm not sure how credible a source they are, but they are reporting (here) that the CIA had expressly briefed VP Cheney and his then Chief of Staff Scooter Libby that the "uranium from Niger" story was not credible, about a month before they nevertheless chose to try to discredit Joe Wilson for releasing the same information.

Regardless of whether you believe Valerie Plame's name was released as retribution or simply to cast doubt on the source of the story, and whether you believe it was an illegal act of treason (revealing the name of a covert operative) or a completely legal telling of something that was already widely known, you have to admit it's a bit troublesome if it turns out that the Administration was willing to go to such lengths to cling to a story their own internal information already knew was bogus.

Liam.

Downing Street Redux

Thre's a new memo out, reported by Channel 4 News in England, which purports to be notes of another meeting between Bush and Tony Blair on January 31, 2002.

The memo, if authentic, provides more evidence that the Bush Administration had no intention of diplomatic solutions with Iraq, already planning ways to guide us to war while telling the Congress and the American people that they were going to exhaust all diplomatic options before starting a war.

The article is here.

For those of us who don't trust this President, the recent comments about trying to find a diplomatic solution to the issues in Iran sound a bit too familiar for comfort. The only saving grace is that by most reports, our armed forces are simply too tired and stretched too thin to successfully wage another war this soon after Afghanistan and Iraq.

(On the other hand, they may actually be trying diplomacy for real this time. I've got a lead on another story which I want to spend some time vetting. If it passes the sniff test, I'll have more on it later tonight.)

[Update: Apparently the Guardian in the UK also has the story, here.]

Liam.

Dissention in the Ranks?

I feel a glimmer of hope for our country this morning, for the first time in months, because of this article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Some background. For those who are not familiar with Grover Norquist, he's widely regarded as one of the five or six major forces behind the neo-conservative movement. He is perhaps most well known for a quote in which he expressed a wish to shrink the Federal government down so small that it could be drowned in a bathtub. And he runs "Americans for Tax Reform", one of the major groups consistently pushing for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations.

So you understand, he's part of "the team". He's an insider and one of the driving forces of the group. So when the article I linked to quotes him as being uncomfortable with the Bush NSA wiretapping plan, it's good to see that there can be issues so odious that even the much vaunted and well coordinated neocons are willing to break with the party line.

But here's the money quote:

"For 40 years we always assumed the left would take care of our civil liberties," he said. "If there were problems, the Democrats were the ones who would push back. But now with a Republican Congress and a Republican in the White House, the ACLU can't get their calls returned."

This demonstrates that even one of the neocon elite agrees with my contention that BOTH parties are necessary in this country, and that either party having access to its agenda without an effective opponent safeguarding their agenda is damaging to our country.

I don't often agree with Grover Norquist, but I do here. It's nice to see that he realizes that it's the existence of a strong opposition that makes it safe for extremists to push for their agendas, knowing others will catch the important side issues that they miss in their extremism.

Liam.

"Misstatement of the Union"

I love FactCheck.org. I first learned about it when Dick Cheney cited it during the Vice Presidential debate in 2004 as a non-partisan web site which determined the veracity of various political claims.

(On two interesting side notes, Cheney accidentally referred to "FactCheck.com", a different site the owner of which forwarded all URL traffic to MoveOn.org so Cheney inadvertently ended up sending many people to MoveOn, but more importantly, FactCheck.org directly contradicted the very "fact" Cheney sent people there to confirm.)

If you get on their mailing list, you'll get dissections of false claims by both sides, they really are equal opportunity debunkers. When they take something on, you learn which talking points are true, which are true but misleading, and which are out and out false.

So their latest article deals with the State of the Union address, and it makes the following statements:

• He proudly spoke of "writing a new chapter in the story of self-government" in Iraq and Afghanistan and said the number of democracies in the world is growing. He failed to mention that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan yet qualify as democracies according to the very group whose statistics he cited.
• Bush called for Congress to pass a line-item veto, failing to mention that the Supreme Court struck down a line-item veto as unconstitutional in 1998. Bills now in Congress would propose a Constitutional amendment, but none have shown signs of life.
• The President said the economy gained 4.6 million jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, failing to note that it had lost 2.6 million jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office. The net gain since Bush took office is just a little more than 2 million.
• He talked of cutting spending, but only "non-security discretionary spending." Actually, total federal spending has increased 42 percent since Bush took office.
• He spoke of being "on track" to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009. But the deficit is increasing this year, and according to the Congressional Budget Office it will decline by considerably less than half even if Bush's tax cuts are allowed to lapse.
• Bush spoke of a "goal" of cutting dependence on Middle Eastern oil, failing to mention that US dependence on imported oil and petroleum products increased substantially during his first five years in office, reaching 60 per cent of consumption last year.

You can read their detailed analysis here.

Liam.

End of an Era

Western Union ended its telegram services last Friday.

This isn't really important to anyone, and isn't surprising in light of newer technologies such as telephones, fax machines and e-mail.

But still, it's a notable end of an era and so I thought it worth a quick note.

Liam.