A place for Liam to post essays, comments, diatribes and rants on life in general.

Those fond of Liam's humor essays, they have been moved here.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Fascism

Kudos to Keith Olbermann. There's a feeling I've had listening to Donald Rumsfeld (and increasingly, those who speak to defend him) that I've been wanting to blog about, but I've been unable to come up with the right words to express what was bothering me, other than a vague feeling that it was just more of the same Orwellian double speak.

Then, last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, the aforementioned Mr. Olbermann delivered this commentary. You can find another transcript and a link to video of the show if you click here.

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

...

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday demand the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every American.

For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land; Worse still, they credit those same transient occupants - our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it is right — and the power to which it speaks, is wrong. In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in evoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For, in their time, there was another government faced with true peril - with a growing evil - powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s - questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted policies, conclusions - and omniscience — needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all - it "knew" that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile - at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name… was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening, we have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History - and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England - have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy, excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute - and exclusive - in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient Ones.

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused… is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such, all voices count — not just his. Had he or his President perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago - about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago - we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelope our nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?

As a child, of whose heroism did he read?

On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight?

With what country has he confused… the United States of America?

The confusion we — as its citizens - must now address, is stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light… and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism."

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral."

Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954.

"We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men;

"Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."

"And so, good night, and good luck."



Yep, that pretty much covers what I've been unable to find the words to say.

Liam.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Tiring of Hypocrisy

There's a radio show I listen to with some frequency (no pun intended) called the Stephanie Miller show. It is unabashedly left wing, but it is primarily a humor show. There is certainly political content, but it makes me laugh and that's much of why I listen.

But what frustrates me is that the host tends to do damage to her own arguments. Given my feelings regarding the current Administration, I find myself in agreement with much of the focus of her show of late (because being liberal, of course, she's also in opposition to the President, although for somewhat more partisan reasons than I am).

However... she plays the same "fast and loose" with conservative quotes that I'm getting so tired of in the right wing talking points machine. In particular, about three months back, she was on one of the news networks as one of the commentators talking about Stephen Colbert's turn at the Correspondents Dinner in Washington.

One of the lines Mr. Colbert used was (paraphrased) "This is a man who sticks by his convictions. He believes the same thing on Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday."

Now, one of the Right Wing commentators on the show made a big stink about how tasteless this was, because 9/11 was also a Tuesday, and I think this was a bit of a stretch. But ever since that time, that has been one of the "go to" drops on the Stephanie Miller show whenever they want to show an example of specious arguments on the Right, and the always characterize it as that the Right Wing pundit in question was saying that she objected to Colbert's speech because he gave it on a Tuesday, and 9/11 was a Tuesday. That would clearly be a specious argument, but it's not even true, if I remember correctly, the Correspondent's Dinner was on a Saturday.

But of course, noting that Colbert used the phrase "regardless of what happened on a Tuesday" and that some MIGHT take this as a veiled illusion to 9/11 doesn't work to ridicule the Right, and so they continue to blatently misrepresent what the woman was actually saying.

Just more proof that it's not just the Right that suffers from the tendency to put debasing their oponents in front of the truth or the good of the nation. And one more reason why I keep writing this blog, because if I can make even just a few more people think a bit more critically about what their pundits (on both sides) are telling them, I will have helped, in a small way, to raise the level of debate and strengthen the country. At least, that's my dream.

Liam.

Musings Late on a Work Night

As my it is summer's end, my children from my first marriage have gone back to their mother's for the school year, a fact which always leaves me in a funk for a while, which is the reason for the latest dry spell on the blog.

However, there are a few recent items I wanted to touch on, and one possibility I wanted to muse over...

First, I think it's a hopeful sign that a federal judge has struck down the warrantless wiretapping program as unconstitutional, and I find it so sickening that the Administration can't find anything more valid to say about it than to reiterate the reasons why we'd want to wiretap, as though the fact that there are valid reasons to tap suspects' phones justifies doing it illegally. Let's just keep repeating: It's not that we're against tapping suspects' phones. We WANT you to tap suspects' calls. But in the process, we want you to do it legally, so that there is oversight, so that we can be sure that you're only tapping legitimate terror suspects' phones and not, for example, political rivals' phones

I, for one, applaud the judge for this ruling. By all means, President Bush, continue tapping terrorists. All the judge is saying is that you have the FISA court available to you. Remember that you're even allowed to file for your warrants retroactively, up to 72 hours later. Do it. Use the court. Protect us all WHILE you protect our rights, because protecting us while dismantling our rights isn't really protecting us, is it?

Oh, and I also find it funny that Administration apologists keep pointing to the British bombing plot of a few weeks ago as justification for the program, when in fact all of the wiretaps in that case were done WITH warrants, which only goes to prove MY side of the argument: That you can protect lives and fight terrorism WITHOUT breaking the law.

The Constitution is not "just a damned piece of paper". It is the document which you swore to uphold and defend when you took your oath of office, not once but twice. It is your first and foremost duty, and if you can't even do that, you do not deserve to hold your office.

Second, there's been a lot of discussion recently about different liquids and such being smuggled on to airplanes. We're no longer allowed to bring anything liquid, paste or gel through security or on to a plane (I know, my kids lost some sunscreen which they had packed in their carry-on, in spite of my suggestion otherwise). And now they're talking about outlawing women's bras filled with water and or gel. So here's the question bouncing around in my head tonight: could a breast implant be fashioned containing a sufficient quantity of liquid or gel explosive with a tiny detonator? It would seem that if a sports drink bottle can hold enough to blow up a plane (the plan, as I understand it), then two good sized breast implants ought to hold enough as well.

We don't x-ray people, and in our fashion-conscious society, far too many women feel the need to get breast implants for us to even pretend it would be reasonable to ban them from airplanes. The part of this that truly scares me is that it wouldn't take all that much effort for a medically trained terrorist (and I'm sure there must be some) to set up shop and implant explosives in unsuspecting patients, breast and buttock implants being only two of more obvious places. How much havoc could be wreaked this way, and how long would it take before we ever figured out where the explosions were coming from?

Ah well, on to the third and final item for tonight: Senator Elizabeth Dole of the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out an e-mail today which makes me so mad I could spit, because it ascribes to the Democratic party virtually all of the motives and behaviors of the Republican party under President Clinton, while completely ignoring the fact that there are some serious issues regarding the current President's conduct which actually rise to the level of high crimes in ways that the Clinton behaviors (distasteful though they were) never actually did.

One quote from this e-mail: Liberal Democrats intend to take over the U.S. House and Senate this November and launch irresponsible, vengeful, investigations into the Bush Administration.

This one sentence contains so much that's incorrect. It relies on the current right wing talking point fallacy that oversight of the President is irresponsible. Five years after 9/11, we still have a rubber stamp Congress and regular attempts at power consolidation by the Administration. One of the jobs of the Congress is to investigate questionable activities by the President, even if they turn out to be legitimate, just to ensure that everything is on the up and up. So by advertising that one of the reasons to donate to Republicans is to stop these sorts of investigations and oversight, Mrs. Dole is effectively telling anyone who's actually thinking that she's asking for money to support allowing the Republican Congress to continue not doing their job.

In closing, I direct you to the latest article from factcheck.org. You may recall that during the 2004 Vice Presidential debate, V.P. Cheney pointed them out as a fair and independent site for political truth, and I have found them to be so, equally happy to point out the lies and fallacies of the left and the right. But the article to which I linked above takes issue with the same series of e-mails from the RNC that I'm talking about, so I thought it might be worth mentioning. Take a look at it. Please.

Liam.

Monday, August 14, 2006

More Terror Lies...

Hmmmm. Here is an interesting article about the foiled terror plot last week.

It seems that much of what we've been told isn't strictly true. The plot was not to crash planes last Thursday, in fact the suspects had not yet purchased tickets, and some had not yet even finished applying for passports. The attack was not imminent.

The Bush Administration, briefed by British officials, pushed for an arrest on Thursday, while British officials would have preferred to survail for at least another week, to try to learn more about the source of the plot and any other intelligence (links within the organization, etc) they could get.

I don't know why they would do this, but this was definitely exploited for political gain by the White House (which has, by the way, backfired, inasmuch as polls show nary a bump in the Presidential approval ratings), both in terms of the immediacy of the threat and in terms of pushing for a politically positive arrest (in light of the Lieberman loss on Tuesday, which most people see as a referendum on the President, as it was Lieberman's staunch support OF the Administration that got him into such hot water with the voters) over the more intelligence-based "wait and learn" tack that should have been taken.

Folks, they're not making us any safer. If safety of Americans were their top priority, they would absolutely have wanted to wait and see what more intel could be gathered BEFORE taking down a plot which was not yet any immediate threat.

If the War on Terror is the only drum that the Administration and the neoconservatives have to beat to keep themselves in power, we really need to note the extent to which it is a politically motivated beat, and not actually anything real, true or noble behind it.

Liam.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Spinning Terror

If you want a good look at the one-note Administration we have in President Bush, just watch over the next few days as today’s foiled terrorist plot in Great Britain unfolds.

For those who haven't been paying attention to the news (and being on vacation, I haven't been until my parents called to tell me of their travails in flying coast-to-coast this morning for a wedding), British authorities arrested 24 men whom they say were poised to blow up as many as twenty England-to-America airline flights today.

I’m inclined to believe that this story is accurate, unlike some of the recent "leaks" of "foiled plots" which generally show up when the Administration badly needs to try to turn around its poll numbers and usually turn out to have been some group of small time losers who couldn’t find their butts with both hands, no closer to actually carrying out an act of terrorism than I am to building a full scale version of the Titanic using only cheerios and peanut butter.

But you watch the results now. Over the next few days, this "rule through fear" administration is going to point to this as though it is some kind of referendum on their own leadership. In as much as I can't make my brain work like Karl Rove’s (nor would I want to), I'm not sure which tactic or combination there of they will take, but it will be some combination of these:
  1. Try to conflate some of the credit for foiling the plot onto the Administration’s leadership, ignoring the fact that it was entirely a British operation.
  2. Point to this and claim that it proves that there are still enemies out there who want to attack us, which is true but proceeds from the false premise that Administration opponents and everyone else has forgotten this fact.
  3. Use this event to further justify their erosion of our civil liberties, as though their own inability to do the job playing under the rules this country was founded upon justifies their taking our rights, instead of justifying finding a new Administration that can do its job AND maintain our rights.

The fact is, this war on terrorism is all they've got. They can't point to their record on civil liberties, clearly. They can only point to their record on the economy if they compare today to the low point of their administration (as opposed to comparing to when they took office). The majority of Americans recognize that they've bent over backwards to line the pockets of the richest 1% and major corporations like Haliburton and Exxon/Mobil while refusing even the barest minimum cost of living adjustments to the minimum wage.

But the fact is, this single issue drum which they keep beating rings pretty hollow, it is merely politicizing the events of September 11, 2001. The best they can truly claim is that 9/11 would have happened no matter who was President (which is very likely true), and that they've done their best (as any President would have) to protect the country from future attacks. That there have been no more large scale attacks is no ringing endorsement of their leadership, since there were 8 years between the 1993 WTC bombing (the last major attack by al Qaeda on U.S. soil) and 9/11. It could just point to the length of time it takes to properly plan and gather resources for an operation like this. And heaven forbid there IS another attack, while they're busily spinning how this shows that we need them and their policies, we should all recognize that another attack is simply another failure on their part. Only in American politics can someone drop a package they’re delivering and then try to claim that that just proves that their own delivery service should be used, because gravity is always out there, always plotting, and only they have the tools to fight it.

But I've gotten off track. My point here is to get people to think. As you watch the news coverage of the foiled plot and the reactions to it, think about the claims being made by anyone and everyone, but particularly by the Administration and their apologists. See how many of them actually ring true, and how many are not truly supported by the facts, or are attempts to take the truth of the situation and extend it beyond reason to assert claims for political gain.

Liam.

P.S. I said I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that 9/11 would still have happened no matter who had been President, and I am, but I want to point out that there is even some reason to suspect that this may not be true. I'm inclined to believe that as a society we'd become so complacent that it was inevitable, but there is quite a bit of evidence that this Administration was given reasonable warnings, both about this particular plot and about al Qaeda in the first months of their time in office and did nothing about it. So while I'm willing to give that benefit of the doubt, I also recognize that I am doing so, and that it's entirely possible that, given a President more on the ball from the start, the 9/11 plot may have been foiled from the start, in much the same way today's was.

 

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