Apples to Apples

Janet and I spent much of the day yesterday in the car driving for various reasons which are immaterial to this post. As often happens when we take long trips, we spent some time listening to various radio "podcasts" on the MP3 player through the car's radio, pausing playback occasionally to discuss what we were hearing.

One of many radio shows we listen to with some regularity is the nationally syndicated Stephanie Miller show. She is extremely liberal, but we do not listen for the ideological content. She is also a stand up comedian and the daughter of Barry Goldwater's VP running mate, Senator William Miller. None of which matters, we just listen to her because she (or more often, her impressionist sidekick Jim Ward) is really funny, and regularly has us chuckling as we listen. About once a week she and her team come out with a line or a skit that has us fully laughing out loud.

Anyway, one thing that frustrates me about the more political aspects of her show is that she is not a particularly good interviewer. She is clearly enamored of the sound of her own voice, and finds it difficult not to hear it at least every few seconds, which doesn't generally give those she interviews time to express their OWN views. She also likes to frame questions in ways that make clear that she already believes she knows the answer and is just expecting the guest to confirm it.

So suffice it to say, I don't listen to her show for the interviews. But yesterday as Janet and I were driving along, on the playback she was interviewing Lou Dobbs, in an interview which pretty well mirrored her interview of a few days before of Jack Cafferty (see my blog posting of earlier today), in that she only wanted to hear his disgust at the current President and Congress, but not his support for conservative philosophies (Lou Dobbs, in any honest consideration of the ideological spectrum, falls clearly to the right of center).

I paused the playback and suggested that what I really felt was wrong with her interview style was that although she fervently believed what she was saying, she never stopped to consider that she was not comparing apples to apples. She was comparing the Democratic party as defined by its ideals to the Republican party as defined by the behavior of the current leaders of the party. As more and more honest conservatives come forward and say "What the heck has become of my party?", it is clear that the likes of George Will, Jack Cafferty, Lou Dobbs and other intelligent people of a conservative bent are rejecting this President and this Congress not on party lines, but because they (the politicians) are not living by true conservative principles. And so the actions of those politicians clearly do not equate to the philosophies espoused by supporters of their party.

On making this observation, Janet said that she felt it was a very succinct description of what is wrong with political debate in this country: Defining your own party by the ideals of its supporters and the other party by the behavior of its candidates.

So let's be clear here. As I've said all along, I support some aspects of both the liberal and conservative PHILOSOPHIES. And I have little but contempt for most politicians of both Democratic and Republican stripe. If you ever catch me advocating for one party on its principles while demonizing the other on its actions, please call me on it. Because I don't honestly believe the current Democratic candidates deserve to win on merit. The Republican candidates (or at least the incumbents) deserve to lose for abrogating their checking and balancing responsibilities as a co-equal branch of the United States government.

I want the Democrats to take control of one or both houses of Congress not for their sake, but for America's. We, the people they in Washington work for, have a right to be proud of our nation and to know that it is strong and good. So long as the influence of power corrupts, and the influence of our money equals votes political campaigns corrupts even more, we will always have primarily weasels in government at the Federal level.

If they're going to be weasels, then at least let them expend most of their weasel effort on trying to outfox each other, rather than on swindling us of our proud heritage and strong future.

And remember that your morality and your philosophies do not automatically conflate onto the members of your party who pay lip service to them. For the most part, they're all a batch of lying weasels, telling us what we want to hear so we'll elect them.

If we fall for it, from either side, we lose.

Liam.

P.S. Yes, I recognize that earlier today I said I'd be happier if we sent a message by tossing out ALL of the incumbents, even if that left Republicans in control, and from a purely philosophical standpoint, I still agree. However, I also said in that post that there were a number of reasons I didn't think that an acheivable outcome, and I also think politicians can spin away any actual message we send them, in the age of considering a half-of-one-percent victory a "mandate". And so while I'd love to see a clear message sent to Congress, I believe that the path more likely to lead to some reigning in of our out-of-control Federal government is good, old-fashioned partisan bickering, and so at this late date, I'm sticking with hoping the Dems can take the Congress. The rest is just wishful dreaming.

Political Heroes

And my second posting for this morning... I have a new newsman hero, a gentleman named Jack Cafferty. He is a regular contributor to CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer", and for those of you who accuse me of only liking left-leaning newsmen, he leans to the right.

But what he also has is a love of this country first, a love of conservative principles second, and a love of partisanship so low it doesn't even register on the charts. And so he is willing to argue in favor of Democrats winning the next election because he perceives (as I do) that our nation is in trouble and heading for the rocks.

But there are two keys to why he's my newest hero.

First, I heard him speaking on the very liberal Stephanie Miller show the other day. She is very fond of him, because he speaks out against the current Administration and Congress as being neither conservative nor good for America. As a result, for this political season anyway, they are essentially on the same team (the enemy of my enemy being my friend and all that), and so she often quotes him on her show.

Well, on the morning in question, he was actually a guest on the show to promote a new CNN special (more on that later). He was decrying some of the acts of this President and this Congress and she took that and used it as a statement in support of the Democratic party, and he said something like "But why would I support the Democrats? They're ALL(*) weasels." Score one for Jack Cafferty. They are more or less all weasels. The sooner more people realize that neither party is really supporting their base or their supposed principles any more (if they ever were), the sooner we can figure out how to get them to work to the benefit of America in spite of their baser natures, rather than by appealing to them.

(* In context, it was clear that ALL referred to all politicians, not all Democrats.)

So, that comment made me seek out the CNN special "Broken Government with Jack Cafferty" that he was plugging. By the way, if you go looking for it, you should be aware that there is also a CNN regular series called "Broken Government", which seems kind of stupid, but there you go. If the show that pops up when you go to watch it doesn't start with Jack Cafferty sitting at a desk quoting a bumper sticker with the words "Had Enough?", you've got the series, not the special.

Anyway, the special itself was nothing, er, special, at least for me. Perhaps for someone who hasn't been paying daily attention to the political situation it would be a good recap of where we are, but for me, it was just a recitation, a list without much in depth reporting behind it.

However, at one point Mr. Cafferty did make one suggestion that I think was a really good one, except that in practice it'll probably never work: We should not, as a nation, be voting for or against a political party, but against establishment. I don't mean this in a 1960's counter-culture sense, I mean what better way to send a message to our entire government than to send all of the incumbents packing, lock stock and ineffectual barrel.

I have no idea which party this would ultimately serve, based on percentages it would probably leave control of the Congress in Republican hands (but I haven't counted the races to know for sure). But it would send in the strongest possible terms the message that the citizens of the United States are fed up and won't tolerate "business as usual" any more.

There are reasons why this wouldn't work, of course. It would require the people of this nation working in concert, something very difficult to do in this political climate and worse (at least for those who would be voting against their own party) it would require trust that everyone ELSE was going to follow the plan as well.

Still, as Mr. Cafferty said, it is my fervent wish that all of the incumbents, every single one of them, loses on election day. Maybe then, just maybe, we could finally start the long slow process of turning the Titanic around BEFORE it hits the 'berg.

Liam.

Fiscal Ruin

First of two postings for this morning...

If I haven't convinced anyone on here to vote for change in this election, perhaps this article will do it.

It isn't a sexy article, it doesn't have the political "pop" of a juicy congressional page scandal nor the heartstrings tugging power of nearly 3000 dead American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis (most reliable estimates coming in between 200,000 and 650,000). It's even more boring and esoteric than Habeas Corpus or whether "waterboarding" counts as torture.

Nevertheless, it very well could impact every single one of us far more than all of the rest combined: Leading economists, including the head of the Government Accountability Office (the article states this effectively makes him the nation's "accountant-in-chief"), say that the U.S. is on the path to financial collapse and ruin.

Ladies and Gentlemen of my reading audience, this is why we need checks and balances BETWEEN the political parties, and why the current Republican financial policies (which are absolutely not conservative policies) are even worse than the extremely odious Democratic ones. Because while no one likes paying high taxes, "tax and spend" at least holds the distinction of being fiscally responsible when compared to "borrow and spend".

Regardless, I don't like either, but until or unless someone can put forth a plan to honestly curtail spending and reduce the size of government, our best bet is to have the Democratic party have a check on spending on Republican issues and pork and the Republican party have a check on Democratic spending. It's still not perfect, pork barrel politics can still go on, but I'll point again to the administration preceding the current one. A Republican legislative branch, a Democratic executive, together shutting down each other's more extreme spending and only together managing to balance a budget which unified Republican branches have merely looked at as a bar to be cleared with ever higher deficits. I have no doubt that both branches in Democratic hands would raise spending by equivalent amounts, but as we have not had any sustained Democratic party control over both branches of government in years, that's largely theoretical.

Leading economists, the ones who are in the best position to know, say we're heading in the direction of a financial catastrophe. As citizens, we have only one tool which we can use to work on this problem: our votes. Let's use them.

Liam.

Depressing Midnight Musings

I've been lying awake thinking about North Korea, and I came to a realization. I know it's not one that many people will buy, and I hope it never comes up, but...

It occurred to me that if there's any kind of nuclear event in this country at any time in the next 10 years, it will most likely be President Bush's fault (more specifically, his policies).

Here's why:

The major job of the President is foreign policy. Sure, the President also has a hand in Domestic policy, but that's largely as a confirm or veto on the Congress, who have the primary task of passing and amending our laws. On the other hand, the President alone is the human face of our nation when dealing with other nations. It is not our Congress that talks to Britain's Parliament, it is our President who speaks with their Prime Minister.

One part of diplomacy that any school child learns early on is that you don't solely negotiate with your friends, you also negotiate with your rivals, to try to come to some agreement that prevents you and they from "having" to attempt to pummel each other into a red paste on the school playground during recess.

And yet this Administration seems to view diplomacy as a reward for good behavior, one that should be withheld (the mere priviledge of TALKING with us) until the people in question have already capitulated to our will. Witness Iran, with whom the Administration said it would only talk if they gave up all of their nuclear capabilities before sitting down. Really? Why would they do that? Would you agree to a car dealerships terms if they said they'd only sit down and start negotiating the price of the car after you'd given them the full sticker price of the car? Would any politician worth his salt agree to a debate if the prerequisite for that debate was giving up any contradictory positions held from what the opposition holds?

And so it is with North Korea. Like it or not, during the 90s, North Korea had regular inspections of its nuclear program. There were monitoring cameras in their facilities. There were careful controls on where the spent fuel rods ended up and how they were disposed of.

And then along comes George "Axis of Evil" Bush, with his "Do what the U.S. says or else" foreign policy, his schizophrenic "Atomic weapons are so important that we reserve the right to use them in our defense, but so unacceptable that we insist everyone ELSE give them up" message. According to news reports, it was only after running into the Bush foreign policy that Kim Jong Il turned off the cameras, kicked out the monitors and started making nuclear weapons.

And so now, like the fabled Russian "suitcase bombs", there is some unknown amount of weaponizable plutonium out there, in the hands of a guy who seems just mad enough to sell it to the highest bidder and who has already semi-successfully tested at least one nuclear bomb. And unlike the "suitcase bombs", it's fresh. Most reports I've read about the supposed missing Russian nuclear weaponry is that it's so out of date that it would likely not be good for anything more destructive than a dirty bomb. Not a fun prospect, certainly, but a heck of a lot less damaging than an actual atomic explosion.

Which means now we have at least one nation (North Korea) and possibly another (Iran) who have or are working towards a nuclear program, who have expressed extreme dislike for our country, and who haven't shown any tendency towards restraint in who they're willing to deal with. (They might be saying the same things about us, I suppose, given that Osama bin Laden got his start as part of an Afghanistan rebel group funded with U.S. capital to fight Russia.)

If it happens, if a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere in the world (or heaven forbid, somewhere in the U.S.), don't listen when the Right Wing spin machine immediately goes into "Blame Clinton" mode. The fact is that most of this was contained under Clinton, inflamed until it was totally out of control under Bush.

Besides, it's been 6 years. Isn't it about time to retire the old "Blame Clinton" dog? At what point does any responsibility fall on this Administration?

Liam.

Habeas Corpus

Several times this week, I've sat down for several hours at a stretch to research the Military Commissions Act of 2006. I've now read the entire thing and it scares me. Scares me because of the unchecked power it confers onto the office of the Presidency. Scares me because a Congress full of our governmental representatives didn't care enough about our rights and principles to stop it. Scares me because so many citizens don't know what's in it and those who have an inkling don't seem to care.

If you want to read the text of the bill, you can find it here.

The Act abolishes Habeas Corpus for detainees deemed to be "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" (UECs). It allows compulsory self incrimination in trials for them. It allows the President to decide what does and does not violate the Geneva Convention, and disallows the Military Commissions from considering them during trials for those UECs fortunate enough to eventually make it to trial.

And it allows the President, with very little real obstacle (just an ill-defined "Tribunal" which the President himself empowers), to declare anyone a UEC and strip them of rights to Habeas Corpus (the right of any prisoner of the United States to challenge their incarceration in a court of law).

Many sections of the Act specify alien UECs, but in some areas (for instance, the area in which the President defines who is a UEC), there is no distinction between American Citizens and foreign nationals.

And even postulating for a moment that George W. Bush and his Administration have nothing but the purest of motives (something which I don't believe, but will accept as given for the remainder of this paragraph), he will not always be the President. Sooner or later, we're going to have a President without the morality or scruples to be trusted with such a blunt force weapon. Our next President, be they Democratic or Republican, may decide to wield this blade for personal gain. What happens when a President decides that he can remove his most threatening political opponents by having them declared UECs? What happens to our free press if the next President decides that half of the editorial and reporting staff of the New York Times is aiding the terrorists and has them all detained? Or if our next President is from the Democratic party and decides that Fox News and others have been acting in conflict with the good of the nation, and has Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and the like all rounded up and shipped off to Guantanamo. Think it couldn't happen? The Politburo in the old Soviet Union used to do such things all the time, and we believed we'd never allow it here. But guess what? Now it's legal. Not strictly the INTENT of the law, but through its use, it could all be done completely legally.

So, I've been trying to think of how to write this blog entry. How to make it make the most sense to everyone, how to really get across the extent to which our leaders have, with this Act, severely curtailed the same freedoms which they simplistically assert are the ones the terrorists hate us for, the ones so many of our nation's soldiers have died protecting. If the terrorists really do hate us for our freedoms and try to attack us to bring them down, does it really make sense to do their job FOR them?

And in all this time, I couldn't find the right words. I wrote this post five or six times, always scrapping the results. And then tonight I watched another episode of Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show on my TiVo, and there he is giving another of his special comments on the topic. It's still not quite what I wanted to post, a bit more on the "what does this mean to our core values" and less on the specifics than I would like. Nevertheless, it comes closer to what I wanted to say than any of my previous attempts, and so I post it here for your reading. (You can find the original, along with video of Mr. Olbermann reading it, here).

With the signing of this Act into law, there is a little bit less to be proud of in being an American. The bloom on the rose has begun to wilt, the silver and brass buttons to tarnish.

Keith Olbermann speaks:

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived as people in fear.

And now—our rights and our freedoms in peril—we slowly awaken to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before—and we have been here before, led here by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.

We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,” most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen—he is still a Japanese.”

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900,000 votes, though his presidential campaign was conducted entirely from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt’s internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but four decades later it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States to the citizens of the United States whose lives it ruined.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

In times of fright, we have been only human.

We have let Roosevelt’s “fear of fear itself” overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said, “the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass.”

We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

Or substitute the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

Or the Socialists.

Or the Anarchists.

Or the Immigrants.

Or the British.

Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always wrong.

“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly—of course—the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

But even within this history we have not before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And — again, Mr. Bush — all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere—anywhere -- but may now, if he so decides, declare YOU an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship YOU somewhere – anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?

“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush, “in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.”

"Presumed innocent," Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

"Access to an attorney," Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

"Hearing all the evidence," Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would constitute “the beginning of the end of America.”

And did it even occur to you once, sir — somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 -- that with only a little further shift in this world we now know—just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots have died --- did it ever occur to you once that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future president and a “competent tribunal” of his lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “unlawful enemy combatant” for -- and convene a Military Commission to try -- not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And doubtless, Sir, all of them—as always—wrong.

Iraq

I find it interesting to note that even the usually lock-stepped GOP is fracturing over the Iraq war.

It must be very difficult for those who swallow all things Republican as the gospel truth when within the same day, you have on the one side, Vice President Cheney interviewed today on Rush Limbaugh's show saying of conditions there, "If you look at the general overall situation, they're doing remarkably well." You also have Rep. Peter King saying that Baghdad is just like Manhattan and that you'd never know there was a war going on there.

Then you check out the BBC (as reported in Australia's Daily Telegraph) and you find James Baker (former GOP Secretary of State) saying Iraq was a "helluva mess."

The spin is coming apart. What ever will the faithful do?

I suppose there's always the truth.

Nah, that's too much to ask.

Liam.

Duping the Religious Right

To begin with, I want to say to anyone who reads this who considers themselves a member of the "Religious Right" or the "Christian Right" or perhaps one of the "morals voters" that this post is not intended as gloating or to take pleasure in your misfortune.

I write this for the same reason I write the bulk of my blog postings: because I believe our President is not what he sells himself to be, and because I believe our nation as a whole will be stronger the more cleare and more accurate a picture we have of our leaders.

That said, there is a new book out (set to hit the shelves next Monday) called "Tempting Faith". The book is written by David Kuo, who was formerly a Special Assistant to the President and number two person in charge of President Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

Now, I have not yet read this book. The staff over at MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann have, and while you may not like their politics, I have rarely found them to be wrong on facts (except in the lighter segments such as "Oddball", where humor is the primary focus; this was not such a segment).

According to the Countdown segment (more scheduled for tonight), the book shows an astounding lack of compassion or solidarity with the Religious Right in this country, seeming to view them solely as a solid bloc of voters who can be consistently and reliably duped into voting Republican. Kuo reports that in Karl Rove's office, evangelical leaders are privately referred to as "the nuts". Kuo writes "National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous,' 'out of control,' and just plain 'goofy.' "

The folks over at Crooks & Liars have a transcript of the Olbermann segment here if you'd like to read it, and as I said, Countdown has promised a more in-depth look at the book in the next day or two, so stay tuned.

In fairness, I do not know Mr. Kuo, had not heard of him until this story aired. He may have an ax to grind (although he is described as having "impeccable conservative Christian credentials"), or he may simply want to sell books. Clearly those on the Right will dismiss the book as politically motivated, its release coming so proximate to the upcoming election. But I have long wondered why Christians, and particularly extremist Christians, seem so enamored of the Republican party, a party whose core principles and ideals are a square peg jammed via a carefully orchestrated campaign into the round hole of the teachings of Christ.

So I want people to know about this book, not to cause them angst or anger, nor to cause them pain, but to open their eyes. The Democrats may not be who you are looking for to run this country, but at least they aren't courting you for your rich Daddy's money and then making fun of you while seeing the hot, poor girl on the side. If the most important thing to you is voting for someone who shares your morality and your values and will work hard to enact them, you've been duped.

You're hardly the first. I am honestly sorry.

Liam.

Lies Lies Lies

Keith Olbermann has done it again. A day after I decide to emerge from my self-imposed hiatus from blogging, while catching up on the various flotsam and jetsam of American television saved for me by my TiVo while I was out of the country, I have come across yet another of Mr. Olbermann's "Special Commentaries" on his MSNBC show Countdown, a commentary that every American should read.

Mr. Olbermann is the Edward R. Murrow of our generation, a journalist seeking the truth and the betterment of our country in ways only an aggressive and free press can seek it, and doing so amidst a group of contemporaries increasingly happy to pledge their allegiance to whoever happens to be in power, in the hopes of obtaining yet another in a seemingly endless parade of meaningless "exclusives".

In this commentary, Mr. Olbermann takes President Bush to task for lies. Lies of commission and lies of omission. Lies of implication and lies of association. Please read it. He is a better writer than I will ever be. The original (including a video link to Mr. Olbermann's delivery of his own words) can be found at this link.

Here, then, are the words of Keith Olbermann. Would that every American could hear them, ponder them, and fully understand their meaning in our world.

* * *

While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool ...

While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the revelations of a book with a glowing red cover ...

The president of the United States — unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’”

The hell they did.

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of yet another part of the Constitution.

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.

President Bush hears what he wants.

Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.”

Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.

And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader. “If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,” the president said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, “it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we’re attacked again.”

The president doesn’t just hear what he wants.

He hears things that only he can hear.

It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

Yet they do.

It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any president at any time in this nation's history.

Rhetorically, this is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders, Democrats, the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies of treason.

But it is the context that truly makes the head spin.

Just 25 days ago, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this same man spoke to this nation and insisted, “We must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.”

Mr. Bush, this is a test you have already failed.

If your commitment to “put aside differences and work together” is replaced in the span of merely three weeks by claiming your political opponents prefer to wait to see this country attacked again, and by spewing fabrications about what they’ve said, then the questions your critics need to be asking are no longer about your policies.

They are, instead, solemn and even terrible questions, about your fitness to fulfill the responsibilities of your office.

No Democrat, sir, has ever said anything approaching the suggestion that the best means of self-defense is to “wait until we’re attacked again.”

No critic, no commentator, no reluctant Republican in the Senate has ever said anything that any responsible person could even have exaggerated into the slander you spoke in Nevada on Monday night, nor the slander you spoke in California on Tuesday, nor the slander you spoke in Arizona on Wednesday ... nor whatever is next.

You have dishonored your party, sir; you have dishonored your supporters; you have dishonored yourself.

But tonight the stark question we must face is — why?

Why has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats now exceeded the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?

Why have you chosen to go down in history as the president who made things up?

In less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity to this clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.

If this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling under the weight of his own lies.

We have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every shape, size and party. We will have to suffer it, for as long as the Republic stands.

But the premise of a president who comes across as a compulsive liar is nothing less than terrifying.

A president who since 9/11 will not listen, is not listening — and thanks to Bob Woodward’s most recent account — evidently has never listened.

A president who since 9/11 so hates or fears other Americans that he accuses them of advocating deliberate inaction in the face of the enemy.

A president who since 9/11 has savaged the very freedoms he claims to be protecting from attack — attack by terrorists, or by Democrats, or by both — it is now impossible to find a consistent thread of logic as to who Mr. Bush believes the enemy truly is.

But if we know one thing for certain about Mr. Bush, it is this: This president — in his bullying of the Senate last month and in his slandering of the Democrats this month — has shown us that he believes whoever the enemies actually are, they are hiding themselves inside a dangerous cloak called the Constitution of the United States of America.

How often do we find priceless truth in the unlikeliest of places?

I tonight quote not Jefferson nor Voltaire, but Cigar Aficionado Magazine.

On Sept. 11th, 2003, the editor of that publication interviewed General Tommy Franks, at that point, just retired from his post as commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command — of Cent-Com.

And amid his quaint defenses of the then-nagging absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the continuing freedom of Osama bin Laden, General Franks said some of the most profound words of this generation.

He spoke of “the worst thing that can happen” to this country:

First, quoting, a “massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western World — it may be in the United States of America.”

Then, the general continued, “the Western World, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years, in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

It was this super-patriotic warrior’s fear that we would lose that most cherished liberty, because of another attack, one — again quoting General Franks — “that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.”

And here we are, the fabric of our Constitution being unraveled, anyway.

Habeus corpus neutered; the rights of self-defense now as malleable and impermanent as clay; a president stifling all critics by every means available and, when he runs out of those, by simply lying about what they said or felt.

And all this, even without the dreaded attack.

General Franks, like all of us, loves this country, and believes not just in its values, but in its continuity.

He has been trained to look for threats to that continuity from without.

He has, perhaps been as naïve as the rest of us, in failing to keep close enough vigil on the threats to that continuity from within.

Secretary of State Rice first cannot remember urgent cautionary meetings with counterterrorism officials before 9/11. Then within hours of this lie, her spokesman confirms the meetings in question. Then she dismisses those meetings as nothing new — yet insists she wanted the same cautions expressed to Secretaries Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

Mr. Rumsfeld, meantime, has been unable to accept the most logical and simple influence of the most noble and neutral of advisers. He and his employer insist they rely on the “generals in the field.” But dozens of those generals have now come forward to say how their words, their experiences, have been ignored.

And, of course, inherent in the Pentagon’s war-making functions is the regulation of presidential war lust.

Enacting that regulation should include everything up to symbolically wrestling the Chief Executive to the floor, if necessary.

Yet—and it is Pentagon transcripts that now tell us this—evidently Mr. Rumsfeld’s strongest check on Mr. Bush’s ambitions, was to get somebody to excise the phrase “Mission Accomplished” out of the infamous Air Force Carrier speech of May 1st, 2003, even while the same empty words hung on a banner over the President’s shoulder.

And the vice president is a chilling figure, still unable, it seems, to accept the conclusions of his own party’s leaders in the Senate, that the foundations of his public position, are made out of sand.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But he still says so.

There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.

But he still says so.

And thus, gripping firmly these figments of his own imagination, Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance, and spreads—around him and before him—darkness, like some contagion of fear.

They are never wrong, and they never regret -- admirable in a French torch singer, cataclysmic in an American leader.

Thus, the sickening attempt to blame the Foley scandal on the negligence of others or “the Clinton era”—even though the Foley scandal began before the Lewinsky scandal.

Thus, last month’s enraged attacks on this administration’s predecessors, about Osama bin Laden—a projection of their own negligence in the immediate months before 9/11.

Thus, the terrifying attempt to hamstring the fundament of our freedom—the Constitution—a triumph for al Qaida, one the terrorists could not hope to achieve with a hundred 9/11’s.

And thus, worst of all perhaps, these newest lies by President Bush about Democrats choosing to await another attack and not listen to the conversations of terrorists.

It is the terror and the guilt within your own heart, Mr. Bush, that you redirect at others who simply wish for you to temper your certainty with counsel.

It is the failure and the incompetence within your own memory, Mr. Bush, that leads you to demonize those who might merely quote to you the pleadings of Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

It is not the Democrats whose inaction in the face of the enemy you fear, Sir.

It is your own—before 9/11 - and (and you alone know this), perhaps afterwards.

Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.

It is not our freedom, nor our country—your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.

You want to preserve one political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it.

These are lies about the Democrats -- piled atop lies about Iraq -- which were piled atop lies about your preparations for al Qaida.

To you, perhaps, they feel like the weight of a million centuries -- as crushing, as immovable.

They are not.

If you add more lies to them, you cannot free yourself, and us, from them.

But if you stop -- if you stop fabricating quotes, and building straw-men, and inspiring those around you to do the same -- you may yet liberate yourself and this nation.

Please, sir, do not throw this country’s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics.

Copyright © 2006 by Keith Olbermann and MSNBC Interactive

National Intelligence Estimate

[Since I'm apparently blogging again tonight, this is a version of a comment I posted on someone else's blog a few days ago. I've modified it slightly, but the core message is the same. --Liam]

Something that frustrated me recently was the response to the recently leaked national security estimate. That document makes it clear that our campaign in Iraq has made terrorism worse and made the U.S. less safe, at least in the estimation of those whose job it is to know.

This mirrors what other people-in-the-know such as former "terrorism czar" Richard Clarke have said all along, even before we started in Iraq.

The frustration comes in when someone from the Administration, responding to those charges, "reminds" us that we weren't in Iraq on 9/11. This is a logical falacy because no one has said Iraq created terrorism, only that it has made it worse.

It has been widely reported that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, al Qaeda lost a lot of support in the Muslim world. A lot of people who didn't particularly like the United States nevertheless said "Well damn, this killing of thousands of people and flying planes into buildings, this is not something I can support", and al Qaeda was reportedly waning significantly. Our initial fair and measured response in Afghanistan did little to damage our standing nor help that of al Qaeda.

Then came Iraq, which everyone except the talking heads on the Right and their associated non-thinking "ditto-heads" knew was unfounded, un-supportable and ill advised. Congress never authorized that war, it was undertaken by the Administration under the assumption that it fell under the broad anti-terrorism powers that had previously been granted by the Congress. In the years since, al Qaeda has had a huge resurgence while we have fallen in world view to a point far lower than in the years immediately before the 9/11 attacks.

So what does it matter that we were attacked before we went into Iraq?

To use one of my famous analogies, if I catch a stomach flu and just as it starts to get better, I go out and locate and eat a batch of bad clams, it is clear that my eating of old seafood will make my digestive symptoms worse. It is also clear that I initially got sick well before I ever ate the clams. But the Administration's argument amounts to saying that because of the prior bout with nausea, the clams didn't make things worse, or that somehow the clams were a good idea in response to the earlier illness.

The argument relies on a slippery little bit of substitution. They can't argue against the facts (our war in Iraq has made terrorism worse and America less safe), so they argue against a statement that was NOT made (that somehow going into Iraq created anti-American sentiment and tus created terrorism) and hope that most people will be too stupid (or too lazy) to recognize that they've made a really good argument against an argument no one ever made, while completely omitting any response to the actual charge, that they've made Americans less safe.

Liam.

Partisan Punditry

I'm back from Belgium (for those who didn't know, I was out of the country for the last week). During the very long flight back, I had a lot of hours to spend in quiet contemplation, and one of the topics on which I focused my otherwise idle brain was Rush Limbaugh.

In set up, let me say that this began with a discussion my wife, Janet, was having with her father. I am not currently privy to the details of this particular discussion, except that it related to the various Right Wing pundits and the extent to which they could or should be trusted as sources of information.

In particular under discussion was Rush Limbaugh, and my wife mentioned that she didn't particularly consider Mr. Limbaugh to be a liar, per se, but simply heavily partisan, and it was from this statement that my musings (and ultimately this post) came from.

My problem with Rush Limbaugh is not in his partisanship. After all, he's a commentator rather than a newsman. He does not owe anyone even a semblance of balance in his reporting, so long as he remains a commentator and doesn't try to present himself as balanced (something I can't say for Bill O'Reilly, who presents himself as both a newsman and an unbiased centrist, when he is not the second, and therefore not a particularly good example of the first).

However, the place where my respect for Mr. Limbaugh goes right out the window is when his philosophies seem to be tailored to the moment, and to the parties involved. For example, a true conservative is just as annoyed with the current government as a true liberal is, because although the members of that Administration shroud themselves in the cloak of the label "Republican" (and thus by implication, "conservative"), many of their policies are no more conservative than Ralph Nader is. When was the last time a true conservative espoused bigger government, a bigger deficit, or greater governmental control over our lives?

Regardless, Mr. Limbaugh's opinion changes based on the parties involved in a given news item, not based on the FACTS.

Consider Rep. Foley (R-FL), who is currently under some cloud of scandal for some a highly questionable history of behavior with and towards his under-aged Congressional pages. I have my opinions of these acts, and they are informed by the facts. As new facts come to light, my opinion changes, and it is the same opinion I'd have if the Rep. was a Democrat instead of a Republican, or was straight instead of gay.

Contrast that with Limbaugh. If Rep. Foley were a member of the Democratic party, Mr. Limbaugh would be in full bluster, calling for investigations and heralding this as proof of the moral depravity of the Democratic party. We know this because with the exceptions that Ms. Lewinsky was 22 (and thus, not underage), was an intern (not a page) and was female, we have on record Mr. Limbaugh's reaction when a Democratic leader behaved questionably towards one of his young subordinates.

On the other hand, with regard to Rep. Foley (a Republican), Mr. Limbaugh's moral outrage is mysteriously absent, and instead of focusing on the acts themselves, he is pointing his audience towards theories and speculations that the whole story was concocted by Democrats to smear a good Republican. He's not even coming out and asserting those theories, but merely musing over the possibility in such a way as to leave the audience with the clear impression that what he considers to be bad behavior here is that the story leaked out, rather than the fact that it happened in the first place.

It isn't that he supports the philosophies of one party over the other, it's that he has a highly selective moral code, in which actions taken by those he supports are explainable, justifiable, and probably smears by the other side, while virtually identical actions by someone on the other side are touted as reasons why that other side is beneath contempt and should never again be allowed to be in charge of any governmental position higher than dog catcher.

THAT is why Rush Limbaugh has no support from me. I've listened to pundits on both sides of the aisle, and some of them seem to hold true to their beliefs under all circumstances, and those I can respect even when I don't agree with them. When people come by their beliefs honestly, examine them carefully, and hold true to them in most or all situations, I absolutely respect their right to hold their beliefs, even if I disagree with them.

But when someone's morality is so fluid that it shifts based not on the actions but by the person (or class of person) doing the acting, then I find I have little respect at all for that person, for they don't really believe in anything but partisanship.

(I recognize that we're all guilty at times of wanting to believe the best in those we support and wanting to believe the worst in those we don't, I'm not saying that people need to be perfect. But most people, or at least most GOOD people, are a damn sight better at it than Rush Limbaugh.)

Liam.

P.S. For those who still believe that Fox News is "fair and balanced", there's a good example from the O'Reilly Factor a few days ago giving lie to that assertion: The first night of major coverage of the Foley affair, the bottom-of-the-screen text identified him as "Rep. Mark Foley (D-FL)". This is not O'Reilly's fault, he was on screen at the time, so was not likely in charge of what was put up on his screen. But Fox got calls, and so during the repeat showing of the same episode, the text now read "Rep. Mark Foley", all traces of party affiliation removed. It's a small thing and probably initially merely a mistake, but it shows that when a Democrat misbehaves Fox is happy to quickly identify the party, but when the person is Republican they focus on the PERSON, and not their party affiliation.