More News

People have asked me how I can, in good conscience, say that I am not proud of my country. It’s reports like the ones I quoted a few days ago and the ones below that do it. I am extremely fortunate to live in this country. And I believe it can one day be great again. But this is a dark period in our history, and it is not a time to be proud of ourselves. It is a time to hang our heads in shame and vow to vote out of office most of the incumbents, Republican and Democrat alike, who have allowed us to come to this low point in our national history.

All the petty, partisan bickering aside, the whole lot of them have to go, from the President who believes he weilds ultimate power, including the power to dismiss the Constitution when it impinges on the things he wants to do to a Congress which happily bends over to lick his shoes clean, providing retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who may have broken the law. (And by the way, what the hell is the justification for that? If they didn't actually break the law, then they don't need protection, and if they did, there's no reason they SHOULD be protected).

If I had my way, the whole stinking lot of them, with relatively few exceptions, would be rounded up, tarred, feathered, put on a raft and shoved out into the gulf stream. I'd probably keep Chuck Hagel and Russ Feingold and maybe Dennis Kucinich. I'd toss Pelosi and Reid and Hoyer and Boehner through the same door through which Delay was unceremoniously dumped.

But anyway, on to the news items which have me feeling this way today, both from McClatchy news service again.

First, there’s this article, which reports that we (the United States) have hidden certain captives from the Red Cross. Recall that one of the purposes of the “International Committee of the Red Cross” is to evaluate the conditions of political and military prisoners around the world and report on whether they’re being treated according to the Geneva Convention. As a country, we have a long history of complaining when other people were not completely open with the ICRC, such as China and the old Soviet Union, or deceptively made things appear much better for the prisoners than they actually were during inspections. In much the same way, by the way, that the Bush administration faulted Saddam Hussein for not fully complying with the international nuclear inspectors and is now faulting Iran for the same behavior.

Apparently what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. Quoting the article: "We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.

A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

"In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said, according to the minutes.

Read the rest of the article. These are not the actions of an innocent and above-board interrogation, and lead one towards the conclusion that perhaps our leaders are guilty of war crimes, which segues nicely into the second McClatchy article:

Retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation into Abu Ghraib, says that the Bush administration is guilty of war crimes.

Quoting the article: U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Again, I urge you to read the entire article.

For those who read my blog who still don’t understand why I, and others, are so disgusted with this president, hopefully this sheds some light on it. If my understanding of the facts is correct, this man and his entire inner circle should be impeached and turned over to the Hague for war crimes trials. These are high crimes indeed.

Liam.

Loving America

If you want to see an example of the worst of partisanship on the part of (in this case) a right wing pundit, watch this clip from Verdict with Dan Abrams on MSNBC.

The context: Much has been made of Michelle Obama‘s statement during a speech in February, in which she said (most likely misspeaking her true intent), she was proud of America “for the first time in her life“.

The Verdict staff uncovered a quote from John McCain that he’s used several times in his campaign, including March 13 of this year on video tape, in which he says “I really didn’t love America until I was deprived of her company”.

Now, the context of his comment relates to his war service and how being a prisoner of war changes you. Still, if we’re going to take Michelle Obama at her word that she was saying that prior to February, she had never been proud of America, then we also have to take McCain at his word that before he was a POW he didn’t love America.

Now, for me, I’m not overly into such stupidities. I think it’s perfectly possible to be ashamed of the behavior of your country and to want to see it returned to its former greatness without being a bad or even unpatriotic person. I think it’s reasonable to understand why a black person might not feel particular pride in America for much of their life. I think it’s reasonable to understand why a young man might not really understand the depths of his love for this country until he saw what it was like elsewhere. I also think McCain uses the word “love” when he should use the word “appreciate”. It is perfectly possible to appreciate America and to feel fortunate to be able to live here while at the same time not being particularly proud of the things we (in the form of our leaders) are doing lately.

But anyway, the two statements are clearly similar, with the larger of any accrued negativity going to McCain (since he spoke it himself) rather than to Obama (since it was not him but his wife who spoke it).

Nevertheless, watch the video. It’s entertaining, watching the right wing pundit twist and spin, trying to justify why Michelle Obama’s statement makes her a horrible, unpatriotic human being while McCain’s are the good and worthy and justified statements of a war hero. And yet, had the comments been reversed, there is no doubt in my mind that he’d be spinning how “you don’t always have to be proud of your kids, but you always love them.”



Liam.

News Items

This morning, during a night of what can at best be described as “questionable” sleep, I spent some time skimming through the various news sources, and I thought I’d highlight a few I think people should know about…

First up, from the McClatchy Newspaper group, and article detailing a number of cases of false identification of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, men who have been detained for years, even though they are not and have never been involved with terrorism. Of course, I’ve mentioned such stories before, but it is best to remember that all the talk about the “worst of the worst” and how these are all terrorists for whom no mercy or due process are necessary ignores the simple fact that underscores all of our requirements for such things: We’re not always right, and we are supposed to be the country that does its utmost to make sure the innocent are not incorrectly punished. If you wonder why I think it is a good thing that the Supreme Court struck down the prohibition on Guantanamo and other detainees challenging their detainment in civilian court, this is why.

Speaking of incorrectly punished (we’ll have more on this in a bit), note the discussion of treatment of prisoners in our custody, specifically at Bagram and Kandahar air bases. Oh, and remember how I’ve been saying for months that our inept and ham-handed prosecution of this bogus war in Iraq has made us less safe, not more? McClatchy has documented this effect. Some of the people in our custody who never previously were terrorists acquire such a hatred for us based on their treatment in our custody that when they are returned home, they become the very thing we accused them of being. But the difference is that we manufactured them into terrorists, it was not their natural state.

I’ve just touched the surface of the article. Read the whole thing.

Next, also from McClatchy, is this article, detailing more specifics about abuse of prisoners in our custody. It makes me too sick to my stomach to think about these things, so I'm not going to repeat the contents of the article. It sure makes me feel good and proud to be an American, though, when these things were done by American officials in the name of American citizens.

And finally, from Newsweek, yet more reporting showing that our pre-war “intelligence” was flawed, and worse, there’s every reason to believe we knew it.

This internet connection here at the hotel sucks, so I’m going to stop for now, but read the articles I linked to. They’re important.

Liam.

Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler

My thought for the evening is one of thanksgiving. I'm not entirely sure why: my family and I are staying in what is truly one of the five worst hotels I've stayed in over the course of my entire life (and that includes the "Gent River Hotel", for those who remember one of my last humor blog posts, over a year ago). And yet something reminded me about human nature.

Why is it that we look for reasons to be unhappy or dissatisfied?

We Americans of the early 21st century are truly very blessed. We mostly have food on our tables and roofs over our heads and clothing on our backs. We generally don't go to bed hungry or die of exposure to the elements because of a particularly harsh cold snap. While food shortages affect other parts of the world and the rise in food prices makes some poorer of the denizens of Earth struggle with privation, we merely have to tighten our fiscal belt a little bit, but generally not our literal one.

It is only in an era and a society of such plenty that we could possibly care about some of the hot button issues in our political landscape today. Think back to the days of the Great Depression, when starvation and want were very real things in the United States. Can you imagine an issue like flag burning gaining any traction at all? If one politician promoted a plan which would make it easier for us to provide for our families and the other suggested that we should make banning public burning of the flag our top priority, who do you imagine would win? If the party in power failed to address the issue of starvation, would not the pendulum of public support naturally swing to the other side, to give them a chance to solve the problem?

Or consider the era of indentured servitude, when people would be trapped into a job by earning so little pay and having to purchase literally all of their basic necessities from the same company at greatly inflated prices that they simply dug themselves in deeper the harder and longer they worked. Can you imagine such a person supporting a public policy to ban gay marriage as anything like their top issue?

No, the truth is that we've become convinced of our own worth, that we some how deserve the plenty that we have, and that anything which threatens the merest fraction of the icing on the smallest tier of the cake is somehow a personal affront. There is not a one of us who will ever read this essay who works as hard as the slaves of colonial times, and so it is with a great deal of hubris that we complain when some of "our" excesses are taken away for one program or another to help those less fortunate.

And yet we will continue, because it is human nature, to take for granted what we have and forever look with yearning at the greener grass in our neighbor's yard, entirely unable or unwilling to recognize that he looks with longing at us lying in our hammock instead of sweating long hours over our own lawns. Which means in times of need we will vote for leaders who will help fill that need, and in times of plenty we will find something to feel dissatisfied over and then vote out the incumbents after every so many years for failing to address the trivial and pointless, even while they kept us from any but the most trivial of wants.

And in truth, there is a positive side to that coin; the need to forever find fault keeps us always looking for ways in which to improve. Perhaps without that side of our collective psyche, we might stagnate and die as a race, or not bother to take on the big challenges like launching objects into orbit or curing the big diseases, the things that underpin some of the very basis of our excess.

Still, though, every once in a while, we should stop and step back and think about how very lucky we are to live in this country at this time, when so many of our basic needs are being met that the very worst problem we can think of to argue over is whether two people who love each other should be allowed to formalize that love relationship, if their particular body types aren't a pairing we consider "naturally" paired.

Let us stop to think about which issues are actually actively important and which are simply proof that we have it too good, to be able to consider such things as in any way important.

Let us realize how great we have it. Then, and only then should be be allowed to emulate the Cajuns at Mardi Gras and say "Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler."

Liam.

Communication

No one listens. No one hears. No one wants to hear any but the message that they agree with, and then everyone points the finger at the other guy as the reason why we’re a divided nation.

Recently, John McCain caused a minor stir in the liberal blogs with a statement that has been widely, and in my opinion, incorrectly, categorized as “it doesn’t matter when we bring the troops home from Iraq”. Keith Olbermann, whom I generally respect, did one of his “Special Comments” on the topic, beginning by “providing the context” for the Senator’s statement to correct accusations that the statement was taken out of said context, but even when putting it in context, Olbermann loses a subtlety of meaning that turns a reasonable, if possibly incorrect, statement into an absurdity that can’t help but anger those who hear it.

The full context:

Matt Lauer: A lot of people now say the surge is working.

McCain: Anyone who knows the facts on the ground say [SIC] that.

Lauer: If it’s working, Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?

McCain: No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq.


To me, it seems far more likely that McCain was trying to say that what isn’t too important is that he doesn’t know when the troops will be coming home. That’s significantly different than that it’s not too important when those troops will come home.

Now, I may disagree with the Senator as to what the best method of keeping American soldiers safe might be, and I may not agree that it is even possible to make Iraq a safe and welcoming place for our troops to be, so that having troops there for as long as we’ve had them in Japan, Germany and South Korea is no more hazardous a posting than at an American military base. And those are worthy debates to have.

But if you believe, as Senator McCain clearly believes, that it is possible to transform Iraq into this safe haven, this beacon of stable freedom in an otherwise unstable region, then he’s right, it really doesn’t matter whether he knows the specific date that he’ll have the troops home, it matters a lot more that we get cracking on making the troops who do remain there safer.

But I’ve wandered around the Internet discussing this, mentioning that if we can’t be bothered to try to understand what an opponent is actually saying and what he actually means before we take issue with it, can we really claim the moral high ground when the neoconservatives hear “we hate America” or “we don’t support the troops” when we give voice to our very reasonable concerns about the state of our nation?

And yet I can’t find anyone out there who doesn’t immediately begin responding to me as though I were some kind of Republican flak, trolling around spreading pro-Administration talking points.

We really can’t have an honest debate in this country, because instead of listening to what the other guy says, most of us seem inclined to extrapolate what we think we’ve heard to an entire position that either makes the person a friend or a foe… and then we respond in kind.

And just to make my point personal, I’ll bet that the reactions of most people on reading this entry will fall into two distinct camps (at least, those who haven’t read enough of my other stuff to understand where I really fall):

Democrats and other progressives are even now shaking their heads and dismissing me as a right-wing hawk, bent on defending an unending stay in Iraq.

Those on the right side of the political spectrum will probably come away from this saying “Yeah, he’s right, those damn liberals never listen to what we say, and they wonder why there’s such a communication gap in this country.”

It almost makes me wonder why I bother. I’m not kidding when I say that my conservative acquaintances seem largely convinced that I’m the worst of tree-hugging, granola eating, free-love hippy liberals while those I know of a more liberal bent seem sure that I’m a closet Republican, secretly longing for another 4 or 8 years of Bush policies.

And that, dear friends, is why we have a communication gap in this country. When someone taking a middle-ground position can no longer be heard as a voice of reason or compromise, but must be heard by both sides as an extreme partisan one for the other, then BOTH sides have cotton in their ears and their minds stuck in “idle.”

Please, please, PLEASE engage the gears of your minds. THINK. CONSIDER. It is not “flip flopping” to be open to new and different information, and to be willing to change your position as your understanding of the facts grows.

Liam.

What a Day. Or Two.

First, there was yesterday. I refer you to the humor blog for details.

Today, Tim Russert dies, suddenly and without warning. Which is perhaps not overly surprising, the man looked as though he never met a cheese steak or a La-Z-Boy recliner he didn't love, but still, there's something disconcerting when someone who seemed so hale and hearty, so alive, just days before (I last saw him during last Saturday's punditry on the final suspension of the Clinton campaign) passes suddenly. Like the Crocodile Hunter just a couple of years ago, this one will probably haunt me for a while.

But then there came some good news, that even though they've swung quite a great distance in the direction of supporting the unsupportable, backing President Bush on his assertions of broad, sweeping executive powers, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay that said detainees do have the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. civilian court. This is a good thing. Not to coddle terrorists, but because we're a country that believes in justice and the rule of law and the inalienable rights of all men. We're a country that believes that it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than for an innocent man to suffer improperly. And until recently, it's never been seriously suggested that the "all men" who "are created equal" only really refers to "all men who are American citizens". And so this is the right decision. Sure, it may force the release of someone who truly is a bad guy for lack of evidence, but that's the way it's supposed to work, and in the mean time, if we treat our prisoners fairly again, perhaps we regain some of the high moral standing and international good will we had prior to the insane squandering by George Bosh on this whole Iraq debacle.

Maybe if, instead of giving more people reason to hate America, we went back to being a shining example of human rights, we will stop breeding the next generation who long for nothing more than to break themselves against the rocks of the "great Satan" in those hopes that enough such shots will break down the foundations and cause our house to crumble.

We don't do things because they're easy or because they're safe, we do them because they are right.

Which brings us to the final bit of news from today, John McCain's oh-so-predictable response to this ruling by the Supreme Court: calling this one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Yeah, we can all see just how different you are from George W. Bush, John.

What was that about the change we need? Sounds like more of the same to me…

"Obama Hates You"

My wife today was discussing politics with someone of a Republican bent and mentioned that she was leaning strongly towards Barack Obama, and she got a most curious response:

"Obama? Why would you vote for him, he hates you!"

This so surprised my wife that she told me about it, so now we're trying to figure out when Obama learned who my wife is and what he has against her.

Seriously, though, what is it with the blanket assertions in political discourse these days? This assertion out of left field shouldn't convince anyone, and yet there was apparently no attempt to put the assertion in context or provide any kind of evidence for the statement. It wasn't even qualified as to what "hates you" means (were they referring to hating her positions on certain other political issues? or had they bought into the Clinton line that Obama was inherently sexist for having the temerity to run a (gasp!) aggressive campaign?).

If I'd been a party to the e-mail, or even knew with whom she was debating, I'd like to metaphorically grab them by the collar and shake them and say "What the hell are you talking about?" We live in a world of facts not stupid statements generalized so far as to have no real practical meaning in reality.

There are real, substantive differences between candidates, even those in the same political party, moreso between those in different parties. We can advance our nation by discussing those differences and the real issues behind them. We may not all agree on all of them, certain issues really aren't matters of fact but of extreme opinion. Being against abortion doesn't mean you don't respect women's control over their own bodies any more than being pro-choice means you like abortion... it just means that in your personal scale, you value one of them more highly than the other.

But when you surrender your critical thinking in favor of repeating mindless and meaningless aspersions, when you take the latest talking points from your extremist fringe of whichever party you agree with and regurgitate them back without a moment's consideration, you do nothing to further the political discourse.

If you debate with me, you may help me to see your side of the issue. You may help me to see things in a new way or consider a point I'd not considered before. You may help me to change my opinion and may have your own modified in the process.

If you simply assert things which are patently not true and think that that passes for reasoned discourse, you simply make me think you an idiot and render it that much less likely that I will even consider any valid points you have to make, because everything you say will forever have to pass through the "is it worth the effort" filter. Too many things which blatantly aren't relegate you to the "not worth listening to" bucket.

And that's truly a shame, because if you have something significant and legitimate to say, I really do want to hear it. If you have a gift for me, I would love to receive it, but if you hand me a bag of dog feces too many times, then when there is an actual real gift in there, I may not even bother to check.

Liam.

Hillary v. Obama

I had one more thought I really want to put out here.

I've been trying to figure out for months now why my tendency was to refer to Barack Obama as "Obama", but to Hillary Clinton as "Hillary" and trying desperately to figure out if this was some subtle technique on my part to minimize her, either because she's a woman (which I really would hate in myself) or because she was the candidate I wasn't supporting.

But I've come to a conclusion. Referring to her by her first name isn't unique to Hillary, early in the campaign process I also had to fight to stay on a last name basis with Giuliani, wanting to refer to him as "Rudy", and that gives another data point.

What do the two have in common? Well, they both went for the "familiarity" vote. Much of the early campaigning (posters, bumper stickers, etc) from the two camps say "Hillary in '08" and "Rudy For America", while everything out of the Obama camp has had him listed as "Obama" or "Barack Obama", rarely if ever just "Barack".

So I'm pretty sure the tendency to want to frame the recently ended Democratic contest as "Hillary" v. "Obama" was nothing more than the way the campaigns themselves introduced their candidates to us.

That's the end of the comment I wanted to make, but in thinking about this whole naming issue, a few interesting points that really don't relate to the issue at hand popped into my head. If you stop here, you've read the entire intended entry. If you continue (as you're welcome to), you're just reading my "typing out loud".

--------------------

Some of the others of course had to be referred to by last name in order to differentiate (or to use a term I've recently heard a lot in C++/Java programming circles, "disambiguate") two candidates. Without a clear and specific context, candidate "John" could have referred to either McCain or Edwards. "Joe" as a Senator could just as easily evoke the 2004 campaign of Lieberman as Biden, or even the delusional "McCarthy". And of course "Mitt" could be the wacky "centrist, extreme right wing" cocktail that is Romney or a large inanimate leathery object used to try to catch things. (Come to think of it, when trying to catch VOTES, that could STILL mean Romney).

The other thing I found interesting in thinking about this is how some names are so generic that both names are necessary. I don't believe I've heard "Ron Paul" referred to by anything other than the full tag "Ron Paul" except from his campaign mailings, which refer to him as "Dr. Paul". (yes, I got on his mailing list... and just about all of the others as well, I'm still getting Huckabee messages with some frequency, and Kerry is STILL using his 2004 list to send out periodic updates on party issues).

Liam.

Energy Policy

There's a relatively new neo-conservative talking point making the rounds today regarding our energy policy, and I'd like to take issue with it.

Ten years ago, so the story goes, Bill Clinton vetoed a bill to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, or ANWR (often pronounced like the first name of the assassinated Egyptian President Sadat), and that had he not, that oil would be starting to flow today into the United States, at a time when we desperately need some additional oil to increase the supply and drive down prices.

And that story is true as far as it goes, but, there are several problems with it.

First, the Energy Information Administration did a study in 2004 which suggested that not only would it take 10 years to start getting oil out of ANWR, but it would be 20 years before we'd reach peak production, and that even at expected peak, it would account for about 4% of our total oil usage.

So imagine we had 4% more oil available to us today than we have (forgetting that it would be another 10 years before we'd reach that peak). How much do you think that would be affecting the prices at the pump? According to Department of Energy Projections, about 75 cents a barrel. I'm not kidding. The price of oil is up around $130/barrel, and we could drop that to $129.25/barrel, when at the start of the Bush it was under $35/barrel (not corrected for inflation) and in 1999 was as low as just around $15/barrel.

See the difference? 75 cents per barrel just doesn't mean much when we're looking at an increase of around $100/barrel and a quadrupling of the price.

But more importantly, we have to stop accepting the neo-conservative redefinition tactic that they're so good at.

Our problem as a nation is our addiction to oil. We use too much of it. It pollutes our air, it (apparently) warms our planet, it forces us to give vast quantities of our money to some of the same people who seem to want to kill us and it leaves us woefully unprepared when that oil supply eventually dries up, whether that's in 10 years or 25 years or 100 years.

But if you watch carefully, the far-right news sources (such as Fox News) take the true statement "we need to break our national addiction to oil" and subtly change it to "we need to break our national addiction to foreign oil".

What we need, and need right now and need vitally, is an energy policy that encourages us to continue to innovate in the area of clean and renewable energy sources. Hydro, wind and solar power primarily, bringing down our use of oil and coal and eventually even nuclear power as we ramp up on these other sources.

Right off the bat, we could reduce a lot of our problems if we'd help support companies like NanoSolar, a company which reportedly has come up with a new way of making solar cells that allows them to be manufactured at a price point of around 30 cents per watt of generating capacity and sold for 90 cents per watt, when the current going price is around $4.80/watt. If we can get that price down to the range that it's affordable to put up on all of our roofs we could cut down on our need for coal and oil generated electricity. (NanoSolar reportedly can't keep up with demand right now, but I imagine that if they ramp up to mass production, and if they can be encouraged to lease out their process to other production companies as well, that price point could drop still further).

If we then used that solar electricity to run geo-thermal heating and cooling systems in our homes, and ran either solar or geo-thermal water heaters, we could significantly diminish the need for heating oil, propane or natural gas heating in our homes.

If we encourage the development of newer and better electric cars like the Chevy Volt and the Think City or more efficient hybrids like the Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid, and can use some of that same solar power to make our commute back and forth to work each day, or to school or shopping or whatever, we can take yet more oil out of the national circulatory system. (For those of means who want something a little sexier, check out the Tesla Motors Roadster. A bit expensive, but it'll kick the butt of most gas powered cars out there, for those who truly need to compensate.)

To be sure there are certain technologies for which no alternatives currently exist. To my knowledge, no one has come up with a workable alternative to the fuel-fired jet (although we might move to bio-fuels, if that doesn't have too great an effect on the availability of food crops), but just think about how much less petroleum we'd use as a nation if most of us were doing most of our driving in cars that we charged up from a photovoltaic array on our roofs?

This isn't going to come quickly or easily, of course. Early adopters (and Janet and I fully plan to be among them, once the kids start leaving for college and we begin building the smaller, eco-friendly house we'll be retiring to) will probably not see a return on investment equal to that investment, and will have to be motivated primarily on the wish to help leave the planet as good as we found it. Even if there were viable electric cars available today and we started phasing out the old gas-guzzlers, it'd be nearly a decade before most of the older models were off of the road. And those early cars have some very serious limitations in range, time to fully recharge, payload capacity, top speed, etc, your average so-called "socker mom" isn't going to be trading in her minivan for a little two seater go-kart of a car any time soon.

But our national problem right now, in any number of different areas, is our addiction to oil as our primary source of energy. That much of that oil is foreign adds to the areas in which the addiction is a problem, but if you're addicted to crystal meth and you're able to start acquiring it from your brother instead of from some violent punk on a street corner, you haven't solved your addiction problem, you've just made sure you’re not supporting violent criminals because of it.

Solve the problem. Solve the whole problem. Don't let someone misdirect you to believe that the trouble is just the foreign oil. That's just the tip of the (quickly melting) ice berg.

Liam.

Hillary Clinton's Concession Speech

[UPDATE: Please see the comments section, now that I've watched some of the pundit's reactions, I'm going to put some comments in there about those, if you're interested. --Liam]

I've just had the chance to watch Hillary Clinton's speech from this afternoon (thanks, TiVo!) and I wanted to write up my thoughts before I hear what any of the pundits have to say.

I suspect they're mostly going to focus on the short section in the middle where she strongly argued the importance of electing Barack Obama in November, and I'll admit that if that had been the bulk of the speech, it would have been a great one.

But in the full context, that part of the speech was notable by the small percentage of her verbiage it actually took up.

I understand the first section, thanking all of her supporters and giving them a pep talk about all they had accomplished. She had to get them in the right mood, and indeed they DID accomplish a lot together. Regardless of how you count the votes, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama each got more votes in this primary than any other candidates in the history of Democratic primaries, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. A black man and a woman running for an office which has until now always been occupied by white males, and they shattered all previous records for primary support.

It is the third section of the speech that I take issue with. It is not the content, I do not begrudge her the chance to talk about the role of women and the shattering of glass ceilings, but I believe she should have gone to greater lengths to draw the parallels between the experience of black Americans and the experience of women. One of the things about the Clinton campaign that regularly galled me was the way in which she seemed to want to portray anyone who didn't support her as a sexist supporter of the all-boys club, when in truth by having two pioneering candidates on the ballot, there was no way to support both. I didn't support Obama because he was black, and I didn't support Obama because he was male. I supported Obama because after my candidate of choice dropped out, he was (in my opinion) the best remaining option, running an optimistic and positive campaign and pushing for a lot of the changes I feel are most critical to our nation today.

And so instead of subtly reinforcing the frustration of her supporters that once again a man had kept a woman down, I would rather she had said something about how sometimes in order for progress to occur in one area, it must be delayed in another. Instead of hyping how she'd bumped into the glass ceiling, talk about how great it is that Democrats have broken the color barrier and showed a sincere willingness to break the gender one as well, except that we couldn't do both at the same time this time out.

The third (and it felt to me longest, although I didn't time it) section of her speech reinforced divisions when we need to be coming together. Jim Webb recently spoke on several of the news shows about how the Appalachian peoples are too quick to view the black community as their rivals for support, when in fact the two share a great many similarities and should come together to work for a new America in which both of their fortunes improve. Hillary Clinton left me with the impression that after vehemently arguing that Democrats all have to get behind Barack Obama, she had to take the bellows to the flame of disaffected feminists everywhere. She may have told them all to work for him, but she continued the implied message that it was sexism, and that she would work for Obama, but only because McCain was a worse alternative.

What Hillary Clinton needed to do in this speech was help her supporters to see that either the first candidate of African descent or the first candidate with two X chromosomes was going to have to lose in favor of the advancement of the other ground-breaking candidate, and that rather than being upset that women didn't win, they should rejoice that a blow was struck against racism, with enough of a second effort against sexism that next time it'll be that much easier to take that one out.

She didn't do it. And I believe the difference between the speech I describe and the one she actually gave is the difference between the most hard-core of the "I'll vote for McCain if Hillary doesn't get the nomination" of her supporters supporting, however reluctantly, Barack Obama and those same extreme supporters making good on their threat, and in a year where we can hardly afford the John McCain of 2008 (and with no sign of the John McCain of 2000), those are votes the Democratic party and the nation can't really afford to lose.

To be clear, I hope we have a female President one day, perhaps even soon. But today is the day to celebrate the ascendency of the dark of skin. Belittling that by continuing to imply that your own loss was because you just couldn’t hit that glass ceiling hard enough to break through institutionalized sexism sends the implied message that you still don't believe Obama is a legitimate nominee. And that isn't unity. And it's not even true.

Liam.

A Quick Article

An article from the New York Times.

McCain apparently believes the warrantless wiretapping program (wildly unpopular and of questionable Constitutionality at best) is lawful and supports them.

Just sayin...

McCain's Speech Last Night

I finally got a chance to watch Senator McCain's speech fron last night, and I don't even know where to begin.

He looked out of his element, with a tendency to smile and chuckle at most inappropriate places.

His audience looked too rehearsed, their reactions didn't seem at all spontaneous, like they'd picked up a batch of random homeless people off the street and offered them all a meal and a warm bed if they'd agree to chant as directed.

And his speech... his speech was so full of misdirections and outright falsehoods I don't even know where to begin. He implies that Obama's plan to get us out of Iraq isn't listening to the generals on the ground when we've seen a steady stream of generals miraculously leave their posts and be replaced by those who say "stay the course". General Shinseki was the first, and most recently General Ricardo Sanchez, who has written a book similar to Scott McClellan's, but which has largely been overshadowed by that other work.

He talks about Obama's plans for greater spending, but recently someone looked at all of the things McCain has promised to spend money on and determined that there's simply no way he could pay for all of them even if we let all of the Bush tax cuts lapse, meanwhile he's insisting on making those tax cuts permanent and adding new ones of his own.

I'm going to have to go through the whole speech and write up a complete rebuttal to it, but damn, if this is all McCain has to offer, then either the Republicans or the nation are in deep trouble.

Liam.

Clinton Damage

I'm getting so sick of the Clinton supporters running around saying "I hope you're happy, now that you've selected a candidate who is entirely unqualified. When he loses in November and we have to put up with four more years of Republican rule it'll be all your fault" completely ignoring the fact that running around calling him "unqualified" does a whole lot more to undermine his chances than any actual lack of qualification.

I saw a piece recently (I'll see if I can find it later and post it in the comments on this item) that showed how some of our greatest Presidents actually had the least amount of previous governmental or executive experience, which makes the argument spurious anyway.

But case in point for how the Republicans are going to use spin Clinton's actions against the Democratic nominee, it appears that the first narrative they're going with is to assert that Obama was not selected by the people but chosen by "Liberal Special Interests". Really, I got an e-mail today from the RNC chairman asserting just that.

What they're trying to do is winnow away the centrists and other independents who might feel that this makes Obama the leftist extremist, beholden to extreme liberal interests, when in fact it's pretty clear that Obama isn't really beholden to anyone, the vast majority of his money has come in $25 and $50 increments from individual donors, NOT in large checks from big money interests.

Now, I don't want to come across as knee-jerk against the Republicans, when they return to the conservative principles they pay lip service (and little else) to you will likely find me voting for them again. But for right now, they're still the party of corruption and "social conservatism", and I'm sick of the lies and deceit in pursuit of power.

Just remember, as you start hearing the "Obama wasn't picked by average Americans" meme that it isn't true. And that Hillary Clinton helped create this story line for the Republicans.

If (and I still doubt this is likely) Obama loses in November, don't believe the Clinton supporters who say "See? Should've gone with our candidate".

Liam.

Water, er, Treatment?

There's a story that made a minor blip on the radar a few weeks back that I think deserves a wider audience, and I've been meaning to put up an entry about it, but with Hillary Clinton making a fool of herself and raising my blood pressure in the process and Scott McClellan's book, I just keep putting it off.

The story, from ThinkProgress.org, involves yet another loophole in the narrative from the White House, yet another case where we believe we've finally gotten to the bottom of the story only to find they'd built yet another false bottom...

In this case, it involves water torture. You'll recall that after much back and forth, the Administration finally claimed that "water boarding" had been used on only a handful of prisoners since 9/11 (I believe the claim was three). Which is worse than "we don't water board" but better than "we've been strapping down every Tom, Dick and Ahmed we can find since day one".

But apparently that's only true if limit the question to strictly water-boarding, which is (warning, for the faint of heart or stomach, don't read the rest of this one) when you strap or hold the interogatee down, put a cloth over their mouth and nose or stuff a wadded up cloth into their mouth and then pour water over the cloth, making it very difficult to breathe and making the subject feel as though he or she is drowning.

Apparently this is just one tactic in a wider bucket-o-fun we've been using called "water treatment". The detainee who had his head stuck in a bucket of water and was then punched in the stomach so that he would breath in the water? That's not counted.

Same with the detainee in 2004 whose throat interrogators forced water down make him feel that he was drowning. They did it without the cloth, so it's not counted in the water boarding statistics.

These are the "non-torture" "enhanced interogation techniques" which our government is reportedly using. Tell me again how we're any more civilized than the people we're fighting against?

Liam.