December 14
Maybe with so many obnoxious Republicans tossed from office, one of our state's representatives, John Kline, seems determined to fill the vacuum. Or maybe he's tired of Michelle Bachmann getting all the attention as the state's nuttiest politician. I still retain an iota of respect for Kline knowing that a son of his was deployed to Iraq, and Kline didn't use whatever leverage a congressman has to keep his own kid out of harm's way (a side note, before his stroke or whatever has happened to him, Sen Tim Johnson was best known for being for a time the only member of Congress with a child in Iraq). What makes Kline the subject today is a couple objectionable things he said recently.
Kline had a guest column on the editorial page of the Star Tribune where he gave his objections to a draft. His conclusion is fine, but his reasoning, well, get this bit:
"A third reason frequently cited by supporters of a draft is reflected in the disappointment of some war protesters that relatively few Iraqi war veterans have returned to protest the war.If only we had a draft, they reason, the war would be more unpopular and pressure would build to bring our troops home. They want to force our nation's youth into the military against their will to create a class of disgruntled malcontents who would protest the war as soon as they return to our soil."
Who are the "they" who think this way? He doesn't say. He hasn't said since, nor has anyone expressed such an opinion to my knowledge. Sure, it's possible somebody somewhere really holds this opinion --- just not very possible. A more likely possibility: Kline is just making it up. I don't claim to know whether this is a deliberate lie, or or the product of his paranoid delusions about war opponents. Anyone want to bet against the notion that when Iraq War II is over, Kline will be among the first trying to blame war opponents for the failure? We had no power and our warnings were ignored, but watch, it will be our fault.
Kline also showed he doesn't get it about ethical reforms. In response to questions about bans on letting lobbyists give gifts and free travel to congressmen, he was quoted saying, "When you talk to members of the Legislature here, it really has broken down opportunities for interaction, if you can't buy a cup of coffee. People just don't get together because if you show up at a reception and you take a shrimp, you somehow have to figure out how you pay for that shrimp."
Nothing stops legislators buying coffee for each other, and meeting at receptions. The ban is on accepting gifts from lobbyists. If legislators and congressmen can't socialize with lobbyists for corporate special interests, maybe that's actually a good thing. I don't see why Kline should so regret missing a corporate reception. All he'll lose is some reception hors d'oeuvre shrimp. Oh right, and the big money for the next campaign, or the cushy job offer for when he leaves office. You know, if the downside of ethics reform is elected officials spend less time having coffee with lobbyists, we can live with that.
One quick thought. Remember that part of the Iraq Study Group report about there being one day when 1100 attacks occurred, but only 93 were reported officially? Think about that being the case every day. Doesn't the conclusion of that Lancet study, that the most likely number of Iraqis killed by the war is and occupation is 650,000, look even more plausible?
One more thought. Donald Rumsfeld is about a week short of being the longest time in office of any defense secretary. Number one is still Robert McNamara who brought us Vietnam. Whoever is number three is way down there. It's just interesting that the two biggest screw ups ever to hold that office are also the longest lasting.
December 8
This Dead Polar Bear Award will be shared among several right wing European think tanks trying to emulate their American cousins by downplaying the threat of global warming and, what do you know, getting a bunch of their funding from Exxon. The Independent's article names the Centre for the New Europe, the International Policy Network, and the European Enterprise Institute. My look at their web sites didn't demonstrate an American conservative level of delusion about global warming being a hoax, but what I saw was reasons for not doing anything about reducing carbon. The reason Exxon and corporate lobbyists fund these think tanks is to give a respectable intellectual panache to the anti-environmental side of environmental issues, just like the Tobacco Institute kept providing studies and expert witnesses to deny cigarettes do any harm. These scientists for hire, "biostitutes" as Robert Kennedy Jr. labeled them, confuse both members of the public and government officials who don't know the details of these issues for themselves, and so turning to experts, find reason to believe he experts are divided and so there is legitimate doubt --- even though there isn't. So in addition to their hefty paychecks, these neocon wannabe think tanks on the other side of the Atlantic get a Dead Polar Bear Award.
December 6
The Iraq Study Group Report came out today. I haven't had time to read through the whole thing yet --- gotta work for a living unless someone will start paying me for this --- though I got through the first quarter. This part is a description of the situation in Iraq, and this lefty blogger is favorably impressed. It's written in clear language and makes a good primer on the Iraq as it is now. There wasn't much new in it for someone who has been following Iraq closely and isn't lost in conservative delusions that things are getting better. They don't have the gory details of almost any day's lead news story, but they don't sugarcoat how bad things are and they get into the complexity. My entry on the third was primarily about how multifaceted the conflicts are in Iraq, and why "conflicts" is plural, and I thought the report explains that clearly.
OK, this smacks of paranoia, but, is it possible the the failure of the lame duck GOP congressional majorities to get the appropriations bills passed is something other than the generally assumed laziness? Could they have done it on purpose so as to toss a bunch of work in the way of the new Democratic majorities' ambitious agendas? It's going to be tough to carry out the 100 hours agenda when these appropriations bills have to get done. Or maybe they did so shockingly little because they're so demoralized, they couldn't even go out on the relative high note of doing their basic job.
I'm I the only one who can't recall the presidential election starting this early before? I vaguely recall that the real news about a candidate making his candidacy known normally starts around late summer the year before. I could be wrong, and I could be wrong in not recalling the race seeming to be going strong a month after the midterm election, and I sure don't recall the race starting before the midterm. Maybe I'm just annoyed that lots of news air time was being given to the presidential race back in October, when it was clear a political earthquake was coming and there was no shortage of midterm stories. I might be wrong in surprise, but my annoyance is mine and I'm keeping it!
So I wonder which came first, the rampant media coverage, or the early declarations. I won't wonder too long, because clearly the race is on. So again swallowing my disappointment about Russ Feingold, let's get on with it. The good news about George Allen, Bill Frist, and Rick Santorum being out doesn't mean there are no scary people running. I wouldn't suggest relying on just one source about a candidate, but there is at least cause for concern about Sam Brownback, who appears to be the fundamentalist's fundamentalist or as the title of this article put it, "God's senator". When Brownback says he has only one constituent and then points upward, I wonder if he missed the part about popular sovereignty back in school. Another scary one is Rudy Guiliani, at least as portrayed in this Salon article. He comes across as a crony-prone dictator. Maybe that won't hurt him as much as opponents bringing up 2004, when he excused failure in Iraq by blaming the troops -- politically dumb, plus it's hard to believe all 140,000 were simultaneously screwing up a good policy.
December 3
The aspect of this debate over whether to refer to the situation in Iraq as a "civil war" I find interesting is that we're having it at all. Calling it a "civil war" or not won't change the amount of killing or make the brutality of a different degree. Then what difference does it make? The clue here is that while the argument to use that term comes from just about everywhere, the resistance comes from the White House and its apologists. Since they're the ones who object to the use of that term, I infer that they must consider the term a pronunciation of failure, and failure is what they're desperate to avoid admitting. It's as if by not admitting failure they can prevent or reverse it. Unfortunately they meant to find WMD and didn't. They meant to cut off Iraqi connections to Al Qaida and instead created them. They tried to change the reasoning to the overthrow of a dreadful regime, and instead they have an unstable government which is unable to prevent the massive killing and offer any sort of security.
That said, even saying "civil war" doesn't quite describe it. It's not as simple as two sides within the same country. There are multiple conflicts overlapping geographically and demographically. There are Sunni insurgents fighting us, Sunni insurgents or militias (another term to debate) fighting the Shiites, Shiites fighting Sunnis, Shiites who have fought us and seem to see us or the British as the main enemy, Kurds seeking a separate nation, Kurds contesting with the other Kurdish militia, Turkomen militia trying to protect their own communities, Baathist Sunnis fighting Islamist Sunnis with no doubt some nationalists who don't support either side, and multiple Shiite militias who don't agree on who should hold power. Did I miss any? Maybe "civil war" should be plural.
Staying on Iraq but steering onto a different debate, war supporters dispute the relevance of the whatever in Iraq now having lasted longer the US involvement in World War II. I'm actually conceding that point, but not surprisingly, only as a lead up towards knocking down a favored conservative argument. Though I think they're right on this point, conservatives are being hypocritical about it since they've tried to compare this Iraq War II to World War II ever since they "proposed" it (I put "proposed" in quotes because the war was decided upon before they started selling it to the public). They can't cherry-pick bits of the analogy that work for them and ignore the parts that don't. Just shows what a bad analogy it was to begin with. The fact though is that the comparison of how long the wars lasted is relevant only because conservatives insisted on making the bad analogy to sell the war. If they now want to say the comparison is wrong, let them. This war was never like World War II. I've objected to the Vietnam comparison on the grounds that Americans think every war is either World War II or Vietnam. It's simplistic thinking that leads to bad decisions. I think comparisons to prior wars are useful because otherwise history has nothing to teach us, which should be a dumb idea on its face. Appropriate comparisons would have prevented some thinking people from supporting the invasion in the first place and will help understand the mess. The best place to start looking is with the country involved. Iraq had a long war to end the British occupation after World War I. The mess was very similar. Looking at that war would have been a good lesson in what could happen if Iraq is invaded.
So I'll offer a deal to conservatives. I'll accept that the length of this war compared to other wars is irrelevant, and you accept that comparing it to World War II at all is mistaken.
If I can enjoy one more aspect of the 2006 election win, three of the most awful people the Republicans were considering for president have been knocked out. Rick Santorum is out due to the size of his loss, George Allen is out because he narrowly lost a seat he was expected to win in a cakewalk, and Bill Frist is out because he was majority leader when his party shockingly lost the Senate, in no small part due to the way he ran things. Now that he's back in the private sector (who would let Dr. Video Diagnosis work on them?), I wonder if the SEC will more vigorously investigate the alleged insider trading. Just like yesterday with Dennis Hastert, they shouldn't get off just because they're out of power or it looks like they got away with it.
But can I have a word of mourning that my choice Russ Feingold opted against running? That word is NOOOO!!. He said being in the majority reinvigorated his interest in the Senate, and, "Yet, while I've certainly enjoyed the repeated comments or buttons saying, "Run Russ Run", or "Russ in '08", I often felt that if a piece of Wisconsin swiss cheese had taken the same positions I've taken, it would have elicited the same standing ovations." Well, yeah. I mean, is it shallow to support a candidate because of his positions? Maybe we should support who we'd rather have over for dinner? That's a lot of how we got Bush and Pawlenty. Here's hoping for a piece of swiss cheese taking those positions, and I don't care if it isn't from Wisconsin.
December 1
This Take the Red Pill Award goes to columnist and talk radio host Dennis Prager, who is upset that the first Muslim member of Congress plans to take his oath on a koran instead of a bible. Prager feels American civilization is under attack from this native born foreigner (Keith Ellison was born in Detroit and raised Christian, but apparently apostasy puts one's citizenship in doubt). Prager is actually factually wrong in asserting that all public officials have taken their oaths or affirmations on a bible. On that wrong assumption, Prager wonders why non-Christians can't swear on Christian scripture just from a sense of tradition. IWhen I read the column and comments, I suspected another assumption underlying that, namely that all Americans are Christians, or wish they were. WIth that goes the assumption that patriotism and Christianity go together, no separating the flag and the cross. There was an interesting slip when Prager and Eugene Volokh, who wrote the linked National Review article, appeared together on Paula Zahn Now. After Volokh pointed gave an example of a Jewish official not using a Christian bible, but an old testament, Prgaer said, "Justice Goldberg used Old Testament, which is part of the American Bible." Yes, he said "American Bible". Not only does Prager, and some people who posted comments in agreement with him, get a Take the Red Pill Award, they also get a copy of the US Constitution with highlighting on the part specifically excluding religious tests for office. I'd also highlight the part where the oath of office includes "so help me God", but it isn't in there.
Yes, some crooks have been tossed from positions of power, but don't assume the culture of corruption is gone by any extent. Progress has been made, that's all. If you want proof, look at how the GOP had problems declaring their guy the winner in Florida's 13th district when it's clear something went wrong. Even allowing the likelihood the touchscreen machines' problems were technical rather than fraudulent, the GOP is doing the usual: declaring a questionable result final when it helps them, and then asking why the Democrats want to steal the election. Now, that link is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, so while it's a good example of the GOP's spin, it's bad factually. For example, they look at one argument they make to defend declaring Vern Buchanan the Winner. One is that Sarasota is a Republican county so the absent votes must be Republican. They don't mention the counted votes were 53% for Christine Jennings. Maybe not so Republican. On the illogical side, they argue that the last two elections had lots of undervotes too. Any chance that really means not that there's no problem, but that the problem isn't new?
The corruption news isn't all bad though. United Health CEO and GOP sugardaddy William Mcguire has just had his retirement assets frozen by court order. He hasn't had to return any ill-gotten gains and gotten fitted for horizontal stripes, but that's a start.
Though Dennis Hastert is tossed out as Speaker and stepping down as Hose GOP leader, he is still in office, presumably still with some influence, and still in possession of some dirty money if the allegations from CREW are accurate. That charge is in regard to Hastert's funny land deal, but other CREW releases accuse him of involvement with the Abramoff scandals, and the ethics committee is still looking into what he knew about Mark Foley. Yes I know, even though he's still in Congress he's mostly out of power. However, when that's all these crooks suffer, they essentially get away with it and try again. I suggest that the acting president and his neocons wouldn't have tried lying to get us into Iraq if Congress hadn't let Reagan go unimpeached over Iran-Contra.
