February 15
I hope something good is going on behind the scenes, because this just makes no sense. A federal appeals court has just ordered two reporters to testify in the investigation into who exposed the identity of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame, and neither of them are Robert Novak.
Though the law grants reporters no more protection from revealing sources than anyone else who has information about a crime, they assert the right to protect anonymous sources as a vital first amendment right, and despite my criticism of Novak I believe they're right. Anonymity makes it possible for whistleblowers to expose wrongdoing. In this case however, the anonymous source was committing wrongdoing, not exposing it. Novak used the information to participate in political retaliation, not to expose something the public had a right to know. The two actually in trouble revealed nothing, which is why I can't understand the decision to go after them but not the main bad guy.
This leads to the current hunt by the blogosphere and pundits for misbehaving journalists, or fake journalists as the case may. Al Franken and Katherine Lanpher disagreed on the air over whether their show should participate in the current atmosphere of calling for resignations/firings over journalistic mistakes and misbehaviors. Franken and Keith Olbermann have gone after Britt Hume for the FDR misquoting (how about "disquoting" for deliberate misquoting?). The right seems to see Dan Rather as a scalp hanging from their belt, and Eason Jordan as another, though Olbermann thinks the bloggers did CNN executives a favor in that case. Bloggers and pundits on the left have gone after Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher for taking Bush money to promote his agenda, and Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer for praising Bush's inauguration speech while not revealing they helped write it. Jeff Gannon or whatever his name is has become a left wing scalp. It seems there has to be a line somewhere between what damages credibility but can be salved with an apology, and what is so grievous that someone has to go. What makes it tough is that the conservative media, while calling for liberal or mainstream media heads freely, punishes none of its own for misdeeds, thus why Hume is safe.
Maybe the difference is between an honest mistake, even if a bad one like CBS with the memos, and deliberate deception and a refusal to acknowledge it and stop. The second category includes the ethics-free Novak of course. I'd put Gannon in there too, and a fake journalist using a fake name for a fake news site getting into White House press conferences with the knowledge of the White House could be a huge scandal. Hume would go in there too, except for belonging to a propaganda organization that only pretends to journalism and rewards liars. Jordan may deserve it for other things he did, but not for one statement that he took back. Kristol and Krauthammer should apologize, but that's enough.
February 14
While watching tonight's episode of "24", I noticed as I'm sure many viewers did, as I imagine we were expected to on some level, that news broadcasts are always on Fox News Channel. Sure, it's a Fox program, but as a touch of realism, shouldn't the characters say, "Hey, we're in a crisis here, so turn on a channel with accurate information!"?
The grassroots won one. Howard Dean was the choice of the people who made the small contributions and served as campaign volunteers. That's not to say the party insiders didn't do their damnedest to win last year, but the record isn't good. They let Bush make his biggest failures his strong point in 2004, they let Bush dodge the corporate scandals in 2002, and an incumbent vice president shouldn't have had such a narrow win in 2000 with peace and prosperity to run on. Many Democrats, and liberals who've held back from supporting them, felt that for a long time the Republicans can be as nasty as they want, but any Democrat/liberal who replies in kind is too extreme. Bush lies like a habit, and we're too polite to say so. To me, the final straw was when party leaders were so ridiculously slow to do anything about apparent fraud in the election. It's like they couldn't see through the long term implications of letting the Republicans get away with it again. The grassroots had to stand on their own for a good month after election before some leaders realized something was up, right after the election where we knew we eliminated the Republicans financial advantage, where we matched the get out the vote efforts (at least in some states, link Minnesota), and where we nearly bucked the history of six prior elections that says the incumbent always wins if there's a war in progress. Let me hasten to add that some Democratic leaders have shown some guts lately. Some may have felt Jesse Jackson was jumping in front of the parade in the dispute in Ohio, but at least he was the first to jump and someone of prominence needed to. Rep. John Conyers took the lead in investigating the problems in Ohio. Sen Barbara Boxer dared to challenge the Ohio electoral vote. Sen. Mark Dayton called Condoleeza Rice a liar in the debate over her confirmation and it may have cost him his seat. However, I shouldn't have to point to isolated examples. We wanted someone who would say outright what we think. If he's too extreme, too far left, too liberal, then too bad. It's our party now, and we're going to see what standing tough by our principles can accomplish.
February 13
Arthur Miller died a couple days ago. I happened to see his last play, "Resurrection Blues", when it premiered at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. It was untypical in that it was largely comic, and for a playwright to keep pushing his personal boundaries like that when he's in 80's rather than his 20's is inspiring, and I hope makes every age-discriminating person in the entertainment business rethink their prejudices. On the other side, Miller did the same sort of thing he did in "The Crucible", writing a play that was really about something other than the apparent subject. It was set in a fictional Latin American country with an insurgency of some sort going on, and though he started writing it in the 90's, it struck me as being about the wars in Central America in the 80's. It could of course be about other dictatorships and the wars going on in Columbia and Peru.
I never acted in a Miller play. The closest I came was a play where he was a character. "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been..." was a dramatization of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) witchhunt for communists in Hollywood, which spread to TV, radio, and Broadway. Broadway to its credit never participated in the blacklist so Miller's appearance didn't hurt him. Unfortunately, the theater has never paid a living wage to more than a few people so though it offered a refuge, financially the blacklist still meant ruin. In case anyone was puzzled so many in Hollywood refused to applaud Elia Kazan when he got a lifetime achievement Oscar a few years back, it was because he was one of those who turned on his colleagues and ruined them to his own benefit. He had worked closely with Miller before that, and oddly enough they managed to patch up the professional relationship.
That's not to say MIller didn't understand how awful the HUAC was. "The Crucible", though set in the Salem witchhunt, was just HUAC set in the 1690's. There's a theater tradition of facing oppression by producing plays that are about something other than a contemporary situation, but are really commenting on the current situation, and this was exhibit A. In this case, it looks like the lunatic right of the 1950s figured out this was about them. Audiences didn't always get it. Interestingly, my mother was in a production of it in college, when it was a fairly new play. I have to believe the director knew, but Mom being young and naive and stuck in a small town in Nebraska didn't know it wasn't just about Salem. If she was in the play and wasn't told, I'd bet a lot of audience just saw a historical pageant. The director probably put his job at risk, so couldn't be too up front or maybe he pretended he had no idea. He didn't get fired for it though. I try to remember that time when civil liberties are infringed now. We have survived this sort of thing before. In fact, I recall when the right was riding high in the Reagan years that some nutcase in the House of Representatives seriously suggested bringing back HUAC and hunting communists again. The Patriot Act, detentions without charge, and "unlawful combatants" are just the latest instance of some leaders of American democracy trying to strangle it.
February 11
Al Franken is calling for Britt Hume's resignation over lies Hume told about Franklin Roosevelt. They might be half-truths, since FDR did say what Hume quoted, but in a different context. The quotes were put together to give a false impression FDR wanted to move toward privatization of Social Security, when he wrote about phasing out the part of Social Security that covered people retired or about to when the program started, and suggested something personal on top of the compulsory program. Remember this was before IRAs or 401ks.
Hume has responded to the criticism of his misquoting by claiming he was taken out of context. Unfortunately Franken's blog linked to the Fox site with the context. Franken got it right, or maybe his cohost Katherine Lanpher dug it up. I don't recall. Anyway, I'd have believed Hume just read what was put in front of him and didn't check it himself, even allowed that Fox isn't renowned for veracity. The obvious comparison is to Dan Rather, who didn't check out his information. Hume is doing something worse by sticking by the lie when it's plainly exposed. At least Rather apologized. However, he and the other people who worked on the story had bosses who were angered by poor journalism. Hume has no such problem. His facts were wrong but his spin was right, so he has no problem with his bosses at Fox. Yes, he should resign, but he's doing what Fox wants so expecting that would be optimistic. On the plus side, this lying shows Bush and his propagandists have little to work with. They're still brilliant at propaganda, and with this lie they're employing the "big lie" technique of repetition, but at least they have no solid base to start from. I happily join in calling for Hume's resignation, but with the realization that not only won't Hume's bosses join that call, but an awful lot of the Fox staff would have to go.
February 10
Al Franken waited until the end of his show today to say he wasn't running for Dayton's Senate seat. He sure talked during the broadcast like he was going to run. He said he feels obligated to stay with Air America since he just sign a two year contract, and he is serious about building liberal talk radio to counter the conservative propaganda machine. He used the term "push back". I believe him, but just maybe he really wants to run against Norm Coleman. Reading his book, it's evident he believes Coleman ran a tawdry campaign in 2002. For now, there's no obvious front runner for the DFL nomination.
This one of those things where it's not new, but it's new to me, and still relevant. Democracy Now broadcast a speech by Noam Chomsky where Chomsky mentioned that Paul Wolfowitz criticized the Turkish military for not influencing the government to support the war. I don't recall hearing it at the time, but I checked and Chomsky got it right. It's relevant almost two years later because despite Bush's attempt to throw the word "freedom" into every sentence, actions speak louder than words. Turkey's key struggle in becoming democratic has been with the army's belief it has the right to tell the government what to do, and to replace the civilian government when it takes a notion. Turkey seems finally to have overcome that, but the democracy-loving Bush administration finds that something to criticize when Turkey doesn't do what Bush wants. The government leaned towards supporting the war, but public opposition was overwhelming and the Turkish legislature declined to go along. Democracy is good only when the acting president likes the result, or when there's a speech to give. Something ironic in Wolfowitz's remarks about the Turkish government is he called upon them to admit they made a mistake. They haven't admitted a mistake, meaning either they don't think they made one, or they're following Bush's strategy of claiming perfection.
February 9
Lousy day in Minnesota politics today. Senator Mark Dayton has decided against running for reelection. He showed why I think so highly of him by telling it straight when he announced his decision. He could have said he wanted to spend more time with his family like politicians in a rough spot so often do, and left it up to the pundits and the snickering members of the conservative chattering class to bring up his fundraising problems. Instead he honestly said fundraising has gone poorly and he hates it. His insistence on playing everything straight is why he's earned my respect. He's not the only honorable politician to hang it up because of the fundraising, and campaigns just keep getting more expensive. The GOP has already started saying the problem is Dayton's place in the polls. I guess they're so used being deceptive that they can't fathom that Dayton tells the simple truth, even though they sure went after him for pulling his staff out of Washington and calling Condoleeza Rice and the Bush administration liars on the Senate floor. And that's when he was still running and looking very vulnerable. Does that sound like a guy who doesn't say exactly what's going on?
Also today, would you believe that Bush still is hiding things about 911? Despite the desire of the 911 commission that everything come out, some embarrasing parts are still being hidden.
February 8
Could it be the Bush plan to eviscerate Social Security is in trouble? He's resorting to a gambit that worked to sell Iraq War II and his upper class tax cuts, changing the reasons for what he wants to do anyway. Just like tax cuts were needed because the federal surplus showed taxes were too high, and then were needed to counter the recession; and Iraq was about WMD and terrorism, then became about Democracy when everything was disproven; now privatization is intended to give workers a better deal, and no longer is a fiscal fix. A new poll shows that while Bush has bamboozled the public into thinking Social Security is doomed in 2042, two thirds think the cap on income subject to the tax should come off, and that's for an idea not much discussed yet, except to be dismissed as a job-killing tax increase.
Notice how there still isn't a bill in Congress, how Bush's plan is still just vagueness? It appears the Republicans are still nervous about touching the third rail. Now of course, Bush is a master campaigner. No matter how much of a buffoon he may be, and he has certainly contributed to the stereotype of Americans as cocksure ignoramuses, we have to grant him that, so he well might bring this off. What we know is that his vaunted stubbornness, oops, certainty, means he'll continue on even if he can't win. If we play this smart, maybe we can show him that even a majority and groundless claims of a mandate may not give him as much political capital as he thinks. He might even have to resort to a gay marriage ban again. Watch for that to come up again if Bush feels weak enough. If he doesn't feel weak, watch for it to be delayed until the midterm election campaign.
Even after misleading numbers and supporters-only public forums (yes, that's an oxymoron), Bush runs into a serious logic problems, and I don't mean his usual expectation that faith and money can override fact. Michael Kinsley laid them out neatly, like, if Social Security taxes are put into the private market, and the money to make up the difference for current retirees has to be borrowed from the private market, the money available for investment is the same. It's actually worse than that, because there will be costs to setting up the new system and ongoing administrative costs will be higher, so the private capital available will be less.
February 6
My readers depend upon me to explain what lies behind current events, and one recently asked me to explain what a "neocon" is, believing me and this blog to be the best source of accurate information. Well Mom, "neocon" means "new conservative", meaning a type of conservative that has developed since the end of the Cold War. It's a third way between the previous (and by no means extinct) types of conservative, the isolationist and the internationalist.
The isolationist conservatives would prefer to mostly close the borders. They want to severely reduce immigration if not eliminate it, drop out of international organizations like the UN and WTO, avoid permanent alliances like NATO, and generally avoid international treaties like trade agreements, environmental treaties, or arms control. This sort was the majority of conservatives before World War II and kept us out of the League of Nations, and prior to Pearl Harbor resisted getting into the war because we weren't immediately threatened, successfully battling liberals who believed Hitler and other dictators posed a threat and wanted to get into the war. They quickly became a minority after Pearl Harbor, but they have never gone away. The best known of this sort of conservative is probably Pat Buchanan, who I satirized in a play a decade ago.
The conservatives they lost out to during the war and the subsequent cold war with the Soviets are the internationalists. These believe in working with international organizations like the UN, and free market economics makes them the biggest supporters of the WTO. They believe in being engaged in the world and throwing America's significant weight around, but in cooperation with other countries. They considered permanent alliances vital to containing the Soviets. Their differences with liberals during the cold war were often matters of degree, since both believed the Soviet Union had to be confronted and negotiated with at the same time, but disagreed over how much of each to employ. A good example of an internationalist is Bush Sr. (that's the Bush that got elected). Unlike his son, when he put together a coalition against Iraq, coalition members got something to say, not just permission to do as told. (The cold war ended just before the first Iraq war, just so no one thinks I have my timeline confused.)
The neocon is a cross between them in that they engage with the world, but only on American terms. They have the isolationists' suspicion of international organizations. They believe America should do as it sees fit, using its power that puts it so far above the rest of the world, and the rest of the world can follow our lead or get run over. A word I've sometimes used to describe neocons is "unilateralist". The prime example of course is the acting president, though the intellectual fathers would include Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and frequent TV pundit, who praised Bush inaugural address without revealing he helped write it; and Richard Perl, also a TV pundit, occasional holder of appointed positions in the defense department, lobbyist (maybe at the same time), and most recently on the board of Hollinger as the company was robbed by execs and board members. No, these are not the most honest group of people. Afghanistan was their type of war in that we had willing allies --- including countries conservatives love to insult for not backing the US in Iraq: France, Germany, and Canada --- but allies were expected to do as told, not say how they'd like to conduct the war. Iraq of course is the mess they got us into, using US military might to expand the empire and eliminate long term threats. It was a test of new military doctrines and free market economics foisted onto other countries.
An astute reader might notice these definitions are all about foreign policy, so obviously conservatism gets more complex once domestic concerns are added in. In fact, what makes the acting president so dangerous is that the imperialism of neoconservatism is added to religious fundamentalism resulting in a crusade, though Bush stopped using that word. It means both the ideological and religious barriers to reality and complexity are found in the individual in charge of Earth's one superpower. That's why the rest of world finds him scary.
February 5
There was an interesting "From the Editor" column of the September 2004 National Geographic (link to come -- the magazine part of the site was down at the time of writing):
We're devoting 74 pages of this issue to a three-part series of stories on global climate change, and I'd be willing to bet that we'll get letters from readers who don't believe global climate change is real, and that humans contribute to the problem. Some readers will even terminate their memberships.
Note that last sentence. People who belong to a scientific organization might cancel because the magazine publishes basic scientific information on the biggest environmental problem of our time. The articles aren't any sort of political screed attacking those who don't believe global warming is happening or don't believe it's man-made, unlike what you're reading now. The articles just present geological and biological evidence that change is happening, greenhouse gases are increasing, and the increase can't be accounted for by natural means.
So why would that cause cancellations, assuming the editor knows his magazine and readers and made a correct prediction? For reasons Bill Moyers was getting at. It has become an article of faith among conservatives that global warming is at least wrong, if not some environmentalist scheme everyone into something undefined but surely bad. It's a bit like the debate over ozone depletion, where every scientist who didn't work for the chemical companies was convinced long before the politicians were, and I'm not sure the hard right buys it even now. The similarity is that once again, there is overwhelming consensus from the scientific community as the National Geographic article explains, but the few who don't are given equal credence despite the evidence being overwhelming. It doesn't help that this is a more complex problem to understand than ozone depletion (to me at least it seems more complex). The main difference is that more than ever, there are faith-based conservatives who simply don't accept facts that conflict with a faith based decision. At least in the ozone fight, the disbelief was economic from affected industries, or ideological from some who just didn't believe in environmental regulation. Add in to the global warming debate those who refuse to believe in global warming because it isn't believed by people they believe in, at least partly for religious reasons. Bush doesn't believe it, and he's a good Christian, therefore good Christians don't believe it.
Let me hasten to add I mean "Christian" in the sense used by fundamentalists, who describe themselves as "Christian" rather than "Lutheran", "Presbyterian" etc., meaning "Christian" doesn't apply to moderates or liberals. There certainly are Christians whose faith leads them to environmentalism and rejection of the idea the end is near, derived from the passages about being good stewards of the Earth and no one knowing when the end will come. The problem is the fundamentalists, who've learned from the evolution debate that science is just another set of beliefs to be accepted or rejected on faith. Evidence doesn't convince them because evidence doesn't matter. Unfortunately, as clear as the science may be, the political battle to address global warming is nowhere near won.
By the way, in the Twin Cities we just had our first air pollution warnings in 25 years (scroll to "Monitoring the air we breathe"). Yes I know, this is a different problem than global warming, but these pollutants come from the same sources.
February 2
Thoughts on the State of the Union address:
Bush made a misleading statement about Social Security (just one? One at a time then.) tonight. He said, "For example, in the year 2027, the government will somehow have to come up with an extra $200 billion to keep the system afloat - and by 2033, the annual shortfall would be more than $300 billion." Somehow? Like the means isn't known? Assuming his figures are correct, which is a big leap with the acting president, the money comes from the trust fund. The reason it will be "bankrupt" in 2042 is that the trust fund will be exhausted, according to the Social Security Administration. "Bankrupt" isn't the right word however, because there will still be taxes collected, just not enough to met obligations. It's not like it stops. Remember also this is the pessimistic projection.
He later said, "Personal retirement accounts should be familiar to federal employees, because you already have something similar, called the Thrift Savings Plan, which lets workers deposit a portion of their paychecks into any of five different broadly based investment funds. It is time to extend the same security, and choice, and ownership to young Americans." That's been done. They're called 401Ks, 403Bs, IRAs... in other words, we already have them, in addition to Social Security, which Bush might have known if his experience hadn't taught him that starting at the bottom means not getting your pick of seats at the corporate board meeting.
This was amazing: "In America we must make doubly sure no person is held to account for a crime he or she did not commit -- so we are dramatically expanding the use of DNA evidence to prevent wrongful conviction." This comes from a man infamous for spending no more than a half hour on clemency petitions for death row inmates as governor. He got his briefings from Alberto "Torture Boy" Gonzales, who didn't see fit to include mitigating information (like the person about to be executed appeared innocent) and Bush never asked why there was no mitigating information. Of course, Bush only said "conviction", so he's not technically lying when he holds people without charge or trial.
This is probably just historical ignorance, and lack of fact checking; the assumption conservatives' rosy view of US history is the right one. "We live in the country where the biggest dreams are born. The abolition of slavery was only a dream -- until it was fulfilled." The implication is Americans came up with abolition first. We started as soon as anyone else, if it's traced to the earliest recorded criticisms of the practice. However, the rest of the western world had abolished the practice before we got to it. In fact, something that stopped Britain and France intervening in our civil war on the confederate side was their public's objection to the continuation of slavery, abolished everywhere else.
See the archives for earlier entries.
