July 15
As you're listening to Republican lies about Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, and just what she did at the CIA in hopes you'll doubt she was undercover and exposed, here's what Newsday said July 22, 2003, right after the story broke: "Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak." They're trying to make it sound like Wilson told lies about Cheney's role and about his wife's role in sending him to Niger. Not only are their "facts" just lies, but they're trying to get you off the point. The point is she worked undercover and she no longer can because they deliberately exposed her. They may have endangered her and anyone involved with whatever she was working on, and since she worked on WMD you'd think they wouldn't want to disrupt that. They did however, and the reason why was not only to distract you from what Wilson revealed about how they lied about Iraq buying uranium from Niger to trick you into supporting the war, but to punish him by endangering his wife, and scaring anyone else who knows anything out of talking. Now, as we focus on Karl Rove, we have to ask when Bush knew that Rove was involved. If Bush knew before hand or early on, then he lied when he said he didn't know. Even without the Downing Street memos, this would make him a conspirator in the crime and impeachable.
And before you buy the idea Rove didn't know she was undercover, ask whether anyone you know to be working for the CIA might be undercover, and would it not be irresponsible, maybe criminally irresponsible, not to check before revealing their identity, especially when you have access to the information as Rove did? Even if technically Rove didn't commit a crime, this must be a firing offense, especially when Bush promised to fire anyone involved; and if Bush knew Rove was involved, even if Rove isn't technically criminal, shouldn't Bush be removed from office?
July 14
David Broder in a recent column mentioned the Democratic Advisory Council formed by the party in the late 50's after Adlai Stevenson's second defeat by Dwight Eisenhower. It put together basically an agenda and policy positions. The point was that the Democratic Party needs something like it again. Times have changed however, and while the Democratic Advisory Council consisted of officeholders, the same sort of process is going on again but starting with the grassroots. The party recently asked active supporters about what messages the party needs to put out, how the party is perceived etc. Broder indicates Howard Dean knows the public doesn't know what Democrats stand for and this needs addressing.
I've been thinking along those same lines myself. Democrats have been working along the lines of formulating the core message, the DFL (Democratic Farmer Labor -- the Minnesota Democrats) as well as the DNC (Democratic National Committee). It was in fact the subject of the last DFL Meetup I attended (my wife and I hosted it, our bit of volunteer activity). Beyond the core message however, we need to define policy positions, so that when the question is, "What do the Democrats want to do about blank?", we have a defined answer, even though not everyone will agree. Most the majority won't agree in some instances, but people think they disagree with us anyway without knowing what we stand for, so we can only gain. I'm not referring to regurgitating the party platform, which is a long list of position statements and honestly, I've never known anyone to refer to a platform after the adjournment of the convention that approves it. We need more of a shadow government. I don't mean strictly in the British sense, where each party in Parliament has a designated leader who would be the prime minister if that party ran the government, and the leader picks other members from the party for cabinet positions, so voters know who would be in charge of what if the party won a majority. Our government just isn't structured like that. Instead, even while congressional leaders have to play defense against the GOP agenda isn't of promoting their own, we have a set of positions that both gives us concrete goals to work towards and a way to tell voters if we win, this is what you get.
Since I've allowed myself a more detailed forum than one gets in a survey, there are some key issues where we need to define our agenda and positions. This won't be exhaustive and might be too big, but so be it, and it probably won't surprise anyone who has been following this blog because you've seen me write on a lot of these issues:
- What do we do about Iraq? There's some debate whether there's even a point having an Iraq policy when we know the acting president won't listen, might refuse to use a good idea because it comes from outside his little circle, and if we got past those obstacles, the Bush administration is too corrupt and incompetent to make it work. However, we know with all this nothing will get implemented (at least in regard to Iraq, though perhaps there's hope on other issues). What we're doing is weakening the charge that we have no ideas, thinking long term about not just the 2006 election but many to follow, and showing we're prepared to govern if the voters will give us a chance.
- Terrorism: We need to assure the public we take terrorism seriously. We know from Karl Rove's recent speech, if we didn't know from the 2004 campaign, that a republican appeal is they can protect the country and we can't. WE must both increase the criticism and come up with how we would fight it. We could have done more to point out how Bush missed everything before 911 that might have stopped it. Why Bush reading "The Pet Goat" wasn't in a bunch of ads I don't know. We failed to attack him on what is perceived as his strength, and talking about the economy simply didn't cut it. Then, we must frame the issue as how we will do better at fighting Islamic fundamentalism and come up with how to do it. We know there are things Bush hasn't done or done badly, like pulling resources from Afghanistan, failing to protect chemical plants, etc. We must make sure the public knows too.
- Ethics: Republican leadership doesn't have any. The GOP couldn't bring down Clinton with questionable investigations of every rumor and I wouldn't propose the same thing, but this issue worked to give the Republicans their congressional majorities, especially in the House. Some of our party are worried we'll get a mud throwing contest if the ethics truce is called off. I'm willing to bet we have a fraction of the skeletons they do, and if we have anyone corrupt, let's get rid of them. The Republicans are handing us so much ammunition: golfing at expensive resorts at lobbyist expense, fake home sales to pay bribes, sweetheart deals with developers, participation in smear campaigns, etc., that we would be utter fools to decide it's too negative and not use it.
- Fair elections: So what if the Republicans call us sore losers? They'll say that no matter what. What we know is that the last elections have had questionable vote counts and the people with the subpoena power are simultaneously benefitting from the alleged fraud and refusing to investigate. We know while election problems go unsolved we might never have an accurate vote count again. Honest Republicans want an honest result, even when they don't win. Both because it's the right thing to do and to give ourselves a chance of winning again, we must push election reform. Most people still don't know how vulnerable touchscreens are to tampering, and won't unless this is a major agenda item. Once the public knows, it might be impossible to keep these things in use. Moreover, this gets a to a core issue for us: we're the party that wants to protect your right to vote. That bears frequent repetition. Not only will our proposed elections make elections more accurate, but it bears pointing out that nothing we propose will make them less accurate.
- Social Security: yes, this issue has dropped off the radar as Bush's plan has bombed, and he did so poorly we should hope he keeps pushing it. However, Republicans will charge that we never had a solution of our own. We know that isn't so, but rather than lots of people with individual ideas, we need a party solution. I've written before that this isn't nearly as big a problem as Bush makes it out to be so our position doesn't need to be complex, but we need to be on the same page.
- Medicare: this is similar to the problem with Social Security but it's much more urgent and Bush ignores it, except for a drug plan only a pharmaceutical lobbyist could love. This means we can hit him both with serving corporate special interests and with ignoring a huge problem. The downside is that a real solution won't be fun, which makes it tempting to avoid. It is however unavoidable. Our solution, bound to be tough and unpopular, will show we're the responsible party and we make the charge it's the GOP that has no ideas.
- While on the subject of the medical system, we must make an issue of universal medical coverage. Republicans have good insurance and no fear of losing it, unlike most people who either have no insurance or do have to worry about losing it, so this will resonate with the lower and middle classes the Republicans have wooed with 3G issues (God, Gays, and Guns). I suggest we take a page from Bush's book, where he governs like he won a big majority rather than a close and disputed win, and we make the debate over how to achieve universal coverage and stop trying to convince Republicans we should have it at all.
- We must address those 3G issues. Our approach of calling these issues distractions, of telling people they're voting against their own interests, true as these things may be, isn't working. Our refusal to address these issues on the grounds they're unimportant when many people clearly have decided they are probably feeds the propaganda that we're elitist snobs. So let's come up with our own positions on these issues and be willing to fight over them, even if our positions are initially unpopular. I think we'll get more respect for taking and sticking to our positions than we're getting for trying to move the debate onto something else. This would also reinforce the notion we stick to our positions regardless of polls and popularity. Gay marriage in particular is the one case where need a strong position. So far, we mostly backed away from the issue and tried to avoid it. It's like avoiding the name "liberal". Our attempts at avoidance just feed the other side. Personally, I'm willing to fight for my positions on these issues. The only thing that scares me is there are so many of these issues that they could distract us from everything above. Somehow, we have address these issues without losing sight of our goals.
July 13
The Star Tribune's reader's rep, Kate Parry, wrote her column Sunday about a typical day. This day had one untypical event, because it was the day Judith MIller went to jail. I took up her invitation for readers to respond with a letter about Judith Miller. I'm copying it below not because my letter is of so much greater importance than anyone else's, but because it makes a good blog entry and, you know, I am doing this in my spare time. If I didn't think I had something cogent to say I wouldn't have said it, but make up your own mind and though this isn't a newspaper, I too would like to hear from readers.
Ms. Parry,Your column on your typical day was quite interesting. What prompts me to write is the part about Judith Miller and the staff's reaction. I understand the principle at stake, but I'm quite torn about the particular aspects of this situation.
I certainly believe journalists must be able to protect sources, and and if there had to be a simple rule for all situations, I would err on the side of protecting sources. However, in every case I've previously heard of, the journalist was protecting a whistleblower who was vulnerable to retaliation from those being exposed. In this instance, whoever leaked Valerie Plame's identity was committing wrongdoing, not exposing it. It makes sense to protect a source who is revealing illegal activity, but when the source is engaging in illegal activity, isn't that a different situation?
What I don't understand is why Miller ever gave confidentiality to this source. The source tried to use her for the commission of a crime. Even is she never made the specific condition on her promise that she wouldn't be used that way, aren't there some innate conditions in a journalist's promise of confidentiality? Don't sources know that they can be exposed if they lie to the journalist, or that the journalist won't participate in criminal activity, or that the journalist can be used for exposing wrongdoing but not for committing it? We're referring to a source in the highest reaches of federal government and a journalist with access to the White House, not a cub reporter or a source with no idea of how the press works.
So while on the one hand I have to respect a journalist willing to go to jail for this principle, this specific journalist had a large role in selling the public a war based on misinformation, on the other hand I wonder if she was just being used that way again. Then why does she owe her source confidentiality? I've heard the journalist's right to protect a source is analogous to lawyer/client or doctor/patient confidentiality, but doctors and lawyers can't participate in a crime and are still obligated to speak up when they have prior knowledge. It appears this is Miller's situation, thus why I have difficulty thinking of her as heroic.
July 10
Maybe raising a fuss sometimes helps. Cyrus Kar has been released. He's the American citizen of Iranian descent I wrote about on the sixth. He was arrested when he hired a cab that carried washing machine timers. He was declared cleared after a polygraph test --- two months ago. According to the NPR story, four more US citizens are being held and the press is having trouble finding out anything about them, including their names.
Secret detention is not the practice of people spreading freedom.
In an e-mail to his bureau chief about a conversation with Karl Rove, Matt Cooper said, "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation...". Double super secret background? And did they use their Little Spy Super Decoder Rings? At least there's a bit of humor in the exposing of a CIA agent as political payback to her husband and warning to anyone else who thinks of telling what they know.
July 8
Those of you who believe the myth that everybody who needs medical care in this country somehow gets it, need to know about Jerome Scott. He was profiled in a story on NOW about an environmental group, The Earth Conservation Corps, in one of the worst areas of Washington DC. The teens and young adults who participate face the worst obstacles of life in impoverished urban neighborhoods, but many use the program to give direction to their lives. Jerome Scott was one of these. He was encouraged in his love for biology, and won a scholarship to the University of Arkansas. However, he was struck by some mysterious disease. He made repeated trips to emergency rooms which kept him alive, but he had no insurance and couldn't see a doctor to get a diagnosis. Those medical resources available to the poor and uninsured completely missed that he had leukemia, not diagnosed until he was hours from death. He died from the insane medical system foisted on us by a well-insured ruling elite. They killed him as surely as if they had shot him.
A question following the bombings in London: now that the British feel a sense of unity, will Tony Blair use it to some good end, or will he be like Bush who, having the whole country behind him after 911, chose to blow that unity apart by using it to entrench Republican political power, which has worked, but it has caused the United States to be more bitterly divided than in all but a few times in our history. Funny thing, when you look at these sharply divided times, they always coincide with wars.
And now an illustration of why I made up the Take the Red Pill Award, and why religious fundamentalism should frighten every rational person. The insurgents calling themselves Al Qaida in Iraq murdered the ambassador from Egypt to discourage other Muslim nations from establishing relations with the Iraqi government. They said in a statement posted on an Islamic fundamentalist web site, "the judgment of God Almighty on the ambassador of the apostates, the ambassador of Egypt, has been consummated with the praise of God." Which came first, turning to murder, or believing they know the will of God? Fundamentalists have this unfortunate tendency to believe they have God's will figured out. It's right there in whatever they use for scripture, and it should be taken literally, no room for interpretation. I don't doubt for a second many rotten acts are attributed to the will of God as an insincere justification after the fact. I also know most religious people aren't fundamentalists, and most fundamentalists don't resort to violence. However, and this is the scary part, my impression in this case is the certainty they knew the will of God came first, and justified the murder. After all, if you're doing what God wants, anything you do is all right. That sounds harsh, but when is the last time you heard of religiously motivated violence carried out by people who were religiously ecumenical?
July 6
Hope someone missed me while I missed a week. Be glad physical germs can't be passed via the web. I'm still hacking on my keyboard in more than one sense, but so much is going by without comment. For example, it's rather surprising, given how poorly the left side of the political spectrum thinks of Alberto "Torture Boy" Gonzales --- after all, we gave him the name "Torture Boy" --- that he is being opposed for the US Supreme Court by much of the right. They dislike his ruling in an abortion case when he was on the Texas Supreme Court. Admittedly the other judges presumed to be on Bush's short list are largely unknown to the public and might be worse than Gonzales, nonetheless, I'll happily accept conservative allies in opposing him. I wrote frequently about my opposition to him as Attorney General and those reasons still are enough to disqualify him from any public office, namely that he is the man behind the memos legitimizing torture, and his refusal to include mitigating information in death penalty clemency petitions he presented to Bush when Bush was governor of Texas. So I say let's defeat him if we can, and take our chances on whoever else Bush might nominate to the body that made him acting president. By the way, since Gonzales-backers accused liberals of racism for opposing an Hispanic, will they make the same charge now at their fellow conservatives?
I haven't spent a lot of time on state issues, but I can't ignore the state government being shut down. Minnesota used to be known as "the state that works". Now we're a laughingstock with our shutdown all over the national news. Where this all comes from is simple: our governor made that stupid no tax pledge, and a large minority of Republican legislators joined him in it, so negotiations start with taxes off the table. How do you negotiate with someone who takes half the options off the table right from the start? Since Pawlenty got elected, he and the legislature have already emptied the trust funds, burned up the reserve fund, put dedicated taxes in the general treasury, borrowed heavily, and used every other accounting trick they can find. They're stuck now. All they have is this ephemeral $200 million from a casino at a racetrack, the "racino" they like to call it. One Republican senator, Dick Day, called it $300 million on Almanac the other night. This was after putting all the blame for the shutdown on Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, who was on the same panel and had just tried to be diplomatic. What an ass*&^#. Any money from expanded gambling is guessing, so I knew there would be trouble back when Governor Gambling had casino money built into his initial budget. Why does he stick to this promise that is breaking the state? Because he has national ambitions, and conservative mucky-mucks have made it clear that his hopes lay on keeping that pledge. What is best for the state is irrelevant.
Public readings of the Declaration of Independence used to be a standard part of Independence Day celebrations. The one place I know of where this tradition is maintained is that lefty-leaning America-hating NPR (the hyphenated statements are sarcastic), where they play a reading by many of their on-air staff of the complete declaration. If you listen to it, when you get to the part about King George III detaining people without trial, think about Cyrus Kar. He was filming an historical documentary in Iraq where he was arrested and has since been held without charge and the government won't say where he is. He was able to contact his family briefly and say he was tortured. Take note of this, those who think this can't happen to them, his American citizenship has been of no avail. Neither has his support of Bush's foreign policy. Then it might help to demand Bush explain what's happened to the "ghost detainees" who are unaccounted for, and who might be held at a secret prison on Diego Garcia. Maybe while we're thinking about Independence Day and the American Revolution, we should think about the British prison ships, and then think about reports our government has prison ships in the Indian Ocean.
See the archives for earlier entries.
