Another inane editorial

Tom Toles
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

The Express-News has another inane editorial about Iraq. This time they give a big thumbs up to President Bush’s vacuous speech on Tuesday and they endorse his short-sighted view that -

”...establishing a timetable for a withdrawal of American forces, would undermine the new government of Iraq and give succor to its enemies...”

As I’ve said before, this either means that we are stuck there indefinitely, or we will just sneak out one day without telling anyone.

In the meantime, our refusal to set any kind of timeline for withdrawal eliminates any kind of incentive for the new Iraqi government to get its act together and take charge of their country. As William Saleten pointed out in his excellent column (see previous post) this is the Republican equivalent of welfare - except that it is more expensive in both dollar amount and lives lost.

The editorial goes on to add this final hedge however -

...if it becomes evident that Iraqi forces can't or won't stand up — and at this point, that isn't the case — it will also be time to bring American forces home.

And who will make that determination? Certainly not this president who has bet his entire political fortune on this ideologically-guided venture in the Middle East. We will have to wait for the next president to come along - no doubt someone who will promise that they have “a secret plan to end the war.”

Iraqi welfare

Kevin Drum today calls attention to an interesting column by William Saleten in Slate that equates the war in Iraq with welfare and uses some of the Republican’s own arguments against them.

President Bush explained how he plans to get our troops out of Iraq. "Our strategy can be summed up this way," he said. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

I've heard politicians say this sort of thing before. But the politicians were liberals, and the downtrodden people they talked about were needy Americans. As these folks learned to support themselves, government would no longer need to support them, the liberals promised. As the poor stood up, we would stand down.

For 40 years, the central argument of the Republican Party—George W. Bush's party—was that liberals had it backward: If you prop people up, they'll never stand up, and you'll never stand down. You have to let go. As you stand down, they'll stand up.

Which brings us to the occupation of Iraq. In blood and money, it's fast becoming the most expensive welfare program in the history of the world. Like other welfare programs, it was a good idea when it started. Like other welfare programs, it has begun to overtax the treasury and the public. Like other welfare programs, it warps the behavior of its beneficiaries. But in one respect, it's unique. It's the one welfare program conservatives can't criticize or even recognize, because they're the ones running it. ...

Saleten goes on to argue that one reason for the drop in public support for the war is because people are beginning to see that it has turned into a huge welfare program for the Iraqi people.

Is it any mystery why polls have turned against the occupation? The people being polled are Americans. The people deriving a "better life" are Iraqis. Bush spent half the speech obscuring this gap. He equated Iraqi terrorists with the 9/11 hijackers and kept insisting that we're fighting for "our" freedom and security. But that spin lost its force long ago, when Saddam's weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize, forcing Bush to reframe the war as a democracy-spreading project. It's a noble war, but it's noble because it's altruistic. And people get tired of altruism....

He goes on to note that setting a timeline for withdrawing our troops would prod the Iraqi politicians to stop their bickering and get busy making the tough decisions and compromises necessary to become self-supporting.

The elections were five months ago. What have the assembly's Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish leaders done for the past five months? Bickered over every petty dispute. How much of the constitution have they drafted? Zip. Why are they bickering instead of buckling down? Because they can. Because they don't have to cut fast deals, meet the deadline, and give every faction a stake in the government to hold off the insurgency. They don't have to do these things, because 140,000 American troops are propping them up.

If welfare causes dependency for poor people in the inner cities, then the same logic applies to the security welfare we are providing for the Iraqi government. We can continue to provide them with truckloads of foreign aid, but its time for them to step up and take charge of their own security situation. And the fact is they will have little incentive to do so until we give them a real deadline for withdrawal.

This isn't our story. It's the Iraqis' story. They have to write it, and they have to start by drafting a constitution in six weeks. If they think Uncle Sam will prop them up till the job is done, the job will never get done. That's what conservatives used to understand about big government, before they started running it.

Failure to define victory

I didn’t have a chance to watch President Bush’s speech last night but I did come across this handy summary over at TPM Cafe that distills it all down to its key elements:

“Global war on terror, September the 11th, 2001, terrorists, terrorists , totalitarian ideology , freedom, tyranny,  oppression,   terror, kill, terrorists,   September the 11th, freedom, enemy , war,  terrorists, kill, murderous ideology , terrorism, terrorists, free nation, war on terror, freedom, violence and instability,  dangerous, violence, bloodshed, violence,  sacrifice , war on terror, violence,  killers, freedom, criminal elements, hateful ideology, freedom, liberty,  democracy, terrorists, war on terror, terrorists, Osama Bin Laden, murder and destruction, enemy, terrorists, car bombs, enemy, terrorists,  suicide bomber, enemy, terrorists, violence, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists , freedom, enemies, September the 11th,  Bin Laden,  enemy , free, tyranny, terrorists, anti-terrorist, free, al Qaeda, free nation, terrorists,  terrorists, enemy, terrorists, anti-terrorist  terrorists, terror, enemy, tyranny, enemies, freedom, freedom, ideologies of murder, atrocity, September the 11th 2001, car bombers and assassins, freedom, freedom, flying the flag, freedom, freedom, September the 11th 2001, enemies”.

Seriously though, I think it was unfortunate that Bush did not take my advice and give us a timeline for withdrawing our troops or even defining what he means by “completing the mission.” If by that he means “to find and defeat the terrorists”, then what we have is an open-ended, ongoing military occupation that will never run out of reasons to continue on and on indefinitely.

The NYTimes editorial today sums it up well:

We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal - beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.
Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking. He told the nation, again and again, that a stable and democratic Iraq would be worth American sacrifices, while the nation was wondering whether American sacrifices could actually produce a stable and democratic Iraq.

Bush stays the course

Kevin Drum has a good graph illustrating President Bush’s declining poll numbers since the 9/11 terror attacks boosted them to unrealistic heights.
Now that they have dipped to their lowest point, Bush will make another effort to revive his stalled agenda with a nationally televized speech later tonight.

I can barely contain my enthusiasm.

In the meantime, the man who should have been president gives us a sample of what we would be hearing from our president if he had any realistic idea for salvaging our adventure in Iraq.

He first outlines some of the “Legitimate reasons... to criticize the Bush administration for its handling of the conflict”:

Our mission in Iraq is harder because the administration ignored the advice of others, went in largely alone, underestimated the likelihood and power of the insurgency, sent in too few troops to secure the country, destroyed the Iraqi army through de-Baathification, failed to secure ammunition dumps, refused to recognize the urgency of training Iraqi security forces and did no postwar planning.

He then details many of the things that we should be doing currently to relieve the pressure on our troops and speed the process along for Iraq to take charge of its own security efforts.

If we had a parlimentary system like Great Britain and Israel, Bush would be in danger of being ousted in a no confidence vote later this year. As it is, however, we are stuck with this administration for another two and a half years.

The odd thing is that if Bush were to announce tonight a timeline for pulling our troops out of Iraq by early next year, his popularity would probably skyrocket again. It would be no problem at this point to “declare victory” and bring the troops home. We’ve confirmed that there are no WMDs. Saddam Hussein and his sons have been deposed. Iraq has a new government in place and a new constitution. I’m sure if Bush were to run through this list of “success stories” and cap it off with a timeline for withdrawal, Republicans would rally around him and Democratic opposition would be undercut. Then he could focus on salvaging his domestic agenda - using some of the money that would be saved by pulling out of Iraq to fund his Social Security privatization scheme, pushing for more oil drilling in national parks and preparing to appoint more right-wing judges to the Supreme Court.

But don’t worry. Bush won’t do this. Instead, he will say that we need to “stay the course” and “finish the job”, whatever the heck that is.

Barton’s bullying

I agree with Atrios about what should be the proper response to this.

There is a street name in Houston that always made me laugh everytime I saw it because it summed up my feelings about my former Congressman when I lived in College Station.

The fact that today Joe Barton is using his position as chairman of the House Energy Committee to harass a legitimate climate scientist over the global warming issue is nothing short of disgusting. But then, I never expected anything better from this sorry excuse for a public official. Nevertheless, Barton should not be allowed to get away with this kind of heavy-handed bullying just because he doesn’t like the results this scientists’ research has produced.

On a different subject, there was another example today
(also via Atrios) of Republicans using threats and bullying tactics to try and get there way. In this instance they are upset because billionaire financier George Soros is a member of an investment group looking to buy the Washington Nationals baseball team.

Republicans haven’t proved to be very good at actually governing, but they are certainly making big strides when it comes to abusing their power in office.

Gurwitz and the Downey Memo

The Downey memo (snicker). That’ll teach Jonathan Gurwitz to turn in his column at the Express-News without checking the page before it goes to print.
The headline they put on his Sunday column is “Downey memo fuel for hatred”. Of course, they should have put “Downing memo” or more accurately “Downing Street memo.” The fact that the editorial folks at the Express-News are so unfamiliar with the whole Downing Street memo controversy that they would let a mistake like this go through unnoticed is really a sad testament. Pathetically sad. I’ll bet they don’t have any trouble spelling Aruba. As of Monday morning they hadn’t even bothered to correct the version online.

But screwed up headlines aside, I had some other problems with Gurwitz’ Downing Street memo column. He starts off by claiming that this sentence from the July 21, 2002 Cabinet Office paper

"Although no political decisions have been taken, U.S. military planners have drafted options for the U.S. Government to undertake an invasion of Iraq."

“directly contradicts” the main point of the July 23, 2002 Downing Street memo which states that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq.

How could they be fixing intelligence around an invasion policy that didn’t exist, he asks?

But saying that no “political decisions have been taken” is not the same thing as saying no decision on invading Iraq has been made. Clearly the decision to invade had been made at that point and the talk about “political decisions” was meant to infer public decisions. A political decision is one that is out in the open for everybody to see. What is clear from these memos is that the decision to invade had already been made but the administration was keeping it all hush-hush. They were still trying to build their case by having the intelligence fixed around the policy before letting the American people and their representatives know about it.

So there is no contradiction between the two documents as Gurwitz tries to claim.

Next, Gurwitz briefly raises the right-wing conspiracy theory that maybe the documents are fake and repeats the lie that the reporter who wrote the initial stories for the London Times “destroyed the originals”, when in fact he only destroyed photocopies he had made of the original documents.

The Republicans in Congress have refused to hold hearings on these matters which could help to clear up some of the confusion. And when Democrats, out of frustration, sought to hold their own informal hearings the Republicans impetuously refused to even allow them to use empty committee rooms, forcing them to hold their hearings in a basement. That is why Gurwitz can lampoon the “mock impeachment of President Bush that took place in the Capitol basement”.

But Gurwitz makes one final observation that is quite surprising for a conservative pundit and is yet another example of why I like him:

”Legitimate reasons exist to question the wisdom of going to war in Iraq and to criticize the Bush administration for its handling of the conflict.”

Wow! How many other conservative commentators would admit to that? Not many. Most tend to take the stand that anybody who is critical of the war in Iraq is a traitor to their country.

But Gurwitz goes on to warn people to avoide thinking too much about the Downing Street memo. Sounding a lot like Yoda from Star Wars he warns:

”Following the twisted and incongruous path of the Downing Street memo, however, leads to a fever swamp of irrational conspiracy theories, ignorance and hatred.”

That’s right, my young padawan! Be warned. The Downing Street memo is the path to the dark side! Or is that the Downey memo?

Alamo City Blogfest 2005

The Alamo City Blogfest on Saturday was very enjoyable. We had about a dozen people representing seven local blogs show up at McAlister Park. For most of us it was the first time to meet people we had come to know only through blogging. It was officially a non-partisan event with bloggers from both the right and left sides of the political spectrum in attendance.
It wouldn't have happened without The Ranting Raven and his wife who did the bulk of the work planning and organizing the event. They rented the pavillion, provided most of the food and supplies - chicken and BBQ from Bill Miller's - and helped keep everyone up to date on the event through the Blogger Gatherings web log.

In addition to Mr. and Mrs. Raven and their 15-year-old son (as well as myself, my wife and our almost 2-year-old son) other attendees were Julia Hayden (a.k.a. Sgt. Mom) of The Daily Brief; Roscoe Ellis of Roscoe Ellis: Live Journal; Matt of Just Another Blog; Peter Bryant and his wife of B and B; and Eddie of The Red State.

A number of folks were unable to come due to last minute committments including Bill Crawford of All Things Conservative; Christina of Feisty Repartee; and Dagney of Dagney's Rant.
We also missed Sean-Paul Kelley of The Agonist; Mark Harden of All Things Conservative; and Lucius Cincinnatus of The Jeffersonian.
There are also a number of other bloggers in town who may or may not have been aware of the local gathering. Fortunately, the Raven is considering organizing another one of these Blogfest get-togethers later this fall when the weather is cooler. That one should have the potential to be much larger. Keep checking the Blogger Gatherings web site for more details as they develop. And if anyone has suggestions as to when and where would be a good place to meet, please leave a comment or send an e-mail.

Update:
Roscoe has some pictures up on his website from the event.

Update2:
Raven has more pictures up here.

Eminent domain and The Riverwalk

Would San Antonio have a Riverwalk if cities did not have the power of eminent domain that allows them to take private property (after providing just compensation) for “public use”?
It’s possible that it would because I’m not aware of any big disputes along those lines during its development. But what if one of the property owners back then had stubbornly refused to go along with the city’s plans to transform the San Antonio River into a national tourist destination? Might they have halted the development?

The folks in New London, Conn. are trying to do something that is not terribly different from what San Antonio did many years ago. Here is how the New York Times describes the proposed development:

“...a large-scale plan to replace a faded residential neighborhood with office space for research and development, a conference hotel, new residences and a pedestrian "riverwalk" along the Thames River.”

One defender of the project even cites San Antonio’s Riverwalk as an example of what they are trying to do:

”This is similar to how San Antonio developed the Riverwalk and revitalized the downtown area. The only difference is the city itself used the power of eminent domain rather than delegating to a non-profit. San Antonio only kept a very narrow strip of land along the river while selling the rest, mainly to hotels.”

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in favor of the New London city officials has excited much consternation from both the right and left halve of the blogosphere - JammerBlog: Letter to Sens. Cornyn and Hutchison; All Things Conservative: Don't Get Too Attached; Ranten Raven: Five boobs in black robes; and Off the Kuff: We need a mall where your house is.

But I think alot of their anger is misdirected. As P.M. Bryant of B and B aptly points out, governments have long had the power under the Constitution to seize property for public use. The question before the courts was who gets to decide what “public use” is. Should it be locally elected city officials or the federal courts?
And before you decide who it should be, stop and think that they could be the ones deciding whether or not San Antonio gets to have a Riverwalk.
Personally, I kind of like the Riverwalk and I don’t think there is any question that it has been a tremendous benefit to the entire city even if a large chunk of it was sold off to private developers.
So think about that before you start condemning this particular court decision.

San Antonio Blogger Gathering

The first ever San Antonio Blogger Gathering is taking place tomorrow (Saturday, June 25) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at McAllister Park pavillion No. 2.
It looks like there may be about 16 people there which is pretty good for a group of folks who only became aware of one another’s existence just recently and have never met in person.

The Ranten Raven has done most of the work to bring this together. It is to be a neutral and non-partisan event open to conservative and liberal bloggers alike - as well as to those strange folks who find other things to blog about besides politics. Check out this web link above for directions and a list of things you can bring.

NBA Champions

NBA Champions
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Congratulations to the NBA Champion San Antonio Spurs!
It could have gone either way, but Tim Duncan stepped up when it mattered the most and sparked a fourth quarter surge that made the difference.
I wasn't sure who would deserve the MVP in the event of a Spurs victory, what with Manu Ginobli's terrific performance in the first two games and Robert Horry's series saving heroics in Game 5. But I think Tim Duncan clearly proved in the end that he is the heart and soul of the team. Now he joins the likes of Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal as the only three-time NBA Finals MVPs. Pretty impressive.

Torching the First Amendment

The Republican-controlled Congress has passed yet another bill to ban flag burning. These things usually die in the Senate, but now that the Republicans have a heftier majority in that body it is not so certain. So we may soon have to go through the process of amending our Constitution over a politically-charged non-issue.

Right now if somebody burns a flag they get disdain and scorn. But in the future they will get disdain, scorn and lots of free publicity! Oh Boy!! I don’t honestly know when the last time there was a U.S. flag burned in protest but I am pretty certain it is a relatively rare and uncommon occurence. In the future there will likely be lots of flags burned by people looking to challenge bans on flag burning.

Since the proper way to dispose of an old flag is by burning it, laws to prevent flag burning will have to be based on intent - which means putting people in jail for expressing unpopular political views. That means altering the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. There is just no other way around it.

Then there is the problem with actually enforcing such a law if it ever comes to pass. Can you only be prosecuted for burning a flag? And if so, how do you define what a flag is? Can you be prosecuted for burning a piece of cloth that looks like a flag? What about a flag printed on paper or terricloth? What about a flag that has only 49 stars? Or a flag that has 14 stripes? What about a flag that uses blue dye No. 8 instead of the official blue dye No. 9 (or whatever)?

And when the Patriot Police finish figuring out how they will enforce this new law what will they go after next? Prosecuting people for not standing during the national anthem? Requiring recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at every public or private event involving two or more people? Criminalizing other forms of political speech that is critical of the government? The options are endless.

Publicity stunt gone wrong

This is just too funny.

NEW YORK An attempt to erect the world's largest popsicle in a city square ended with a scene straight out of a disaster film - but much stickier.

The 25-foot-tall, 17 1/2-ton treat of frozen Snapple juice melted faster than expected Tuesday, flooding Union Square in downtown Manhattan with kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid that sent pedestrians scurrying for higher ground.

Firefighters closed off several streets and used hoses to wash away the sugary goo.

The stunt might have worked if they had just used water with red food coloring. But I imagine the freezing point for the heavily sugared Snapple juice is a bit lower than they expected.

Statute of limitations on illegal immigration

There was an excellent article in the Washington Post over the weekend making the case for a statute of limitations on deportation.

We used to have one policy that is worth revisiting: a time limit -- a statute of limitations -- on prosecuting unauthorized presence... nearly all offenses, civil and criminal, carry statutes of limitations... It is not the best use of the government's resources to pursue old cases in which the evidence is stale or difficult to obtain....
A statute of limitations on unlawful entry is therefore not anachronistic but consistent with basic legal and moral principles. It does not condone or reward illegal immigration: Unauthorized presence would remain a violation of the law and continue to carry the risk of apprehension and removal, at least for some period of time. But it would allow us to recognize that the undocumented become, for better or worse, members of the community, and to accept them as such.

I can remember reading about cases in the past where elderly grandmothers who have been in this country longer than I have were picked up by the INS and threatened with deportation. Surely there must be some kind of common sense way to deal with such potential travesties and a statute of limitations is it. I don’t know how long it should be, but I have no doubt that our INS would be better serving the public interest by pursuing recently arrived illegals rather than going after people who have established themselves in their communities.

There was another case I remember when I was in Lubbock about a woman from the Phillippines who was picked up by the INS and threatened with deportation despite the fact that she was married to a U.S. serviceman and had four small children at home. It had to be one of the most monumentally stupid things the INS had ever done. They were just begging to get bad publicity. Every night on the news and in the paper you would see images of this Army officer at home trying to take care of his four children ages 9 months, 2, 4, and 6, while their mother who had come to this county as a child 12 years earlier was sitting in lockup somewhere.
I don’t know how the case was eventually resolved but I don’t think she was deported. Fortunately for her this happened back before Republican ideologues took over every branch of the government so I believe that cooler heads eventually prevailed. Today it would probably have turned out quite differently.

But at least not all right-wingers are on the wrong side of this issue. I was surprised to see a rare column by Charles Krauthammer the other day that I can actually agree with.
So maybe there is hope on this issue.

Fatherhood squared

A little more than two years ago life changed for my wife and I when we learned that we were going to have our first child. After 13 years of marriage with no luck at having children of our own we were beginning to think that it wasn’t meant to be. But then Nathan came along and now he will be turning two in just another couple of months.

Being parents has been a real joy for us. Perhaps because we were forced to wait so long to experience it we are enjoying it more, but regardless of the reason I can’t wait to go home each day and be with my family. So I fully expect it will only get better the second time around. My wife and I are expecting our second child in November. And we just found out the other day that it’s a little girl.

Downing Street Memos

My friend Bill does a good job summarizing
the conservative blogoshpere’s reaction to the Downing Street Memo documents that were first published last month in the Sunday Times in London. But I’ll go ahead and summarize it just a bit further:

It’s no big deal, it’s all old news and it’s probably fake anyway!

The significance of these memos is hard to overstate because they give us an insider’s view of the deception that went into the Bush administration’s pre-war planning. They spell out many of the things that the Bush administration’s critics have long suspected but could never prove - that Bush was intent on invading Iraq regardless of what intelligence reports said about Saddam’s WMD capabilities.
The memos are the closest thing we have to the Watergate tapes of the Nixon era. So it is not a surprise that Bush backers will try to downplay their significance in order to continue living in their fantasy world. The latest effort to declare the memos “fakes” is probably the most humorous and easily debunked. I’m sure that if pressed, these folks will tell you that these documents were faked as well.
Nevertheless it is an all too common tactic on the right today and it helps keep a certain segment of their supporters in line - particularly those who refuse to read anything in the biased MainStreamMedia and get all their news and information from right-wing blogs and talk radio.

But it is difficult to maintain that charade when top government officials just won’t cooperate.

Two senior British government officials today acknowledged as authentic a series of 2002 pre-Iraq war memos stating that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program was "effectively frozen" and that there was "no recent evidence" of Iraqi ties to international terrorism—private conclusions that contradicted two key pillars of the Bush administration's  public case for the invasion in March 2003.

For people who were opposed to Bush’s rush to war from the beginning, these memos simply confirm our worst suspicions. The Bush administration took advantage of the 9/11 tragedy to pursue an unrelated foreign policy objective that has proved to be much more costly in both lives and dollars than they ever expected.

Kay Bailey Hutchison: Big Liar

I'm disappointed that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison won't be challenging Rick Perry for governor next year. That means that there won't be a big fight to fill an open Senate seat and - since one of the likely candidates in that race would have been U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla - I'll still be stuck with my worthless excuse for a congressman.

I think everyone should recall that back in 1994, Hutchison campaigned as a big supporter of term limits and promised repeatedly to serve only two terms in the Senate. So her decision now to run for a third term means that she LIED!
Unfortunatley, that is unlikely to lose her too many votes and it is doubtful that she will have a serious challenger for her seat this time around.

I can still hope that Carole Keeton Strayhorn might weaken Perry with a nasty primary campaign and make him more vulnerable to a worthy Democratic candidate. But that may just be wishful thinking at this point. If people can't see by now that George W. Bush is the worst president ever and that Republicans are too blinded by right-wing ideology to effectively run the government, then I can't see much worse happening between now and 2006 that might snap them out of their trance.

No. 43 at 42 percent

Here is another poll for conservative Bush backers to ignore and dismiss...

George W. Bush’s overall approval rating has sank lower than his rank order among presidents according to the latest NYTimes/CBS News poll.

The only bright spot for Bush is that a slim majority - 52 percent - say they support his efforts in the “campaign against terrorism.” But what is odd about that is that the same poll places support for Bush’s war in Iraq at a measly 37 percent. Could it be that folks are finally starting to distinguish between fighting actual terrorists and launching a costly invasion and occupation of a country that had nothing to do with the terror attacks? If so, it’s about time.
The poll puts support for Bush’s foreign policy at just 39 percent. Ditto the economy. While Bush’s plans to overhaul Social Security gets an abysmal 25 percent approval despite months of Bush and Co. barnstorming the nation with its carefully scripted Bamboozapalooza tour in support of privatization.

Oh, and the Republican Congress? 33 percent approval. And only 19 percent of respondents say that the Congress “shares their priorities for the country.”

Bring on the 2006 mid-term elections!

Redefining torture and terrorism

Sen. Dick Durbin caused a stir recently when he quoted from an FBI report documenting some of the prisoner abuses that have taken place at Guantanamo.

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Conservative bloggers have been beside themselves claiming that this treatment does not rise to the level of torture. But what exactly is torture if not this?

Here is a definition we might consider by the "United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment" or UNCAT:

“Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”

The Geneva Convention further specified that prisoners of war “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely and that there must not be any "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture." or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment".

It is fairly clear that inmates at Abu Gharib were being tortured on a routine basis. Along with the photos that documented some of the abuses we have the report from Major Gen. Antonio M. Taguba that describes:

”Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.“

We also have the reports on abuses at Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of at least two detainees - one of whom was widely believed to have been innocent of any involvement in military action against the U.S.

Conservatives who continue to defend these systematic abuses argue that such treatment is necessary if we are to defend ourselves against future 9/11-like terrorist attacks.
But while you might be able to make a case for harsh treatment in some limited circumstances where we have captured a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden who might have details of a pending terrorist attack, that is not the case with the vast majority of inmates at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Many of these prisoners being subjected to this treatment are not top-level members of al-Quaeda, but are at best foot soldiers in the Taliban or the Iraqi insurgency with little useful information to provide. In the worst cases, they have proved to be innocent civilians who were caught up in events and wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the same conservatives who are so ready to give a very narrow definition of torture, like to use a very broad definition of the word terrorist. Everyone at Guantanamo is a “terrorist” as is anyone in Iraq who is opposed to our occupation of that country. By labeling them as such we make them accountable for not just 9/11, but for all of the suicide attacks and roadside bombings that have plagued Iraq since the beginning of our occupation. And thus we are free to torture them as much as we want because they are not worthy of humane treatment. And anybody who challenges their treatment is faced with the Bush/Darth Vader dictum: “You are either with us, or you are our enemy.”

Left/Right religious convergence

Here is a promising story today in the Washington Post - Religious Right, Left Meet in Middle

The Rev. Rob Schenck is an evangelical Christian and a leader of the religious right. Rabbi David Saperstein is a Reform Jew and a leader of the religious left. Both head political advocacy groups in Washington, and they have battled for years over abortion, gay rights, stem cell research and school prayer.
This summer, each intends to preach a bit of the other's usual message.
Schenck said he plans to tell young evangelicals at a Christian music festival on July 1 that homosexuality is not a choice but a "predisposition," something "deeply rooted" in many people. "That may not sound shocking to you, but it will be shocking to my audience," he said.
Saperstein said he is circulating a paper urging political moderates and liberals to "demonstrate their commitment to reduce abortions" by starting a campaign to reduce the number by half within two years.
Schenck and Saperstein disclosed their plans in separate interviews. They are not working together. The minister remains a die-hard opponent of same-sex marriage; the rabbi staunchly supports a woman's constitutional right to choose an abortion. But both are trying to find common ground between liberals and conservatives on moral issues -- and they are not alone.

First it is nice to see the media acknowledging that there is a Religious Left in this country, and not just a Religious Right. Second, I am happy to see people representing both sides reaching out in an effort to find common ground. Reducing the number of abortions in the country is an excellent goal for both left and right advocates. We have differences about how to pursue that goal, but that should not prevent either side from cooperating in areas where we can agree. And recognizing that there is something more to homosexuality than just a choice someone makes to be different may break down some of the barriers to cooperation in those areas as well.

Saperstein noted that the phenomenon of strange bedfellows began a decade ago on foreign policy. During the Clinton administration, the rock star Bono, former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and religious leaders across the political spectrum teamed up to champion debt relief for Africa. Since Bush took office, broad religious coalitions have backed U.S. peacemaking efforts in Sudan, funding to combat AIDS and pressure on countries that restrict religious freedom.
What is new, the rabbi said, is the effort to forge such coalitions on domestic issues.
"For 25 years, evangelicals involved in conservative politics and mainline denominations involved in liberal politics really have been adversaries, both in politics and in the free market of ideas, and that continues because we have very different visions of religion in American public life, and very different views of the Constitution, and very different views on some core issues," he said.
"But right now on abortion, poverty, gay issues, the environment, there's a lot of talk about crossing the lines and finding common ground. There are elements of a common vision, but not yet common policy or legislative proposals."

Star power

Obi-wan Ginobili
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

The San Antonio Spurs are currently mopping the floor with the defending champion Detroit Pistons after nearly sweeping league MVP Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns. There should be little doubt that they are the best team in basketball right now.

So why then are we still seeing stories like this one?
Star-free finals are hurting NBA

Star-free finals? How can this be? The reigning champions of 2004 are playing the champions of 2003 and they are saying there are no “stars” on either team? How does one become a star if not by leading your team to the finals year after year? Tim Duncan is obviously a superstar and now Manu Ginobili is threatening to surpass him in star quality this season.
But the real problem turns out to be merchandise sales.

...The more immediate problem is merchandise sales, which are down 42 percent for the year to date.
"They're missing their chance to highlight their most popular players," said Neil Schwartz of SportsScanInfo, which tracks sales of sporting goods at 13,000 stores nationwide...
...part of the problem is that NBA fans have not warmed to the league's current crop of foreign-born stars...

Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki has the best-selling jersey of any foreign born star, but he's No. 24 in the rankings by SportsScan.
Houston center Yao Ming might be a huge star in China, but here there are 40 jerseys more popular than Yao's.
And both Nowitzki and Yao outsell any jersey worn by a Spur or Piston...

Spurs star Manu Ginobili, who was good enough to lead Argentina past the United States for the Olympic Gold Medal in 2004, isn't even on the radar on year-to-date sales.
"Pete Maravich sells more uniforms today than Ginobili," said Schwartz.

Perhaps that will soon change after the Spurs wrap up their third championship victory, but if not it would be a sad testament to the so-called fans of basketball. Why can’t people appreciate a team that just plays well together? Just because you don’t have one guy hogging the ball so he can score 50 points every game doesn’t mean you don’t have great players on the team.

These types of complaints are similar to the ones leveled against the New York Yankees during their run of three consecutive World Series titles in 1998-2000. That was probably one of the best teams in baseball from the past 50 years but you had no one other than perhaps Derek Jeter who stood out as a superstar. And now that the Yankees have filled their team with “superstars” they are not as good, so go figure.

Political Odyssey Pt. 1

The first presidential election I can remember being aware of was the one that pitted Gerald Ford against Jimmy Carter in 1976 when I was turning 11. I urged my parents to vote for Ford that year. I don’t know who they actually voted for.
The reason I liked Ford was that I had seen him on TV that summer presiding over the Bicentennial celebrations at the nation’s capitol. At some point he urged every American to go out and ring a bell to celebrate the nation’s 200th birthday. I was so excited that I rushed around the house looking for a bell. When I couldn’t find one I settled for clinking a glass with a spoon and I went outside happily ringing my makeshift bell.
Four years later when I was a freshman in high school my government class held a mock election between the incumbent President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. I cast my “vote” for Carter. I had a thing about supporting incumbents back then, I guess. I urged my parents to vote for Carter, too. I don’t know who they voted for.
As you might surmise from this, my parents were pretty much apolitical when I was growing up. Politics was rarely discussed at home and I was not pushed to support or oppose either political party. My dad was a Vietnam veteran and both my parents worked in the oil and gas industry. But the world of politics rarely if ever invaded our little world as we moved from one small Texas town to another.

Reagan’s victory made little difference to me at first. I probably wouldn’t have thought much about it, but then came the assassination attempt the next year that riveted the entire nation’s attention. I remember being shocked that such a thing could happen in America. I anxiously read about and watched every update on the president’s condition and was impressed both with his courage and his good nature throughout the ordeal. It was hard not to like Reagan after that point and I certainly had no reason not to.
When the next election rolled around and I was finally old enough to vote I was firmly in the Reagan camp. I was a freshman in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M where maintaining traditions was all important. The bulletin board in my dorm room was neatly decorated with pictures of Reagan and bumper stickers from his re-election campaign. A good friend of mine from back home told me he was planning to vote for Walter Mondale and I thought he was crazy. I didn’t know anything about Mondale, but I knew that I did not like him because he was daring to challenge my hero - Ronald Reagan.
I never attended a College Republicans meeting but my dorm was blanketed with their literature such as the flyers that said “Walter Mondale could be your next president. If that doesn’t scare you, it should.” When I cast my first ballot, I didn’t stop with voting for Reagan, I voted straight Republican down the line - Phil Gramm for Senate, Joe Barton for Congress, etc. There was no question that I was a Republican.
But something happened during the next four years that turned all of that on its head. By the time the next election rolled around I was rabidly anti-Republican and pro-Democrat. I voted for Jesse Jackson in the primary - just to make a statement - and then volunteered to work on the local Dukakis campaign in College Station against George H.W. Bush.
So what happened? How and why did I make such a dramatic leap in just four years? I’ve often wondered about that and I will try here as best as I can to explain it. I can’t recall precisely when each of these events occurred, so I can’t draw a neat little timeline that says this lead to that, but in total these are the things that most effected the direction of my political odyssey.

When I voted for Reagan in 1984 it was because I was enamored with Reagan the man. I had given little thought to the political ideologies that lay beneath the various candidates. I wasn’t really a conservative in the political sense. I remember getting into an argument at some point with my friend Eddie over whether or not the state should provide education for the children of illegal immigrants. I decided if they weren’t legal residents then they should not get any of the benefits of our society such as a free education. But Eddie (my former high school debate partner) made a passionate case in favor of educating everyone who lives within our borders regardless of their immigration status. Not only was it best for society to not have uneducated youths running around causing mischief, but we had a moral responsibility as a society to educate all human beings in our midst. I suddenly found myself unable to argue the position I had started out with and it made me question many of my other core beliefs. What did I really believe? I had to have some core principles to stand on and I wasn’t willing to just let those be dictated to me by some political party.
At some other point, and I can’t remember exactly when, I attended a symposium at Texas A&M on the death penalty by someone from Amnesty International. Of course, I was in favor of the death penalty. Who wasn’t? It just seemed like such an obvious thing and I had never given it a second thought, so the idea that someone would try and make a case against it was intriguing to me. Once again, I found myself feeling intellectually outmatched as I listened to the speaker go through the myriad reasons why the death penalty is wrong. He didn’t even go into all of the religious arguments against capital punishment. He just went over all the data showing that executions don’t deter crime. How the punishment is applied disproportionately to the poor and to minorities. How almost every other industrialized nation had eliminated capital punishment. How many times it has been used against people who were later proven to have been innocent. I remember walking out of that symposium wondering how many other political views I held that I could not defend.
These were both key occurrences that served to shake up my not-so-set-in-stone belief system back then. But there were two other events that were even more crucial to my transformation - the Iran-Contra scandal and the JFK assassination. More on those in the next installment.

Republicans defunding PBS

GOPBS
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

My little boy is just starting to get interested in some of the childrens’ shows on PBS like Barney, so imagine my delight when I saw this story in the NYTimes today.

A House Appropriations panel on Thursday approved a spending bill that would cut the budget for public television and radio nearly in half and eliminate a $23 million federal program that has provided some money for producing children's shows that include "Sesame Street," "Clifford the Big Red Dog," "Between the Lions" and "Dragon Tales."

By a voice vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee adopted a measure that would reduce the financing of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that directs taxpayer dollars to public television and radio, to $300 million from $400 million. The subcommittee also eliminated $39 million that stations say they need to convert to digital programming and $50 million for upgrading aging satellite technology that is the backbone of the PBS network.

The Republicans obviously see this as payback for public broadcasters who they deem to be too “liberal.” Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the Bush-appointed head of CPB who has been leading a Republican takeover of PBS programming, warned stations earlier this year that if they fail to cooperate with his plans to “balance” their programming it could prompt the Republican-controlled Congress to significantly reduce financing. Now we see that threat coming to fruition.

"It is clear the G.O.P. agenda is to control public broadcasting or to defund it," said Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. "House Republicans have gutted funding for public broadcasting stations across the country."

This is utterly contemptible. It’s clear that this administration cares nothing about running up budget deficits, so the argument that they are making these draconian cuts in such a tiny budget item to save money is ludicrous. This is just them being spiteful.

Bashing Perry

Gov. Rick Perry takes a beating today in the pages of the Wall Street Journal editorial section and, coincidentally, in the San Antonio Express-News.

The WSJ features an opinion column by J.R. Labbe of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that lampoons the “Godly Governor” for trying to focus on “political accomplishments” dealing with abortion and gay marriage while downplaying what was supposed to be the No. 1 issue - school finance reform.

Such social issues are more appealing to the governor than thorny problems like this term's lack of education reform. The failure of reform might point to Gov. Perry's own failed leadership, or worse. Quality of education was never the stumbling block in Austin; it was how to pay for the learning the kids do receive, which means uttering the word that dare not cross the lips of a Texas Republican if he or she wants to get re-elected in '06: TAXES.

The WSJ also writes an editorial today (not available online) titled:

What's the Matter With Texas?
The do-nothing GOP legislature.

“What was supposed to be the most productive session of the Texas legislature in history ended last week in a legislative version of the Alamo.”

The editorial points out that Republicans control “every lever of political power in Austin for the first time since Reconstruction” and still could not get anything done.
They cast their first stone at Democratic lawmakers for blocking a school voucher plan dear to right-wingers’ hearts. But after that they grudgingly admit that the “other failings of this legislature must be laid at the feet of the Republicans.”

Of course, what the WSJ editorial writers are upset about is that the Republicans steered away from making the kinds of budget cuts that would have placed Texas on par with a Third World nation. Now they are demanding that Gov. Perry call a special session and “announce that nobody leaves until they’ve approved his call for a cut of at least 20 percent in property taxes...”

That will happen about the same time that all the WSJ editorial board members take their children out of their fancy New York private schools and enroll them in underfunded public schools in Texas.

“...If property taxes aren’t cut meaningfully right now, the Republicans might not be coming back to Austin after the next election.”

We can certainly hope so!

San Antonio's new mayor

Phil Hardberger
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Well I called it wrong way back when this city election was just getting started. I assumed as many people probably did that Julian Castro would sweep to victory in the San Antonio mayoral contest. But late last night he fell short by 3,829 votes in a squeaker of an election.
One of those votes that put Phil Hardberger over the top was mine. While I had assumed that Castro would probably win, I remained undecided up until the fiasco involving the city manager candidate from Phoenix. Castro’s lead role in derailing Sheryl Sculley's bid for the city manager job at the last moment is the point where he lost my vote. By joining in with the short-sighted mob mentality that harangued over the trivial details of Sculley’s compensation package, I lost faith in Castro as someone with a big-picture view of San Antonio.

But Castro supporters should not despair. All they need to do is wait four years and thanks to San Antonio’s idiotic term limits policy he can take the mayor’s job then. That is unless he decides to run for the congressional seat that Henry Bonilla will be vacating when he runs for the Senate seat that Kay Baily Hutchison will be giving up to challenge Rick Perry in the 2006 governor's race.

In the meantime, we have a new mayor who has the distinction of being both a long-time San Antonio political figure and an outsider to city government. I wish him well and hope that he has a relatively scandal-free term in office.

Bush administration edits climate reports

This is absolutely outrageous! I can’t believe the Bush administration is getting away with this. Unbelievable!

A former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute with “no scientific training” is given free reign to “edit” government climate reports.

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

How anyone can continue to have any faith or trust in this administration is beyond me.

Eat the Rich

This New York Times editorial is right on target about the ill effects of Bush’s tax cuts. It appears that even the modestly rich people are being screwed by this administration while the super-rich are making out like bandits.

With all of the debate about taxes, the economy and domestic spending, it is hard to imagine anyone supporting the notion of taking money from programs like Medicaid and college-tuition assistance, increasing the tax burden of the vast majority of working Americans, sending the country into crushing debt - and giving the proceeds to people who are so fantastically rich that they don't know what to do with the money they already have. Yet that is just what is happening under the Bush administration. Forget the middle class and the upper-middle class. Even the merely wealthy are being left behind in the dust by the small slice of super-rich Americans.

In last Sunday's Times, David Cay Johnston reported that from 1980 to 2002, the latest year of available data, the share of total income earned by the top 0.1 percent of earners more than doubled, while the share earned by everyone else in the top 10 percent rose far less. The share of the bottom 90 percent declined.

President Bush did not create the income gap. But the unheralded effect of his tax policy is its unequal impact on the modestly well to do. By 2015, those making between $80,000 and $400,000 will pay as much as 13.9 percentage points more of their income in federal taxes than those making more than $400,000, assuming the tax cuts are made permanent. Below $80,000, most taxpayers will see their share of taxes rise slightly or stay the same....

The divide between rich and poor is unfortunately an old story, but income-class warfare among the top 20 percent of the scale is a newer phenomenon. One cause is that the further up the scale one goes, the more of one's income comes from investments, which under the Bush tax cuts enjoy about the lowest rates in the tax code. But many families making between $100,000 and $200,000 are not exactly on easy street. They don't face choices anywhere near as stark as those encountered further down the income ladder, but they face serious tradeoffs not experienced by the uppermost crust, particularly when hit with the triple whammy of college for the children, care for aging parents and preparing for their own retirement.

There is something deeply wrong about a system that calls into question a comfortable retirement or a top-notch education for people who have broken into the top 20 percent of income earners. It starts to seem politically explosive when you consider that in a decade, those making between $100,000 and $200,000 will pay about five to nine percentage points more of their income in federal taxes than those making more than $1 million, assuming the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.

This is not about giving wealthy people more money to invest back into the economy. At this level, it's really about giving more money to those who have nothing to do with it except amass enormous estates for their heirs. Fixing the problem will require members of Congress to summon the courage to say no to a president who wants more for the richest of the rich at the expense of everyone else. We're not holding our breath.

Bunker Mulligan - R.I.P.

I just saw the sad news today about the passing of Mike Reed who ran the Corpus Christi-based blog Bunker Mulligan and who was the founder and inspiration behind Texas Bloggers, which serves as a neutral gathering area for Texas bloggers of all political stripes and persuasions.
My condolences to his friends and family.

Pining for Reagan

There was an op-ed in the HoustonChronicle Sunday which unfortunately I cannot link to but still want to comment on.
It was written by a recent high school graduate from Houston who is currently a freshman at Ohio University. It is essentially an ode to Ronald Reagan entitled “Reagan: We love the man we didn’t know; Why ex-president is an inspiration to young conservatives”.

I find the article interesting because it gives one a glimpse of the mindset of a young conservative today. The girl is obviously enamored with Reagan the same way I was when I was a freshman in college 20 years ago. The only difference is that Reagan was still president when I was in college and she wasn’t even born yet.

She begins the article by using some weak anecdotal evidence to try and establish that conservatives are slowly gaining ground on liberals, who she believes are still the dominant political force in the country. She attended a taping of CNN’s Crossfire - probably as part of a group of College Republicans - and notes that when asked who was their favorite president the audience cheered most loudly for Reagan. She also describes how Bush-Cheney campaign posters adorn “several bedroom doors” at her sorority house and how “one room was nearly wallpapered with them.”

Then she makes the following observation:
“When our parents were in college, students wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Today, you won’t see many armbands, but you will see plenty of cars and backpacks adorned with yellow ribbons - a symbol of support for the troops.”

The only reason we aren’t seeing daily mass protests against the war is because we have an all-volunteer military doing the fighting. If we still had a draft that was forcibly sending young people from all walks of life to face the roadside bombings and snipers in Iraq you would see more than just black arm bands at this point.
But aside from that, one should not assume that yellow ribbon stickers equal unqualified support for Bush’s war. I have a yellow ribbon sticker on my truck (next to my Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker) because I too support the troops. But my idea of supporting the troops is to bring them home as soon as possible, not leave them hanging out to dry in some never-ending quagmire.

Next, she tries to explain why there has been this “generational turn to the right” by linking it to 9-11.
”In a post-9/11 nation, 1960s feel-good liberalism is no longer practical. As young people, my generation witnessed the most devastating attack ever to occur on American soil. It traumatized us. The peacnik vision of ‘Give Peace a Chance’ and disarming the enemy with love and kindness is a nice dream, but most of us reject it as not only foolish, but potentially deadly. We can’t deny the very real threat of terrorism.”

Wow. I guess I missed that plank in the Democratic Party platform about disarming the terrorists with love and kindness. I wonder too, what she would think if liberals had actually been in charge of things when 9/11 happened, instead of a Republican Congress and a Republican president who had repeatedly ignored the warnings of the top terrorism expert in the government.
But even though the Democrats in the last election nominated a Vietnam era war hero to go up against a guy who went AWOL from the National Guard, they are still viewed by young conservatives as the party of Flower Power Hippies handing out beads and chanting anti-war slogans at every opportunity.

Then we get into the favorite meme of today’s young conservatives - the everybody’s out to get us victimization syndrome. Conservatives were becoming dominant on college campuses back when I was in school. Republicans have controlled the White House for 24 of the last 36 years and currently control both Houses of Congress and have appointed 7 of the 9 justices on the Supreme Court. And yet we get treated to the argument in this essay that young conservatives are under attack and are having to buck the system in order to get their views heard:

”It’s no secret that liberal thought dominates almost every aspect of the university - from the administration to the student newspapers. Like the campus leftists of the previous generation, conservative students are eager to ‘Question Authority.’ We argue with professors, write passionate letters to the local papers and join the College Republicans to meet other like-minded students. Our lack of representation fuels the fire. Talk to any conservative student and you’ll find that we often view ourselves as an oppressed minority constantly fighting to make our voices heard.”

Lack of representation?? An oppressed minority fighting to make our voices heard??? What planet is this girl living on?!?
It absolutely amazes me that in spite of controlling every aspect of our government for the past five years, Republicans can still persuade their impressionable youth that they are an oppressed minority fighting against a liberal establishment. What will it take for them to finally admit that they are in power and to start taking responsibility rather than blaming it all on “liberals” or whatever the current bogeyman of the day is?

Capping off her essay, the young conservative explains why her generation would rather embrace the late-Ronald Reagan than current President George W. Bush.

”Unlike George W. Bush - criticized even by conservatives for being too divisive - Reagan was the Great Communicator, speaking of America as the ‘shining city upon a hill’ and restoring hope to an entire nation. He led us out of the darkness of the late 1970s and into a decade of peace and prosperity...”

In Bush’s defense, Reagan was considered divisive during his tenure too. The difference perhaps is that Reagan actually had to work with a Democratic Congress to get things done, something that Bush has not been constrained to do. So Reagan came across as more amicable in some areas where Bush has been seen as very one-sided and partisan. But there was also a dark side to the Reagan administration that this young conservative has probably never been exposed to - such as the way they opted to use illegal channels to pursue their foreign policy goals when they could not get what they wanted through the Congress. With Iran-Contra, Reagan authorized the sale of weapons to the Ayatollahs in Iran and then funneled the profits down to Nicaragua to finance the anti-government insurgency there. When Reagan went on national television shortly after the scandal was exposed and lied about it I began to lose my faith in his presidency.
As for prosperity during the Reagan years, that was mostly financed with massive deficit spending on military programs that led to a tripling of the national debt. It was the next decade - the 1990s - where the country actually experienced what I would call ‘peace and prosperity’ under a Democratic president who balanced the budget for the first time in years and helped guide the country during an unprecedented boom time that far exceeded what we saw during the Reagan years. But that all came to an end when Bush the Younger came to power. Since then we have been mired in a never-ending economic stagnation, record deficits and a war in Iraq that was launched under false pretenses and now threatens to bog us down for years to come both militarily and financially.

It’s no wonder young conservatives today would rather pine for Ronald Reagan than laud George W. Bush.

The thorns in Bush's rosy scenario

Good analysis today in the Washington Post that cuts through all the rosy scenario nonsense coming from the Bush administration and gives us the cold hard truth about the situation in Iraq.

While Bush and Vice President Cheney offer optimistic assessments of the situation, a fresh wave of car bombings and other attacks killed 80 U.S. soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis last month alone and prompted Iraqi leaders to appeal to the administration for greater help. Privately, some administration officials have concluded the violence will not subside through this year.

I like how no one in the adminstration will level with us on the record, but privately, and off the record, they are letting us know that Bush is full of it.

The disconnect between Rose Garden optimism and Baghdad pessimism, according to government officials and independent analysts, stems not only from Bush's focus on tentative signs of long-term progress but also from the shrinking range of policy options available to him if he is wrong. Having set out on a course of trying to stand up a new constitutional, elected government with the security firepower to defend itself, Bush finds himself locked into a strategy that, even if it proves successful, foreshadows many more deadly months to come first, analysts said.

Watch out! Here comes some more off the record revelations...

Military commanders in Iraq privately told a visiting congressional delegation last week that the United States is at least two years away from adequately training a viable Iraqi military but that it is no longer reasonable to consider augmenting U.S. troops already strained by the two-year operation, said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). "The idea that the insurgents are on the run and we are about to turn the corner, I did not hear that from anybody," Biden said in an interview.

But,wait! That's according to Sen. Biden, a Democrat. Why should we believe him? Well, there is also the Republican Congressman saying the same thing...

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who joined Biden for part of the trip, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others are misleading Americans about the number of functional Iraqi troops and warned the president to pay more attention to shutting off Syrian and Iranian assistance to the insurgency. "We don't want to raise the expectations of the American people prematurely," he said.

So Rumsfeld and others are "misleading Americans" about the number of Iraqi troops. That's a pretty serious charge and its coming from a Republican.
And here is another Republican with not much good to say when asked to comment on Bush and Cheney's neverending stream of rosy updates...

"I cannot say with any confidence that that is accurate," said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), a member of the House International Relations Committee. "I think it's impossible to know how close we are to the insurgency being overcome."

Our military is already strained to the limits and it may take another two years to get things to a point where we can pull out without the Iraqi government collapsing like a house of cards.
If this is not a quagmire, then I don't know what the term could possibly mean.

GOP embraces “terrorist”

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. That’s one of the problems with Bush’s “War on Terror,” deciding what terrorism is. The Bush State Department has determined that Yasith Chhun and his group the Cambodian Freedom Fighters is a terrorist organization. In 2000, Chhun took part in an attack on several government buildings in Phnom Penh that injured at least eight government officials. He was recently indicted on federal charges of plotting to overthrow the Cambodian government.

But none of this has dissuaded the National Republican Congressional Committee from embracing Chhun who has raised $6,550 for the GOP and sits on the group’s Business Advisory Council. Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher dismisses the State Department’s concerns about Chhun and applauds his efforts to topple the current government in Cambodia.

Gee. I wonder what would happen if the Democratic National Committee invited a known terrorist to sit on its Business Advisory Council?

Harmful Books

Note: I am supposed to be guest blogging this week over at The View From The Nest. Unfortunately, after logging in as a guest I've run into some kind of technical hangup where I cannot enter text into the introduction box or main body box in order to compile a post at the site. All I can do is enter text into the headline field which is kind of useless if that's all you can do. I've tried switching browsers from Safari to Internet Explorer with no luck. Could it be a Mac thing? If so, I'll have to wait until later this evening when I can access a PC.
In the meantime, posted below is what would have been my first post at the Nest.


Hello, I’m Mike Thomas and I run the San Antonio-based blog Rhetoric & Rhythm. I’ll be your token liberal guest blogger while Ranten N. Raven is on his sabattical. I want to express my appreciation to Mr. Raven for inviting me to participate in this endeavor along with Bill Crawford of All Things Conservative and Christina of Feisty Repartee.

I thought I would kick things off by calling attention to the list of the Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries as determined by a special panel of so called experts put together by the far right-wing magazine Human Events.

Their list starts off predictably enough with the right-wing’s No. 1 boogeyman Karl Marx and his notorious “Communist Manifesto.” I imagine that old Karl must haunt most right-wingers’ dreams like Freddie Krueger. Then we have Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” which would probably make any group’s list regardless of political persuasion, followed by “Quotations from Chairman Mao.”

After that, however, things start to get a little weird. No. 4 on the list is Alfred Kinsey’s Report on Sexual Behavior exposing this group’s obsessive fear of anything dealing with sex. Then we have “Democracy and Education” by the liberal educator and philosopher John Dewey, which they blame for all of our problems with public schools.

Karl Marx is back again at No. 6 with “Das Kapital,” which very few, if any, right-wingers have actually read. But, hey, it’s by Marx so it must be pretty scary!
Betty Friedan’s classic tome “The Feminine Mystique” is bashed for giving women the idea that they could occassionaly come out of the kitchen and put shoes on.

Capping off the Top 10 is “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” by John Maynard Keynes, the New Deal era economist whose policies helped bring the country out of the Depression and built up a solid Middle Class that still anchors our society to this day. But the Human Events panel blames Keynes for the nation’s multi-trillion dollar debt, conveniently ignoring the fact that most of that debt was added during the reign of very anti-Keynesian presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

This list of books that were given honorable mentions is also a hoot including:

“On Liberty” by John Stuart Mill; “Origin of the Species” by Charles Darwin; “Unsafe at Any Speed” by Ralph Nader;  ”Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson; 
“Introduction to Psychoanalysis” by Sigmund Freud; and “The Greening of America” by Charles Reich.

I just have to say that this list tells us more about the people that compiled it than anything else. It’s kind of sad really that they would feel threatened by so many books that essentially helped to stretch the bounds of liberty that had constrained so many people both culturally and intellectually throughout human history.

Mark Felt: American Hero

Mark Felt
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

“Follow the money”

So Deep Throat turns out to have been the associate director at the FBI.
It all makes sense now, I suppose. J. Edgar Hoover had his thumb over every U.S. president going back to Calvin Coolidge. But when he died in 1972 Nixon probably thought he was home free and able to do anything he wanted. But then the No. 2 guy at the Bureau, a career G-Man and Hoover protege, steps up and takes him down.
And what is really amazing is that he didn’t do it for money, or fame, or anything else other than that he believed it was the right thing to do for his country.
I’m glad his family pushed him to reveal his secret before he died so that we can salute him before he goes.

Arthur Andersen is dead

Dead as a doornail, as Scrooge might say. And unlike Old Marley in Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, it’s not about to come back and start spooking us in the middle of the night. That there was criminal behavior on the part of some Arthur Andersen executives is undeniable. What they did was show blatant disregard for the law in the midst of one of the worst corporate scandals in our nation’s history. The company paid the ultimate price as a result and there is no turning the clock back now.

But did everyone in the whole company deserve to lose their jobs as a result? Certainly not. All the people who worked on the top floor of my building here in San Antonio lost their jobs as a result of the scandal. It didn’t really matter whether criminal charges were ultimately upheld or overturned.
Since the Supreme Court decision was unanimous I would imagine there is not much room for arguing it. They say the jury instructions were flawed so I guess they were. But that doesn’t mean that the former Arthur Andersen executives are vindicated. Rather it is just one more glaring exampe of the gross incompetence of the Bush administration - in this case, the Bush Justice Department.