Mooninites Revenge!

This applies only to fans of Adult Swim:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html

 

Truly gives meaning to the phrase, “You can’t buy that kind of press.” Please note that Boston PD shut down two bridges, all traffic on the Charles, and blew up one of the “devices” before realizing their mistake.

 

I have one thing to say about that:

 

Update on the Valerie Plame Affair

All the hype this week regarding the coming out parties of Mr Richardson, Mr Obama, and Ms Clinton, followed shortly by the State of the Union, has overshadowed a case of some import: the trial of “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former Chief of Staff who faces perjury and obstruction charges. Remember that guy? Luckily, the BBC does.

 

Highlights:

 

1. The defense team’s opening remarks are nothing short of stunning. Counsel Theodore Wells “said that Bush administration officials blamed Mr Libby for the leak to protect President Bush’s top political adviser Karl Rove because of his own disclosures… Mr Libby, who was asked to refute [former ambassador] Joseph Wilson’s criticisms [of Mr Bush’s erroneous claims regarding Iraq’s attempts to buy uranium from Niger], felt betrayed and went to the vice president with his concerns of becoming ‘a sacrificial lamb’, the defense said. After hearing Mr Libby’s concerns, Mr Cheney wrote a note saying that one staffer should not be sacrificed for another, Mr Wells said.”

 

Now that IS interesting. So much for the theories that (a) Mr Libby was taking one for the team; (b) that Mr Rove was innocent!

 

2. Apparently jury selection was gruesome for two reasons: First, “because so many candidates were critical of the White House team, especially Mr Cheney, who is expected to be a major witness.” No surprise here; Mr Cheney consistently polls even lower than Mr Bush—a not too shabby feat. Second, even though “blacks outnumber whites by more than 2-to-1” in the DC area, the jury consists of 10 whites and 2 blacks. Impressive vetting on the part of the defense, I must say.

 

Ugh.

 

-W.

Disturbing Polls

The World Service survey recently did a study of 25 nations—including the US—asking general and specific questions about the role of the US in the international community. These ranged from whether the respondents agreed with our position on global warming to generally whether they thought we provided a positive influence on the world. Now before the liberal amongst you respond with cynicism (“Of course they think we suck—we do!”) and the conservative amongst you respond with spite (“Of course they think we suck—it’s always in vogue to resent your benefactors!”), you should read the BBC write-up of the study. It is beyond disturbing.

 

To give you a tidbit: two years ago the percentage of individuals who responded that the US has a positive impact on the world was 40%. It is down to 29%. If that doesn’t scare you, let’s try domestic opinion. “But among Americans, the number of those who viewed thir country’s role positively fell to 57%--six percentage points down from last year and 14 percentage points down from two years ago.” You know things are bad when even our nationalistic pride is hurting in the polls.

 

Read the write-up for yourselves: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6286755.stm.

 

-W.

 

Proud to be un-American

Two issues made headlines today which merit comment. At present I can only provide a primer. Suffice it to say that—in spite of widespread naïveté and euphoria over the new Congress—the retardation of our government grows daily.

 

First, there is the recent about-face of the Justice Department and the administration regarding the FISA court and domestic spying. Justice (et al) announced that the administration will no longer green-light the program, but they insist that this has nothing to do with the new Congress nor with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' impending interrogation by new Senate Judicial Committee Chairman, Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The claim at present is that the FISA Court changed the rules for applications, making it easier for Justice to submit and thereby allowing them to do their jobs as they choose. (Justice will not reveal what changes occurred to provide for the reversal in policy, as this is "classified.") Further, Press Secretary Tony Snow bristled when the press corps asked if the administration was trying to preempt Congressional oversight; he turned it around on the reporter, saying that the latter was "accusing" the Court of acting politically to "bail out the Bush administration—I don't think so."

 

Here's the catch: if all this is true, then why didn't the GOP approve the repeated attempts by Arlen Specter (D-PA; I count 6 bills in the 109th Congress sponsored by him) to provide appropriations to "meet the increased personnel demands to process applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" and to "improve and strengthen [use of funds] ...in the implementation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as well as increase the efficiency of the application process." In other words, if the issue was primarily the amount of time and manpower required to file applications (which is exactly what Mr Gonzales claimed when testifying before Congress, and constitutes a paraphrase of the administration's excuse), and if the FISA Court has eased these restrictions, then why did the administration, Justice, GOP, etc. oppose such moves in the past? Indeed, aside from Specter's own sponsorship, I count 11 such attempts by the 109th and 108th which did not make it to a floor vote.

 

(For those who think my assumption regarding the content of the Court’s supposed changes in policy is too speculative, I’m simply following the administration’s logic. That is, this is the stated reason why they ignored the FISA Court in the past. Yet they did not pursue the GOP-controlled Senate’s repeated attempts to do this very thing, which would have precluded the need for and possibility of the Court changing its own rules—it is controlled by Congress. Therefore, either they are lying now or they were lying then: the change in policy cannot have anything to do with the Court’s guidelines, as previous attempts to change them were insufficient for the administration. But, then, why did they do it at all? This is Neoconservatism 101: the entire movement has been all about increasing the Executive Branch’s authority, at the expense of the other Branch’s oversight capacities, since its inception. Thus, when faced with the likelihood of being neutered by the Legislative, the Executive simply alters policy—thereby disallowing the precedent which would be set. This is not uncommon: witness Jose Padilla. When faced with a battle against the Supreme Court (which it was almost guaranteed to lose) regarding the three-year detention—without charge, without evidence, and for most of the time without counsel and held in solitary confinement—of an American citizen, the administration suddenly turned Mr Padilla over to a criminal court. I.e., when the Supreme Court decided to hear the case, it signaled that the Executive might not be able to do whatever the hell it wanted with both American and foreign “enemy combatants.” Instead of allowing the Court such oversight—and by way of avoiding an embarrassing legal battle: no one knows Padilla’s name right now, but imagine if the evening news covered the illegal three year detainment of an American citizen—the administration simply side-stepped the issue.)

 

Second, the BBC reported today that the Pentagon drafted a new manual pertaining to detainee military tribunals allowed by the Congressional bill at the end of last year. Specifically, the BBC states, "The new rules would allow terror suspects to be imprisoned on the basis of hearsay or coerced testimony - if a judge ruled the evidence credible." Best of all, the Pentagon refers to the trials as "fair and just."

 

(To my utter dismay, I had to go to the BBC for this. It was on their front page. I couldn't find it at all on CNN, and FOX's version was truncated beyond recognition; none of the above information was provided in their reporting.)

 

Yet another day goes by which makes me proud to be an American. (Ironic that “an American” and “un-American” are homophonic expressions…)

 

-W.

 

Another feather for Jon Stewart's cap

Now that I have thoroughly lambasted TIME, allow me a tidbit of good news from that often moldy and bankrupt institution.

 

On its website, TIME has recently set up a 2008 election tracker called “The Racing Form” (http://www.time.com/time/2007/nation/democrats/ or http://www.time.com/time/2007/nation/republicans/, depending on your [sexual] preference). The page, TIME’s self-proclaimed “new data-driven guide to sizing up the candidates,” opens to reveal a table: the left column lists potential candidates, the top row lists 11 statistics and facts like “Current Polling Numbers,” “Total Cash on Hand,” and “Visits to Iowa since Nov. 2004.”

 

Among these important considerations—for both democrats and republicans—is “Number of Daily Show Appearances.”

 

Bravo, Stewart (et al)! Although it shames me that our country needs a satirist to fight the good fight, I can sleep at night knowing that at least somebody is.

 

-W.

 

As for Iraq's woes, is this news?

Sometimes it irks me how there seem to be simple explanations and solutions for problems to which the federal government seems despairingly to throw up its hands in the air. Sometimes it infuriates me when the media follows suit.

 

On December 12, during his final interview before passing the torch, Lt. General Peter Chiarelli—ground commander of U.S. forces in Iraq this past year—explained why he proposed increasing the “emphasis on jobs and reconstruction,” rather than the administration’s plan for escalating troop levels. “If I could drive down unemployment in this country just to something that was reasonable, or if other people could help me drive unemployment down here, I promise you, our casualty figures would not be as high. Nor would the level of violence be as high as it is today” (TIME, “Would a Troop Surge in Iraq Work?.” December 20, 2006).

 

Mark Kukis, the TIME writer from whom this quote is pilfered, immediately follows this with an anecdote regarding the kidnapping of some 70 people in Sanak two days later. “No employment program can stop what happened that day in Sanak,” Mr Kukis writes. He then moves on to describe success stories, wherein the American military—through the use of massive checkpoints and constant patrols—temporarily reduced the number of sectarian murders in small areas.

 

It seems to me that Mr Kukis is as lacking in foresight as the military and civilian leadership which he covers. Of course, he is correct in a quite literal sense on both counts. In the former case, if we wish to view the incident as an isolated, atomic event, new policies encouraging entrepreneurial investment would probably not have an immediate effect. In the latter case, effectively reducing all travel and commerce to a halt through the implementation of a DMZ blockade will probably reduce the opportunity to kill people—along with the opportunity to do anything else, period. To speak in this manner about troop levels and policy is to repeat the same impressive foresight illustrated by such hallowed titans of prescience as Paul Bremer (who disbanded the Iraqi army) or Paul Wolfowitz (who testified before Congress that Iraq had no history of ethnic strife). It flies in the face of expert, learned opinions concerning the region and its woes. (Similar to the apparently liberal-conjured fear-mongering experts who decried drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge for unproven and, according to estimates, relatively small oil reserves. The GOP claims that this would improve our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, even though once green-lighted the crude would take incredible amounts of cash as well as ten full years to reach American pumps. Meanwhile, the long-term effects to worldwide biodiversity would be irreversible and devastating.)

 

Incidentally, although Mr Kukis’ article begins with a question, it does not make any attempt to answer the question—or even to present anything beyond tautologies (e.g., “American troops exercise a broad measure of authority on the streets of Baghdad they claim”) and a “damned if you do…” (e.g., “It’s a dilemma… much of the fighting in Ramadi and other places continues because of the American presence, not in spite of it.”). General Chiarelli’s plea receives no further attention in the article, as if its sole value lies in grabbing the reader’s attention with a ridiculous or humorous introduction.

 

I’m not against the troop increase. Indeed, I’m still among the ever-decreasing weirdoes who believes that we should not pull out of Iraq—a group that reduces to a dozen-or-so retarded persons when you remember that I tend to caucus with liberal-types. That is not the point; I’d be happy to agree or disagree with a considered response to the question of troop surges. Yet this type of reporting—which gives the less than careful reader the illusion of information, while merely reinforcing her own preconceptions as to what is wrong with Iraq—fuels the same ignorant-yet-passionate mobs which have been at each other’s throats since the beginning of this debacle.

 

I used to think that the answer to all life’s problems was to require logic courses in all schools from day one. Unfortunately, this is the same elitist position which leads such august publications as TIME to preclude worthwhile work while replacing it with tripe such as this—alongside “Time’s Person of the Year: You.” If I’ve learned anything from teaching, it is that your students will always meet your expectations, however high or low they may be. Maybe if the big guys like TIME respected their readers by giving them real information (and, in the process, performing their duties as the Fourth Estate), we could expect more from Congress (and, in the process, discharge our duties as citizens of a democracy). Wouldn’t it be nice to see those on the Hill driven not just by their sense of political survival, but also by considered principle? Can’t these two align?

 

Or am I really just retarded?

 

-W.