Best of the Fray

2010-03-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

Yet another relocation, only this one final, at Best of the Fray.

Update

2008-05-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

Updated to new blogger template. Added to sidebar: Blogroll of where everyone is today as well as updated link to New Fray Best of the Fray. How far we've come.

WikiFray

2007-02-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

We've moved to WikiFray.

Why I like dailykos

2006-10-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

By: Gregor_Samsa
filed under: BotF | Daily Kos

Feyerabend said it best in "Against Method". Every single proposition unto itself is an orphan. Without the supporting legs provided by an entire paradigm, it's a sitting duck, a dead parrot (…and I await a knock on the door from the metaphor cops). Ptolemians had a field day poking holes in Galileo (not the kind of holes imparted by the Catholic Church) in the days before Newtonian mechanics. Jesus was not the first messiah, nor the last, and where would we be without the apostles? The point is, no great advance in human thought has ever been achieved without utilizing the synergies between like minds. The trouble with the fray ("The tower of Babble on" – Ducadmo, circa 2006) is its narcissistic nihilism (note: nihilistic narcissism works as well). No sooner has one posted a "work in progress" (e.g. a 9/11 conspiracy theory) than a flock of vultures descend from all sides and tear it from limb to limb (a shredded cockatoo, a mutilated humming bird...). What I like about dailykos is that they care about letting their ideas breathe, about nurturing them to maturity. They embrace the burden of looking witless, reactionary and unfashionable today, but they aspire for a deeper understanding tomorrow. They are progressives, but not in the sense you think. You people, entombed in your snark and self-congratulation, will never understand this. If dailykos is an echo chamber, at least there is light at the end of that tunnel (and don't give me that cliché about an approaching train). Do you know why you prefer diversity? For the same reason the lion prefers a teeming rain forest (I'll have to check on that).

Maybe dkos will be washed away by the tides of cyber history. But if anyone has a chance of leaving a mark, it's them. The only contribution you are capable of is canned laughter for sitcoms.

Out to Lunch

2006-08-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

Back in ...

Suck On This

2006-08-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

By: The_Bell
filed under: BotF | Terrorism

After British authorities exposed a plot last week by terrorists to bomb trans-Atlantic flights using liquid explosives smuggled aboard by multiple individuals in the form of everyday household products, both U.S. and British officials have added liquids and gels to the list of prohibited airplane carry-on items. This includes such substances as shampoo, toothpaste, hair gel, makeup, perfume and suntan lotion. Baby formula and medicines are exempt but only in limited quantities and subject to additional screening.

Take it far enough and the liquid-less air cabin could force a change to the attendant's friendly question of "coffee, tea, juice, or soda?" to something along the lines of "coffee grounds, tea bag, fruit, or sugar with caffeine?" One would have to take these offerings, along with the obligatory pack of dry roasted peanuts, and suck on them during the flight. Then again, this raises new problems. Is saliva a banned or permitted liquid?

As far as that goes, the human body is about seventy percent water. We are huge walking bags of liquids and fatty gels surrounded by a thin layer of meat. First terrorists turned airplanes into bombs, then they tried to turn shoes into bombs, and now we have caught them trying to turn liquids and gels into bombs. They have already shown their willingness to die in these attacks. Is it really so far-fetched to believe they would turn their very bodies into bombs if such a feat were technically possible/practicable?

Nobody doubts the threat from extremist Islamic terrorism is still real nearly five years after the September 11 attacks or that airport/airplane security is still necessary. Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups can be counted upon to continue their jihad of violence against the West until the bitter end. Yet why do these groups continue finding ready converts who will die in order to kill Americans?

The promise of a hero's reward in the afterlife? Maybe that is some of it but we cannot avoid the fact that our foreign policy and propaganda have done little to convince the bulk of the Muslim world that our objective truly is fighting global terrorism. Instead, too many still see it as a global attack against Islam by the West. In Afghanistan the Taliban is enjoying an unprecedented (military) resurgence. Iraq has become a killing fields for Muslims of all stripes against both Westerners and each other. Gaza and the West Bank are increasingly walled off/fenced off blockade zones. And Lebanon has been plunged back into devastating war just when it was shaking off the yoke of its longtime occupation by Syria.

None of these situations are (entirely) the fault of the United States. Yet in our preference for unilateralism in our own foreign policy and our biased support of Israel, we have done little to create a perception of trustworthiness in the Arab/Islamic World.

Newsweek reports that last weekend, London's Heathrow Airport was also forbidding all books and newspapers as carryon items. While passports and other travel documents were exceptions, Bibles were not. The magazine describes one episode in which an elderly woman traveler, near tears, is forced to give up her "rather snazzy, leather-bound Bible with gold-leaf pages and the title Good News that she was clutching for dear life."

It struck me how ultra-conservatives, who often favor extraordinary measures by government in the war on terror while simultaneously disparaging government restrictions of Christian expression, would view this. If terrorists did somehow gain control of that airplane and destroy it, that elderly woman would die bereft of her greatest means of comfort. When security measures become so severe and restrictive that Bibles are verboten, it must seem to them as if the terrorists have already won a subtle yet demoralizing victory.

That is how an awful lot of us less-than-ultra-conservatives feel about the loss of liberties experienced in the name of fighting terrorism by the U.S. government. An awful lot of hardship is being endured by an awful lot of people without an awful lot of real progress to show for it. I am reminded of the story of Jesus and the woman by the well in the Gospel According to John.

Jesus answered and said unto her, "Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. The water that I shall give him shall be a well of water springing up into everlasting life."
Let us just hope Jesus never tries hawking his Water of Life on a plane traveling between Great Britain and the U.S. You can get sent to Gitmo for that. He, like the rest of us, will have to make due with his own spit and suck on it.

Cuba

2006-08-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

By: daveto
filed under: BotF | Cuba | Castro

I wanted to see it before Castro died. And I wanted to see it as a Cuban (or as close to that as I could manage), hence the stay in Havana.

I probably asked a dozen or so Cubans what they thought would happen after Castro died. Early responses tended towards "carry on", with brother Raul likely doing the carrying on. Many would expand on this, with the general theme that things were getting better (economically; bottomed out after the break-up of the USSR), and that they really like what they've got: free education, free medical, minimal crime, and a standard of living perceived as better than most of their neighbours', etc.

Towards the end of my stay I was getting more interesting and varied responses, and mostly on the negative. Some didn't hesitate to disrespect and mock Castro (especially after a few drinks), some echoed the acid words of his ex-wife(?) that he'd turned Cuba into an island jail. Many, you could tell, hoped (desperately!) for a thaw with the US and an opening (re-opening) of Cuba to Americans. This though they likely knew (through mainly painful experience of several previous generations of Cubanos) the downside of being an American playpen. But money talks.

As an aside, Cuba's still pretty much shuttered. TV channels are state-owned and educational or propagandist, immigration (new blood) is about zero, so, outside of tourists, you've got conraband Internet and contraband satellite tv as peepholes on the outside world.

Anyway, at some point I realized it wasn't a coincidence that the answers changed (towards the negative towards Castro) as I became less of a tourist. Early on I was getting the 'pat' response. I could have been a spy(!) .. bottom line, opening up to a complete stranger wasn't worth the risk. But walk the walk, even for a tiny bit, and you get some acceptance. That was my feeling.

Finally, America will be disaster for historic Cuba. And for Castro's Cubans, who (Habanos, at least) have a fierce pride and live a lyrical if somewhat sparse and uncomplicated life.

[Deleted]

2006-07-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

Good Veins

2006-07-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

By: The_Bell
filed under: BotF | Capital Punishment | Death Penalty | Rocky Barton

Rocky Barton was put to death yesterday morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility by means of lethal injection. Prison officials used a new technique, designed to help prevent vein collapse and ensure a quicker, less painful, and more humane death. For his part, Barton was never worried. "I got good veins," he had reassured anyone who would listen to him.

Barton was the twenty-second inmate executed since the state of Ohio resumed use of the death penalty in 1999. A review of his convoluted case may help illustrate why capital punishment remains such a murky and controversial topic.

Barton died for the aggravated murder of his fourth wife, Kimbirli Jo. Barton had a long record of domestic violence. He served eight years in Kentucky on an attempted murder charge for beating and stabbing his second wife. He was paroled but returned to prison for another year after his third wife accused him of threatening and assaulting her while she was trying to divorce him.

Barton had known Kimbirli since high school. They married while he was still in prison. Within months of his release, Barton was arrested in 2002 for threatening his new wife and pushing her around. She refused to file charges at the time. Four months later, in January 2003, she had decided enough was enough and announced she was leaving him.

Barton went into a rage. He made numerous threatening calls to his wife over the next several hours while she was at work. However, she eventually become convinced it was safe to return to their home to pick up some of her things.

When Kimbirli returned to the house with her youngest daughter, Barton went into the garage and emerged with a shotgun. He fired at Kimbirli from four to six feet away, hitting her in the shoulder. She tried to crawl toward her daughter but he then came closer and shot her again in the back from one to two feet away. Barton then knelt down, put the shotgun under his chin, and fired again, inflicting a serious, disfiguring but non-fatal wound on himself.

Barton's charge carried a death penalty specification because he had previously been convicted of attempted murder. After a jury found him guilty of both the murder charge and death penalty specification, Barton refused to allow his attorneys to present mitigating evidence during the penalty phase and made an unsworn statement to the jury asking that he be given the death penalty.

"My attorneys advised me to beg for my life," Barton said then. "I can't do that. I strongly believe in the death penalty. And for the ruthless, cold-blooded act that I committed, if I was sitting over there, I'd hold out for the death penalty."

The jury subsequently recommended a sentence of death and the judge so ordered it.

Then, in May 2005, a prison psychiatrist diagnosed Barton as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and severe depression. He received medication and treatment for these conditions. In September 2005, he requested his attorney to appeal his conviction to the Ohio State Supreme Court. He had experienced a change of mind, his attorney explained. He was "think[ing] clearer than he ever has" and "he wants to live."

The Ohio Supreme Court was inclined to hear the appeal. Justice Paul Pfeifer asked the Warren County Prosecutor if she was asking the "legal system to aid an assisted suicide. That's the feel I'm getting from this case."

In 1999, the Court had declared in State v. Ashworth, that when the defendant waives all mitigating evidence in a capital case, the trial court must engage in a dialogue with the defendant to be sure that he is making that waiver knowingly and voluntarily.

But in the case of Barton, the Court ruled by a 5-2 majority that this standard did not apply because the defendant had not waived mitigating evidence in the guilt phase of his trial and had addressed the jury during the penalty phase. Dissenters seriously questioned that statement's validity as mitigation and held that "a competency hearing should be required any time a capital defendant waives his or her right to present mitigation during the penalty phase." The decision was issued in April 2006.

On June 6, 2006, Barton's attorney again petitioned the Ohio Supreme Court, this time for a hearing to determine Barton's competency. He again cited a prison evaluation, which said that Barton was suffering from depression, hallucinations and delusional thinking.

But Barton had undergone another change of mind. He had refused to speak with anyone from the Parole Board in May. At his clemency hearing, on June 16, he sent the Board a letter stating he was not seeking clemency and did not wish to delay his fate any further. At that same hearing, both of Kimbirli Barton's daughters expressed their desire to see their mother's killer die. The prosecutor called Kimbirli's death a "planned and calculated crime," and said Barton was "a dangerous, dangerous man who has an extreme, deep-seated hatred of women. He planned for a long time that he was going to kill her."

On June 23, the Ohio Supreme Court, by a 6-1 majority, ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Barton by a Warren County judge because Barton had waived his right to appeal the death sentence. The court did not order Barton's execution delayed, calling instead for a prompt hearing.

Three days later, on June 26, the Ohio Parole Board unanimously recommended Governor Bob Taft should not grant him Barton clemency, calling him a "repeat violent offender of serious magnitude."

A few days later, Barton made a surprise announcement from his prison cell that, although he still wanted to die for it, shooting his wife had been "a spur-of-the-moment thing" and that he had planned to kill only himself. "It was an act of anger," Barton said. "Evidently it was not too thought out, or I wouldn't be where I am today."

On July1, he gave a one-on-one interview with a representative for Ohio reporters in which he repeated that claim. "Just killing Kim. That just come by the spur of the moment. That was not planned, calculated, designed. I planned on killing myself in front of her. When I come out of the garage, there she was, I pointed the gun at her and I shot. I don't know why I did. Can't tell you what was going through my mind at the time."

Barton revealed he had gone to great length to avoid showing any remorse at his trail, in order to ensure he received the death penalty. "If I showed any remorse at the trial . . . If I'd a cried at that trial and showed remorse, I wouldn't have gotten the death penalty. I wanted the death penalty. I wanted to die ever since I killed Kim."

Barton also exhibited an almost mocking dislike for the prosecutor in his case. "She's taking credit for sending me to death row. I sent myself to death row and now she's taken credit for the quick time between the crime and execution. I'm the one that dropped my appeals. That woman ain't done nothing but run her mouth."

Two days later, on July 3, he told the Warren County Judge at his competency hearing that he had "faked it" when he told prison doctors last year he was seeing things and hearing voices. He claimed he had done so in a failed attempt to be moved to a psychological prison unit nearer to his family so they could visit him more.

On July 5, the Judge declined a psychiatric evaluation to determine Barton's competency. "He gave a consistent understanding of the proximity and finality of his death," the Judge wrote. "He consistently gave an explanation as to why his execution made sense to him. This included his own feelings of guilt and remorse as well as the desire to bring finality and closure to his victim's family as well as his own."

Then, on July10, Governor Bob Taft removed the final roadblock for Barton by refusing to halt his execution. In a short statement, Taft simply stated, "I can find no compelling reason to grant clemency" and concluded by saying, "May God bless the family and friends of Kimbirli Barton."

In his final statement yesterday, Barton turned to Kimbirli's son and two daughters and said: "I'm sorry for what I done, sorry for killing your momma and for what I done to you."

The execution seemed to bring out a bizarre array of emotions among family members. Kimbirli's son held no compassion for Barton. "I hope [Barton] rots in hell, that's for sure," he said. "He's going straight to hell. If he's not, then I don't want to go to heaven."

Yet Kimbirli's two daughters, who had begged for Barton's death at his parole hearing, were more circumspect. "This is closure for our family, and I will also mourn the loss of Rocky Barton," one of them said. "He was a member of our family. It's not like we're celebrating a death here today." They also stated they believed Barton's apology was sincere. "I'm sure he meant those things – he did love us."

Barton's own relatives said they accepted his decision to die. But his father read a prepared statement in which he likened his son's death to assisted suicide and chastised prosecutors for being "cruel and boastful."

The chief prosecutor seemed almost to agree with the suicide angle, without actually using that word. "The system is working the way it's supposed to work," she had previously said. "At a certain point, the system has to recognize the right of [Barton] to decide what he wants to do, where he wants to go with his life."

What is the right answer regarding Barton? He was clearly guilty of killing his wife. He had a long record of violent offenses. He wanted to die, the State wanted him to die, his victim's family wanted him to die, and his own family supported his wishes. Prosecutors had argued against the "drain on the State" by keeping him alive and characterized failure to comply with his wish to die as "cruel and unusual punishment."

Barton clearly understood the difference between right and wrong. He felt extreme guilt over Kimbirli's death. Severe depression among death row inmates is hardly uncommon but when did Barton's really begin and how did it affect his judgement. He certainly proved his judgement could be mercurial during his three-year odyssey to execution and we know he was lying at least some of the time, although it would help a great deal if we could know for sure when exactly that was. Indeed, Barton's long-standing record of domestic violence is itself a testament to deep-rooted psychological problems.

None of this is to suggest that Barton deserves absolution for his crimes but the State of Ohio was generally only too willing to allow him to waive the usual legal procedures in order to hasten his demise. Barton clearly desired death but was that really the calm and informed decision of a rational mind or was it an emotional reaction of a psyche wracked by grief, despair, and impulsivity?

Barton was not a nice person by any measure, yet he retained enough basic humanity at the end to show remorse for his actions and touch some of people most victimized by them. Even if he legitimately deserved to die, was he legitimately able to make that decision for himself – or did convenience and expediency get substituted for a desire to see justice done by those responsible for his fate?

"The quality of mercy is not strained," says the Bard. It wasn't for Rocky Barton. Death was a mercy from his perspective and he had good veins. The problem may be that this was also the very quality that most singled him out as a worthy candidate for execution by the State.

The Value of Life, a conversation

2006-07-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

filed under: BotF | Israel | Hamas | Palestinians

The discussion’s roots are found here.

TheQuietMan:

According to Syrian-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal Israel should swap prisoners held in Israeli jails for the return of the 19 year old Gilad Shalit - a young soldier captured during a deadly ambush of Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil.

According to the Hamas government such a swap would be nothing more than the application of natural logic.

Sensing that the Israeli government isn't capable of displaying such logic, they've reduced their demands from hundreds of prisoners to be released to dozens.

Egypt, with a keen eye on everyone saving face, has proposed instead that the Hamas militants holding Shalit should unilaterally release the lad and in return - no, strike that - totally independently and unilaterally, Israel should release some Palestinian prisoners. Egypt stresses, though, that this deal isn't a deal between the two sides.

Ultimately, I'd wager something like the Egyptian proposal will occur. On the one hand the factions of Hamas have acted with intense stupidity. They are in a no-win situation:

a) They have a prisoner that if they kill they will provoke a strong international reaction and further, a strong Israeli military reaction.

b) They aren't going to get the release of nearly as many prisoners as they bargained for - once as high as 1500 asked for.

c) Israel continues to use their military to dissect Gaza, killing a good number of militants and the occasional innocent bystander that those militants hide behind.

Israel, on the other hand, has made it clear they want out of Gaza ASAP and the only thing they want more is the return of their young lad.

So - I'm guessing we will see some kind of swap - but we won't call it that - and further some kind of ceasefire. I'm guessing that this ceasefire will be a "comprehensive" one. Something I think valuable to both sides - and a major step forward in the peace process.

In the days just before Shalit's capture, the governing wing of Hamas was set to sign an agreement with Fatah giving implicit, but not explicit recognition of Israel along with a ceasefire offer. This incident simply got in the way.

If I'm right, Israel's strategy has been very successful. They haven't appeared to be weak. They'll get their soldier back. They'll get the end of these crude missiles being fired by various Palestinian militants and they'll get a ceasefire agreement. Incidentally, Israel has provided electricity to parts of Gaza since knocking out a main generator a couple of weeks ago. The humanitarian crisis, so far, has been averted.

Hamas, on the other hand, looks fractured and out of touch. One gets the impression that the political wing in Gaza gets what politics is about, while the military guys, and our man Mashaal are more and more resembling the IRA thugs who haven't figured out the game is over yet and can't get out of their thug uniforms.

Well that's all fine and well.

There is, I think, a more interesting point - a point on the value of life.

What does it say about the Palestinian militants that they see it as a fair swap - 1500 (now much less) Palestinians for one Israeli?

The fact is, Israel has a history of such lopsided swaps with the Palestinians and other Arab nations. Do Israelis simply value their own more? Or is this a case of these militants devaluing their own?

You know, it's kind of insulting. If you were a Palestinian prisoner how would you feel at being valued at 1/1500 the value of one Israeli?

So you might point out to me that actually, these militants are being smart. They know the Israeli government "overvalues" their own citizens and are merely exploiting this fact.

But I don't think so.

The fact is, that time and again, in these military skirmishes, the Palestinian militants and the Palestinian citizens get the worst of it - by a large margin. In the past couple of weeks since the ambush, I think there is one Israeli soldier dead - and several dozen Palestinians dead.

The willingness to continue with tactics producing such results does also seem to indicate a devaluing of Palestinian life - and not by the Israelis - but rather the Palestinians behind such attacks.

It should go without saying that it is highly likely that such a devaluation is held by the few, not the many There in is the rub. Sadly, it didn't and doesn't have to be this way.

For those that have been foolish enough to read me on these issues the last few years, you'll know I think a general peace between Israel and Palestine is close at hand. I believe, as ironic as it may seem, that the current fighting may be bringing that day even closer. I believe Hamas is becoming more and more self-aware.

Incidentally, if Hamas were sincerely interested in developing a significant lobby group it would be so easy. Here's a recipe:

Announce an immediate cessation of hostilites, renouncing violence. Do this unilaterally. Hire and train some reasonably handsome spokespeople who have a strong command of English.

After 3 months introduce them to your spokespeople to CNN, etc.

Start using the obvious catch phrases like "embracing peace". Find your equivalent of "glasnost" and "perestroika". Make sure your higher ups are similarly trained. Give it 9 more months. Really - it's not that difficult. (My further prediction: 10 years from now some of those spokespeople will have permanent jobs at CNN, etc.)

Gregor_Samsa:

Are you stupid or insane?

Rhetorical question. I know the answer.

What does it say about the Palestinian militants that they see it as a fair swap - 1500 (now much less) Palestinians for one Israeli?

1. It reflects, foremost, the asymmetry of power and capabilities. Palestinians can rarely capture a single Israeli soldier, while Israelis can throw thousands of Palestinians in jail at will. I'd guess the militants would have offered a better exchange ratio (drastically improving the self-valuation of Palestinian life by your asinine metric) if only they could lay their hands on a second or third soldier!

2. The implicit "valuation of life" reflected in choices usually captures circumstance and alternative opportunities more than fundamental attitudes towards mortal risk (unless strict controls are used in analysis). Sons of millionaires don't become Alaskan crab fishermen, but it's boneheaded to conclude that the average rich guy values life more than the average poor in any fundamental sense (except via the opportunities afforded by wealth). Even holding constant cultural and religious parameters, the poor, powerless and dispossessed will adopt more deadly (to self) strategies in conflict.

3. In bargaining, asking price is a reflection of estimated willingness to pay, not the seller's own value for the object on sale (except placing an upper bound). If I'm bald and in possession of an electric hair-dryer, I won't give it away free. I ask for approximate market price, or put it up on ebay.

4. Prisoner exchange ratio is a comparison of apples and oranges (from either side's perspective) anyway. If I'm willing to trade two prisoners for the release of one of my own, it shows that I place a higher value on the life of my guy than the political/security value of holding two prisoners. It does not tell, in any obvious way, my parochial premium for human life.

5. By your own recommendation, these decisions should be taken based on long term considerations (such as establishing reputation) rather than short term acceptable trade-offs. This makes the attempt to extricate Palestinian valuation of life utterly self-contradictory. If the ransom demand was pared down to a one-for-one swap and Israel still declined, would it follow that Israel values Palestinian life more than Israeli life?

I could go on, but Hamas hasn't paid me enough money to extend the advocacy (remember?) I'd call your post sophistry if only it were a little more competent. I find it informative that you're generally perceived as a thoughtful poster. Goes to show the importance of style-over-substance in social interaction, i.e. a pontificatory tone and sociability will usually mask the peddling of blatant and illogical bias.

TheQuietMan:

I addressed some of your points in my top post.

If it were just a matter of trading prisoners I'd agree it doesn't say much about valuations. In fact you are agreeing with me here - I made the point first.

As for criticizing my style -given your rhetorical flourish you've just displayed is a little calling the kettle black, no?

On the issue of short term vs. long term considerations - I'll continue to view it as a complicated mess. Releasing 1,500 Palestinian prisoners may well have long term unwanted consequences. Are you denying this? If Israel had never before agreed to a prisoner swap, do you think Shalit would be a hostage now?

So what's your point? Where's your argument this isn't about the valuation of life? In your equation, if you hold a bunch of things constant, what's left has to be the variable.

Gregor_Samsa:

Illiterate (way past borderline)

It is often true in your case, between illiteracy, dimwittedness and bias, it's hard to apportion credit. In this instance, though, I feel it's safe to assume that you didn't understand (by some combination of incapacity and unwillingness) a word of what I said. Anyway, what a splendid rationale for violent and oppressive policies if it can be argued, by whatever contortion of logic, that the subjects themselves value their lives at next to nothing. You did insert the qualifier that it applies to "few, not many", but given your penchant for extending representation and responsibility willy nilly (Hamas faction to Hamas, Hamas to Palestinians), as evidenced by your cheerleading of the destruction of civilian infrastructure, it's little more than a disingenuous footnote.

Don't kid yourself that my description of you is rhetorical, even if my subject line was.

TheQuietMan:

"as evidenced by your cheerleading of the destruction of civilian infrastructure".

Militants have fired roughly 1,000 missiles into Israel proper.

You say I'm "cheerleading." I say Israel's response has been both very targeted and appropriate. No comment though from you on those missiles.

In my view this line of argument you are using is beneath you. You avoid basic premises. You ignore what I say, and attempt a poor spin.

Here's an example.

I quote an article where a Palestinian talks about the "natural logic" of such a lopsided swap.

Adding the term 'natural' to the term 'logic' has a long history. It might predate Aristotle. The prima facie interpretation of such a term is that the "natural" value of what is being swapped is equal. Perhaps that's an unintended consequence of the term - but I'm not the one who put it out there. Add to this the willingness to take disproportionate losses without obvious gain (except perhaps political - which adds to the point, not detracts), and you have a fairly simple argument for a difference in the valuation of lives. Add to this the extremely disproportionate number of people to be exchanged in this swap.... and the best you come up with is some name-calling?

I'm well aware of the ability to build premises which would counter the claim - though you did an ass-poor job of it. It's a thesis - and it was built on 3 premises and you'll just have to do better than that.

Really, its become apparent I bring out the worst in you. You can be a much better poster than this. Anyway, I'm not going to be around much the next while, so save your breath on a response.

Gregor_Samsa:

I didn't write about missile launches because (other than laziness) I don't sense much disagreement that at least the extreme fringe of Hamas (funny term) is idiotic and depraved. There is however considerable difference of opinion on the morality and strategic wisdom of the Israeli response (more widely considered a moral agent), though I'm not interested in debating that broader topic with you either. There is only so much patience one can have with incomprehension and unresponsive bloviating, and for me it has ceased to be a profitable exchange long ago. I responded because you floated a toxic idea that shouldn't pass without comment. The idiocy (or interchangeably, blind bigotry: weights depending on assessment of your intelligence) of the "thesis" that skewed death tolls in conflict imply skewed self-valuations of life should be self evident, but given the pervasiveness of skimming and cultural filters, I'm afraid it isn't.*

For the illiterate, the careless and social allies, I invite extending the logic to other test cases. Look up Soviet-Nazi death ratios and decide whether Russians denigrated the value of their lives (more than Nazis did theirs) by refusing to surrender Leningrad. Maybe German Holocaust victims displayed blatant disregard for life by failing to emigrate when Hitler came to power? Try thinking why the obvious excuses (other options worse, liberty and honor more important, miscalculation, lack of foresight, etc.) wouldn't apply, or rather, what the unwillingness to even consider them means. It's also worth noting that disingenuous qualifier notwithstanding, TQM feels free to psychologically generalize (the reference to long term death toll of the conflict and overall Palestinian strategy (which is highly decentralized), as opposed to particular instances).

I'm quite comfortable with the insult-to-content ratio of my response, TQM. It's always interesting to note how quickly decorum becomes your principal argument. (Surely, by saying that, I have dug my own grave, since it will unleash a flurry of gibberish that may read like a rebuttal to the unwary).

* A far less tortuous argument is citing the suicide bomber, where self destruction is clearly intentional. I'm tired of repeating the obvious, but it's a strategy that can easily be framed instrumentally (i.e. for perceived political gain, even if in error, as opposed to the wanton pleasure of killing) and in terms quite familiar in western democracies ("Ask not what your country…") Anyway, bears repeating that all this is comparative, and devaluation of enemy life seems to me quick and universal. Also, surely cultural differences exist even in basic attitudes, but burden of evidence should be high in making specific claims (TQM: for practice, set the bar at 6 inches).

TheQuietMan:

Insomnia keeps me here tonight. Work takes me away for a while, and the conversation isn't goin very far.

For the record, I think the Soviet/Nazi case fits what I say well. Soviet idealogy wasn't exactly based on the value of the person, whereas Nazi ideology..... (you can fill it in yourself).

Still - there are fundamental difference between these two cases (the possibilty of success, for instance).

There is neither idiocy nor bigotry in suggesting the possibility that some value lives here differently. In fact, we all value lives differently - there's no universal force here.

Now I'm sure there will be places I generalized too quickly, but really, your over simplifying and intentional mischaracterizations and name calling are worse sins.

Even your view that it is only a "fringe" of Hamas is really laughable. That you'd engage in that kind of rhetorical ploy perhaps makes you feel better. You denounced the fringe. Good on you. Just a few dozen of those nutters.

Well I've got news for you. The carpet that is Hamas has some pretty big fringes. Do you feel the same way about Sinn Fein and the IRA?

So you sneak in terms like "fringes" and "cheerleader". This has become a typical move from you.

And decorum isn't my principle argument. But my thesis on you is that your argumentation goes downhill when you resort to name calling, but not because of the name calling - its a symptom, not a cause.

And that too is a silly tactic of yours. I point out how stupid your name calling is - and you see it as me somehow switching my main argument.

The truth is, we've had this discussion numerous times before, and I'm not going to let it pass. If this irritates you, so what?

Perhaps, though, we are arguing here over the burden of proof. If that's all your point is, really you've made it foolishly. If your song here is merely one of caution, you could have scored more points by making the point.

In my top post I pointed out that there was an alternative to interpreting the exchange of prisoners. I pointed it out, and tried to argue against it.

And I made it clear in the top post that I think this kind of valuation is held by some and not all. If there are places where I've over-generalized, I do apologize for that - feel free to add the appropriate specifications where needed. But really, this strikes me as grasping at straws.

In fact, you are commiting the very sin you convict me of - the burden of proof thing. You dismiss the places where I've been careful each and every time, and hope to score points in the one or two places where I may have been less careful (hypothetically - I'm too lazy to look up what you are talking about - after all, this isn't the first time you've pulled this kind of stunt on me.)

Any way, I meant what I said to alexa. I can't get my shorts in a knot over you anymore. Perhaps I'm just unable to evaluate things properly that I'm involved in, but really, I find your manouevres here generally disappointing.

Gregor_Samsa:

Previous reply was mistakenly posted to Alexa.

Re missiles/kidnappings, etc.: I was responding to your (typical) insinuation that my silence on this or that indicates tacit approval. Clearly, explication won't suffice, because you'll tediously keep expanding the span of what I haven't denounced (what about the whole of Hamas and its past record? The Intifadas? Genghis Khan? [For official records, I do hereby condemn the Mongol]).

Re "fringe": Sure, it's wishful thinking (the size implication). I thought it'll sit well with your stubborn optimism (exchange with daveto, Fritz)! If times they are a changin', how are they changin' unless the elected Palestinian party has undergone a significant shift in attitude? Anyway, I'll only emphasize the strategic significance of the seeming internal split within Hamas at this moment (external aggression being typically a winner for uber hawks).

Re generalization: it's prominent in your post and responses, not a sloppy detail tucked in a corner. Quotes available but unnecessary: you're clearly not talking in isolation about the missile firing; you're talking comprehensively about the historical Palestinian approach to the conflict. It's dumb to pretend the violent tactics of either side hasn't been backed by broad popular sympathy (the election of Hamas, if proof be needed), so any attendant psychological diagnosis cannot be restricted to a marginal group of Likudniks or "militants", if one is speaking of general patterns. I don't think you seriously believe that either (reply to mfbenson suggestive).

Re "natural logic": Your pedantry is obtuse in itself, but even were it reasonable, I doubt Hamas militants are well versed in the pre or post Aristotelian nuances of philosophical jargon.

Re Leningrad: B+ for blaming it on Stalinism. For next week's homework, try the Armenian genocide, Bosnia-Kosovo and the native American wipeout. Practice maketh perfect.

I'd say I lose again! The thread has reached a length where it probably looks even purely due to information overload (relative to attention deficit). I should have stuck with insults and eschewed all else.

The Gates of Heaven

2006-07-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

By: The_Bell
filed under: BotF | Gates | Buffett | Philanthropy

Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation has announced that he will be leaving the day-to-day running of Microsoft over the next couple of years to focus on philanthropic work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, currently worth $30 billion.

Hot on the heels of this, investment wizard Warren Buffett announced that he would be giving close to seventy percent of his own $40 billion personal fortune to the Gates Foundation, apparently on the premise that Buffett is relatively old, Gates is relatively young, and "[Gate's] judgment above the ground is going to be a lot better than [Buffett's] six feet below the ground." The bequest will double the foundation's worth.

My aunt and godmother, whom I generally consider liberal in many of her political views but who is also a self-made person of wealth, was glowing to me about Gates at a recent Fourth of July gathering. She was disappointed to learn that I did not share her positive view of him.

Don't get me wrong. I am grateful that Gates would see fit to share so much of what he has amassed with society – I do not believe that his wealth obliges him to do so. I even feel a certain respect for his desire to get personally involved as opposed to simply writing out checks. Yet, for all that, I cannot say that I particularly like or admire Bill Gates, either as a businessperson or as a human being.

He and Buffett strike me as too much in the mold of tycoons-turned-philanthropists of the past – such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Getty, and Ford – who spent thirty years cutting throats and ruining lives on their climb to the top and then engaged in self-congratulatory beneficence for the last ten or twenty.

Rockefeller used to give away shiny new dimes to children to improve his image. Gate's billions are certainly a step above that. Likewise, the Gate's Foundation seems less concerned with building things of permanence to act as monuments to Bill himself. Its chief areas of focus are eliminating problem related to global health, education and poverty. It has scored some noble victories regarding the first category while having more muted success in the second two.

There is almost a boyish gleam in Gate's eye as he talks about abolishing disease as he once talked about wiping out the competition. "Within our lifetime, I would expect . . . we would have vaccines and medicines to eliminate the [top twenty diseases]," he said at the news conference where he accepted Buffett's pledge. Forbes magazine has even come up with a name for billionaires managing their later-life munificence, dubbing it "venture philanthropy."

It makes sense intuitively. These billionaire donors clearly know how to use money to make more money. Why not turn all that energy and creativity to the service of society at large instead of a select set of shareholders. Yet altruism, by design, does not always work along the same lines as the free market. Diana Aviv, head of a coalition of charities, foundations, and corporate giving programs that includes The Gates Foundation, predicts, "I'm sure there are lots of young, wealthy individuals who have made their fortunes and who are watching this very carefully."

If that is true, then what others are learning is not only to be generous with their wealth but to insist on having a say on how it is spent. For example, the Buffett bequest to the Gates Foundation comes with two significant catches. First, all the money is to be distributed in the year it is donated, not added to the foundation's assets for future giving. This is not necessarily a bad idea but money that must be spent quickly is not always money spent most wisely. Second, the pledge also requires that Bill and Melinda Gates remain alive and active in the policy-setting and administration of the foundation.

Gates and Buffett are not the only trendsetters of this nature either. Larry Ellison, the mercurial CEO of Oracle recently reneged on a pledge of $115 million to Harvard University because he disapproved of the outing of President Lawrence Summers. Given the tempestuous nature of Summer's presidency, Harvard might have found that trade-off to their profit but other examples abound.

In 2001, Netscape founder Jim Clark withdrew $60 million of his $150 million pledge for a biomedical research center at Stanford University in protest against federal restrictions on stem-cell research. In 2002, philanthropist Robert Thompson withdrew a $200 million pledge to build Detroit-area charter schools in disgust over the city's political infighting. That same year, Washington business leader Catherine B. Reynolds reneged on a $38 million deal that would have gone to the Smithsonian Institution because she wanted more control over how the money would be spent.

And getting back to the Buffett endowment for a moment, Newsweek's Allan Sloan finds some very crafty, non-altruistic aspects in Buffett's gift to the Gates Foundation. First, even with the spending qualifiers in place, the Gates Foundation's assets are one of only a few large enough that the donated Berkshire Hathaway shares will not need to be sold immediately to provide necessary funds. That will protect share prices for Buffett's family and investors.

In addition, Buffett will convert his class A shares into class B shares and donate these to the Gates Foundation. Class A shares have one vote while class B shares have only one two hundredth of a vote. Thus, after much tough talk about his children needing to accept his selflessness, Buffett will be able to retain a significant control of his and their voting rights within Hathaway even as he publicly divests the bulk of their ownership.

I would not discourage anyone from sending Bill Gates a thank-you note for generosity with both his money and his time in setting up and now running the Gates Foundation. However, I would be loath to see anyone putting him on a pedestal for it – he still has more than enough money to build his own pedestals.

Gates was known for his hard-nosed business practices, particularly when it came to squashing the competition. As for his treatment of employees, Microsoft's reputation as a coding sweatshop is ubiquitous. As a consumer, I appreciate the stability the dominance of a single brand brought to the industry. As a manager in an IT company that features non-Microsoft architecture and platforms in our solutions, I can attest how difficult it can be for even strong, well-reviewed products to "buck the trend." Will Gates give more back to the industry and society than he cost it in competitive innovation over the long run?

Anyone can change and perhaps Bill Gates will prove to be a generous risk-taker, as opposed to a micromanaging control freak, with his foundation's money. Still, doing good things does not make one a good person by default. In the Dickens's classic, we know that Ebenezer Scrooge's sudden generosity is not hypocritical because we are there as he undergoes a transformation of spirit. The ghosts are still out on their pronouncement regarding Gates, in my opinion.

For those who insist his foundation's work and his vast contributions to it prove Gates is a good person, I am afraid I can, somewhat skeptically, go no further than to admit they prove Gates certainly acts the good person . . . when he can afford to do so.

Morale Building and Consequentialism

2006-07-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

By: The_Bell
filed under: BotF | Israel | Hamas | Terrorism

In response to a post I made last Thursday, the poster Ele_ replied with a defense of Israel that included this interesting argument – "The whole Israeli army is on the move because of just one captured soldier? And every soldier in this army knows that should it happen to him or her, it would be the same. Now that's morale building!"

The "one captured soldier" is bespectacled, baby-faced Corporal Gilad Shalit. Hamas militants and other Islamic extremists operating within Gaza took him captive. The point of my post was that Israel was using his capture as justification to wage an undeclared war, including invasion and regime change, against the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

Ele_'s counterpoint intrigued me. Are the spirits of the members of Israel's armed forces buoyed in the knowledge that the entire army – the entire nation – is willing to go to war for each of them? What of Corporal Shalit? Hopefully his morale is high because it is all he has at the moment. Freedom, I am afraid, is still lacking for him.

The militant's who seized Shalit demanded that various Palestinian prisoners held by Israel be released in exchange for him. The Israeli government refused to negotiate and has responded with increasingly violent attacks into Gaza. The militants warned that failure to comply with their demand would mean, "we will consider the soldier's case to be closed."

Many thought that meant Shalit would be killed. Certainly that was the fate of Nachshon Wachsman, the last Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas, who died in 1994 during an Israeli commando raid on his captors' Jerusalem hideout.

However, a spokesperson for the Hamas government suggested a more sinister meaning. "If [Israel] continues every day to kill and target and attack, it won't get the soldier, alive or dead."

That is exactly what has happened to date. All word about Shalit and his condition has been shut down from the Palestinian side. He has become a ghost. Can a non-entity even have morale, heightened or otherwise?

Last week, Wachsman's mother, Esther, wrote an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that criticized Israel's government for inconsistency in dealing with abduction cases. "I am not calling for the release of murderers, but [Israel's leaders] should not insult our intelligence because they have negotiated and they have given in to terror," she stated. And indeed, Israel has swapped prisoners in the past to win the release of captured citizens, both alive and dead.

It is, once again, the convenient flexibility of the BuSharon Doctrine in full force. As the conservative, aristocratic Prussian statesman, Otto Von Bismark, once observed, "Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war."

Bismark was not much of a soldier himself, so it must be presumed he started his wars without too much second-guessing. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has it even easier – his dying soldier is nowhere to be seen.

Soldiers are asked to bear the ultimate sacrifice for their country. For that, we, their fellow citizens, owe them our thanks and our support for their safety and well being, even if we disagree with our government over the cause that placed them in harm's way. Yet the thing that no soldier who has seen combat would ask is for their country to sacrifice itself for him/her by opening itself to the greater violence of widened war.

Soldiers often form brotherhoods among themselves in which each willingly risks their life for those of their comrades. Yet soldiers cannot declare war, no matter how justified their grievances against their enemies. Only nations may do so.

Invading Gaza and deposing Hamas may be good things for Olmert politically. They may well even be good things for Israel from a national security/foreign policy perspective. But let's not pretend it isn't all-out war and let's not pretend it is motivated principally by a deep respect for the sanctity of the life of each and every Israeli soldier.

Israel's defenders are most apt to fall back on the argument that its government "had no choice" regarding escalation in Gaza. Yet less than two weeks after September 11, Slate own William Saletan was framing this argument.

This is the problem with the consequentialist argument for revising U.S. policy in the Middle East. Maybe it's true, for other reasons, that we should rethink our position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, withdraw our troops from Saudi Arabia, or ease sanctions on Iraq. But if we do these things to avoid further attacks on our cities, we're granting terrorists the power to dictate our acts by dictating the consequences.

Keep in mind that Saletan's argument was not a tirade against pacifism but one against allowing terrorists to force our actions to fit their desires. In that sense, there is no difference between saying "we have no choice but to fight" than saying "we have no choice but to withdraw." And a state of perpetual violence is exactly what the Islamic militants who captured Corporal Shalit hoped to re-ignite between Israel and the Palestinians.

Roger Scruton, the British philosopher, expresses it from a different angle. In his 1987 essay, "Waging War on the Individual," he defines terrorism's greatest offense.

Terrorists often claim to be fighting wars, and to be doing no more than is necessary in war. This is nonsense. War is certainly the natural expression of collective resentment; but it occurs between organized groups and is fought openly, against a collective enemy. It is possible to fight a war with undiminished respect for the rights of the enemy individual. Indeed, that is the duty of every soldier. But the terrorist must disregard this duty and disobey the law of war. His feelings towards the individual are abolished by his loathing of the group, and it is this – rather than his cowardice, cruelty, or intemporate hate – that constitutes his true moral corruption.

Prime Minister Olmert is using the hypocrisy of the BuSharon Doctrine to wage war against a group he despises in the name of respect for his own soldiers. In doing so, he breaks a long-established Israeli policy to avoid/minimize harm against Palestinian civilians. In truth, he loathes Hamas so completely that he has already made one Israeli soldier disappear by playing the game his enemy desires of him. And, as Ele_ observes, "every soldier in [the Israeli] army knows that should it happen to him or her, it would be the same."

The thing that some people never get about love of country is that it does not equate to blind acceptance. Sometimes the best and most honest thing you can do toward your object of love is to tell it, "Shame!" I sympathize with the Israeli people and government. I empathize with the Israeli people and government. I just do not particularly admire their current actions in Gaza or their justification for them.

To the left of me, “cut and run”, to the right, “sticks-in-the-mud”

2006-06-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

As you’re all well aware, Rove has unveiled his dumbing down of November cliché. You’ve all heard the analysis and speculation (classic Rove…, turning a weakness into a strength…, will it or won’t it stick to the Democrats…). You’ve also heard any number of nuanced Democratic responses. But it’s asinine on its face. People who are persuaded by “cut and run” aren’t interested in nuance. They need the comfort of a cliché, and Rove and his minions provide them with one. There’s no need to explain it, no need to justify it, no need to prove, just put it out there and repeat, repeat, repeat through to November.

So I say we fight a cliché with a cliché. Bush and his GOP controlled congress are “sticks-in-the-mud”. Get excited about it. Put your own spin on it:

Stick-in-the-mud Commander-in-Chief.
Worse than a do nothing congress, the GOP is a stick-in-the-mud congress.
Republican's have the leadership quality of a stick-in-the-mud.

Attach it to your logic, rational opinion pieces.

Ahem!

The long and short of is this. If you want to get the better of Rove, if you want to neutralize him and go on the offensive, each and every one of us has to march. Because Rove’s power is not his tactical genius. His power is in his ability to get his soldiers to march to the beat of his single drum.

Stick-in-the-mud
Sticks-in-the-mud

The Benevlolent and Protective Elks of Iraq

2006-06-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

Tragedy struck the small town of Clinton Missouri last night. An aging three story building downtown that housed the local Elks Lodge collapsed during a dinner and initiation ceremony. Most people were on the second story eating at the time of the catastrophe. Amazingly, all were eventually pulled out alive and only three with serious injuries, although it took most of the night. Rescuers took extra precautions for fear the building would topple further. "This must be done in a step-by-step manner," explained a policeman at the scene. "We're not in a hurry."

The single fatality and last to be removed from the rubble was the Elks Club leader, who had been alone on the third floor practicing a speech at the time of the collapse.

The lesson was plain. When trapped in a crumbling infrastructure, the best hope of getting out alive is staying with the crowd and exiting slowly.

President Bush met with General George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq, last Friday and the two reviewed various scenarios that Casey had developed. One of them called for the removal of two combat brigades – representing about seven thousand troops – in September of this year.

The White House has stressed this was only one option outlined by Casey and Bush insisted, as always, that he would do nothing without the recommendation of his commanders in the field and authorization by the new Iraqi government. The plan is far from being "engraved in stone," Press Secretary Tony Snow told reporters.

Yet it seems hard to believe the President would stubbornly push away such a political godsend. Casey has already recommended it as a possible option and the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is unlikely to say "no" when it has already had to soften down calls for date-driven U.S. withdrawals from its own reconciliation plan. The timing is perfect for the 2006 Congressional midterm elections and the reduction is largely symbolic in comparison to the one hundred twenty-seven total U.S. troops in Iraq at the moment.

Perhaps the real question is why Casey is offering Bush such a gift at present? Military insiders say that Casey is generally resistant to troop cuts. Like Clinton Missouri police, cautious about pulling out survivors from a shaky construction, Casey worries that withdrawing U.S. forces too quickly could undermine the fledgling Iraqi government and overburden it too soon.

Still, Casey may be astute enough himself or under sufficient pressure from Bush officials to realize this caution must be balanced against growing public sentiment to do something regarding Iraq. The latest Washington Post–ABC News poll finds recent negative gaps suffered by Republicans in past months are predictably closing as Election Day draws nearer.

Except in one area. The numbers now show forty-seven percent of voters favor a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. That is up eight points from December and growing. Indeed, discontent is growing so fast and is so deep-rooted that it may be less and less an anti-Republican issue and more an anti-government one. About two-thirds of poll respondents see Bush and the GOP with no clear strategy to end the war as compared to about three-quarters who say the same about Democrats.

However, Democratic voter support for firm timetables is running ahead of support for the same by Democratic lawmakers. Casey, faced with a choice between evils, may desire to throw in his fortunes with the Party likely to grant him the greatest flexibility possible in managing troop numbers.

Congressional Democrats seem to understand which way the wind is blowing. They have angrily denounced the Casey proposal as partisan Republican politics and accuse Republicans of embracing the very policies they recently decried as "cut and run" when proposed by Dems.

If the Bush Administration and the Pentagon did not hatch the Iraq War in concert, they have certainly conducted it as such. People are now hearing timbers crashing around them and running in panic, screaming. The would-be architects have tried shouting above the din to trust them but to no avail. They have argued it is unethical to suggest the building is rotten while it is full of people; also to no avail. So now they are trying to huddle together and leave very, very slowly as a group and hope only the right – or, in this case, the center – bystanders will notice. At least until December or later.

filed under: BotF | The_Bell | Iraq | War | Politics

This Blog is Fixed

2006-06-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

This blog was broke. It took a little over a month, and a couple of requests (the first one sent to the wrong persons I’m guessing), but Technorati is now indexing bestofthefray again. Joy. I’m pretty sure the fix is due to my last request (about a week old, go here), but I can't say for sure because aside from the auto-response, there was no notification that the problem had been addressed.

Anyway, the moral of the story is don’t ping Technorati. Be patient, and let whatever built-in software (Weblog notifications I’m guessing) do it at its own pace. My initial mistake was assuming Technorati wouldn’t list my blog at the top of the tag search if the entry was old, so I wanted it indexed right away. I no longer believe this to be the case.

Also, although tag listings did generate some traffic, Technorati’s real favor is their partnering with major outlets like WaPo, AP, Newsweek and now Slate.

filed under: BotF | Technorati | Indexing | Help | Blogging

Decline and fall

2006-06-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

By: Fritz_Gerlich
filed under: BotF | America

And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

You amaze me, America. You are entering the maelstrom, but you don't even see it. You live a life of entitlement that you take entirely for granted, unaware that it is shortly to end, to be replaced by one of insecurity and stress if not of want and strife. If your children are young, the dreams you have for them almost certainly will not come true, because they will come of age in a different, much harsher, world. The electronic wealth you have accumulated may be safe from rust and the moth, but it will, through the magic of global finance, vanish even faster than your possession that are not. Your Christians foolishly scan the skies for signs of the coming Rapture, never noticing that history tightens its coils around their ankles, preparing to jerk them into a future as chaotic as the one their prophet foretold for the city that rejected him.

We are in the final halcyon days of denial, utterly incapable of perceiving, as a society, what historians will marvel that anyone could possibly miss. Not a single one of the large trends presently shaping the world points to a sustainable future--especially for us. The bad news has already started to come in, and common sense tells us it will accelerate and accumulate. Within two years you will remember this prediction, and wonder uneasily if I was right. Within five years you will have the sinking feeling that I was. Within ten, you will know that I prophesied truly.

Consider:

Energy. The world is beginning to run out of cheap hydrocarbons, which means that it is beginning to run out of hydrocarbons, period, because some who can now get it will lose that access because of rising cost. This effect will slowly gain momentum, as the remaining hydrocarbons get farther, deeper, poorer quality, and the needed investment mounts.

Despite brave talk about alternative energy and new energy, there is no relief on the horizon. Wind and solar are nice adjuncts but obviously incapable of supplying any serious part of the coming deficit in hydrocarbons. Fuel cells and fusion are speculation, at best so far in the future as to be irrelevant to the decades ahead. Nuclear power is in principle abundant, but faces great political resistance and requires huge lead times. Coal is also abundant, but imposes very high environmental costs. The real limitation of both nuclear and coal is that they are not adaptable to the vast transportation needs of society, ours or global. The whole vast transporation network, from ships to aircraft to motor vehicles and (in this country) railroads, was designed on the premise of unlimited cheap petroleum. It cannot by any stretch of the imagination be powered by uranium or coal. Without that transportation network, nothing else in society, ours or global, works as it is supposed to.

Dropping hydrocarbon production will affect the whole world. But the country with the farthest to fall in that regard is the United States, which has 6% of the world's population and uses 25% of its petroleum. In past decades, Americans sometimes defended this disproportion by claiming that they produced more for the world. But while that may have been true in 1955 or 1965, it is definitely not true now, except in agriculture and defense. The American demand for energy is predominately consumptive in nature, especially with respect to our vast dependence on automobiles. There were and are alternatives to private automobile transportation, but we rejected them decades ago. Because of that long-ago policy choice, we now feel that our dependence on automobiles is an entitlement that cannot and must not be changed. As vice president Cheney said: "The American way of life is not negotiable." The reeking arrogance of that statement is an ill omen indeed, for this country and for the world.

Food. The impending hydrocarbon crisis poses a more direct threat to survival than simply not having gas to put in our cars. World food production is critically dependent on manufactured fertilizers whose principal resource base is natural gas. As North American and world natural gas supplies draw down--North America is in depletion now, i.e., past its peak production--the same thing happens with those fertilizers that is already happening with gasoline. Only now, it's not transportation problem we're talking about, which can be solved/compensated to some degree in other ways, but a decline in the world's ability to produce the food necessary to feed a population of more than six billion--a population that could never have existed in the first place without abundant cheap natural gas to turn into fertilizer.

Climate change is another threat to world food production. Although a marked warming trend is now beyond dispute, experts are appropriately reluctant to predict the incidence or degree of its effects on agriculture. But there are ominous signs. Europe suffered record heat and drought in the summer of 2002, severely damaging its agricultural output. Australia, a major wheat producer, is in the sixth year of a punishing drought. China's harvests have fallen well below targets in recent years, forcing cereal importation. If severe drought were to strike China for two years in a row, it would likely face a genuine emergency. The United States has been drawing down the Midwestern Oglalla Aquifer for over a century to irrigate crops. This stored water has been a major source of America's awesome food-producing ability. But the aquifer is a non-renewable resource at the rate we are depleting it, and it must fail sometime. How long it has left is not known. If the Plains suffered prolonged drought as the aquifer began to run dry, the world's champion food producer would suddenly slump, with grave consequences for itself and world markets.

Debt. Back in the 1950's and 1960's, when we were Europe's great market, we still produced all kinds of valuables, including most manufactured ones, for sale around the world. We were the only major producers of some, such as jet aircraft. Then the Japanese surged up in automobiles, steel, appliances and electronics, and we abandoned or reduced our investment in those. We did a lot of the pioneering work in computers, but that manufacturing quickly moved offshore. Software had its day in the 1980's and 1990's, but now that market is mature and sedate. For several decades the U.S. had a dominating presence in the "financial industry"--banking, insurance and the like--but the rapid globalization of capital soon took away much of our puissance there. Virtually all textiles and light consumer goods are now produced abroad; that is the magic of Wal-Mart. And, as everybody knows, even such culturally-specific activities as telephone services are now being rapidly moved to call centers in India.

There is only one economic pursuit that America still excels at: consumption. Look carefully and honestly at your community. What is its economic base, i.e., what provides most of its jobs? Although there are exceptions, the answer for most communities is: government, construction, retail and services. However necessary those things are, none is a primary wealth-producing activity. They are adjuncts to an economy resting on some firmer base.

America's once-firm economic base--considered awesome and invulnerable in my childhood--has been largely eroded away. We've depleted our oil and gas, cut down our forests or closed them to logging, destroyed our many hundreds of thousands of small farms by policies encouraging "agribusiness," and closed our factories and shipped the jobs they once offered overseas. In return, we've gained a burgeoning low-wage retail sector, a gross and glutted residential construction sector, a sclerotic and largely irrational health care sector, and a cowed, defensive public sector. Great CEOs no longer lead companies in inventing new products and creating markets for them, but by mergers, acquisitions, and liquidations. Fortunes are made, not by finding or inventing new sources of wealth for the community or nation, but by financial manipulation or "celebrity" qualities (not restricted to entertainment and sports; successful CEOs, lawyers, journalists, etc., are now essentially celebrities of a specialized kind).

What this historic shift from Global Producer to Global Consumer has meant is that we have also transformed ourselves from Global Creditor to Global Debtor. The numbers are so large they are almost meaningless; and besides, they change constantly. The United States is literally hemorrhaging its once-vast wealth across the oceans to other nations, and their governments, in two ways. One is through uncontrolled consumption by business and, ultimately, consumers. This produces a vast, seemingly ucontrollable trade deficit. The other is through uncontrolled borrowing by the federal government, which produces vast debt to the governments of nations that buy the treasury securities that are our debt instruments. China, Japan and Taiwan are chief among those nations.

These great macroeconomic debts are reflected within the national economy by our negative savings rate (we not only save nothing, we spend more than we earn), and our staggering levels of credit card and mortgage debt. Probably our indulgence about personal debt has a lot to do with our political acceptance of government debt. A politician who told us, flat out, that we are digging our own collective grave by accumulating massive public debt and that we have to do something drastic to stop it might also make us worry about the wisdom of our home equity loans and zero-down ARMs. So we listen to, and vote for, the guy whose soothing tones implies that all's right with the world.

But it isn't. The rest of the world may be in a temporary quandry about what to do about us; they need us as a bottomless market, and they use our dollars as their reserve currency, so if they suddenly pull the rug from under us they will hurt themselves, too. But if history teaches anything, it's that lies aren't durable. We call them lies precisely because they don't hold up as well as what we call truth. It is often said (in America, anyway) that communism failed and we prevailed because our system is founded on a clear-sighted, tough-minded understanding of reality, while communism was a bizarre ideology that tried to deny reality. Very well--if truth won out in that great contest, why will it not win out when the world sits down to consider whether it really serves everybody's interest to keep feeding an America that no longer works? That borrows the world's wealth to keep on spending without limit? That hogs a quarter of the world's shrinking energy budget, not to benefit the world but for its own ever-greater consumption? Where is reality in this? It is not on our side.

Wars and rumors of wars. Ah, but we have the big battalions on our side. We are not just a superpower, we are a hyperpower, the hyperpower, the Global Hegemon. So in the end, we can get what we need, can't we? Take oil: we're fighting in Iraq now . . . well, not to get oil, officially anyway, but to plant democracy that will somehow, in some vague way, ensure that we can get oil in the future. We have "global interests," and also a military with global reach, to protect those interests.

This is the saddest delusion of all, the one that really seals our fate. One need look no farther than Iraq for proof. After all the shock 'n' awe, after whipping the pants off of Saddam's already pantless army, losing 2,500 lives and spending around half a trillion borrowed dollars, after three years of steadily dropping confidence in a president who once had the highest American Idol rating in history, not a single barrel of Iraqi oil is on the world market that was not on it before the war. Indeed, less. The price of oil has more than doubled since the invasion of Iraq. The oil that was to painlessly pay for both the war and Iraqi reconstruction has become a vast slush fund for Iraqi warlords and gangsters--that part of it, that is, that makes it past the constant sabotage of pipelines, refineries and loading facilities by anybody with an interest in stopping it.

Our military has not only failed in Iraq to improve our access to a pig's share of the world's oil, and not only failed to install a stable and durable democracy--it has been strained almost to the breaking point in trying. That is possibly the single most important fact about the Iraq war, and the one that will hurt the "global hegemon" the most. In Iraq, the limits of American war-fighting capability are clear for anyone to see. The Americans can bomb the bejesus out of anybody. But against an enemy they can't defeat from the air, they must fight against the clock. Not only the political and economic clocks (how long will support for the war last? how deeply can we go into debt to pay for it?) but, above all, the military clock: how long dare we tie up most of our assets in a bogged-down war with no promise of any early end? What if something else happens elsewhere? What if this war threatens to spread to nearby nations?

Iraq, like Vietnam, is simply an insurgency that won't end. We have staked "victory" on ending it--an impossible goal. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we are trying to impose from without what a foreign nation either does not want or is not able to sustain. What we see from our American perspective is "democracy," what they see is centuries of division and distrust and endless opportunities for sectarian, tribal and individual aggrandizement. If there was ever any hope of our overcoming those centrifugal forces, it was lost when we failed to secure the country promptly at the start of the occupation. It has been all downhill from there. It is very difficult to see what else could be needed to prove that the most Bush can hope for in Iraq is a Potemkim democracy.

Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains. None of the fundamentals is right. Military might is our one high card, and it only confirms us in our delusions and misleads us into blunders. Once America led the world in military might, industrial production, wealth equality, international influence, and moral suasion. All of them have been lost, except for high-tech aspects of warfare.

America, you are hollowed out. You are wallowing in claims of entitlement that have only grown as the one-time justifications for them have dwindled. You are shutting out vast pieces of reality, denying such obvious facts as that your bloated way of life--the one that Mr. Cheney thinks is so sacred-- cannot possibly survive the coming years of energy depletion, food scarcity and collapsing debt structures. You are living on fond pipe dreams about your own power that the world does not share. (And if your power impresses no one, what good is it?) And you are inflated with a sense of your own righteousness that might have been earned once, by your ancestors, but is now little more than public relations spun out by an increasingly pathetic government.

Your streets are jammed with cars, your malls with customers, your idiotic television shows and your sappy civic celebrations with complacent citizens who simply cannot imagine things being any different. It would do no good to tell them. I am sorry for you, and for them. I live in the forest, my house is (or can be) heated with the wood that will always grow there, my water comes from my own well, I hunt and fish for food, I can garden on a large scale if I must, I have the tools I need to build and repair, I have the skills to survive on my own. I cannot do entirely without fuel, but I can reduce my needs to a very small amount in a time of scarcity. I have no debts. My modest personal fortune is now shifted largely into gold and similar investments that I think will be safe even in times of financial panic. My children are grown. And, perhaps most important of all, my life is well more than half lived, and in it I have seen things that taught me what a work of art is man. In that sense, I am complete, and I do not fear the future. What saddens me is that I doubt so much that the next generation is going to have anything close to the same wonderful opportunities. And it is partly my fault.

The Irrationalist Tradition

2006-06-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

By: Zeus-Boy

Two of my favorite thinkers opposed any and all attempts at system building. Both worked against the urge to codify thought in architectural, reticulated edifices of rationality. Both interjected confusion and the irrational into rational structures; and both rejected codes and sought instead to enliven thought with tangential, unpredictable and unprecedented ideas. The first was Shakespeare's contemporary, Thomas Nashe, after whom I named and dedicated my blog. He is remembered primarily for collaborating with Ben jonson, for befriending Robert Greene, for resisting the Harvey brothers' attempt to shut down the theatres and for being the inspiration behind some of Shakespeare's most colorful characters.

The other was Johann Georg Hamann, a contemporary of Immanuel Kant, who also lived in Konigsberg, but who created one of the most exhilirating collection of irrationalist essays and letters extant. Most of his work still remains untranslated, but there are important monographs by Walter Lowrie, James O'Flaherty and Isaiah Berlin. I dare anyone to read his essay Aesthetica in Nuce, which recalls the work of Giordano Bruno and foreshadows that of Goethe, Jacobi, Kierkegaard, even Joyce and Beckett. Hamann believed in approaching systems with a subjectivist skepticism, which he characterized as the necessary antidote to the "monastic rules" of the "self-castrating eunuchs" of rationality:

From his 'debut' work, Socratic Memorabilia, Hamann began to promulgate a particular view of what it means to understand something. From the beginning of that essay he emphasized the importance of passion and commitment in interpretation; undermining the more conventional assumption that objectivity and detachment are prerequisites of philosophical reflection and understanding. In Aesthetica in Nuce, wearing the authorial mask of the 'kabbalistic philologian', he provocatively maintained that initiation into orgies were necessary before the interpreter could safely begin the hermeneutical act. The idea that one must rid oneself of presuppositions, prejudices, and predilections in order to do justice to the subject matter he characterizes as 'monastic rules'—i.e. an excessive asceticism and abstinence. He goes so far as to compare such individuals to self-castrating eunuchs. (N II, 207:10-20)

I am reminded of these thinkers because of the very monolithic historical approach to US history that seems to prevail and underlie justifications of American Foreign policy today. Most extenuations for the 'Pre-emptive war on terror' depend on an abolutist view of history, especially US history, and while US policy makers grant themselves the right to frame their sometimes sociopathic deviations from their own norms in the most rational terms, they cannot abide rational scrutiny of those very terms. They define the parameters and then condemn their detractors for using their own language against them. It has always been the way with megalomaniacal law makers -- one law for themselves and another for everybody else. Such hubris is endemic of the criminal mentality. Therefore, an irrational analysis would not even be possible where the terms of the discourse have been selected beforehand, so there would scarcely be room for a Nashe or Hamann today. And how would such a critique of US empire look?

Well, before answering that question. Let me suggest that the Ann Coulter-Michael Savages represent precisely the sociopathic view. They may tap into the zietgeist to justify their hatreds and bigotries, and be accounted seers by those unwilling to remove themselves from the lure of their contagion. More mainstream bigots enjoy a more unimpeachable platform because of the shock tactics of the extremists. Try as one might one cannot debunk these people on the terms they provide and this is why a complete outsider is needed. I propose the work of Dahr Jamail as an example in the tradition of Nashe and Hamann; for a completely tangential view of the same history his dispatches oppose the valorized representations of power. His outsider status compels us to rethink and re-examine our assumptions and expectations. It's subtler than, say, any radical departure from the routine and hegemonic language of power; rather, it is in the new sense he gives us with which to apprehend the same old sense of things -- the being-there where there is not the simple transplanting of here to there, but complete subjective skepticism. None of the dour and bigoted points of view that went embedded could see with Jamail's eyes, and it seems to me the only way out of the prison of authority is through the misprisons of somebody like Jamail. The challenge is to recognize what is other and not to be beguiled by the confidence tricks of silver-tongued con-men who can be and not be whatever we choose when we choose. The David Copperfields of language may mesmorize us into forgetfulness, but it takes the jolt of unreason to awake us from our received hypotheses and conceits.

i hate....everything. POOP on the czech team!

2006-06-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

By: undkatrina aka andkathleen

woe is me...ungrammatical, but apt. but not anywhere near strong enough to describe how i feel.

i had to go on an errand in the student union building on my way back from class, and there, right in front of my unbelieving eyes, was a sight i had not thought to see. two huge-screen televisions broadcasting the us-czech game. i knew there were public televisions in the building, but i also knew (or thought i knew) of the general apathy towards all things soccer, and thought i'd be safe.

wrong.

score? czech republic 1, us 0. nothing, zero, zip. nil. no score whatsoever.

since the suspense had already been removed (as i have mentioned, i am taping it), i immediatedly telephoned my friend who is also watching the match. he confirmed that yes, it was a sad, sad thing but that at least donovan had gotten off a near-goal.

i was not consoled. but could it get worse? why yes. yes it could. and it did.

while i was picking up a package (still on the phone) i happened to see a beastly shot on goal that unfortunately happened to go into the goal, and it wasn't kicked by one of our guys.

foul, foul language came out of my mouth.

now most of you know where i am, yes? one would not have anticipated that this sort of reaction (variously involving words which sounded like 'wit', 'duck' 'floody bell' and 'dastard') would provoke visible and audible hilarity amongst the other viewers (all five of them); however, since they'd also been listening to me in my telephone rant as i stood some ways behind them, and my reaction was probably exactly the one that they themselves were trying to stifle, hilarity ensued. apparently that was the sole bright spot of the match, since the us are (were) playing a CRAP game.

[hee hee, snicker snicker, she said 'fuck']... but there's still hope. the half ended, i left to go run errand #2, and i consoled myself that a brisk telling-off of the players by arena would take care of the second-half performance.

then my ex-boyfriend called, chatted about this and that, and asked me if i was taping the game. i said i was. he asked if i knew the current score. i said i did. and then i told him that i was cut off from all media communication from here on out since i had the utmost faith in the us team to launch a massive strike against the evil czech empire. and then, after a chat about his motorcycle (which his grandfather sort of ran over with his truck), we hung up.

i got back to the office, settled down to work, and got a call from the ex-b.

stupid, stupid me...i answered it.

'it's 3-0,' he said.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i called him three kinds of a bastard and hung up on him. did i ever say we were friends? we are not friends.

my day? she is ruined....

RUINED!

how can that pathetic sort of play bode well for us against italy on saturday? how?? if italy plays against ghana the way i know they'll play against ghana, we are dead in the water. because italy will get three against ghana, we have nothing, and cr has three. worst (and most likely) case for saturday is that italy beats us, then has six points to our effing zero points, and then cr plays ghana and collects three more for their six points, and then we play ghana at the same time cr plays italy, and we get our three. and it doesn't fucking matter, does it? because we have three! and they! they have at least six each and both of them are advancing and we are going hoooooooooooooooooome........

i honestly want to go stick my head under a pillow and howl. i am crushed. humiliated. how can i show my face?

i thin ki'm going to cry. now i know how the poor, poor polish fans felt on friday. except they only got shut out 2-0.

i want to go get drunk.

Things I Learned Playing Poker

2006-06-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

By: Schadenfreude

1. There's no such thing as a good beat.
2. The better your hand, the more money you will lose.
3. The bigger the idiot, the more money (of yours) he will end up with.
4. Quit while you're behind, not when you're ahead.
5. All-in is almost always the wrong move.
6. Fold is the most underrated move in poker.
7. Most of the so-called legends of poker have no better idea of what they're doing than you do.
8. Aggression is the key to victory; passivity is certain defeat (but don't go crazy either way).
9. Cards are of secondary importance.
10. Money is of tertiary importance.

Analyze this

2006-06-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

By: Fritz_Gerlich

In this dream, I am a woman. No particular woman; I don't know my name, my age, or what I look like. But I am definitely female. I feel female, which feels different from being male. Don't know how else to explain it.

I'm embracing another woman. Initially, I can't see her, don't know what she looks like, although I have the impression she is young. If I were a man in the dream, I would be acutely conscious of her body, but as a woman I'm not. I'm conscious of her self, of her being there, so to speak. Don't know how else to explain it.

Our embrace is not erotic, but it is emotionally intimate and intensely satisfying. I have a powerful sensation that we have, against all odds, discovered each other. It's the feeling of relief and wonder as when you learn that someone else is as intoxicated with you as you are with him/her. But, again, in this dream the emphasis is not on physical intimacy. It is more that from now on we will love each other, trust each other, have each other, no matter what happens. The peace and joy of that thought pass through me like a gentle wave.

We break off the embrace and I hold her at arm's length and look at her. She is young, no older than her twenties. I know from the protective way I feel toward her that I'm older, but nothing more specific than that. I don't have a terribly distinct recollection of what she looks like, except that she has dark hair. In this dream, she would be overpowering to me no matter what she looked like. I have tears in my eyes, as she does. She looks down and sniffles, seeming overwhelmed.

She asks something like, "Is this it, then?" I say: "It is, but there's one more thing we have to do." From here the dream takes on an, um, dreamlike quality. That sounds strange, I know. Up to this point, the dream has been quite naturalistic. Now it becomes ritualistic. Something of great importance must be done. I don't know in advance what I'm going to do or why, but I act, nonetheless, with complete certainty and precision.

I take out an oversized safety pin. I mean, this sucker is a good eight inches long. I unclasp it and carefully thrust the point through the outside of my right cheek, near my mouth, and then out my mouth. I know in advance that it will not hurt, nor will I bleed, because this is not the first time I've done this. That is, I know that it hurts the first time you do it, but not thereafter.

I also know that she has never done it, so it will hurt her. Nonetheless, it must be done. I slip my left hand behind her head and draw her mouth to mine. Then I work the point of the pin between her lips, turn it, and thrust it firmly through her cheek, after which I somehow manage to close the pin with one hand. We are now literally safety-pinned into a kiss.

It does hurt her. I can taste her blood, and her tears wet my cheeks. But she doesn't struggle, and I stroke her hair comfortingly. I know the pain will not last.

Suddenly, we fuse together in a kind of white-hot joy. Every barrier is swept away. Our bodies don't exist any more. We know each other's thoughts and feelings in a way impossible in life. But such revelation, far from diminishing either of us to the other, makes us appear to each other as having almost infinite proportions. I know nothing specific or limited about her, because I now know her in a way that goes beyond specificity and limitation. Moreover, I can literally feel her knowing me in the same way. It's like an infinity of mirrors, my joy beholding hers beholding mine beholding hers, and so on. It is as if we know each other at the level of being itself, and understand for the first time that being is miracle. Don't know how else to put it.

I wake up, gasping. The dream haunts me for the rest of the day. I can still feel it.

I didn't mean to kill you.

2006-06-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

By: Schadenfreude

Dear Pedestrian:

I didn't mean to kill you. I tried to stop, but there just wasn't time. Did nobody ever tell you to look both ways before you cross the street?

I'm sure that phone call you were making was very important to your future romantic/professional/social life, but surely less important than an intact rib cage or uncrushed pelvis; your neck just looks wrong.

Mercifully, your phone seems to have died, too. At least I don't have to listen to the anguished squawks that would be issuing from it if it was still alive.

I'll probably have to pay the deductible for that dent. Maybe I'll just wash it and see what it looks like.

Sincerely,

Schadenfreude

Bonus:

The idea that limitations on free speech are justified by the problems of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is a failure to attribute the consequences to the real problem: lack of adequate emergency exits, lighting and signage. Whenever someone uses this argument, I automatically think, "Twit".

This Blog is Broke

2006-06-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

Technorati stopped indexing it. Because I was a bit ping happy, I suspect I earned the dreaded splog designation. I emailed them last week about it, but I don’t expect a response. Suffice it to say, without technorati, bestofthefray is without its best source of external traffic. Now I could recreate the blog under a new name, and having learned my lesson, avoid being confused for a splog. But no. Instead I’ll take the opportunity to leave it at that.

I want to thank all those who I featured, and suggest you start your own blogs. Some of you (I won’t say who) should. With what I’ve learned, I’ll probably start my own personal blog as well. It was fun.

As for bestofthefray, it’s something of a bridge now, so I’ll leave it just as it is. If it wasn’t broke, I’d invite someone, anyone to take a turn at running it. I did set it up with the intent of sharing, so the login and password are totally generic (i.e. I don’t have a problem giving them to a volunteer). That said, I suppose it might not matter to everyone that it’s broke, or even more unlikely, someone might like to try and fix it. If that’s you, email me at my Ender email address for the keys to this, the bestofthefray.

Update.

filed under: BotF | technorati

Ethics refresher for US troops

2006-06-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

By: O_Hellenbach

From CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military chief in Iraq Thursday ordered troops to undergo fresh training in legal, moral and ethical standards for the battlefield, in response to what the mayor of Haditha has called a "day of catastrophe."

Listen, I'm all for training to improve our troops, but let's think about this for a minute, people: Does it really take special moral training to know that breaking into houses and slaughtering 24 unarmed non-combatants, then lying about it constitutes behavior that is generally categorized as "wrong," or at least "inappropriate?" That never seemed like something that was a gray area to me and most of my friends. Then again, almost none of us are registered Republicans. But I digress.

Anyway, if these particular soldiers somehow had a moral code that gives a big thumbs-up to massacre, it makes you wonder what kind of guys are joining up in the first place, and what kind ethical training exam they might have had to pass initially:

Question 1 (10 points): You're an occupying force in an unstable nation. One of your buddies is killed by an IED. Locals aren't sympathetic with your mission, and some of them no doubt are behind the bombing. Do you:

(A) Fire a few rounds into a local mosque after evening prayers
(B) Fire a few rounds into a local mosque after evening prayers, then kick the shit out of a few old men for good measure
(C) Get together with your unit and go waste a bunch of raghead women and children
(D) Get together with your unit and go waste a bunch of raghead women and children, making sure to falsify the report so it says they were killed by an IED
(E) both B and D

And so on. Whatever the problem is here--and my guess is that it has more to do with how war, occupation, and militarism brutalize even the best people than with individuals with faulty moral codes--it seems unlikely to be fixed with a PowerPoint presentation and the threat of losing a weekend liberty.

By: Fritz_Gerlich

Amerikanische Umwelt

You might be interested in something I posted on this subject last night:

I, too, am a Vietnam veteran. I was a POW interrogator, not an infantryman. I was exposed to combat without having to carry the burden of it. I saw my fill of the degradation of human beings that inevitably comes with war.

In one case, I had to interview a farmer whose penis had been shot off by (he said) a GI firing randomly from the back of a passing truck. In another case, I arrived at a field hospital to talk to a wounded POW who was supposed to arrive there, and found that even though his wound had been reported from the field as "minor," he had somehow managed to arrive at the hospital dead, with a .45 hole in his chest. Of course, nobody knew anything.

In part, it's simply what war is. We feed ourselves a big line of bullshit about how Americans are different, Americans fight humanely and honorably. I can assure you, Americans are no different from any other hate-and-fear-crazed animals. In highly disciplined units, some control can be kept over this stuff even under stress, but units vary a lot in discipline and morale. Inevitably, some are going to degenerate into it. When you've been in danger for too many days in a row, you feel like you're a character in one of those violent video games. Not only are you on hair-trigger alert all the time, but you feel very alone, very forgotten, pushed out the door of human existence, almost. It's hard to believe anybody will know or care what happens to you--or what you do. All it takes is a weak NCO who lets his men get away with too much bullshit talk about what they want to do to the gooks, and if the right circumstances present, it can happen without warning.

But the problem is a lot deeper than lack of training specifically on rules of engagement. We got a lot of that, they get even more today. (Today engagement takes clearance from much higher than it did in my war.) The root problem, as I saw it in Vietnam, is the overbearing and contemptuous attitude the army fosters toward foreigners. In Vietnam, "gooks" (any Vietnamese) and "chucks" (VC) were virtually equated. Americans, even officers, thought nothing of insulting Vietnamese civilians. I once listened to an American lieutenant berate his ARVN interpreter, an enlisted man, because the interpreter had denied that South Vietnam was a "communist country." The lieutenant told him he was full of bullshit, every other gook was a chuck, etc. And this was our ally, a guy he was supposed to be working with! The whole attitude was, "We're Americans and you're not, creeps." Believe me, the Viets understood and resented it--even those who were most on our side.

It wasn't restricted to interpersonal relations. I cringe when I read about the accident outside Kabul, because that was a constant issue where I was. GIs drove their trucks like maniacs--no military reason, just to scare the gooks off the road--and accidents were common. One CID guy told me once, "I wish one of those gooks would just pick up his rifle and shoot one of these cowboys sometime. Maybe that would get the message across."

The Americans built giant bases and stuffed them with every luxury possible. They loved posing as Lords of the Earth, aristocratic warriors who could live like kings and hire the little people to do their scut work. They hired thousands of Viets to come on the bases and do their laundry, their KP, clean their hootches, burn their shit. (And then wondered how Charlie knew where every fucking thing was on a base.) Sexual harassment of women was so common nobody thought anything of it. Most GIs professed to believe that all Viet women were prostitutes anyway, who were delighted to give them blowjobs for two bucks. Some of them would say so to their faces (GIs and Viets shared a kind of pidgin quite capable of communicating anything sexual.)

Well, you get the picture. Racism and chauvinism aren't in themselves war crimes, but they do as much as anything else to establish the climate in which men will easily take foreign lives in the belief that their system will probably ignore it.

Although I've never been to Iraq, I'm satisfied from what I read that pretty much the same thing is happening there as happened in Vietnam. Maybe not quite as crude; this, after all, is a small professional army, where we were a big conscript one. But I think the basic problem is still the same: "We're Americans and you're not, creeps."

Hillary Clinton as Batwoman

2006-06-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

By: The_Bell
filed under: The_Bell | BotF | Hillary Clinton | Politics

DC Comics has just announced the reintroduction of Batwoman. The original superheroine premiered back in 1956 but was subsequently killed off in 1979. The new Batwoman will share some commonalties with her predecessor – her alter ego is named Kathy Kane and she will wear a costume replete with cape and boots. However, DC says they have also decided "to give her a different point of view." By this they mean that Batwoman is now a lesbian.

Fan reaction to the change ranged from outrage to hearty approval, with a wait-and-see sentiment dominating. "This is not just about having a gay character," DC insists. "We're trying for overall diversity in the DC universe."

Then there is Hillary Clinton's presumptive run for President in 2008.

NOW HOLD ON; JUST STAY WITH ME ON THIS ONE.

The poster Catorce asked a really good question the other day on the BOTF board – "Why don't you like Hillary?" He goes on to explain, "I've heard a lot of the 'I just don't like her' stuff. But I have yet to hear responsible coherent criticism."

I must point out that while "I just don't like her" is certainly not a rational argument, it is a very real one upon which countless Americans will base their vote should Clinton run. Indeed, generally liking/trusting a candidate seems to have become more important to a great many of us than where that candidate stands on the issues since at least Ronald Reagan and probably all the way back to Washington.

That said, let us examine some of the reasons why people "just don't like" Clinton in a more analytic light. One Democratic strategist has labeled her "black licorice," meaning that the people who like Clinton find her irresistible while those who dislike her absolutely despise her. I would argue (tongue-in-cheek) she is also the new Batwoman of politics and can be best understood in those terms.

1. They're Both Chicks
Let's get the most obvious thing out of the way first. Generations of the boys and men who comprise the (usually) unwashed masses of comic book enthusiasts have long enjoyed feminine superheroes. Yet there is a smug assumption that they remain sidekick material in the presence of their male counterparts. Batwoman can kick all the bad-guy ass she wants when alone. If Batman is standing next to her, however, she is expected to graciously swoon and allow herself to be protected by a real hero.

Blame genetics, blame societal stereotyping, or anything else you prefer. Likewise, many men – and, in honesty, more than just a few women – would vote against Hillary simply because she is a woman and the office of President historically has been a male domain.

2. Lesbian = Liberal
For very conservative comic book readers, the very fact that the new Batwoman is gay makes her immoral. Those less traditional in their views may still find themselves uncomfortable should artists follow Kathy into the privacy of her boudoir with a consenting adult. Even those who have no problem with it whatsoever may still worry whether her lesbianism will impair the new Batwoman's widespread appeal and acceptance.

Hillary Clinton is seen by many conservatives as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. When the Clintons first came to Washington, many Democrats whooped that, at last, serious progressive were once again in charge who would put an end to the inanities of the Reagan era. Bill Clinton did not do that – in fact, he ended up moving the Democratic Party to the right-center.

That was partly out of political savvy and partly because personal scandals kept him too preoccupied to implement much of any agenda he may have had. Republican scandal makers, having lost the husband as a liberal bogeyman, turned to the wife and insisted she was always the real force behind Bill in that direction.

Nobody doubts that Clinton could probably win the Democratic nomination. However, many fear that Republicans could easily defeat her in the general election by tarring her with the old "tax and spend liberal" charges. Clinton herself is certainly worried about it, given her propensity over the past year to move herself to the ideological center and engage in tough talk regarding Iraq and social values.

3. She's From New York
Gotham City, the haunt of Batman and Batwoman, has always been considered to have been modeled on New York City and "Gotham" is an old NYC nickname. Unlike Superman, who often left his also New York-like city of Metropolis to fight for all of America or even the entire world, Batwoman tended to be bounded by her native city.

One of the reasons for Clinton's recent emergence as a viable Presidential candidate is the bipartisan respect she has earned over the past five and a half years while serving as the junior Senator from New York. The problem is that New York is one of the bluest of Blue States and is often inseparable in many people's minds from the very liberal New York City. Clinton may have gained Rupert Murdoch's esteem but that just makes her a successful liberal carpetbagger in the minds of many Red State voters.

4. She Already Died Once
One of the more subtle factors working against the new Batwoman is the fact that she had a predecessor who suffered the ultimate failure for any superhero in dying. Unless they are John Wayne at the Alamo, a hero's reputation only tends to suffer rather than being ennobled by being defeated. We cannot help but remember the weakness from an earlier time.

In this sense, Clinton the candidate will not be able to escape her ill-fated 1990s assignment from husband Bill to solve the country's healthcare crisis. Nobody doubted Clinton's intelligence after the massive study she ran. But where America was looking for leadership and admittedly simple answers, she proposed a staggering bureaucracy – the very thing we fear most regarding healthcare. She got a unique opportunity to be co-President. She also suffered a Presidential-sized failure in full view of the American public. It is not that Clinton cannot rise about this past failure but it will always continue to loom over her.

5. No Charisma
One reason Batman is so interesting is that Bruce Wayne is interesting and complex. Orphaned at a young age by a thug's bullet, he dedicated his life to crime fighting, making him a fascinating mix of selfless champion and merciless vigilante. Kathy Kane was a circus acrobat who unexpectedly inherited a fortune and found herself bored. She was inspired to superheroine status by Batman and there is an unavoidable girlish crush aspect to her dedication.

I really don't know if Clinton is bland in her own right. She had the unfortunate luck of spending most of her political career until recently standing next to Bill and most people are going to suffer in that comparison. She comes across as cold and stilted to many people, although, by standing on her own, she may end up doing to the nation what she did in New York. She has certainly shown herself able to raise big piles of money which is as pragmatic a measure of charisma that any candidate can manifest these day.

Still, Clinton's charisma, no matter how real and effective, strikes me more as learned. I cannot she her winning that battle if the Republicans run someone with true natural charisma, such as John McCain.

6. What's With This "New Point of View?"
A lesbian superheroine in the abstract than may bother comic readers less than the re-introduction of a character who was never gay before. DC Comics may be sincere that the new Batwoman has no agenda to promote but fans will be hard pressed to avoid being skeptical if not downright distrustful.

The same is true, in my opinion, about Clinton's recent swing to the right. It is understandable – the entire Democratic Party is cowering in fear of doing something wrong to screw things up at the very time when Republicans are at their most vulnerable to aggressive attack. Yet it leaves many voters distrustful of the "new and improved" Clinton who has emerged from New York and the U.S. Senate. How much is genuine and how much is learned?

Her marriage does nothing to help this perception. Everybody loves Laura Bush. She married a drinking, drug-abusing, wild man but stood faithfully by his side until he found Jesus and respectable behavior. Hurrah, she's an icon. Clinton has stood faithfully by Bill's side through several infidelities. Many have sympathized with her over this but still ask why she stays with him. Then they answer their own question by concluding she is addicted to power and unattractive for being so.

* * *

The roots of these reasons may themselves all be irrational but they logically lead to only one unfortunate conclusion for Clinton. No matter how much she may have been misrepresented or suffered by comparison in the past, no matter how much she may have sincerely changed/grown in office, and no matter how much she has accomplished as a Senator in her own right, many people will never be able to shake the image of cold, bitchy, liberal, healthcare Hillary. She is the new Batwoman of politics. When they see Clinton's name on the ballot, a familiar theme song will run through voters' heads –

Naw-Nah, Naw-Nah, Naw-Nah, Naw-Nah . . . Hillary!

All or None at All

2006-06-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

By: Ele_

Just a few days ago our nation celebrated Memorial Day by honoring those who died defending our freedom and our way of life. We all did – well, let's say, all to speak of – but in different ways.

Some of us carried flowers to the graves of soldiers or participated in public activities that signified our indebtedness to fallen heroes. Others spent the long weekend at home, with their kids or grandkids. There is nothing wrong with that either, because there cannot be a better remembrance of the past than nurturing the future.

Yet others headed to the malls. Don't be too quick to take offence with them. This is a part of our way of life and on the battlefield one doesn't select which part is worth dying for and which is not – it's either all or none. So a peaceful shopping traffic is also a memorial and even if lacking in monumentality is no less lasting.

Regrettably there were, as usual, the few, the pathetic, the … but let's talk of something else first. Memorial Day is the legacy of the Civil War. Here is how it started:

"Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No.11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war)".

So let's talk of the Civil War. Between two surrenders – of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861 and of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865 – it lasted for 4 years. To say that it started as a continuous string of Southern victories would be incorrect because, as in most wars, both sides had their shares of successes and failures. The Union troops won several engagements in West Virginia prior to the first Confederate victory in the First Manassas Battle. Yet, until Gettysburg, things didn't look very bright for the North and even after it there were quite a few disappointments.

And that is just the military part of it, not counting the Reconstruction, which lasted for more than a decade. Most certainly, each setback planted in susceptible minds an additional reason to doubt the final outcome. After all, one can't just invade a country (so what if self-proclaimed, wasn't the Union itself self-proclaimed too?), tell its people that their way of life is wrong, and enforce one's own by force of arms. Not to mention civilian casualties, not to mention European powers' disapproval. Not to mention shut-down newspapers, raging riots and even Habeas Corpus being for a while suspended… Not to mention…

Turned out, bloody well one can and today we have his statue on the National Mall. In this picture it's right there, behind the columns. But that's not really the point. The point is that not every Union soldier was Joshua L. Chamberlain or Robert Gould Shaw. There were those mistreating POWs and there were those breaking into homes and killing their inhabitants, whether armed or not, whether on orders or without. There was burning Atlanta and there was burning New York City.

To dispel it all by referring to a few bad apples and such is easy but the reality might be very different. It is entirely possible that those who stood fast at Gettysburg and those who left a path of devastation and death from Atlanta to Savannah were ones and the same. And, to think of it, do we know everything of Chamberlain and Shaw? I mean the real ones, not the larger than life characters of the screenplays.

Wars bring much confusion, and not only on the outside, events-wise, but also the inner one, inside each and every one of those who fight them. Action heroes, whose vision is clear and the aim steady at all times, dwell in the celluloid domain; real wars sadly lack them. Otherwise, perhaps there would've been no wars. But there are, so we talk of the fog of war and this fog not just brings up the best and the worst – it brings it up in the same people.

Are we to exhume every military grave in a mindless quest to separate those, who have never deviated from the rigid formulae of morality derived in the air-conditioned comfort of ivory towers, and honor only them? I say, we honor all or none at all, because what matters is whether they have died in a war to propagate slavery or to abolish it, and America doesn't fight the former kind.

Should one select to honor none, one must detest any armed conflict and therefore the military itself because its only purpose is to engage in such conflicts. That is, of course, the position of the few that I have mentioned in the beginning of this article. Basically they see the world as one big courtroom, where one prevails by virtue of a better-reasoned argument. What doesn't occur to the few – and that's why they are the pathetic – is that a courtroom is orderly only because bailiffs with guns are present and everyone knows that they wouldn't hesitate to use them if necessary, even though an innocent bystander might get hurt in the process.

So when we return to the roots of Memorial Day and honor Union soldiers we honor them all because the rude but worth remembering reality is that without Sherman's March to the Sea, slavery might've been still around and there cannot be the land of the free in which some are slaves. It's either all or none at all.

A Dire Warning

2006-06-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

By: Isonomist--

I don't know how to say this gently, and I hope you're all sitting down (I was, and eating a taco, at the time). Apparently editors across the nation are being told, by no less a personage than the head of Copy Editor, Wendalyn Nichols, that the personal pronouns singular (well two of them) are on their way out. Guess what's taking their place. The grammatically incorrect "they." She claims it's already happened in England (Is this true? Can anyone confirm?).

I know you've all seen that construction before, and it was wrong, wrong, wrong. But now it's going to become part of our lives. Instead of saying he/she is going" we'll all be saying "they are going."

It hurts me.

It was bad enough they dropped the second person singular. Now they're removing sex from the language. But that's not the end of it, no. The next step, according to Nichols, is to completely destroy everything we know about English syntax by accepting the Frankensteinian "They is." As in, "when a copy editor encounters bad grammar, they is likely to throw a fit."

If you think this won't come to pass, remember what happened with randomly-hyphenated-compound adjectives.

By: Freditor_G

Removing sex from language? I think you've got that wrong.

If it's a definite group of mixed genders, it's already a "they." Despite the fact that there are two sexes. "They" is a sexless word.

But if it's an indefinite person of indeterminate gender, it's a... pretty awkward choice. Why pick a specific gender for a generic person? If nothing else, it feels dishonest to the careful speaker - hence the colloquial dissatisfaction with the rule.

"They" has the advantage of indicating an indeterminate subject. This development will hardly make English the first language with a third gender.

By: Isonomist--

I'm not sure but it sounds like you're confusing sex with gender.

Gender is the grammatical form of a word, sex is the feature of the person.

So if I read you correctly, it's "mixed sexes," and "indeterminate sex" -- and why pick a specific sex for a generic person-- and I don't disagree that it's a pain to most of us to have to make a call on whether anonymous persons are of one sex or the other. The way I handle it in writing for presentations is to keep switching the gender of my pronouns. So that every other anonymous child, parent or caregiver is a "he" or a "she." Not a great solution either.

We already have a third gender: "It." No one wants to be "it." We'd all rather be they. Maybe we need to convene a constitutional convention (or whatever it's called, all you poly sci grads) the way they did when they decided to call tomatoes vegetables or that screws should be lefty loosy and righty tighty. But then, I can't imagine Congress collectively understanding enough about sex to be able to rule on gender.

Quid Pro Squash

2006-05-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

filed under: The_Bell | BotF | Politics | Corruption | William Jefferson

Based on some pretty convincing evidence gathered by the FBI, Democratic Representative William Jefferson of Louisiana is a scumbag of the highest order. Back on May 20, the Bureau conducted a late-night raid on Jefferson's offices at the Rayburn Building. They had a warrant, based on alleged videotape that showed Jefferson accepting $100,000 in cash from an FBI informant at a hotel in Arlington Virginia. A subsequent search of Jefferson's home discovered $90,000 of that money concealed in his freezer.

Even so, this was the first time in the nearly two hundred and twenty year history of our nation that the Justice Department had used a warrant to search the offices of Congress. What is more, they carried away computer and other records in their pursuit of evidence. As a result, Jefferson – the scumbag – is suddenly earning bipartisan support as the most wronged man in the country by his fellow legislators. Republicans and Democrats could not agree on immigration policy or social security reform or gay marriage or the Iraq War but they are united in agreement that a bribe-taking Representative got a raw deal from the FBI.

The argument is that this is something "bigger than Jefferson." Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a rare joint statement last week protesting the raid as a violation of Constitutional separation of powers. House Majority Leader John Boehner predicted the matter would end up in the Supreme Court. GOP Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin held a hearing entitled, "Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?" and now says he will next call Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller before his panel to explain themselves.

Yet the high passions and self righteousness are not limited to Congress on this matter. When cries first began for the FBI to return the materials seized from Jefferson's office, Gonzales indicated he might resign rather than do so. President Bush then interceded by directing the Department of Justice to seal the materials for a forty-five day "cooling off" period. Even that was enough to trigger indignation. "What is [Bush] saying? His own Justice Department was wrong?" one senior law-enforcement official fumed to Newsweek.

At the heart of the standoff is a Constitutional issue, relating to Article I, Section 6, Clause 1, which says, "[Congress] shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place." [my emphasis]

Based on established jurisprudence, that is a pretty lame defense for Representative Jefferson in this matter. Back in 1880, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Kilbourn v. Thompson that the Speech and Debate Clause meant that members of Congress and their aides are immune from prosecution for their "legislative acts." In order words, the clause does not protect members of Congress from prosecution for any criminal acts they might commit but rather from prosecution for unpopular political views. This position was later reinforced by the cases of Browning v. Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives in 1986 and United States v. Rostenkowski in 1995.

That may be so, say many in Congress, but today is a different time facing different realities. Jefferson is an eight-term Congressman and the senior member on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. As such, he may have been given briefings and various sensitive materials related to the Iraq, terrorism, and other matters of homeland and national security. The FBI cannot search his seized records for evidence of bribery without inadvertently opening these sensitive materials and thus compromising them.

The Justice Department counters such an interpretation is flatly ridiculous. It would extend the Speech and Debate Clause's immunity so far that it would make it impossible to search any place that might contain even one privileged document. Such a step would be "fundamentally inconsistent with the bedrock principle that 'the laws of this country allow no place or employment as a sanctuary for crime'," they said in papers filed with U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.

Given the sleazy nature of Jefferson's alleged crimes and the fairly solid evidence against him, it is easy to join the Boston Herald in asking, "So is this really the man that Republicans in Congress want to be out on the front lines defending when they're fighting for their political lives?"

Yet Congressional fears of abuse of powers are far from misplaced.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland raises a valid question when he asks why Justice Department officials saw the need to break tradition and raid the offices of a Democratic Representative even while current and former Republican lawmakers are under investigation. "It certainly has been disparate treatment," he said.

Likewise, the Department of Justice is still furiously backpedaling from initial confirmation by one of its spokespersons to a report by ABC News that House Speaker Dennis Hastert – an outspoken critic of the FBI raid – was himself under investigation by the FBI as part of the corruption probe centered around convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. That led many to defend the Speaker and insist the report was a form of retaliation for his non-cooperation regarding Jefferson. "You know this is one of the leaks that comes out to try to intimidate people. And we're just not going to be intimidated on it," Hastert told WGN Radio.

What ought to have happened in this case seems straightforward to me. Whether U.S. Representative or average citizen, Jefferson ought to have cooperated with or at least not attempted to oppose the FBI investigation against him. The FBI was well within its rights and normal operating procedures to obtain a warrant to search Jefferson's office and home for evidence. However, especially giving the precedent-breaking nature of the search, to do so in the middle of the night and without prior notification was going too far on the Bureau's part, even if it is becoming an increasingly troubling modus operandi for them.

Yet the insistence by Congress that it ought to be above the Constitution does not surprise me either, particularly in light of the security angle they insist is involved. They are simply mirroring the kinds of protections and special powers they have provided to the Executive Branch since the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. They have repeatedly rolled on their backs in granting the Bush Administration extended powers or failing to exercise their own powers. Their initial passage and subsequent renewal of the Patriot Act empowered the very Justice Department by whose actions they are now outraged.

Sure, it is all very hypocritical but Congress made the mistake of assuming that the three branches of government were being hypocritical together. It was supposed to be quid pro quo. I scratched your back, they are telling the Executive Branch, now it is time for your to rub our upturned belly. Unfortunately, as they are finding out, it does not work that way. The Bush Administration was never interested in growing the powers of the Federal Government due to the exigencies of foreign terrorism; they desired the advancement of the Executive Branch at the cost of all others. The Justice Department is no longer bound by the Constitution in order to catch nasty Islamic extremists; the same cannot be said for members of Congress.

It will be very hard for Congress to get back what they have already surrendered but at least they may show more circumspection in the future about rolling over. Power corrupts. Giving it to one side does not lead to quid pro quo but quid pro squash – squashing the powers and rights of everyone else, that is. It is indeed unfortunate as sordid a character as Jefferson was required to wake up Congress but thank heavens they are at least awake now to some other sordid things which they have had a hand in supporting.

A rant occasioned by Haditha: Iraq is lost

2006-05-31T08:21:00.000-07:00

filed under: O_Hellenbach | BotF | Iraq | Haditha | War

It's not over yet? Too soon to judge? That's so cute.

But okay, I'll play along. Let's say that after some number of years, though no time soon, Iraq manages to staunch the increasing and increasingly horrific internecine violence, manages not explode into constituent parts, manages to establish a viable government, manages to become a somewhat peaceful and more-or-less secular state (at least by the standards of Iranian ayatollahs and Jerry Falwell), manages even to establish some form of quasi-democracy. Not a lot of people think this is really going to happen, but let's say that it does, sometime after 2010. The US has still lost.

The surest and latest nail in the coffin of any real hope of US "victory" in Iraq--though the administration still seems not to have a very clear definition of what "victory" comprises--is the mild reaction both within Iraq and throughout the greater Middle East to what appears to be upcoming revelations about the Haditha massacre. The Iraqis don't think this is a big deal at all. Unlike our domestic warmongering apologists for US military atrocity and misconduct, however, it's not because they think that we're a swell bunch of guys, but that occasionally bad stuff happens while we're there to help them out. Rather, it's because they think that this behavior is just par for our occupational course. They don't think this is the first such massacre, don't think it's the last, and don't think it's the worst. From Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Word that U.S. Marines may have killed two dozen Iraqi civilians in "cold-blooded" revenge after an insurgent attack has shocked Americans but many Iraqis shrug it off as an every day fact of life under occupation.

Despite U.S. military denials, many Iraqis believe killing of men, women and children at the hands of careless or angry American soldiers is common. No reliable statistics are available.

Since U.S. officials said last week that charges including murder were possible after an investigation into the deaths at Haditha last November, Iraqi media and politicians have paid scant attention to details leaking out in Washington.

And so on. No matter how Iraq ultimately shakes out, the US is going to be remembered throughout the region as a bad guy, except perhaps by the Kurds. (Unless of course we manage somehow to screw them over in an attempt to salvage a unified Iraq.) Self-justifying stories that some Americans tell themselves about how we had no choice, or how the Iraqis are so much better off than they were before, or how it was just an honest mistake, just doesn't cut it. We've pretty much confirmed, or at least have provided reasonable grounds for inferring as true or plausible, the worst that anti-Americans have claimed about us. That doesn't bode well for any "war on terrorism" or create the kind of conditions that would tend to make us safer, either.

That we would make Iraq a nifty "free" place and that they would at least be a nice reasonable and--more to the foreign-policy point--friendly pro-Western nation was pretty much the last shred of justification or hope of success for the Iraqi invasion. As of now it's crumbled to dust and scattered across the desert like Humphrey Bogart's gold at the end of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

In fact, except for the original Captain-Ahabesque goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power, the Iraq invasion has been a disaster by pretty much every measure one can think of. No WMDs were found. (Maybe they're still hidden in the same warehouse as the mounds of flowers that the cheering Iraqis were supposed to shower on their American liberators. Someone should check.) In the end, there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and The Terrorists who supposedly threatened our very existence. Iraqis are dying at a faster rate than could happen even in a Saddam Hussein wet dream. We've got 2500 dead American soldiers and counting. (At 10 dead per week, we'll equal the toll from the WTC attacks by this time next year.) Conservative estimates of the cost of the invasion are running at half a trillion dollars--yes, that's trillion with a "tr." (FWIW, that's equivalent to the entire non-military discretionary federal budget for 2006.) The actual economic cost is probably much higher. The reservoir of post-9/11 good will and solidarity that we enjoyed through most of the world has been squandered, along with our credibility. (Go ahead, try saying "US moral authority" with a straight face.)

Put a fork in Iraq, folks, it's done. As for all you who bought into and flogged the war from the beginning, damning opponents as traitors and cowards and America-haters and pro-terrorists, and screeched that was all just about Bush-hating: well, you know who you are, though you hope the rest of don't. There are a few honest and reflective souls among you, and all kudos to you guys. But as usual, the formerly most vociferous warongers haven't got the balls or honesty to admit either to being wrong or even duped, much less admit their shameful polemic.

But it's okay, because we can generally recognize you. You're mostly hiding in the weeds, popping up occasionally to condone torture and massacres of civilians and NSA spying. Or, to the extent you engage in discussion about the wider catastrophe of Iraq at all, it's to insist plaintively that we should now all put aside our differences and take the high road. You know how that goes: "Let's not play the blame game or argue about the rights and wrongs of the invasion: the important thing is to make a success of it going forward!"

As the title admits, this is a rant. But it's still right.

Dearest Descendants:

2006-05-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

filed under: Ender | BotF | Al Gore | Pollution | Environment | Global Warming

Is it warm? I imagine it is. Are sea levels up? How did I guess? Yes, I knew. So if what we knew and when we knew it is hotly debated in your time, feel free to produce this letter--for what it's worth--in support of those who would argue that we, your forefathers, knowingly chose to live it up at the expense of your environment. But I'm being silly. Of course we knew. Yet, I don't rule out that someone in your time will find some profit in arguing our ignorance. I'm sure they'll have a wealth of historical records on which to base their argument. It's rather ironic. They'll have to argue that we were gullible enough to believe the studies and experts paid for by their very rhetorical forefathers--those of my time who are driven to lie in an effort to preserve the status quo, otherwise known as the bottom line. Now I'll not say that everyone was immune to the spin put out by the various polluting interests. Certainly idiots survive even into your time. Or perhaps you can't relate. Perhaps in your time there's a cure for stupidity. Nevertheless, I doubt such a cure would prove to be a panacea. No, intelligence is as much at cross-purposes with progress as it is responsible for it. But I digress.

What I want you to know that most of us, most of us know full well the truth behind our unsustainable and toxic lifestyles. We've made a choice. We chose luxury. We knew it was a good time to be alive. We figured, best case scenario, technology saves you from us. But we're not betting on it. Take technology out of the equation, and we wouldn't skip a beat. Trust me. You, and your wellbeing, occupy precious little of our day-to-day thoughts.

What occasions this letter? Al Gore and his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. I'm sure you know of it and him. Hell, you're living his dire warning. I imagine if he's right--and we know he is--he's achieved quite the legacy with you people. He must seem like a real prophet compared to the rest of us lugs. But he's not. He's not telling us anything we don't know. Strange isn't it. You probably debate why his message never got through as much as he did. Do you want to know why? First, you have to understand that he is being diplomatic. He can't very well expect to get applause if he stands up and announces that he not only knows we know what we're doing to mother earth, but he knows we decided to do it anyway. No, instead he has to play like he's educating us so that we might make the right decision. That way, we can at least pretend that we agree with him, if only everyone else would get on board. But we are on board. We're on board with the status quo. The status quo rocks. Seriously. Not a one of us is going to give up our first world status. If for no other reason, if we give it up, the rest of the world isn't going to sit around and not take it. Please.

No, the reality is we'd be stupid to give up our first world status, and make no mistake, excess defines first world status.

I think a little bit about me is in order. You might be thinking I must be a raging Christian fundamentalist oil executive. You'd be wrong. Quite the opposite in fact. I consider myself a liberal, an environmentalist and I don't believe in God. So why am I so selfish and pessimistic? Well, I'm wise and I'm lazy. Wise, right. Hey, take it for what it's worth. Lazy, okay. In fact, I'm lazy before I'm anything else. I enjoy all the modern conveniences, and that makes me lazy. I suppose if I did physical labor for a living, I might not be wholly lazy. But I don't. I sit behind a desk, and no amount of overtime, exercise or even charity work will change the fact that the accoutrements that define my world as modern, also define me and all those who enjoy them as I do, as lazy. I'm telling you who I am because it's important to me that you harbor no illusion that there were innocents in my time. We're all just as guilty, just as culpable, even Al Gore. In fact, Al Gore, when all is said and done, will be personally responsible for burning more fossil fuel than 100 of us non-messianic slobs put together.

But I'm not done. No. Now is the good part. Now is when I explain to you your hubris in blaming us for the shithole of a planet you inherited. First of all, no matter what your problems are, they truly do pale in comparison to the shit the industrial age conquered. Medicine alone owes its revolution to this age of excess, and you my children are the beneficiaries. Would you really trade modern medicine in for lower sea levels? I think not. Look around you children. Everything that you take for granted is rooted in my time. But I'm assuming you're benefiting from my technologies. Let's assume you're not. Let's assume you're living like animals in a barren wasteland. Well, you won't be reading this letter. So let's elevate your condition just enough to enjoy that pleasure. Now I ask you, do you know how many people are on the planet as I write this letter? Somewhere in the vicinity of 6.5 billion. Some people in my time would call that overpopulation. Would you? I don't imagine you would. Put simply, you owe your very existence to some of those children that were too many. And you know it. You exist because we chose excess. You are the end product. To condemning us for ruining your world, you must first condemn your own existence because you are the one true non-biodegradable pollutant of mankind. So suck it up children. Suck it up.

Why don't you like Hillary?

2006-05-31T08:04:00.000-07:00

filed under: Catorce | BotF | Hillary Clinton | Politics

By most accounts, there is this massive "I don't like Hillary Clinton" crowd outside of New York State, waiting with baited breath for her to announce her Presidential ambitions so they can continue to hate Hillary in a relevant context. In New York meanwhile, HRC has managed to win over much the seriously doubtful rural part of the state, has been feted by Rupert Murdoch (of all people) as good for New York, and continues to be beloved by Manhattan liberals, even as many pine for Gore-Obama.

Me, I've heard a lot of the "I just don't like her" stuff. But I have yet to hear responsible conherent criticism -- you get a lot of rank gender-based comments and tabloid gossip. You also get the very weird comment, offered as criticism, that HRC is politically ambitious. One would imagine most politicans are, especially those running for President. Some people claim she is a panderer, but I've yet to see real proof of that. HRC has always been a little more conservative than her rightie critics would allow, and if she's flipped on issues more than any other pol, I doubt it.

So what is it, Hillary haters? Can you provide a real, honest to goodness criticism of her that doesn't fall back on silly sterotypes, gossipy rumours, or unsupported allegations? Is the Hate Hillary crowd a bunch of Swift Boaters, or is there actual substance and truth behind the ill-will?

Go ahead. Convince me.

A Guy's Scent

2006-05-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

filed under: Splendid_IREny | BotF | Women | Men | Scents | Shampoo | Metrosexual

What is it? It's in my hair today.

A few months ago, I went to my stylist's new salon and he was giving out boxes with Redken samples (he teaches for them and does their shows, so always has kooky ideas on what to do with hair, and I let him because I trust him).

A couple of the samples were a guy's shampoo/conditioner. I just put them under the sink, thinking I'd let a guy use it if he were ever in the neighborhood. Thus far, the product has been under my sink unused (puns welcome here).

This morning, I decided, for no reason other than to test the difference between a "guy" product and a "women's" product, to use the shampoo. The packet of shampoo boasted three products that I guess the company thought would lure men who were into weight lifting: "Protein, Carbs and Glycerine."

Hmmm, protein. Why can't a chick have protein? Well, because it smells vaguely like a male cologne, maybe. I want to say the scent was bergamot, or something with bergamot, but can't be sure; the ingredients only said "parfum." Helpful. I like bergamot, though; I have a favorite fragrance with bergamot that a friend describes as an "amped-up" Earl Grey tea.

Or, maybe the scent was Bay Rum, which I also happen to enjoy.

A few years ago I house-sat the whole summer for a male friend. I loved the sorts of scents he kept in his bathroom – lavender, Bay Rum, Bergamot. After bathing one night, I splashed on some of the Bay Rum and thought it a shame that such a concoction was considered the domain of guys.

Whatever the scent was comprised of, I liked it enough to consider buying a whole bottle of the shampoo. Ok, that, and the fact that the "protein" and "carbs" made my hair extra soft today.

Protein. That's what my hair's been missing.

Where Leadership Naps

2006-05-30T11:18:00.000-07:00

filed under: The_Bell | BotF | Bush | Arlington National Cemetery | Memorial Day | Politics

Where valor sleeps. I will say this for President Bush – despite his infamous reputation for sometimes mangling the English language, he has speech writers who sure can craft a poetic turn of phrase. The President made his yearly trip yesterday to Arlington National Cemetery, where he laid a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He referred to that hallowed ground as the place "where valor sleeps."

Bush then called upon "our responsibility as Americans to preserve the memory of the fallen." In words recalling those of Lincoln at Gettysburg, he promised that we, the living, "will honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives – by defeating the terrorists, by advancing the cause of liberty, and by laying the foundation of peace for a generation of young Americans."

When Bush began his first term, some mocked his appearances at Arlington as hypocritical, saying he had used service in the Texas Air National Guard to avoid serving in combat. Frankly, I find myself nostalgic for those old charges of mere hypocrisy. Six years into his Administration, Bush is very much the "war President" of his own styling. He is/has been the Commander in Chief over a series of conflicts that have left thousands of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen dead and the same true for tens of thousands of other countries.

His words, as always, are stirring when he speaks of the ultimate triumph of liberty over tyranny. His actions, however, weave a different story – one of ineffectual dithering.

In Iraq, the military there has (as quietly as possible) announced that it is deploying the main reserve fighting force for Iraq, a full thirty-five hundred member armored brigade, as well as about fifteen hundred troops from a reserve force in Kuwait, into the volatile Anbar province. Their goal is to help maintain order, since a surge of terrorist violence has severely damaged efforts to turn Sunni tribal leaders against the insurgency. "[Al-Quaida's] Zarqawi is the one who is in control [here]," a Sunni sheik told the Washington Post. "We have stopped meetings with the Americans, because, frankly speaking, we have lost confidence in the U.S. side, as they can't protect us."

Uncontained violence is, of course, a problem everywhere in Iraq. Yesterday, insurgent bombings and other attacks killed more than forty people in Baghdad and around the country.

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps are conducting two separate investigations – one into the initial incident and another into whether it was the subject of a cover-up – of the possible death of fifteen unarmed civilians at the hands of U.S. soldiers in the western Iraqi city of Haditha.

Of course, Iraq is an ongoing conflict. How about Afghanistan, where we supposedly won? A recent traffic incident in Kabul involving a U.S. convoy kicked off riots in which crowds chanted "Death to America" and over a hundred people died. Much of the violence was organized by members of the Taliban, a group rapidly re-gaining popularity within Afghanistan. The democratic values embodied by President Karzai have been slow to catch on. Poverty and religious intolerance remain everyday facts of life for its citizens. "Democracy is just talk here," said an anonymous Afghan Christian, ". . . Islamic extremists control the government."

This is meant as no post-Memorial Day screed against our troops. I join the President in honoring those who have fought and are fighting in Iraq and elsewhere as having "acted with principle and steadfast faith." This is an all-volunteer military, after all. The vast majority of its members are not merely obeying orders but serving gladly and in support of what they believe to be a just cause.

Let us grant them that premise. Whatever our disagreements over the origins and justifications for the war in Iraq, the discontent in this country over that war can find common ground in the senseless way the noble sacrifices of our fighting men and women are being underused by the current Administration.

Never mind Bush the cowboy or Bush the warmonger. What about Bush the Commander in Chief? Here the divisiveness of partisan politics can fall away to be replaced by evaluation based on the facts. Even as the President called upon us yesterday to remember the honored dead, he had earlier signed the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act, a law just passed by Congress largely in response to the anti-gay demonstrations of a single Kansas church group at military funerals. Yet it symbolically represents the divide between this President's words and actions regarding war.

The other day at a join press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush admitted to some "mistakes" regarding Iraq. But perhaps his biggest insight came when he talked about why public sentiment was running against the war – "I mean, when you turn on your TV screen and see innocent people die day in and day out, it affects the mentality of our country," he said. I do not doubt the President believes in the worth of this war. His chief hypocrisy comes in how he presents it to the rest of us.

Bush wants us to acknowledge, honor, and accept without question his leadership in the conduct of the war as well as the sacrifices of the soldiers fighting it for him. Yet it is a sacrifice that he prefers kept in the abstract to the greatest degree possible. He proclaims that "America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war." But as Jon Meacham points out in Newsweek, he misses the point there is "no such thing as a 'small' war."

Almost more than any other events in our history, what we chose to fight for and whom we chose to stand against have had a way of defining our national character. The Revolution was for self-determination. The Civil War was a stand on both the supremacy of our country as a whole over the sum of its parts and the value of each individual within it. The Mexican War and Spanish-American War were for conquest, expansion, and empire. World War II was a stance against fascism. Korea and Vietnam had their places in (attempting to) check communism within the Cold War.

The difference between success and failure in any of those ventures had less to do with the purity or soundness of their individual aims – all had merits in their own ways – and owed more to the understanding by wise leadership when the fight was too much or not enough.

President Bush is a man in a crucible. He is caught between current public sentiment to stand down in Iraq and the fervent belief of his core supporters that victory there is vital to not only this country's safety but also the history of the free world. Attempting to bring openness to the Middle East is not a bad goal. If military might is how the President believes it can best happen, he should prosecute that to the fullest extent, even at the sacrifice of his own popularity or that of his Party. If he has come to believe he is mistaken, he must act to bring the troops home.

Either way he must lead. Bush is doing neither. Instead, he continues to talk up holding the status quo in the hopes that a miracle occurs or at least that the opposition can be held off through the mid-term elections this November. In the meanwhile, our troops continue dying at a slow but steady pace. We know that they are honorable and faithful. Many of us believe in the aims for which they serve and for which some give the ultimate sacrifice.

"Liberty is always the achievement of courage," said the President in his speech yesterday to great applause. True enough but it also not enough in and of itself. It also takes leadership. We need to stop labeling criticism about the latter as attacks on the former. To die in defense of a good cause is nobility itself. To do so needlessly however, no matter how good the cause, is simply a tragedy. Arlington may indeed be the place where valor sleeps. Yet that valor rests uneasily when, across the Potomac River, the Oval Office has become the place where leadership naps.

In memoriam

2006-05-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

filed under: TheBrewmaster | BotF | WWII | Memorial

My father's ashes were buried last month in Arlington National Cemetery. His grave overlooks the Pentagon. Across the Potomac River, you can see monuments to our great Presidents and Commanders-in-Chief. The service was led by one of his childhood friends, now an Episcopalian lay reader. We said the Lord's Prayer, and then Mr. Kittrell continued:

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our friend John; and we commit his remains to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him, the Lord lift up his countenance upon him and give him peace.

I never expected him to end up there. In all of the 50 years I'd known him, he had been an ardent pacifist, atheist, and self-professed communist. But evidently, before he died he'd told one or two other family members that he wanted to be buried in a military cemetery. "To save money," one of them said he'd told her, though who knows what his real reason was. He wasn't very rational near the end, in any case. Perhaps the two or three years he spent in the army during the Second World War ...more », from age 18 to 20, were the crucially formative years of his life, and his symbolic return to the military at death was an acknowledgement of his true identity. He certainly lived much of his life with images from those years clearly in his sight.

He was born in 1925 in Houston, Texas, the son of two bookkeepers at a lumber company. They had some hard times during the Depression, but eventually my grandfather became a partner in the company, which prospered building big houses in Houston during the post-war boom. My grandparents were Episcopalians. My grandmother had chosen that church for its respectability. (Her father, in a fit of enthusiasm, had become a Jehovah's Witness. But Mamie thought that sort of people weren't the right sort of people.)

So anyway, these two upright Christian Texas businesspeople got together and had a child, a son. They had great expectations of him. And he didn't disappoint, at first. He was athletic, an outstanding student, a model churchgoer, a Boy Scout, a leader. He thought about becoming a minister when he grew up. In 1942, when he was 17 years old and a freshman at the University of Colorado, he volunteered for the Army. He turned down an invitation to attend West Point, and went in as a private. He took part in two difficult campaigns: Leyte (October '44 to July '45—3,500 U.S. forces killed in action, 12,000 wounded) and Okinawa (April '45 to July '45—12,000 U.S. forces killed in action, 36,000 wounded). When he got back home, he was a different person. He decided to devote his life to the abolition of war. In 1963, he wrote a story describing some of the experiences he'd had as a soldier that helped shape that decision. This is his story:

It is mid-April, 1945, and the infantry battle is in full swing on Okinawa. The nights are cool and crisp; the days usually clear and sunny. We are under Japanese howitzer fire, dug in on a hillside overlooking a small Okinawan coastal village which has been razed for weeks by our naval air bombardment. We are attacking toward the south, slowly driving the Japanese into the sea. We overpower them.

The Japanese still manage to maintain artillery fire from their positions in the caves in spite of our heavy artillery, air and naval bombardments. Their batteries can be heard firing: boom, boom, boom, boom, a low muffled series of explosions and then in a few seconds the huge shells fall among us with a whistling crescendo ending in a loud shattering burst of sound as their steel jackets are torn into many high velocity, jagged pieces of potential death and injury. One shell goes over our heads; another lands in front, another to our left and so on. It is nerve-wracking.

We are maintaining an infantry battalion telephone switchboard in our foxhole. We have been under this barrage for almost a week. My sergeant is jittery; I'm fairly calm. I am religious, and I believe God wants me to fight the un-Christian Japanese. I believe that if I am killed I will go to heaven. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, I volunteered at the age of 17 to serve my country and to die for it if necessary.

"Cassidy," I said to my sergeant, "just think, those Jap gunners may find a particular setting on their instruments that will put one of those babies right in our foxhole."

"Shut up!" he bellows. He's older and married and has a couple of children. Perhaps it's a bit harder for him to die for his country. There is another salvo coming, coming close; the whistling turns into a high-pitched screech and one lands up the hill about 30 feet right in a foxhole. I think we've lost the radio crew. There is an eruption of canvas, canteens, raincoats, earth from the hole. I keep looking after the dust and debris settle, and I see the radio crew intact peeking from another hole. Two of them had just left the ill-fated hole before the shell hit it. (I saw later a foxhole hit directly by one of those big shells with the men still in it.)

I glance down the hill and see a young man jump out of a hole and start running down the dirt road. Weaponless, he is running toward the rear in panic. It's Harrington, still a teen-ager like myself. He always seemed so tough in pre-combat training, talked so tough—a muscular physical culturist who admired his own well-built body. I hear another rumble as the howitzer batteries blast off again. Again the shells fall close in. When I lift my head to look out, I see no sign of Harrington. It's quiet for ten minutes; they may not fire for an hour or two.

"I'm going back to see if Harrington made it," I tell my sergeant.

He's still shaking and says, "O.K."

I move fast down the road carrying my M1 rifle. I run about 300 yards around a turn in the road, and I find Harrington, or what's left of him. He has been hit directly and terribly mutilated by the big shell. One arm and one leg are blown off, and he is very bloody and warm and dead. I have to leave him there at the roadside and return to the safety of my hole.

I think about his death, so sudden and final. The shell did what it was designed to do: it murdered a 19-year-old boy who was running away from war like a frightened child running to his mother. He was my friend. No, I don't hate the Japanese for doing it; they were told to do it. But I'm beginning to wonder why we have to kill each other.

The next morning I see a dark figure moving about in the rubble of the blasted village below. "Cassidy, nobody's supposed to be down there!"

"No, let's go down and see who it is."

The barrage has lifted temporarily. Our battalion is sitting behind the front lines in reserve. Three of us go down into the village. We find a small, middle-aged Okinawan woman there beside a stone well. She is trying to pull up a bucket of water. She is in a ragged, torn and dirty kimono. She is crying softly, whimpering. Her face is bruised, one eye black, swollen shut, and her left thumb has been lacerated, seems to be hanging by the tendon. There is a heavy sliver of wood driven through her left flank; she points to this. Her wounds all look several days old and dusty. She seems frightened of us armed men. Her home has been destroyed, her family killed or hiding in the caves.

We lead her back up the hill and prepare to send her back to the medics. I bring her a steel helmet full of clean water I pour from a five-gallon can. She stoops and begins to make ineffectual efforts to straighten her hair and to tidy up her appearance using both hands. My eyes fill with tears. These gestures are so feminine and remind me of my mother and sweetheart at home; these gestures are so universally human. Perhaps people in different countries are really not so much different after all, even if they aren't Christians or Americans. I am beginning to hate the war.

We are getting ready to move up to the front. Several days pass, and the enemy barrage is less frequent. I am on guard at 2:00 a.m.; I hear footsteps down the hill below me. I hear a burst from one of our heavy machine guns dug in down there. Then there is silence.

At dawn I look out and see two figures lying on a path along the hillside. It is cold. I approach the figures out of curiosity. An Okinawan girl about ten years old lies on her back with her dress pulled up over her face; she is dead. An older woman, possibly her mother, lies at her side face down in the path. They are both cold and stiff. The two woven rice baskets they were carrying spill rice about them. I am sickened by this sight. In the fighting on Leyte I never saw a child killed....I want to bury them. My sergeant says people from the regiment will do it. We will soon move up.

It is Sunday morning. The word is passed that the chaplain will have communion service at 10:00 a.m. before we leave for the front. I always go to church services; I have since before I can remember. I used to come in on Sunday mornings from Boy Scout camp so I wouldn't miss Sunday school. I got a medal and a wreath around it and at least five bars hanging below to show that I had gone seven years without missing a Sunday. I was an acolyte, too, and sang in the Sunday school choir.

The service is held in a little group of trees further up the hill. I swing my M1 rifle over my shoulder by its strap (you are trained never to go anywhere on the battlefield without taking your rifle—it's supposed to become "part of you" like another appendage) and walk up to join the group of soldiers gathering there. We are all armed; some have grenades in their belts, pistols, bayonets, as well as rifles and carbines on their shoulders. Everybody has on a steel hat.

I can see the blue ocean and down the hillside I can catch a glimpse of the girl-child lying face up with her mother at her side. They are small specks from here and no one else recognizes them or knows they are there. I feel uneasy, almost sick at my stomach. A group of 35 or 40 gather.

The chaplain arrives. He keeps his steel hat on. He begins the ritual of The Lord's Supper with a prayer:

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love Thee, and worthily magnify Thy Holy Name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

We then say the Lord's Prayer together, and I keep looking at the specks down the hill....

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven....forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us....but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory....

A great wave of doubt and confusion begins to engulf me. I hear the chaplain reciting:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

I look about me at the grimy men with bowed helmets, at the weapons designed to kill men, weapons which will kill men in the days ahead, and I look back at the specks. Am I mad? Are these only words, meaningless phrases passed on generation after generation? Is there really a kind Father-God who cares for people, who hears their adult prayers? Does God care for us, the Americans, more than for the Japanese or Okinawans? Didn't a man ask Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" Did God care for the specks? What about Harrington? Did God love him?

I hear the chaplain's voice break into my thoughts:

....and bring us to everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I wonder who is included in the "us"? I know the chaplain can't see my specks lying dead in the path, but I want him to include them in his prayers. I look out over the village laid flat by weeks of shelling from our off-shore navy guns and planes. I wonder how many "civilians" were killed. I look dimly ahead into the next few weeks, and I wonder how many of us here will still be alive....

The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee preserve thy soul and body into everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.

The wafers are passed and then the grape juice:

The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee, preserve thy soul and body into everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ's blood was shed for thee, and be thankful.

The comfort of the ritual has somehow left my mind for the first time in the seven years since I was confirmed in the church and started taking communion. I feel like a total stranger, like a Jewish person might feel at the same Christian ceremony. For the first time I don't want to drink Jesus's blood not to eat his body. I keep looking at the stiff, cold bodies down the hillside....

....humbly beseeching Thee that all we who are partakers of this Holy Communion may be filled with Thy grace and heavenly benediction.

Then the chaplain prays for the safety of each man about to go into combat and he prays for our victory over the enemy. I still hope he'll somehow mention the specks but he doesn't. And then the benediction:

May the peace of God which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his son Jesus Christ our Lord, and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be among you and remain with you always.

In two days filled with the peace of God which passeth all understanding and the Holy Spirit among us, and the blessing of God Almighty secured for us by the Christian clergyman, we are on the front killing Japanese, Koreans, and Okinawans. I see a second Okinawan child in a cave; it had been roasted to a black crisp by our flamethrower. I see my sergeant shoot a Korean worker four times in the face and chest. He lay hiding unarmed in the grass. He was a young man near my age. My sergeant stands over him and shoots him. He is face up and I can see the blood spurting from his wounds and hear his gurgling groans. I can hear my sergeant back in camp telling his fellows how he shot his first Jap, almost boasting.

Happy Memorial Day, Iman and Abdul

2006-05-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

filed under: Fritz_Gerlich | BotF | Memorial Day | Iraq | War

A bunch of us down at the AmVets started talking about the war and Memorial Day and stuff, and somebody said, well, what about the Iraquis? And somebody said, we oughta send em a letter and encourage em a little. We wanted you to know that we're thinking about you this Memorial Day, even though you're not Americans. So I was elected!

Now, I know you're just kids, so you probably don't know that every year we Americans have a holiday, called Memorial Day, to honor the valiant soldiers and sailors who died in our wars. And this isn't just something out of musty old history books, kids. Our boys are dying now right over there in Iraq! For your liberty! It's sad that our young men have to die like that, but that's what happens when people like Saddam Hussein attack America. I know it wasn't your fault, Iman and Abdul, but 3,000 Americans died on 9/11, which is more than everybody killed in this war so far ...more », so you can see we've still got a way to go to teach the terrorists a lesson. What we say here is, these colors don't run. And you better believe it!

We Americans know this war has been tough on you Iraquis, too. I read that you don't get much water and electricity and gas. Boy, it must be a real nuisance with the air conditioning going out all the time! Well, it must be getting better, now that we are there. Like we say, Lafayette, we are here! Ta-da!

Of course, sometimes Al Qaida sets off bombs. They are truly evil, what with all the innocent people they kill. And their beheading videos--did you catch any of those? But hang in there, guys. Freedom isn't free. Our own Revolutionary War was pretty tough, too. Iraq will come through this just fine and someday get to have a president and a congress as good as ours!

Now, kids, this is tough to talk about, but we know about what happened in your house last November 19. See, we Americans don't cover that stuff up. No, sir. We have what's called a free press. We just wash our dirty laundry out in front of everybody! And I want you to know how bad we feel about our dirty laundry sometimes. We have a saying here: America isn't perfect--it's just better than anywhere else! I think that lets you know where we're coming from.

Anyway, we understand that it's tough--very tough, I would say, no question about it--to have Marines break through your door early in the morning and waste seven people right there in your living room. (Do you guys have living rooms? Or do you all live in the kitchen or someplace?) Especially when you're--like, what? seven and nine? Isn't that how old you kids are? I understand you got hit, too. Don't worry, American doctors are the best in the world. You tell those Army docs to give you candy and cigarettes! (That's what we always gave the kids in Nam.)

Now, I will grant you, Leathernecks--that's what we call Marines--can be pretty scary. They're trained to be. But those were good men, kids. The best of the best. They were there fighting for your liberty. Don't forget that. They didn't mean to hurt your family. A buddy of theirs had just been killed by a bomb. Wouldn't you be a little upset, too, if that happened to you? And, I guess, it happened pretty close to your house, so they thought you guys maybe had something to do with it. Maybe they got a little confused, or jumped to a conclusion or something--don't know. This is war, and war is like that. Mistakes get made. Happened in Nam all the time. It's nobody's fault--stuff happens, ya know? We Americans know a lot about war, kids. We've been in a lot of them, and nobody has to tell us war is hell. Nobody loves peace as much as Americans.

We heard your mother, your father, your uncle, your aunt, your grandfather and two of your cousins got killed, while you guys were hiding in the bed. And, I mean, that's just excessive force. Nobody in America agrees with that. Even in a fire fight, nobody's whole family should get wiped out unless there is just absolutely no other way. And we want you to know that everybody here 100% believes you guys absolutely deserve $2,500 for every single one of them! Now, we've heard some stuff about some Iraquis not wanting to take the money. Well, that's just silly. It isn't charity--you earned it! We want you to have it! Don't worry about the Army. They plan to make these payments, it's just overhead to them. Don't feel bad, now--you take the money! I mean, add it up: seven times $2,500--man, you could buy a Ramcharger for that! (If you want a lot of options, well, you still got one heck of a down payment there.)

Some of the liberal media are saying your grandfather was 77 years old and in a wheelchair when he got shot, and they're making a big deal of it. Now I know this'll be hard for you kids to understand, but see, in combat, you can't trust anybody. I mean nobody. Even a baby. An old man in a wheelchair might have a grenade in his lap. Now, your grandfather probably didn't, which was an honest mistake. As I said, that does happen in war. But try to look at it from their point of view--the Leathernecks, I mean. They didn't know! What were they supposed to do, politely say, "Do you have a grenade in your lap, Mr. Camel-driver?"--yeah, sure, while he's pulling the pin and saying "Olly olly oxen free," or whatever it is you guys say when you're gonna kill somebody? Well, I guess not. Those Marines have got themselves and their buddies to think about. And they have families at home too! Let's not forget that!

So, in conclusion, I want you kids to know that the sacrifices your family has made will not be in vain. You will grow up in a free, democratic Iraq. President Bush has said so. He's a Christian so you know he's good for it. As we Americans go to cemeteries to remember our dead, we will be remembering yours, too. As we go on our picnics and play softball and watch the Indy 500 and celebrate our freedom, we will be celebrating yours, too. That's the important thing, Iman and Abdul: freedom. Your loved ones, regrettable as it is, died for their freedom. But just remember what President Bush said: No sacrifice is too great for freedom.

A Breathing Lesson

2006-05-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

filed under: Isonomist | BotF | CPR | Death | Life | Cake | Icing

I actually looked forward to taking the CPR class offered by my company this week. My reasons for taking the class are probably not everyone else's. It's one of those "past or future" riddles. I'm taking it to answer a question about the past. They usually take it in anticipation of a possible future.

They served us dinner during the course, but I had no appetite. Looking back, maybe I was afraid, a little. Not just of the possibility that this experience would trigger a painful migraine, but afraid the answer to my question would be: I did it wrong.

Because when my father was dying, I didn't know CPR. ...more »The method was new enough that my lifeguard certification, Girl Scout lifesaving, babysitting and first aid merit badges hadn't included it, although they taught us everything from cross-chest carry to mouth to mouth on pets. I'd seen it performed, but only on tv shows. I knew it involved pushing on the chest, counting, and alternating with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. What if I'd done it wrong? What if I'd just made him suffer more? Or worse, what if I'd actually caused damage? Maybe that's why I've waited 27 years to take this class. Not wanting to find out that one of the defining moments of my life had been a monumental fuckup.

My father made it to the hospital that day, but he never made it out of ER. I don't think he or any of us expected he would. We knew his heart was failing, so it wasn't heroic, what I did. It was just part of being the only one home that day.

ER doctors don't come out to tell you your dad is dead, and it's your fault. They know better. Unlike sisters. When my dad had been in the same hospital a month before, my middle sister had taken me aside in the family waiting room and said, "this is your fault." She thought my wild ways had caused his heart attack. Like he had any idea. I can't say I've forgiven her for saying that. I don't know that it's possible to truly forgive that, any more than it's possible to truly blame her.

You don't hesitate when someone is dying in front of you. You just get on your knees and do your best. I watched my classmates re-enact the 29 year old scene in our family bathroom over and over again that night. Except they weren't crying, or begging Resuscit-Annie not to die. But they were a little panicky, especially the first few practice rounds. Forgetting the rhythm, forgetting to count, forgetting to check for signs of life after a cycle of puffing and pushing. I pretty much fell into the middle of the class's bell curve. I needed prompting, guiding, encouragement.

I don't' think anyone guessed my secret: that I have been here before. That if I'm doing it wrong, it's not because I haven't tried. Move your hands, push down here, stop and check for circulation. It's hard to get the order right, and that's probably why they developed the order. And why they make you repeat it over and over, and watch everyone else repeat it over and over. When the day comes, you won't have time to think. You'll just get down on your knees and do your best.

One of the trainers told us that it's easier to have someone else check the pulse if you're the one performing CPR, because they're less likely to mistake their own pulse for the victim's. I said, "one way you can tell, when you're on your own is if the face turns from ash gray to pink." He said, "That's a good idea." Like I'd just thought of it.

But that was the only way I could tell that anything I was doing to my father mattered. His face would turn pink. And he'd start up with the death rattle again, which would rise to a groan, and sink into a gasp. Should I have stopped? But every time I backed away from his body, he'd slip into gray again. So I'd go back, pounding on his chest a few times, moving over to breathe into his mouth.

"Gasping is not breathing," said trainer number two. They showed a video of an actor imitating a gasping near-corpse. As if someone knew I needed to actually see and hear it.
Some of my classmates were a little hesistant to push on the Resuscit-Annie's rib cage. I knew what they were thinking. So did the trainer. "What do you do if you break a rib? You keep on going. He doesn't care, he's dead."

That was the answer I needed. I still felt a bit out of body and out of time as I pumped on Annie's rubber chest, but I was learning. Next time someone needs me to breathe for them until help arrives, I'll at least know I'm doing it right, even if they don't care because they're already dead. We're all already dead, I guess that's what I really learned. We're all already dead. Your next breath is cake and icing.

Hypocrisy, foolishness, venality

2006-05-26T13:35:00.000-07:00

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Most Democrats (or liberals, or whatever you want to call them) aren't really civil libertarians, though I've noticed an increase in self-identification as such in the waning years of la Régence dauphinoise. To be fair, the misidentification is less a matter of dishonesty, unlike the faux-libertarians who populate rightwing blogistan and specialize in ostentatious pseudo-ethical blather prior to inevitable justifications of authoritarianism. It's more a matter of naïve shock ...more »that statist policies they themselves support could reach their logical and terrible conclusions in the hands of particularly unscrupulous leaders. The outcry over the president's peeping-Tom-ery is a perfect example: there's a lot of hand-wringing over the violations of the FISA statutes, and a lot of gloriously irrelevant talk about Congressional oversight. This misses the heart of the matter.

The official history goes something like this: FISA was the culmination of a series of legislative actions in the 1970s designed to rectify abuses of America's information-gathering capacity, especially the use of intelligence services and the FBI to engage in domestic spying.

Now that's a nice fairy tale—and about as patently absurd as a gingerbread house with a witch inside.

Laws like FISA provide statutory cover for violations of our liberties. I find it absolutely galling and incredible that Democrats speak in defense of the FISA statutes because, after all, the FISA court never turns down warrant requests. This is oversight? The lack of intellectual rigor required to convert that fact into a critique of the president for circumventing the FISA court is astonishing. If, in fact, there have been thousands of FISA warrant applications, and if, in fact, less than a half-dozen have been turned down, then that isn't oversight, and it certainly isn't a check on executive prerogatives to spy on whomever they wish, whenever they wish, for whatever reason they can concoct. Perhaps my allies on the left have a higher opinion of the general honesty and dispositions of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton than I do, but I'd aver that it requires credulity bordering on idiocy to believe that the FISA court's unique willingness to rubber stamp every request it received between 1978 and 2001 somehow indicates its value as a bulwark of our fragile liberties.

It's true that President Bush disregarded FISA. It's true that he broke the law. Fine.

But answer me plainly: What practical, substantive difference is there between spying on Americans with or without the secret approbation of a secret court that doesn't deny permission? I've read plenty of speculation that Bush was spying on political enemies or on reporters—that, perhaps, the NSA was using some new data-mining technology or technique that would have caused the FISA court to blench.

I'd gainsay that this is a highly improbable scenario. To believe that two decades of uninterrupted compliance—during a period in which data-and information-gathering techniques and technologies advanced exponentially beyond any prior capacity—would culminate in a stand against some new manner of spying is simply preposterous.

Plainly put: If you accept that the government has the right to spy on you with the phony approbation of a secret kangaroo court, then you have no grounds to protest when it spies on you without the approbation of a secret kangaroo court.

Would Jesus Have Hated America?

2006-05-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

filed under: ElephantGun | BotF | God | Jesus | Christian | America

This question may sound weird, but would not be out of bounds from a Christian point of view. As God, Jesus would have had foreknowledge of all nations from before creation. Consequently, if Jesus did hate the United States, he would have done so from the beginning of God's existence. Moreover, Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected after the death of his human body on the cross in Jerusalem. So, from a Christian view, Jesus would ...more »still be with us rendering the judgment he had on the United States from the beginning.

This question came to me when I saw this passage from Matthew 25 in Garry Wills' "What Jesus Meant":

"Off from me, with a curse on you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I hungered and you fed me not, I thirsted and you gave me no drink. I was an alien and you welcomed me not . . . In truth I tell you whenever you failed to do these things to the least of my brothers, you failed to do it to me. And then they will go off to eternal punishment, while the vindicated to to eternal life."

It is fair to ask what this kind of statement means for Jesus' judgment of the United States because Jesus indicates that judgment indeed was passed on collective bodies as well as individuals. Cities like Sodom and Gomorrah and Jerusalem were doomed collectively just like the "proud," those who condemned their fellow men as fools, and rich people were doomed to eternal punishment.

The passage indicates that Jesus would judge from a very personal perspective. In fact, treating the sick, starving, or foreign poorly is condemnable from the point of view of Jesus because it is an injury to Jesus himself. Obviously, Jesus would have had a profound antipathy to slavery in the U. S. (and elsewhere). Those who kept slaves hungry, sleepless, poorly clothed, and in terror of physical torture would have been seen as brutalizing Jesus himself. It is as if each of the millions of slaves in the United States would have been Jesus and all of the acts of cruelty and violence toward them would have been part of Jesus' passion. To the extent, then, that the U. S. was a slave society then, it would have been a society of constant crucifixion from Jesus' point of view.

Of course, it is possible to ask whether the treatment of minority, poor, homeless, hungry, disabled, gay, and immigrant populations in the U. S. Thinking of the Duke rape incident, the same thing would be the case in relation to sexual violence against women. Are the things being done to all these millions of people being done to Jesus? Is the treatment of these folks condemnable?

But it's also possible to ask some not so obvious questions. For example, how about the valuing of wealth in this culture? We know from the key passages in Matthew and Luke that Jesus blesses the poor and damns those who are rich? But what about the more general ethic of valuing wealth that is so pervasive in American culture? Would that be condemnable as well. Likewise, what about the celebration of power over weakness? Or the revenge ethic that is so palpable in American military policy, heavy support for the death penalty, and American movies? What impact do these general dimensions of American culture have on the treatment of the weakest among us? And if that impact is negative, would these cultural characteristics make all of us condemnable in the same way that Sodom and Gomorrah was condemnable?

Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are not the only Protestant evangelicals who repeatedly claim that the U.S. will be condemned because we're not homophobic or because we strayed from Victorian sexual prudery. But perhaps sex is not the problem. Perhaps the "America" problem would run in other directions for Jesus.

The Way the System Works

2006-05-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

filed under: The_Bell | BotF | Enron | Jeff Skilling | Ken Lay

Now that former Enron executives Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay have been found guilty by a jury on twenty-five of the combined thirty-four counts against them, a judge will sentence them on September 11. That date may not have been chosen entirely at random. As the Washington Post points out today, Enron was the September 11 of Wall Street. "More than any other case, Enron symbolized the collapse of the 1990s stock market bubble and the revelation that many of the nation's highest-flying companies were far less substantial than they seemed."

In a post from the trial's start back in January, I tried to sum up the crucial factors of the case in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

Yes, Enron executives did many, many very bad things . . . except Lay and Skilling . . . they didn't do them. ...more »The actual misdeeds were done by guys like Andrew Fastow, Enron's former Chief Financial Officer . . . and Richard Causey, Enron's Chief Accounting Offices . . . and a whole bunch of middle management slobs.

The question for jurors is whether Lay and Skilling knew about all the lies . . . even encouraged all the lies . . . to keep Enron stock prices high . . . so they could sell their shares and make a mint before the market caught onto what was really happening.

Many legal analysts felt it would be a difficult case for prosecutors to prove. Most posters responding to me also expressed a certain cynicism regarding justice prevailing. That is not surprising. For starters, as a society we have a tendency not to see corporate or "white collar" crime as vile and destructive in comparison to physical felonies, such as armed robbery or drug trafficking. Secondly, CEOs and other top executives know how to distance and insulate themselves from tangible acts of malfeasance.

The two defendants in this case certainly believed they were safe; they may have even genuinely believed they were innocent. Reports say that both were physically shaken by the guilty verdicts delivered against them and perhaps for reasons that go beyond the prospect of time in prison.

Ken Lay said outside the courtroom that he was "in disbelief . . . even shocked" by the jury's conclusions. He restated his firm belief in his own innocence and issued dire warning about the precedent being set. "If I were a CEO today, I would say it sends a very dangerous message," Lay thundered. "[It] basically makes an innocent act criminal." For his part, Skilling was in a more pragmatic temperament. "Obviously, I'm disappointed," he told reporters. "But that's the way the system works."

He's right. Or, more precisely, that's the way the system works now. That is what makes this case and this jury's decision so important.

It is as much an indictment against arrogance as criminal wrongdoing – a sense of entitlement that allows certain men and women to manipulate inconceivably large amounts of money, sometimes to the profit of others and sometimes at their expense, in order to pad their own personal wealth. The great tragedy of Enron is that the company's management initially did many aggressive and innovative things that the market loves to reward. It fell into corruption when its top leaders allowed underlings to manipulate, lie, and steal in order to continue lining their own pockets at the expense of others.

Interestingly, the jury said they found Lay and Skilling to be far more damning witnesses against themselves than the array of mid-level Enron executives with whom the federal government cut plea bargains. Lay came across as a micromanaging control freak and Skilling gave masterful explanations of Enron's complicated and arcane financial transactions. The jury simply could not believe that such hands-on managers could be the unwitting dupes they portrayed themselves to be.

The standard of responsibility to which the jury held Lay and Skilling was drawn from their own lives. Juror Freddy Delgado, an elementary school principal, summed it up nicely. "Personally, I can't say 'I don't know what my teachers are doing in the classroom.' I'm still responsible if a child gets lost."

This conviction will hardly mark the end to white collar crime. A (hopefully ever-improving) Sarbanes-Oxley Act is far more likely to aid in prevention. Likewise, the dishonorable end of guys like Skilling and Lay – along with WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers, Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski and CFO Mark Swartz, Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and his son Timothy, Credit Suisse First Boston investment banker Frank Quattrone, Cendant Vice Chairman Kirk Shelton, and sixteen other Enron executives – will not prove an unassailable deterrent to other corporate heads, precisely because the arrogance that can commit such crimes cannot believe itself capable of being stupid enough to get caught.

But this case makes it clear that society does now regard the corporate criminal as every bit as vile and destructive and with victims as real as that of any thief, rapist, arsonist, or murderer. It also makes it clear that society insists on culpability being shared right up to the very top – CEOs need not have "pulled the trigger" but only hidden the smoking gun for their own profit to be guilty.

It is just the way the system works now. It is an unprecedented response but also the proper response to crimes of the magnitude of those committed at Enron by its highest- ranking officers.

lemme explain about misogyny

2006-05-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

filed under: ciinc | BotF | sydbristow | Misogyny

There are some here who frequently accuse me of misogyny and claim I've admitted same.

If I did make that claim, I want to clarify it.

By saying that I am what you might call a "situational misogynist".

Meaning that I don't react to women in a gender-specific way UNLESS ...

... they come on in a gender-specific way.

At that point I harbor great feelings of situational misogyny toward them because guess what ...

... they're hypocrites.

And you all know that nothing drives me up the wall more than hypocrisy.

Same thing with:

- gays
- Jews
- Native Americans
- etc.

to whom I have also been accused of being phobic.

If you come on to me in a gay/Jewish/NatAmer/etc. way, I am going to react in the same way as above.

NO ONE is entitled, folks, NO ONE.

your failing (here)

you are a misogynist (say).

you'd be making the same argument.

"ah, dave, but they'd be lying .. I'm not."

you're sure?

Da Vinci Code: a roast

2006-05-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

filed under: Gregor_Samsa | BotF | Da Vinci Code | Tom Hanks | Ron Howard | Christian | Jesus

Warning: This review may contain spoilers. Which is just as well, if it saves you money that's better spent on Gigli or Dude, Where's My Car.

I haven't read the book, and I will happily go back to not reading it. Ron Howard's last film (A Beautiful Mind) made a hash of John Nash's life and ideas. This in spite of basing it on a living personality and a single gospel (Sylvia Nassar's exquisite biography). What could you expect when he turned his attention to a man dead for two thousand years, and whose life is revealed in a bewildering multitude of conflicting accounts? Suffice it to say that Jesus had it coming. Again.

Tom Hanks is the most overpaid actor in human history, with the possible exception of Pamela Anderson's boobs (depends on whether you consider them as two actors or one). He attempts to portray a latter day Aquinas in tweed, but appears only slightly more animated than Mary Magdalene's sarcophagus. Other members of the cast set more modest goals with varied success. Alfred Molina looks fat. Jean Reno looks like he hasn't showered in days. Ian McKellen tries to look cool, but ends up looking goofy. Audrey Tautou appears exactly as her name suggests – a smiley tattoo on a teenager's ass. ...more »The screen play is atrocious, the dialogue stilted and the cinematography pulls off the amazing feat of making the Louvre look like a warehouse somewhere in the outskirts of L.A. It will be an injustice not to mention the musical score. Apparently, Howard was afraid that the slow moving Bergmanesque austerity of his movie could be a turn-off for the average viewer, so he filled up every gap with an orchestral cacophony that makes elevator music sound like a Schubert symphony.

The film is most notable for its unintended ironies. It purports to reunite the yin with yang in Christian faith, by taking the conspiratorial misogyny of Catholic orthodoxy by its horns. The female lead however, who is a descendant of Jesus Christ to boot, starts off with a few minor code-cracking feats, but gradually descends into a state of tearful bafflement. So much so that it is left entirely to the dude to figure out the combination and save the day. Moral of the story: movie damsels will always be in distress, even when touched by divinity. I now understand why nuns were picketing the theater.

Even more perplexing is the issue of Christ's divinity, which I presume is the main reason behind the Catholic establishment's apoplexy. If God chose to roam the desert in flesh for thirty odd years, I presume he drank and pissed, coughed up phlegm, suffered from the occasional diarrhea and maybe even sprayed the front row audience during His sermons. If these fluid mishaps do not detract from His divinity, why will the fact that He may have knocked up a girl and bore a child? (If it so pleases the faithful, assume the god gene is recessive, or prone to mutation, which is the impression one gathers anyway after watching Ms. Tattoo's performance). The story tackles the Vatican's fetishism by inventing an even more ludicrous one, involving lineage and dynasty. It reduces theology to a paternity test.

Ultimately, the movie does one great service to humanity. Sitting through this crucifiction for two hours, you get a sense of what crucifixion must have been like. Thank you Ron Howard, and sorry, Jesus. We owe you one, man.

Sure, I want us to lose.

2006-05-24T15:28:00.000-07:00

filed under: Fritz_Gerlich | BotF | War on Terror | Iraq | George W. Bush

First, no durable good outcome is likely. The sooner we recognize the futility of the effort the better. Japan would have been better off had it lost in 1944 instead of 1945. The U.S. would have been better off it had recognized that South Vietnam was not a viable nation in 1968 instead of 1975.

Second, I want the sole author of this war, George Bush, to have to face the failure of his policy on his watch. Why should a successor administration have to cope with it? If the roof is going to fall in anyway--and it is--then let it fall on Bush. This war was his choice. Not ours, not Iraq's, not history's. George Bush's. Let him take responsibility for failure, as he over-eagerly took credit for ...more »seeming success two years ago.

What Hitchens fails to see is that our freedom of moral choice is not foreclosed by Bush's fait accompli. Like Hitler, who deliberately started a war in Europe to force Germany onto the path of its "destiny," Bush and his coterie engineered an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war in Iraq to enshrine neocon ideology in American foreign policy. Would you agree that patriotic Germans in Hitler's time were morally obliged to support a war of conquest they knew was wrong simply because the Fuhrer had irrevocably committed their nation to it? Not likely. We now honor the few Germans who continued to resist the madness, like Stauffenberg, Bonhoeffer, and White Rose. So, too, we have the right and the duty to continue to oppose this war because of its conniving, mendacious, aggressive provenance.

The mere fact that American and Iraqi lives are at stake does not turn the evil policy that created that risk into a good one. The risk, and the deaths, are Bush's doing, not ours. Unlike Bush, I showed up for my war. I fought. I had no illusions in 2003 what war meant. Bush and his cronies did. Let them, and the spineless Congress that laid down for them, take responsibility for their failure. And let them take it soon.

BotF Shows its Quality

2006-05-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

...more »

The internal monologue of Cletus P. McGeetus aka Sawbones

2006-05-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

filed under: Sawbones | BotF | Benjamin R. Barber | Democracy | Civic Values | Terrorism | Consumerism | Neoliberalism | Marketization | Fundamentalism | Globalization

Democratic Alternatives to the Mullahs and the Malls: Citizenship in an Age of Global Anarchy [pdf]

BENJAMIN R. BARBER

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

Delivered at: Jed's Co-op Feed Store and Acupuncture Emporium Ooltewah, TN (pop. 87)

It been damn near two hours this man been talkin', and my nether regions are gittin' numb. I shoulda listened to mah still, small voice, at least the one that sounds like Waylon Jennings. "Just good old boys, never meanin' no harm…" Wait a minnit, not that one, the one that tol' me ta steer clear o' this place. I don't usually hold no truck with pointy-headed ackydemic types, but they tricked me with them promises o' finger sandwiches and them little wiener-in-a-biscuit thangs. Ain't it always either my stummick or parts farther south gittin' me in trouble?

So this feller's dronin' on about me losin' my liberty to all them big corpor…coarpr…chor….biznesses, and somethin' about the end of the world and how it's all Amurrica's fault. He's talkin' about us only goin' ter war in dubya-dubya's one and two becuz we had to (well ain't that a revelation!) ...more », and that we thought we had ter stay outtuvit to "stay pure," or some bull hockey like that. How 'bout so's we wouldn't get our boys killed in somebody else's fight, numbnuts? And he go on talkin' about what sounds like our Star Wars system (I keep waitin' fer 'em to give me my own Wookiee – 'd make a damn fine guard dog, but I ain't seen it comin' yet), sayin' that it's cuz of some "myth of innocence." Dagnabbit, ain't no myth o' innocence, it's a buncha real nucular warheads been pointed at us the last fifty-odd years! An' then he talks about us wantin' to be all unilateral an' shit, but hell, who was it started that whole dang U.N. with them pansy blue helmets? All that multilateralin', and look where it got us – crazy bastards with unnerwear on their heads flyin' planes inta buildings. Seems Mr. Barber been thinkin' so long he thunk his head right up his ass, if ya ask me.

Then he keeps a-talkin' about some autoimmune response to terrorism. Now just wait a second, my auntie Chlamydia Mae, she got the lupus, an' that's autoimmune – the doc says it's like her body attackin' itself. Ain't no us attackin' ourselves – it's other people doin' it fer us! When them planes hit the World Trade Center, it weren't no autoimmune response; I don't really care fer New Yorkers any more than chiggers in my tighty-whities, but that was more like us getting' shot in the chest. When you think about it, it's pretty durn amazin' that things weren't worse for the rest of us after that. An' he's tellin' me that terrorists wanna make us have an autoimmune reaction so we destroy ourselves – man, they just wanna make us hurt enough ta make us leave 'em alone. We in the South unnerstand these things, lemme tell ya.

Then ya got Mr. Barber an' his mind-reading abilities, sayin' that furriners' "instinctive reading" of all this globalizin' is what makes 'em happy when they see us down. Hell, ya think maybe they just like seein' the big fella lose one? Why ya think people roots against them damn Yankees (besides 'em bein' called Yankees)? We been kickin' 'em for a good long time, an' they're happy if they can hit us in the nutsack every once in a while.

But the part that tickles me the most is where Mr. Barber needs some excuse for proposin' some one-world, buy-the-world-a-Coke (oops, maybe not that) bullcrap, so he starts sayin' that free markets only come around outta democracies. Now don't git me wrong, I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but free markets was comin' long before Old Glory went up fer the first time. But never mind that. He's sayin' that we globalized all our sins and shit (fergive me, preacher. I dinnit mean that ter be out loud), but none of our good stuff. What about them globalized jobs? What about all that globalizin' information that tol' people about them people in that soooooo-nami so fer we could get them the food an' diapers an' guns an' other stuff a family can't make it without? He's actin' like there ain't nobody outside the U.S. of A happy about the globalizin' and I know fer a fact that his mind-reading equipment done broke on this one. But he keeps a-going on, sayin' that people think globalization gonna take away their ol' time religion an' their down-home swap meets. Dammit, I ain't that bright, but I seem ter remember them people feelin' that way a long-ass time ago – weren't it 1979 when that peanut-farmin', sweater-wearin', peace-talkin' pansy Carter was gettin' our people held hostage by them crazy Iranians? An' that was before the internet was jus' a gleam in some never-gettin'-laid computer geek's eye. An' Mr. Barber's sayin' that we can fixit all up if we just fix the inequality in the world; he sayin' somethin' about the axis of inequality mirrorin' the axis of evil, but them countries just don' match up – the ones the terrists are a-comin' from are pretty rich, 'ceptin' for them squinty-eyed North Koreans. And you can't trust one o' them yeller people no father than you can throw a nigra.

So I gotta bone ter pick with this Barber fella. All this stuff he's proposin', I'm gonna be the one loses in the end. He can dress it up purty all he likes, but if we're goin' to that lovey, huggy world democracy horse manure, we ain't gonna have the votes ter get our way. An' what you think is comin' next? That's right, the repo man gonna take away my El Camino and mama's Hoveround scooter and anything else they can git their hands on, and send 'em all to some starvin' kid in Ether-nopia. I know them gubmint types. So you tell me why I should be all right with that. You can have my El Camino when you pry the steerin' wheel outta my cold, dead hands, or maybe if you bomb enough places here where I start a-thinkin' that it just really ain't worth it no more. Until then, I ain't joinin' that poker game, Pedro.

So I gots a different idear. If you gots a horse, and you're a-whuppin' him in the ass while your buddy is a-smackin' him in the face, you can't really tell which one is a-pissin' him off, can you? Seems to me we're doin' the same thing – we're globalizin' the shit outta people, but at the same time we're stompin' the shit out of 'em with our military an' usin' our influence to decide who their gubmint is. Well, how bouts we stop one of 'em, an' not the other. How 'bout we just leave 'em alone, quit sendin' our boys all over creation to get shot at, let 'em elect their own crooked politicians, and then see if the globalizin' still pisses 'em off.

That's all jus' me talkin', a dumb country boy from Tennessee. An' hell, I was the one who flunked Home Ec – two times. So you're prolly right ter ignore me. Or are ya?

I've grown accustomed to your butt-face.

2006-05-19T15:25:00.000-07:00

To a large degree, polarization in America is a cultural consequence of the information age. This sort of economy demands and encourages education, and an educated electorate is a polarized electorate.

In theory, of course, education is supposed to help us think independently, to weigh evidence and make up our own minds. But that's not how it works in the real world. Highly educated people may call themselves independents, but when it comes to voting they tend to pick a partisan side and stick with it. College-educated voters are more likely than high-school-educated voters to vote for candidates from the same party again and again.

That's because college-educated voters are more ideological. As the Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz has shown, a college-educated Democrat is likely to be more liberal than a high-school-educated Democrat, and a college-educated Republican is likely to be more conservative than a high-school-educated Republican. The more you crack the books, the more likely it is you'll shoot off to the right or the left.

Once you've joined a side, the information age makes it easier for you to surround yourself with people like yourself. And if there is one thing we have learned over the past generation, it's that we are really into self-validation.

We don't only want radio programs and Web sites from members of our side — we want to live near people like ourselves. Information age workers aren't tied down to a mine, a port or a factory. They have more opportunities to shop for a place to live, and they tend to cluster in places where people share their cultural aesthetic and, as it turns out, political values. So every place becomes more like itself, and the cultural divides between places become stark. The information age was supposed to make distance dead, but because of clustering, geography becomes more important.

The political result is that Republican places become more Republican and Democratic places become more Democratic.

So what accounts for a place like BOTF--where most of every page is now devoted to political polemics? If Brooks is right that we are all seeking like-minded company, why do I log on, knowing I will immediately be smacked in the kisser by offensive political ranting from obviously brain-damaged people?

Now that I think about it, I suppose I've just answered my own question: it validates me to witness the idiocy of people who have different opinions. ...more »I'm not going to name names--you know who you are--but I admit that I experience a kind of sick thrill right down to my toes when I view your latest exercise in self-immolation. The old-time comedy drunk routines long ago vanished as politically incorrect, but here I get to watch you and your fellow defectives stumble and slide helplessly in your own syntax as you futilely try to prove that 1 - 1 = 2. And I don't just get to laugh at you, I get to laugh meanly, nastily, wickedly. I am entitled to be happy that you are so stupid and make such a fool of yourself in front of all these people. Because you're not just some unfortunate whom life has treated harshly. You're a pompous jerk who needs to be brought low. Whatever bad thing happens to you, you deserve it.

Oh, sure, I admit that it's always possible for me to be wrong. I don't claim to be God or anything. I've been known to get a fact wrong now and then, and I've even been gracious enough to admit it. (Unlike you.) But when I watch your chimp-on-a-bicycle act and feel simultaneously sickened and gladdened, I know deep inside that I must be right. How could I have these overpowering visceral reactions if there was the slightest possibility I was mistaken? I'm a cautious, thoughtful guy. I really try to get stuff right. I've put many years into reading and thinking about these things. There was a time when my opinions were more tentative and I sought approval for them from people who seemed wiser than I.

But that was before I met you. Until then I didn't realize that my views could be validated two ways. They could be shared by the wise or they could be rejected by fools. And I must say, the second way is easier and a lot more fun. Wise people make me a little nervous. They might not approve of everything I say, or might condescend to me a little--"Yes, of course, we agree in outline, but I wouldn't expect you to appreciate fully the complexity and nuances of my views." Whereas you--well, I log on every day to relish your latest, don't I? You're like my favorite soap.

If I'm very, very honest with myself, I have to admit there is a certain codependency here. Yes, I have gotten to look forward to my daily fix of your dysfunctional babbling. Block you? Hell, the more you heap shit on your own head, the more, well, just plain cool my own opinions look, to me and everybody else. And maybe a little narcissism, too. I find myself going back and rereading my yesterday's posts, chuckling appreciatively over how I took your head off there and punctured your balloon there and tripped you so you fell headfirst through the seat hole in your own outhouse there. Heh heh. Good day. You looked so goddam funny with your legs waving in the air like that.

But, really, I'm glad we have a place like this to dialogue and share views and, y'know, meet interesting people. I really think the Internet is fabulous for that. I tell my kids, you gotta be connected--that's the only way you're ever gonna learn. Learn to network, see, find out stuff and get the buzz and stay ahead of the game. Yeah, that's what makes this the greatest nation on earth . . .

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Torture: the last superstition?

2006-05-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

filed under: TheVeiled | BotF | Torture | War on Terror | POW | Geneva Conventions | September 11 | Canada | Guantanamo

Looking at all the hand wringing over alleged torture by our troops makes me want to pull my hair out. Nothing better can be expected of liberals, whose hatred of America trumps common sense, but I am surprised with the pussyfooting and appeasement being adopted by Republicans and conservatives on the issue. Why does no one have the courage to stand behind an obvious principle – we need torture to win the war on terror?

Qualitatively speaking, torture is no different from bombing. Both inflict pain, and in some cases death, on enemy combatants and civilians alike. The distinction is often made that in torturing captives, we are inflicting pain deliberately, while the collateral damage from our bombing campaigns are unintended side effects which we try to minimize. This argument turns out to be bogus if you so much as scratch its surface.

As far as enemy soldiers are concerned, our objectives are no different across the two methods. In fact, torture is usually more humane, because we control the process and stop short of maiming or killing in most cases. For civilians caught up in the mess, I don't see why narrow interpretations of intentionality should be considered more important than effect. ...more »When our military launches massive strikes against densely populated cities like Baghdad or Falluja, it is a statistical certainty that thousands of civilians will be killed as a result, and many more horribly injured. It is utterly naïve, and in fact dangerous, to say that we make these decisions without fore-knowledge of such consequences. In any event, if we could separate the innocent from the rogue among detainees, we would target our torture with precision just as we would eliminate collateral damage from our bombs if we could. We are not God, so we do the best we can.

The only difference between bombing and torture, as far as I can see, is that we can put a face on the people we torture, while those who are affected by the fury of our missiles remain anonymous. However, ask yourself this – is it any consolation to our victims that we got to know them before breaking their limbs or burning their skin? Or that we made sure to draw lots before unleashing our awesome power on their bodies? I don't think so. If they don't care, why should we?

I know at this point even my conservative brethren will step in to say that our bombs are directed at armed combatants on the ground, who are still fighting, while torture victims being disarmed prisoners, are no longer a danger to us. This is precisely the kind of obtuseness which drives me up the wall.

Nobody, least of all President Bush or Secretary Rumsfeld, is advocating torture for retributive or sadistic purposes. Its potential usefulness is as an information gathering tool – valuable information that may help us win the war. Tactical decisions in warfare are not made based on situational cost-benefit calculations, but in terms of the broader objective. Of course the threat from captured enemy has already been diffused, but their comrades are still out there plotting more 9/11's against us, and torture is aimed at reducing that outstanding threat. If we are so often willing to accept grave injuries and loss of lives on both sides to secure a bridge, why is it wrong to impose pain on some of those scoundrels for the sake of securing our cities and troops?

There is the pragmatic counter-argument that torture simply isn't effective as a method, that the tortured will tell you whatever you want to hear. This is typical liberal tripe, dreamt up in Manhattan cocktail parties. First, a bunch of false leads bundled with some genuine ones is still better than no leads at all. More importantly, relative to military hardware, our torture techniques have suffered due to neglect and having to operate under a cloak of secrecy. If we honestly acknowledged its importance, I'm sure the Pentagon has the resources to come up with more effective ways of extracting information. The lack of potency argument is far from empirically established, and we'll never know until we really try.

There is also the view that stuff like the Geneva Convention confers reciprocal benefits, which we stand to lose if we unilaterally violate its provisions. If you believe that, I have a deal on the Statue of Liberty just for you. People who are willing to blow themselves up to bring down our buildings and kill women and children are not going to be deterred in their treatment of captive soldiers, no matter what we do. The argument may have applied to more conventional armies and governments in the Cold War era, but in this unipolar world, we have plenty of other means to make sure our POWs are not abused. Case in point – captured American soldiers were well treated in Gulf War I, but it's absurd to suggest that Saddam worried about the health of his Republican Guards who fell into our hands. No, he worried about Baghdad being sent back to the stone age, along with himself.

Finally, there is the New Age mumbo-jumbo that opening the door to torture will corrupt our souls and sully our greatness as a nation. To these folks, I say: put down the bong and find a job. Our souls survived deep frying Dresden or flattening the Vietnamese countryside, and it can survive some regulated electric shocks sent through a few genitals.

There is the (slightly) more sophisticated argument that revulsion to torture is a psychological state which provides useful restraint in our internal affairs. If we lose it, the cops will start routinely torturing suspects, men will start beating their wives, parents will resort to corporal punishments, and all hell will break loose, generally speaking. One should know better than to pay heed to the cataclysmic nightmare scenarios the left regularly dreams up. In the past, we have had to do some nasty things in the defense of freedom, and we have survived spiritually each time.

What troubles me when I read the typical defense of the administration on the Fray and elsewhere is the apologetic, conciliatory tone that has crept into the ranks. It's only accusations, it wasn't really torture, a few bad apples, the orders didn't come from the top, blah, blah, blah. Gimme a break. The picture you're painting of the world's greatest military is one of a chaotic organization run amock, over which its top brass has scant control, and which is rife with unprofessional excess while fighting a war, such as sophomoric hazing rituals and near fraternization with the enemy. I refuse to believe that the brave men and women who put their lives on line for our sake have lapsed into such hedonistic decadence. I'd like to think our government has the right plan to make us safe, and it is being executed professionally. If it's only panties-over-heads, the problem isn't that it's disrespectful, but that it's ineffective.

Our enemy in the war on terror is a clandestine, underground network spanning many countries. As the difficulties in Iraq have shown, traditional firepower and "clean" war is of limited value in this conflict – we cannot invade Syria, Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan one after the other and diffuse the problem through military occupation. We have to sniff out the network from one node to the next, and burn its tentacles as we move along. Torture and intelligence-gathering, much more than explosive force, will be our best aid in this task.

If that ruffles your feathers, shut the fuck up or move to Canada. Don't worry, we'll protect your ass anyway. We always have.

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Puttin' on the Frick

2006-05-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

filed under: Fritz_Gerlich | BotF | Frick | Goya | Art | Museum | New York | The Frick | Henry Clay Frick

I was in New York City for several days to witness my daughter's graduation. Why she needed a witness is not clear to me, but there are some thing one does simply because others want one to. So I did.

Kate had arranged a room for me at one of the Teachers' College residence halls. She warned me not to expect much, which was good because the room had no toilet paper, hangers or blankets. It did have a couple of towels, a pillow with no case, and two sheets. The single mattress was encased in what looked like a body bag. When the fitted bottom sheet was stretched to the breaking point to cover the corners of the mattress, it found no purchase on the slippery vinyl and promptly popped off when I sat down on the bed. I needed both sheets on top for warmth, anyway. Plus my overcoat, my light jacket and my heavy sweater.

Just before leaving Alaska I had stumbled across the fact that an exhibition of Goya's late works was running at the Frick. I would have just one day to see it before it closed. Goya, like Kate's graduation, was nonnegotiable. We had agreed to go the day after I arrived.

Columbia is on the upper West Side, around 120th, and the Frick is on the middle East Side, on 70th, so we had a fairly good walk. We meandered in the direction of Spanish Harlem, then dropped into Central Park. Although I had visited New York over the years for professional things, I had not been footloose in the park since 1970. At that time it was filthy, vandalized, dangerous. Now it looked like something by Seurat, ...more »with verdant vistas defined by neat walks and manicured groves and promenaded by ladies and gentlemen leading perfect children by the hand. Wheelchairs, Dominicans, yarmulkas, castles, poodles, frisbees, wrought iron fences, baseball diamonds, street magicians, sparkling water. Did I say it was a sunny day?

We came out of the park around 90th and walked south along 5th Avenue. Every building had a covered entrance and a doorman. Between the main entrances there were many small plain doors with brass plates: Avram Einkorn, M.D., Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. William Blassingame, D.Ent., Endodontics. Chudabir P. Ramsinghwallah, M.D., Radiation Oncology. We stopped at a snack wagon to get coffee. The lady said something I couldn't understand. Kate answered her in Arabic. Later she told me, "This side of the park, a lot of the vendors are Arabs."

At the Frick, we found a line presided over by a wizened security guard. I had a sinking feeling that maybe we wouldn't get in; after all, the Goya exhibit was ending the next day. It turned out that a limited number of tickets were being sold for each two-hour block, and that the only block for which tickets remained was the final one of the day, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. It was now 11 a.m. Kate groaned. "What are we gonna do over here for five hours?"

I told her I was staying to see Goya, but if she wanted to go back to her place I'd get her a cab. She hemmed and hawed and finally said there was stuff she had to do. So I put her in a cab back to Morningside. To tell the truth, I was relieved. Kate does not share my passion for painting and was accompanying me only out of duty. I could prospect Goya much more profitably on my own.

When I paid for my ticket, they gave me two. One was for the Goya. The other was a general admission to the permanent collection, which I was free to see right away. This was a possibility that had not occurred to me up to then. I had never visited the Frick. I knew one or two items in the collection from reading, but that was all. Now I had five hours to explore one of the most famous collections in America--before being admitted to see work of the artist who fascinates me more than any other.

I should explain, for those unfamiliar: Henry Clay Frick was a Gilded Age robber baron, originally a partner of Andrew Carnegie. He was rabidly anti-labor. His Pinkertons gunned down several strikers and sympathizers during the Homestead Steel strike. The radical Alexander Berkman tried to settle that score by shooting Frick three times and stabbing him twice. Berkman evidently was not cut out to be an assassin. Frick not only fought him off, but was back at work within a week. Berkman spent 14 years in prison.

Eventually Frick migrated to New York City, where he built a gloomy but impressive Italianate mansion on 5th Avenue. This is where the Frick Collection is housed today. The collection's number of paintings is relatively small for a major collection, but it also owns a huge assortment of small bronzes and marbles, furniture, carpets and tapestries, clocks, porcelains, enamels, and gold and silver artefacts. This allows the collection to be displayed in an unusually natural fashion for a museum; there is an effort to make it all look as if the old fucker himself might still live there. If so, he really ought to do something about the restrooms in the basement. I mean, we only have to use them once. He has to go down in that smelly little hole all the time.

I can't give--and you surely aren't interested in--my work-by-work itinerary through the collection. Here are a few highlights and generalities.

One of the great things about the Frick Collection is its almost complete freedom from Impressionism. Since there was plenty of Impressionist painting on the market when Frick was buying, I have to assume that he simply didn't care for it. So he wasn't entirely bad. The collection is concentrated primarily in Northern Renaissance, Flemish, Baroque and the eighteenth century English school. It has a respectable medieval component. The latest works (other than a fawning portrait of Frick himself) are by Whistler (and not particularly good ones).

The Frick, like most museums, provides those walkie-talkie guide things. How stupid. How can you grasp anything an artist hoped to accomplish if you approach his painting only after listening to a lecture about it--or, worse, while listening to the lecture? What is it some modern artist said about painting? "I want to make you look until you see." That's all you need to know about a painting at first. If you see something, however small or transient, the painting is working for you; after that consult reference works. Never before.

That is especially true of portraits, and the Frick Collection is especially strong in portraiture. Portraits are the pinnacle of painting. There simply is no bottom to what a great artist can convey about character. You lose all track of time standing before such a portrait. It is like meeting the person, only much better because he or she doesn't distract you with words and movement, and you need not be distracted by any social obligations of your own. (Well--that's almost true. Twice I was reprimanded by guards for putting my face too close to portraits. Once a guard came over and stood right next to me, apparently alarmed by my excitement.)

I learned various things about portraitists that I had not realized before. For example, Van Dyke is a painter of dresses, not character. Bellini is more interested in geology than in saints. And nothing is as phony as the faces in portentious allegory, where the painter has not the wit to seek actual character.

But for a sampling of genius, try Vermeer or Rembrandt or Franz Hals. How do we know that Vermeer's maid holds the upper hand over her mistress? That Rembrandt finds life a burden? That Hals' burgher-lady had lower-class origins and knows exactly how fortunate she is? The Hals was the painting in the collection that I returned to most often. This woman is as individual as anyone I've ever met, yet as familiar to me as my own mother.

Two other great portraits in the collection are Holbein the Younger's Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. They are displayed on opposite sides of a fireplace, with Cromwell looking in More's direction. More gazes into the middle distance, between man and eternity. His posture suggests alertness and readiness. His look is settled but not without a hint of spiritual anxiety; he does not take virtue for granted. Cromwell peers suspiciously, almost sourly, at More (and hence at humanity). The clutter on his desk reflects both his preoccupation with power and the restlessness of his scheming mind. These two Holbein portraits match perfectly the characters of these men as presented in Fred Zinnemann's masterful movie A Man for All Seasons, in which Cromwell is the principal agent of More's destruction. Perhaps Robert Bolt, on whose play the movie was based, got the idea for his characters from Holbein.

The Frick has an extensive collection of Gainsboroughs, Constables and Turners. This is a segment of painting history I've never paid much attention to, assuming that it would be heavily conventional. Quite a pleasant surprise to find that I like Gainsborough very much. This man liked women. You can just feel him itching to paint them unclothed. I have no idea if he ever slept with the various wives he painted, but I am quite sure that he wanted to. Turner, too, was a pleasant surprise--a good eye for the scabby detail. In the foreground of Cologne: The Arrival of a Packet Boat: Evening you can see a pipe discharging sewage onto the beach.

Another curious find: Georges de la Tour's The Education of the Virgin. I find this painting enigmatic. If it had been painted in the last eighty years, no one would call it anything but kitsch. Why do we hesitate to judge it so simply because it comes from the time of the Thirty Years' War? Without the title, there would be nothing in the least religious about the work. I wonder if it doesn't say more about the education of women than it does about the Mother of Christ.

Some of the Frick's greatest names are poorly represented. Breughel the Elder is present only in the undistinguished Three Soldiers. This is especially disappointing in a collection whose greatest strength is the Northern Renaissance. On the other hand, the Frick has only nine Spanish paintings, and every single one is a masterpiece. Note especially Goya's An Officer. Whoever this unknown subaltern was, he made a mistake by sitting for The Man With the X-Ray Eyes.

The Frick has only three permanent Goyas, but of course I was there because of the special Goya exhibition. At 4:00 I was admitted to . . . the basement, where the Frick saw fit to show Goya. I realize that the museum is not the most spacious in the world, but the inheritors of the pretensions of Henry Clay Frick ought to be able to do better than that.

Goya is the Shakespeare of painting. He had a million characters inside him and he got a good percentage of them on canvas, paper, enamel or ivory during his long career. Like Shakespeare, Goya was also something of a social paradox, a much-decorated court painter very concerned about his orders and awards, who yet entertained liberal opinions in a dangerous time and who even openly sneered at his royal patron. (Of this painting, Hemingway said, "See how he has painted his spittle into their faces.")

But Goya's daring cost him in the end. The Bourbons, driven out by Napoleon in 1808, returned in 1813 in the person of Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand was not just a reactionary but a coward and a bully. There could never be good relations between Goya and this man, especially since Goya kept up his friendships with all sorts of liberals who were persecuted by the court. (Ferdinand was so obsessed with eliminating political dissidents that he personally often accompanied the arresting officers and oversaw the commitment of the accused to prison, gloating at their powerlessness.) Goya's position became untenable when, in 1820, a liberal revolt against Ferdinand's tyranny temporarily drove the king from power. When Ferdinand regained the throne his vengeance was sweeping, and Goya (who had not been involved in the revolt) realized that he would not be spared. Then 74 years old, he abandoned his home and slipped into France on the pretext of seeking medical treatment. He did return to Madrid once, briefly, but otherwise lived the last four years of his life in Bordeaux, where he remained as active as ever until his death in 1828.

The works in the Frick's Goya exhibit all date from the last eight years of his life, the majority from Bordeaux. They don't include any of Goya's greatest and best-known works, such as the paintings shown here, or the Caprichos or Los Desastres de la Guerra.

But they include works reminiscent of these. Probably the most famous is Self-Portrait with Dr. Arrieta, a pieta-like portrayal of a desperately ill Goya languishing in the arms of the young physician whom he credited with saving his life. Compare this piece with the two earlier self-portraits, from 1780-92, and 1792. The earlier portraits make clear that Goya saw himself as a strong, energetic man focused on a vision. The Dr. Arrieta portrait shows Goya paradoxically using the same power to "see" himself (of course the scene had to be imagined--Goya is portraying himself as at best semiconscious) as helpless. Yet, in spite of deafness, ill health and exile, the accounts we have of the elderly Goya portray him as anything but self-pitying.

It is unfortunate that you cannot enlarge the portrait of Javier Goya, the artist's only child to survive to adulthood. In the original, the character of this dissipated young man is very clear. Javier called himself a painter, but no known works of his survive. His big interest was money. He was not above selling his own work as his much more famous father's. His father obviously did not hold him in much admiration.

The next seven portraits are as powerful a collection of character studies as Goya ever did. Every single one of them repays long contemplation. Together they form an excellent example of why you should study portraiture first without knowing anything about the subject, or even the artist.

The final painting, Milkmaid of Bordeaux, is a disappointment. To me it was, anyway. The woman's blank/disturbed gaze, throwing off the viewer's initial perception of her beauty, is classic Goya. But the composition is primitive, even crude. The character is incomplete. It reads more as an idea for a painting than a polished work.

The exhibit also contains a long suite of, cartoons in effect, on a variety of subjects, usually bizarre. Scroll down to El perro volante, for example: "The Flying Dog," which shows a winged dog seemingly crashing from the sky onto the earth. Yet, not far above that, is Woman with two children, a young mother plainly enjoying her two young children. There are pictures of raving lunatics, a monk being strangled, and a man defecating. But right alongside them is Enredos de sus vidas, "Entanglement of their lives," seeming to show two young women in an amorous embrace.

To me the most interesting of the Goya works were the dozen or so ivory miniatures. These are seldom seen. It was a form Goya learned only in Bordeaux. Each began as an ivory plate, approximately 2 inches by 2 inches, coated with carbon black (i.e., extremely fine soot). Onto the carbon Goya would drop a single drop of water, sometimes plain, sometimes colored. The water would dilute and displace some of the carbon, creating shape and shade. From this chance beginning Goya would let his imagination take over to create a scene by means of watercolor, ink and some engraving. Again there is Goya's characteristic mixture of macabre and sensual.

I spent my whole two hours in these two small basement rooms. The guards didn't exactly round us up, but a whole bunch of them filtered into the basement at about 5:45 and started eyeing us expectantly. That was enough to drive out most of the people who remained. Out of respect for Goya, I was determined to make them throw me out. I was the fourth from the last to leave.

Back on 70th, my knees felt like buckling. I hadn't eaten since morning, and the energy I expended in those seven hours easily exceeded that of several of the walks Kate and I had taken that morning. Mental intensity takes glucose, too. Suddenly I wanted a hot dog more than anything else in the world.

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God's Retriever

2006-05-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

filed under: JudgeMe BotF God Story Dog

Spring in Southern California is a windblown affair. The wind comes screaming out to sea like a wind screaming out to sea. The kind of screaming wind that could use chap-stik because its lips are dry. When the wind kisses you, in its windy, screamy way, it sure makes you wish you had chap-stik handy, your lips get so dry.

Maybe I should leave the poetry to the poets. I really just want to make a point. It was windy and it was spring. I was home with my family which was unusual because I'd grown up and gone away. But I was back this spring because it was Easter and I was on my Easter Holiday, which we called "Spring Break." So, here I was, getting my spring broken by an angry wind, just before the Easter holy day. ...more »

I think it was probably a Wednesday because it was Ash Wednesday, which falls on Wednesday. That's the day that Catholics paint crosses on their foreheads with ashes. It also involves palm fronds, but that's too doctrinal for explanation right now.

My family is Catholic when they're religious at all. I'm not really Catholic, but my father is. He's not a very good Catholic, which is why the Church pays him to give advice to priests on their liturgies. He got really interested in liturgy once, and now he knows it better than the average seminary graduate, so priests defer to him on liturgical questions, which are usually very petty but highly profound.

Any lay person who gives doctrinal advice to their priest isn't a model Catholic, in my opinion, since part of being a Catholic is taking orders from the guys higher up on the celestial pecking pole. But that's just my ignorant bigoted opinion. I'm missing my point again, though. I just brought this whole thing up to make some things clear. I'm in a pick-up truck with my dad on a windy Southern Californian day, heading for the church to drop off some speakers he's gonna' need later that night when the Catholics come to paint their heads with ashes. That's my point and nothing larger.

So the church we're heading to is named after a Spanish guy. I don't want to say who, or it might get back to my dad and get him in trouble, but it might as well be San Francisco, the way this church is getting raped by the winds of Santa Ana, right now. She's filling up his steeple, if you know what I mean.

So, we get to this church and pull up in the parking lot. This may be a church, but it isn't exactly the Garden of Eden, so we're going to have to put the speakers in a locked room somewhere. My dad figures the church office is the best place, so he parks right there and we both get out.

Now, I've been a long time lapsed, so it kind of makes sense that my dad should be the one to go get the key from the priest, because I'm not likely to get it out of him. So, I decide to sit down out in front of the office and keep an eye on the truck while my dad heads into God's house to get the key from the pastor.

I don't think the priest is alone with the Lord in there, because somebody has left their dog tied up here on the bench outside the church office. It's a lovely dog. I want to call it a Golden Retriever, but I'm not really sure that's what it was. Its fur was golden, and it was pretty big, but maybe the fur was too long for the name… I just can't say for certain. But it was a long-haired golden dog with a hard-on for retrieving. Of that much, I'm certain. You see, the owner of this beautiful dog had left him tied by his leash to a bench with a tennis ball to play with. And he's just happily chewing on it when I sit down on the bench opposite to admire this beautiful dog being beautifully doggy.

Of course, he's got better ideas, himself. He comes galumphing up to me in that goofy good-natured dog kind of way and gets almost all the way to me before the leash catches him short. So, he comes up as far as he can and drops that slobbery tennis ball on the pavement and rolls it towards me with his nose. Talk about a retriever! This slutty pooch wants to play fetch on a leash!

Well thank that non-existent Lord and all his rape-bait saints that one of us two was given some brains! Though it may be lost on the Golden Retriever, I'm well aware of the limits that leash is gonna' place on his favorite game. Still, as long as we're both sittin' here, waiting on the pious, we might as well amuse ourselves with a game.

My first bright idea is to stick my arm out really fast, horizontally so he doesn't get any wrong ideas, and hold the ball there for him to grab. This strikes me as a good substitute for fetch, but he isn't having any of it. Each time I hold the ball out, he wags his tail cheerfully and gives me that dumb face-to-ball-and-back-again glance like he's ready for the real fireworks to start.

That doesn't work, so I set the ball down and sit back down. But he really isn't bright, so he picks it up, brings it towards me, and nudges it my way again. Well, I try to stop it with my foot, but kinda' screw up and kick it back at him. It rolls past the bench, smacks into the planter behind and gets scooped up in his happy hunter jaws. Man, is he delighted, as he rolls it my way again! Figurin' that worked well, I kick it again, real gently towards the planter. Once again, it bounces into his mouth and comes back to me, just like you'd expect a ball under the influence of a retriever to do. Next kick doesn't even make it to the wall before he's got it! Now we got a nice compromise going on! He gets to retrieve, just like he was born to do, and I get to make him happy, which… well, which I might as well be doing since I don't have anything else going on at the moment.

And so it goes, good feelings building up on both sides. And I kick it, and he goes after it before it hits the wall, and he misses pretty bad. Instead of grabbing it, he ends up pushing it with his nose. It picks up momentum and smacks the planter far harder than is usual, and ricochets off at an angle with quite a bit of speed.

Well, this is an optimistic retriever, and he ain't gonna' let that ball get away from him. He tries again, getting off his nose and charging after the fleeing ball.

Well, now I'd rather not get to my point at this point, but I'm gonna' do it anyhow.

I didn't stop the ball, even though I think I tried. I know that he didn't stop the ball either. But as he charged after it at full retrieving speed, that leash stopped him.
It's kinda' hard to say what happened next. Not that I don't remember. No, I sure do remember. He didn't come short with a whimper. It was really more of a squeak… like some squeezed-out plush-toy. The ball, it just kept cluelessly rolling, and he was just lying there in a really un-dog-like heap.

My heart dropped down to the soles of my feet. I kneeled over the dog, laying hands on him like some kind of dickless faith-healer… you know, the kind who wants to fix you but doesn't have balls enough to re-invent the world at a whim… I couldn't order him to be OK, and rubbing his head wasn't gonna' take his mind off the pain. I pushed away that long, beautiful golden fur around his collar and felt something wet, very wet in that damned dry wind, sticking to my fingers. It was red, and it was blood and he was bleeding around his neck.

OK. So, I fucked up pretty bad here.

I look to my left, I look to my right, and I see I'm all alone, so I just back away. Way away. Like I didn't even know there was a dog in the neighborhood.

My dad is really taking his sweet fucking time, talking to God and his priest and whatever dog-owning jackass is also in there. Before he comes out, two young, deeply-tanned SoCal blondes come strolling by across the parish grounds. The beautiful blonde women see the beautiful blonde dog whimpering under a bench, and descend upon him like a flock of fawning harpies. I'm not exactly close, since I'm pretending I don't know the dog's there, but I hear one of them cry, "OH MY GOD!!! He's BLEEDING!!!" To which the other replies in a shout just below a scream, "What monster leaves their dog like this!!!!"

If it were my dog, don't you think I'd notice this? But it can't be me, because I am studiously nonchalant! The pair pass off, screaming like chalkboards in their hatred of human barbarity. The dog just keeps whimpering, rubbing his head, and licking his paws….

Finally, dad comes out! We unload the speakers, he never even notices the dog… not the kind of thing he would notice… and off we drive.

And that's it for me and God's Retriever… I figure he must've been alright in the end… right? I turned out OK for it, right?

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The Senate Goes Nuts

2006-05-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

"Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman,"

By a 10-8 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee allowed a constitutional amendment with that language to go to the Senate Floor. Arlen Specter, that bastion of Constitutional scholarship, says that he's totally opposed to this, but is too gutless to stop it from going to the Senate floor. (Ok, I put in the gutless part, but he has said he is opposed to this) The reality is that this is a political ploy designed to whip up the nutjob wing of the Republican Party to come out and vote instead of staying home in November. ...more »It's designed to remind that wing of the party that if the Democrats win, those evil ho-mo-sex-uals will be running nekkid through the streets. However, I digress.

Regardless of whether you are for or against gay marriage, civil unions, or whatever anyone wants to call them, you need to be frightened about a phrase in that provision: nor the constitution of any State. If such a provision passes, it would, in effect, mandate an interpretation of a state constitution and forbid that state constitution to confer more rights on its citizens than the Federal Constitution does. To be sure, there are some states that judicially follow the "lockstep" doctrine and interpret their state's constitution to only give the rights that the Federal Constitution does. Fortunately, I live in a state that does not believe that. I live in a state that believes that it can grant its citizens more rights than the Federal Constitution does if it wants to. It can't go below that floor of the federal constitution, but it certainly can raise a higher ceiling.

Language such as that passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee is dangerous, because it would be a giant step toward limiting severely the concept that the states are to be the crucibles of change and innovation. It would be another step toward the idea that there really is no seperate state sovereignty and that the federal government subsumes all. This was never the intent of the founders of this country, or the drafters of the Constitution. States have always been permitted to grant state citizens broader rights than those granted by the Federal Constitution. By refusing states the ability to give its citizens greater rights than the federal government allows, the amendment trashes the entire concept of seperate statehood inside the United States.

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When Levees Hold

2006-05-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

filed under: The_Bell | BotF | Pat Robertson | 700 Club | Hurricane Season | New Orleans | New England | Katrina

Pat Robertson, America's evangelist of apocalyptic angst is at it again in the doom and gloom business regarding the weather. Although he identifies no villain for the pending disasters, Roberts has said several times on his 700 Club program that God spoke to him during a personal prayer retreat back in January about plague-scale bad weather, due to hit the U.S. this year.

"If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson first said on May 8. "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest," he added two days later.

Meteorologists have already begun predicting a hurricane season as bad or worse than last year's for the Gulf Coast and earthquakes periodically occur along the Pacific Coast that might trigger massive waves, so Robertson's epiphanies seem ...more »safe enough. But it appears they have already begun in a less-expected location – New England.

Four days of driving rains that began last weekend dumped more than a foot of rain across New Hampshire, Massachusetts and southern Maine, with up to seventeen inches in some places. There was widespread flooding, with many people driven from their homes and dangers such as sinkholes, washed-out roads, and dam breaks.

Yet compared to the aftermath and response to the flooding in New Orleans last summer that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, none of the same debacles seem to occur, even on a limited basis. And this despite the fact that Gulf Coasts residents are quite used to the threat of storms while this was the most violent rain and flooding seen by New Englanders since the 1930s.

There are no reports of widespread looting. No roaming gangs taking potshots are rescue workers. Emergency shelters were clean, adequately provisioned/staffed, and orderly. Nobody was left stranded on rooftops without a quick rescue. Injuries were minimal and only two deaths were reported.

Why the big difference?

It may be that the tragedy of Katrina and the New Orleans flood has taught local, state, and federal officials some important lessons that they put into play this time. Maybe it taught similar lessons to the populace (potentially) impacted by flooding as well. That would be an optimistic sliver lining to Katrina's generally darkened cloud.

Maybe it is related to differences in the education, poverty level, and general quality of life of those affected in New England as compared to their Gulf Coast counterparts. Maybe it is just the difference between Southern fatalism and Yankee roll-up-your-sleeves pragmatism.

Maybe it was the fact that this threat was sudden and unusual in New England that gave it a true sense of emergency. After all, predictions of bursting levees have been going on for so long down in New Orleans with the approach of every hurricane, they have kind of become status quo and familiarity does breed contempt. Yet the fact is that much of New England is a maze of rivers and tributaries, many of them built up by the mills and other factories of Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century industrialization. People there are no less aware of their constant dependence on the solidity of dams and levees.

Maybe the difference came because, instead of waffling with indecision over what to do, Governor John Lynch of New Hampshire, Governor John Baldacci of Maine, and Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts all declared states of emergency by early in the morning on the second day of rain. Maybe it is because National Guard troops were activated and reporting to flooded areas just as quickly. Maybe because state emergency operations center were plentiful and opened for business in the same timeframe.

Maybe it is because, instead of announcing to citizens they had been previously warned they would be "on their own," authorities went door-to-door warning of the need for evacuation when the National Weather Service reported the earthen portions of the Milton Pond Dam near West Lebanon Maine were eroding. Maybe it is because New Hampshire had sent twenty thousand sandbags to various communities by the morning of the third day of rain and were gathering another thirty thousand. Maybe it is because a granite dam in Methuen Massachusetts was quickly reinforced with five thousand sandbags when it showed signs of collapse.

Maybe it is because, instead of scratching their heads and asking "what do we do next?" the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency coordinated its disaster responses a little more efficiently because it and the Department of Conservation and Recreation have been devising a list of priorities for flood prevention over the past couple of years. Maybe it is because the New Hampshire Bureau of Emergency Management is ready to meet FEMA with a list of problems they believe may come to light as water levels continue receding.

Maybe it is because, instead of going on television and radio to denounce others for not helping them out, Governor Lynch was too busy heading off to the town of Hooksett, where a dam was reportedly cracking. Maybe because Governor Romney was on the scene watching rescuers evacuate two hundred and fifty sick and elderly residents from a badly flooded nursing home in the city of Lawrence. Maybe because Governor Baldacci was hugging a woman in York as she cried and surveyed the wreckage of her candy store and told her, "you'll make it."

Maybe its because, instead of calling for handouts because his city was entitled to exist, Mayor Michael Bonfanti of Peabody Massachusetts – whose downtown was underwater at the time – was on the phone trying to raise money as part of long-standing, ongoing efforts by locals there to preserve historic tanning factories so they can be reused for other purposes and revitalize the local economy.

There is a type of fatalism that begins and ends by noting that bad things happening are unavoidable. Then there is another that goes on challenge us as to what each of us will do about it. How will we turn tragedy into the strength to continue? It is about taking responsibility instead of placing blame. It really is about rolling up your shirtsleeves instead of waiting for epiphanies. It was a mindset sorely lacking at all levels of government in the aftermath of Katrina and New Orleans.

Yet it is a mindset that I now know countless mayors and three New England governors understand very well and that they further understand that is it catalyzed, driven, and inspired by leadership. We fail when we refuse to confront our shortcomings as a nation openly and honestly, so we can learn from them. But we would do a similar disservice if we fail to acknowledge when we do things right. Some levees more important and basic than earthen dams and sandbags held this week. I tip my cap to New England.

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Jogo bonito

2006-05-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

filed under: Gregor_Samsa | BotF | World Cup | Football | FIFA | Soccer

My interest in soccer kicks in every four years when the World Cup comes around. Nevertheless, it has been on the wane over a period. This year, I feel totally clueless as to the teams, the odds, and the players to watch. I may have even skipped the telecast, but andkathleen has made a racket that's enough to raise the dead.

All soccer fans are nuts, including the ones who have never set fire to a stadium. I had the misfortune of watching the '94 tournament in a college cafeteria with a Peruvian friend. He ruined every game by talking incessantly, recycling old anecdotes from past championships. It is a still a mystery to me how he picked up on all that minutiae, since he never seemed to have the slightest interest in the action on screen.

There are two distinctive qualities about soccer. First, it is one team sport that can truly be called international, the game of humanity. The FIFA championship is not a hilarious misnomer like the World Series or the Cricket World Cup. Second, it's possibly the simplest game ever devised. No two-point conversions, onside kicks, quota of time-outs, loading of bases. No helmets, face masks, graphite rackets or special teams. You try to kick a leather sphere into a rectangular frame for 90 minutes, and that's all there is to it.

If you have ever hung out with a bunch of soccer crazies, you must have had your fill of crackpot ideas, fantastic stratagems and bizarre conspiracy theories. Never mention England's winning goal in the '66 final at Wembley to a drunk (or even a sober) German. Versailles didn't cause that much resentment, and all the talk about the grassy knoll will sound like a scientific treatise by comparison. One of the enduring sociological truisms held dear by soccerdom is that soccer style encapsulates national character, that it is an expression of cultural essence. The sparse simplicity of the game offers a tabula rasa on which individuality or cultural identity can be writ large, or so it goes.

The German team is noted for ...more »its precision power play, discipline and mental strength. Their game is linear and schematic. Much like the Volkswagen (with the obvious exception of the Beetle), what it lacks in style, it makes up in efficiency and reliability. The most famous German player of all time, Franz Beckenbauer, marshaled his entire troop from the top of the penalty area, creating a whole lot of lebensraum with ruthless determination. He was nicknamed the Kaiser! I suppose 'the Fuhrer' didn't go down well with focus groups.

The Irish couldn't be more of a contrast to the Germans. Utter confusion reigns from the moment they take the field, accompanied by a great deal of shovin' and hollerin'. If one of them perchance gets the ball, he'll give it a high and mighty kick towards the heavens, as if to say, "Stop buggin' me, you dirty bastard! Can't you see I'm havin' a jolly good time with the folks?" George Best, the greatest Irish Hall of Famer, squandered his talent through drinking and womanizing. No Kaiser, that feller.

Dutch soccer is extremely libertarian. They refuse to assign specific positions and responsibilities to their players; everyone is free to do whatever they fancy. They call it total football, which is just another term for: anything goes. The Dutch will dazzle everyone with their brilliance in one World Cup, and then miss the next three, leaving one wondering when they'll get off the pot and put on their boots again.

The French have no particular style; it's all a hodge-podge. However, in every major game I can recall (especially the famous 1982 semi-final against Germany), they have always surrendered. One of their goalies was a long haired fellow who wrote poetry and often cried on camera. In recent years, Team Bleu has shown more grit and toughness, but one can't help noticing that it is increasingly packed with North African immigrants, which may have something to do with it. I look forward to a showdown with Team USA. It will be interesting to see if they get French fried or Freedom fried.

The Spanish team is always great to watch. Their offensive team has players of immaculate skill and panache, who deftly sidestep defensive tacklers like a matador, dribble with the practiced élan of flamenco dancers and shoot goalwards as if driving a sword into the bull's heart. After impressing the hell out of spectators, they always go home half a dozen goals down, because their defense has the incurable habit of taking frequent siestas. I have had Spanish friends who had to be put on suicide watch after every World Cup.

The Italians, at least on surface, play against character. Traditionally, they have an excessively cautious, safety-first approach to the game, offering no hint of the creative verve that one may expect from the land of the Renaissance, floating gondolas and dashing Romeos. Nevertheless, the Azzuri have produced defenders of considerable notoriety such as Claudio Gentile, who bottled up legendary attacking players like Zico and Maradona, using means that are quite a bit, um, unconventional. Gentile offers you no less a glimpse into the Sicilian mind than Martin Scorsese.

No discussion of soccer is possible without mentioning Brazil. Nobody plays it like the Brazilians do. It is a mesmerizing show, like a pack of lions closing in on the gazelle, though their controlled, rhythmic aggression is set to the tune of the samba and visibly steeped in the joie the vivre of the Carneval. Unlike the Dutch, Brazillian coaches and officials do have tight scripts and specific roles for each player, but nobody gives a damn what they have been told. The defensive left back Roberto Carlos was last sighted in his assigned position in 1995. He likes to hang out in the opponent's goal area, teasing them with free-kick curveballs and the choicest Portuguese epithets.

In America, soccer has struggled to find its niche as a professional game. Appropriately for a nation where soccer moms are the swing voters, the women's team has kicked ass for many years, but the men's team were babes in the woods until even a decade ago, though the improvement has been stunning since. I hear they have top billing this time. I do wonder what kind of national spirit they'll display in the championship. Hopefully, they won't be bringing their own referee and scoring a few pre-emptive goals even before their opponents have shown up. That will be embarrassing.

Is it possible that eleven men running around and kicking a stupid ball can somehow, through that effort, reveal a kernel of truth about their cultural heritage and national stereotypes? The notion of a national character, a pat summary of millions of diverse personalities, is conceptually problematic and politically dangerous. Nevertheless, Orwell thought there is such a thing, however elusive, as the "English character", so we may be justified in a bit of philosophical speculation whether David Beckham hasn't articulated it better than good, old Georgie himself.

Speaking of philosophers, Camus played goalie for the Algiers team, and found metaphorical significance in soccer. However, Borges has been quoted as saying: "Football is popular because stupidity is popular." I guess it is a case of sour grapes, since soccer has rendered its verdict on the character of philosophers, and it ain't flattering.

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The secret of my most beautiful lawn

2006-05-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

filed under: historyguy | BotF | gardening | lawn | green | environment

I have the most beautiful lawn in my neighborhood. Here's what I do.

In the late Fall, I sprinkle region-appropriate grass seed in the bare spots. No zoyssia! If we get cold rain and snow, it starts growing underneath before Spring. If there's no snow cover, and not enough rain, I feed the squirrels when they need feeding the most.

In very early Spring, immediately before or in the early minutes of a major rainstorm, long before the last frost, sprinkle more grass seed. At this time, it usually takes. It is critical that the grass start growing before the leaves appear on the trees, because it won't start itself once it's in shade.

No fertilizer except what history dog provides. ...more »History dog didn't like it when I tried using commercial fertilizer. Worse than that, the robins stayed away. The cardinals were willing to approach the bird feeder, but when they spilled bird seed, they wouldn't pick it up from the ground.

No chemical weed killers.

I mow the grass every weekend. No bagging; all clippings stay to replenish the growing grass, except what the birds take. The grackles always arrive when there's cut grass on the ground. I'm not sure if they're after the cut grass, or like the easy access to the worms below.

I will dig up dandelions when I'm in the mood at this time of year. With a shovel to get the roots. Of course, it's impossible to get them all.

My neighbors used Chemlawn. They have pure green, all even, all even, no weeds, no dogs or birds landing, not even worms. My lawn stands out at this time of year. None of the people think it's beautiful right now. The grackles, dogs, robins and cardinals think it's the best. Since there are more of them than there are people, I win any "most beautiful lawn" vote.

But that's not good enough for me. I want the most beautiful lawn for people also. I will have that soon, from eight to midnight, late June through late August.

The Chemlawn neighbors don't get the beauty I get. My secret ingredient is:

fireflies!

Fireflies don't get along with Chemlawn. It's striking walking through the neighborhood in the dark, how dull the Chemlawn properties are at night, nothing but streetlights above and lanterns by the front door. Nothing beautiful in between, nothing to see at all.

Fireflies love my lawn. They lay dormant there, until they're ready, when they rise from the ground, a little higher each hour, find the old maple tree they treat as a singles bar, and then sink back down, to rise up again the next night. All Summer long, in the prime walking and looking out the window hours.

The neighbors can have their daytime greenness. Heck, I'm not even here to see it during the week, and most of them aren't, either.

The secret of my most beautiful lawn isn't what I do to it, it's how, and when, I look at it.

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da vinci code outrage

2006-05-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

filed under: BotF | twifferTheGnu | rundeep | Schadenfreude | literacy | da vinci code | boobs

what bothers me about all the flack the movie is getting is not that it is a silly reaction to fiction. it's that the book didn't recieve it.

folks, the movie has the same characters and plot. actually, it was written almost as a movie (likely to make the adaptation easier).

what is the difference? why are people worried now? why should a movie, based on a bestseller, be more threatening than the book itself?

the most reasonable explaination seems to be ...more »demographics. that is, more people will see the movie than would have read the book.

i'd like there to be a better reason, because i find this one a bit sad. can anyone indulge me?

Answers:

-Rightwing Christians don't read. But they watch TV and have seen the trailers. The Catholic Church still prints a list of banned books, but no one is really sure where it's printed.

-They're worried that their gullible boobs might become someone else's gullible boobs.

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Stevens-Moulitsas exchange misses the mark

2006-05-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

filed under: Publius | BotF | presidential | campaigns | politics

Contrary to the premiss of the Book Club discussion between Stevens and Moulitsas -- that "consultants" make a big difference one way or another in campaigns -- Presidential campaigns today are not all that different from 1968 or 1948, just a lot longer.

Few candidates for President ever had a more refined sense of how to organize a campaign, tailor messages to targeted voters and leverage the media fully than Bob Kennedy. And very few have had the services of more or better professionals than Bobby did. The fact that he was cruelly murdered at age 42 at the peak of his campaign naturally puts a gloss on everything he did ...more »and said and encourages hagiography by his supporters and adversaries alike.

Generally, one ought to be skeptical about this whole exchange and particularly about the notion that the influence of consultants and the media turn otherwise "genuine" candidates into fluff. Harry Truman's "turnip days" may seem more "genuine" but that's mainly because he did win reelection in 1948. Harry's down home farm boy background was indeed a political plus, which he exploited for all it was worth, even though the Harry Truman of 1945 had put the farm behind him decades before. Harry also refined the "whistle stop" train tour of the country where he dutifully delivered the "sound bite" of the day to crowds while ensuring that it hit the papers and radio everywhere in each news cycle. Harry may not have had a Bob Shrum charging hundreds of dollars an hour, but he had the equivalent expertise in politics from Ed Flynn and other notable party Bosses, who didn't charge by the hour but got handsomely paid.

What began to change in 1968 and changed dramatically in 1972 was the sheer length and difficulty of campaigning for President in a country that spans a continent, due to the radical and sudden democratization of intra-party politics. Even in 1968, when McCarthy and Kennedy competed in the few then-available primaries, the bulk of delegates to the Democratic National Convention were chosen by party organizations and were pretty firmly in Hubert Humphrey's corner as of Bob Kennedy's death. Kennedy had a chance based on his California win against McCarthy to persuade party leaders to abandon Humphrey and support him. While we'll never know, it's unlikely they would have.

Beginning in 1972, Presidential campaigns had to be focused for the first time ever not on assembling party leaders' support but on winning delegates directly in primaries and caucuses. By 1976, candidates had begun to campaign extensively in targeted states (e.g., Jimmy Carter in Iowa) more than a year before the conventions. This very quickly evolved into an almost endless campaign season, with a need to reach at one and the same time a huge national audience and a smaller set of targeted state-by-state audiences. TV -- both paid advertising and so-called "free media" -- was and is the only reliable way to accomplish this simply because the candidate can only be in one place at a time and time to reach so many people is precious. Of course, lately the Internet has added a new dimension to the available media tools but it's not going to make campaigns shorter or the country any smaller.

None of this, though, has any necessary effect on how candidates present themselves or what they say. It may seem that way since only what is truly memorable about what Truman or JFK had to say remains readily available and widely quoted. As a candidate, JFK had a day by day "message discipline" any current Presidential wannabe would want to emulate. And he had very artfully canned issues as well -- Quemoy and Matsu, the "missile gap," a tap dance on civil rights, to name a few.

It seems to me that Moulitsas's gripe with Kerry and some others boils down to his not liking what Kerry had to say, rather than some useful insight into the role of "consultants." He is obviously also peeved at the failure of more than a few voters to be attracted by Howard Dean's supposedly more genuine approach. But whether Dean was more "genuine" or Kerry more "scripted" may not have been the issue in early 2004 at all. It may simply be that people did not like Dean or like what he had to say and, thus, didn't care whether he was being genuine about it.

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now that i have the time....23 DAYS! 23 DAYS!

2006-05-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

Tags: andkathleen | BotF | World Cup | Football | FIFA | Soccer

can't you feel the excitrement, people? i know that i haven't inflicted the recent build-up on you as much as i should have been, but with the end of term and papers and what have you, i've been too busy to attend to your world-cup needs.

but no more!

first, let me give you the team members. the squad is 23 altogether, with the starters ...more »yet to be determined bold plays overseas, italics plays domestically):

goalkeepers: kasey keller* (borussia moenchengladbach, germany [obviously, but it's a great name]), tim howard (manchester united, england), marcus hahnemann (reading, england).

defenders: carlos bocanegra (fulham, england), steve cherundolo* (hannover 96, germany), jimmy conrad (kansas city wizards), cory gibbs (ado den haag, holland), chris albright (l.a. galaxy), eddie lewis* **(leeds united, england), oguchi onyewu (standard liege, belgium), eddie pope* ***(real salt lake).

midfielders: damarcus beasley* (psv eindhoven, holland), bobby convey (reading, england), clint dempsey (new england revolution), landon donovan* (l.a. galaxy), pablo mastroeni* ****(colorado rapids), john o'brien* (chivas usa), ben olsen (dc united), claudio reyna* (manchester city, england).
forwards: eddie johnson* (kansas city wizards), brian mcbride* (fulham, england), brian ching (houston dynamo), josh wolff* (kansas city wizards)
note that it's almost evenly balaced between international and domestic team players, and that's it's the exact same ratio as it was in 2002. a good omen? we'll take anything we can get, because our ability to get to the quarterfinals this time may depend upon the italian team's playing like shite due to the upset and turmoil in the country's football system. we'll just have to pray that they are sensitive souls.

*returning players from world cup 2002
**midfielder for world cup 2002
***midfielder for world cup 2002
****defender for world cup 2002

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Border Rumors

2006-05-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

The rumor of a great city goes out beyond its borders, to all the latitudes of the known Earth. The city becomes an emblem in remote minds; apart from the tangible export of goods and men, it exerts its cultural instrumentality in a thousand phases.
– U.S. Public Relief Program, "Metropolis and Her Children," 1938

Visitors to a zoo in Amsterdam watched in horror yesterday as a group of sloth bears chased, attacked, mauled, and then ate one of the macaques that shared their exhibit. Zoo officials said they carefully arrange habitats to avoid such episodes but ultimately shrugged off the incident, observing "they are and remain wild animals." The zoo plans to move the macaques from their current exhibit to another part of the park.

Such a solution may seem self-evident to many but President Bush, for one, might have disagreed with it, arguing instead that what was needed were more guards patrolling the borders along the two animals' shared environment. In a major speech last night, Bush came closer than ever to endorsing a path providing eventual citizenship for the estimated twelve million illegal immigrants in the United States – while avoiding the dreaded "amnesty" word. ...more »In counterbalance, he announced he will immediately send as many as six thousand National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.

Surprise, surprise! The New York Times found this a terrible plan, calling it "a victory for the fear-stricken fringe of the debate" in its morning lead editorial.

However, the Chicago Tribune liked the idea, arguing it was "a speech intended to shake the status quo . . . That's desperately needed." The Tribune went on to explain that National Guard troops on the border "should put more pressure on Congress to pass a broad bill that increases the Border Patrol." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution agreed, saying "the nation should give serious consideration to using military forces to assist in guarding the border" so long as the role played by the military was "limited and temporary."

There were certainly political factors motivating this proposal from the President but also practical ones as well. At a time when the Republican Party is weak, Bush needed to reassure his conservative core without alienating Hispanic voters completely. He also needed to find an approach that might find favor with the enforcement-focused immigration reform bill already passed by the House with the more lenient one proposed by the Senate, even as those two chambers seek to negotiate a compromise.

The use of the National Guard is a move full of inflammatory symbolism. It is also quite a major cost in resources. The Guard is meant to temporarily fill in for the six thousand additional Border Patrol officers that Bush wishes to see hired and trained. However, since they will be working in shifts rather than full time, that means something more like one hundred and fifty thousand personnel will be required. While their main role is intended to be intelligence gathering and surveillance, they will still be armed and authorized to use force to protect themselves.

"There is a rational middle ground" to the illegal immigration problem, the President insisted in his speech and all pundits agree that any immigration reform must be comprehensive (i.e. include enforcement) to be successful. Politically, middle ground is about all Bush has with which to work.

This is because GOP surveys show the immigration issue does not cut the same way in all competitive Congressional districts in this year's mid-term elections. Hispanics are those most likely to passionately protest stricter enforcement. Those most likely to base their vote on its necessity cut across Party lines, tending to be less educated and less affluent. Many are senior citizens.

Democrats have been largely critical of the President's plan. Rather than increase Homeland Security, they argue this approach will weaken our security by drawing off National Guard to deal with immigrants and decrease their preparedness should we be hit with another terrorist attack.

Yet the bottom line is that just under seventy-five percent of all Americans said they favored using National Guard troops to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico, according to a Washington Post–ABC News poll conducted before the President spoke. In fact, most Americans say they cannot support a guest worker program until they are first reassured that the borders are secured.

Indeed, the chief problem with calling out the National Guard may not be that it is too extreme a solution for the problem but that it is impracticable, at least in the long term. The same democracy that President Bush believes in so deeply that he views it as America's duty to export to the rest of the world also calls the rest of the world to us. It is a call that knows no natural borders and which flatly refuses to recognize political ones.

People who are willing to cross burning desserts, run gauntlets through barbed wire, crawl through makeshift tunnels, and jam themselves into one hundred ninety degree truck holds to taste freedom will not be deterred by gun-toting guards. No matter how many we are able and willing to kill, some are going to get through. Likewise, the idea of amnesty and completely open borders runs the risks of making it all too easy for us to excuse the creation of a second-class citizenry, whose role is to do our least desirable jobs for us.

Unlike the macaques in the zoo, there is nowhere else in the American park to move Mexican and other illegal immigrants. This implies some degree of coexistence between them and ourselves is going to need to continue whether we like it or not. And that may be the best argument of all for bringing the National Guard to the border at this time. We have our own version of sloth bears already pacing about out there.

I am thinking about folks like the Minutemen and other vigilante and/or Latinophobe groups who have begun volunteering in record numbers to protect the rest of us from what they perceive as a dire threat. Now, I am sure that but vast majority of membership in these groups is motivated by sincere patriotism. However, there are two distinct risks.

One is the loner who either is pathologically virulent in their hatred of immigrants or who simply desire a chance to shoot at human beings. These groups can provide legitimate cover for such individuals until it is too late. The second problem are the large rallies that have been attempted lately in which a mob mentality could easily form. A few too many beers at the Bar-B-Q and the crowd that came to build a fence might easily be persuaded that beating up any Hispanic-looking individuals in the area might be a better alternative.

Very few would argue that better control of our borders is undesirable even if we might disagree as to how urgent and severe a problem it represents. Yet as we seek to build fences and mount armed guards to protect ourselves from the rest of the world, we would do well to remember that we are and remain human animals. As such, we respect and respond to borders that go deeper in our psyches than any that national governments might seek to draw upon the land.

To be an American (unlike being English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history.
– Leslie Fiedler, "Cross the Border–Close the Gap," 1969

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Tap dancing at the NSA

2006-05-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

Tags: Gregor_Samsa | BotF | NSA | CIA | Warrantless | Wiretap | Wire Tapping

Apologies for the NSA's telecom data mining scam have quickly developed along two lines: (a) phone records are routinely summoned without warrants in criminal investigations. No big deal (b) If 'network analysis' confers great snooping powers as suggested, then it must also have significant potential for detecting terrorist activity. You can't have it both ways.

Ironically, the problem isn't too much information but too little. If the government had to ask for records on a case by case basis, its search habits would be revealed ...more »to some outside agency (the telecoms). That isn't much of a check, but word could leak out in case of large scale abuse. There would also be some kind of paper trail of search requests, I presume – relevant in case of an investigation into allegations of abuse. The problem with the program isn't so much that it disrobes the citizen as it cloaks government. Having the whole data base at the fingertips of the security bureaucracy practically eliminates any possibility of counter surveillance, by eliminating intermediaries and potential witnesses. You will never know what they're monitoring – from Sy Hersh's phone records to who's buying dildos in Alabama. Yet another chapter in the Bush administration's obsession with secrecy.

There is an aspect to the whole thing which goes beyond legalities or practicalities, i.e. tangible concerns relating to either security or civil liberties. A free society places the onus on government to justify every extension of its intrusive powers. It is not incumbent on the citizen to present a watertight case why they should be curbed. The ease of obtaining phone records in targeted individual cases is not an argument for the program but against it. Why the extra wattage, if it's so easy to follow up on identified suspects? There is good reason to worry especially if this was a senseless accumulation of junk information. The often irrational fetishizing of knowledge and control is the hallmark of bureaucratic megalomania on which a police state is founded. It seems Bush has leveraged September 11 to infuse a radically new character into American government, one which is antithetical to its founding spirit.

Above all else, it's the aesthetics, stupid.

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Monitoring Borders and Boundaries…

2006-05-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
--John Perry Barlow

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have spent two decades working in legal compliance related telecommunications recording, call records and other associated information and compliance measures from Wall Street trading floors to E-911 systems across the world.

Being familiar with the field, I find it somewhat remarkable that so many appear to be untroubled by the warrantless wire tapping program and the call records gathering by the NSA. It might be appropriate to spend just a moment or two describing how these things actually work and what they're used for ...more », the regulations and who has access.

First, the recording piece: The FCC has little enough to say about telephone recording—most of the laws that govern it are state laws and revolve around the issue of one or two party consent. Recording is seldom mandated and generally occurs with a centralized system that taps into the main distribution frame of your switch on premise (MDF or IDF if internal) and replicates the voice stream and copies it into a specific system designed for archival and retrieval and tagging with specific data and monitoring capabilities. Many of these systems are tied into carrier's CO switches—those are the big ones telephone companies use to provide service to your office PBX or home. In terms of consent, you either live in a 'one party consent' state meaning as long as one of the two party's consents to the recording, it's legal, or a 'two party consent state' in which case both parties must consent to the recording. Consent can be obtained in one of several ways—a beep tone generated on the line every ten seconds or so, someone asking your permission or informing you it's a recorded line, a prerecorded announcement prior to switching your call through to your party, or the fine print of the contracts you signed with a specific organization you do business with.

In all circumstances 'no party consent'—that is a third party recording the call without either of the two parties of the conversation consenting (absent a warrant) is considered a felony. This is the first part that ought to concern you; the notion of 'dumbing down' the definition of a felony when all that's required not to do that is procurement of a warrant is unnecessary, prone to abuse, virtually impossible to properly oversee and intrusive in ways that ought to be unacceptable to Americans who espouse the benefits of liberty while acting more like a police state. When there is a conflict between what you say and what you do people inevitably believe your actions over your words. It's hard to be the beacon of liberty when you're busy conducting surveillance.

The NSA's collection of call records is slightly less intrusive—but equally if not more alarming. It's alarming for several reasons—the first of which is that neither the warrantless wiretapping nor the collection of call records have proper oversight. That may not sound like much of a problem to you now, until you start to think about the facts that 1) nobody can really tell you that this information is being properly used (that's why we have checks and balances—because we don't place sole authority with the President) 2) that 'lack of oversight' is what traditionally leads to abuse (see the reasons why the FISA court was created in the first place and the conclusion of the reports on Abu Ghraib—lack of proper oversight is one of the conclusions for what went wrong) and 3) those records contain more about you than you think.

Don't believe me? Go back and look up all of your call records from your carrier(s) over the last six months. I just audited mine—a quick look (mere database, stuff, forget the actual data mining that reveals far more) would tell you who I do business with (what companies and people), where I've been and when, where I stay, what airlines I use, where my family lives, where and who my friends are and the nature of my business. That's information I don't want any single person in government or any single agency for that matter deciding they are entitled to without some reasonable check on that kind of authority and inherently intrusive breech of privacy.

There are several reasons for that—having been involved in several investigations of this type (the one I'll use here is the infamous Banker's Trust scandal years ago that made the cover of Business Week which decried the 'rip off' factor traders were building into complex derivative instruments they didn't understand. In the 'war room' set up at that time, I saw federal investigators and regular employees and vendors and all sorts of other people listening to conversations and checking calling patterns. Within 48 hours I could tell you everything there was to know about a particular trader's social life and business life. The fact is that many people had access to that information and used it to satisfy their curiosity (is he having an affair) or out of sheer boredom (he's doing what?) or to take an advantage of an opportunity (I hate this guy—wonder who he talks to all day—hey I know that person… what's going on here?!) The fact is that people who ought not have access to this information routinely do, and with no check or improper oversight, you are vulnerable. You may believe you are not and this is appropriate for the administration. Fine—Hillary Clinton (or whomever the next Democratic nominee will be) is pleased to hear it—remember that this sort of power will not always be with merely those you trust, and that this administration in particular has displayed difficulty in understanding its own limits.

Further, this kind of information so readily available and without checks or balances provides law enforcers with a discretionary authority explicitly reserved for law makers--that in turn opens the door to prosecution based on specific personal biases and agendas, random and haphazard enforcement and creates an opportunity for corruption. All of this has deleterious effects not only on our nation as a democracy, but on law enforcement itself, lessening both respect for and adherence to the law and actions that appear to be both capricious and sporadically acted upon.

Worse, it's ineffective. I'm not saying that such a database shouldn't exist, or that it shouldn't be a focused objective with proper checks and balances, but I am saying that as a primary tool, there's too little there to go on and investments in human intelligence, information sharing between domestic and international agencies. What would have prevented 9-11 is people paying attention to the warnings about Atta and others prior to 9-11—they were given, just not collated and paid attention too. The call records, amongst so much flotsam and jetsam is at best less useful than other tools and at worst false comfort and a distraction that we can ill afford that undermines the very liberties we are trying to protect.

Tonight, it is anticipated that President Bush will focus on 'securing our borders' by deploying the already overextended National Guard to keep out immigrants that are not the people that comprise the terrorist threat the administration keeps pointing to—you hear precious little about protecting the Canadian boarder this is curious given terrorists have actually attempted to enter the country from there and a it has much larger Muslim population than Mexico and a 12-page document recently posted on an al-Qaeda-affiliated on line forum urges would be terrorists to enter the US from Canada.

Cynics would see this speech tonight as a diversion—pragmatists as further incompetence. Perhaps both. I find it somewhat ironic that those so obsessed with 'securing the borders' and protecting 'our way of life' care so little for their own boundaries and the decisions that actually undermine that way of life in far more subtle and effective ways.

Perhaps it would benefit us not to confuse borders and boundaries, as if security rests entirely with keeping those unlike us out instead of defending our own liberties and integrity—and to start worrying a little less about the former when we seem to understand so little about the latter.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.
--Samuel Johnson

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RE: Fear of Fiction

2006-05-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

Filed Under: Kalervo | BotF | DaVinci | Christian | Catholic | Jesus

I think that fear is the wrong word. As an aside, I actually have read the book. Further, I read the other book too (Holy Blood, Holy Grail). Dan Brown presents an tired thesis and an interesting plot motive to make it go. It is, unfortunately, a large amount of bullshit. This has been established via consensus by both the faithful and academic communities. What Christ actually taught and believed is fairly well documented and portrayed (for a complete overview, I heartily recommend Thomas Cayhills' Desire of the Everlasting Hills, see here, as a good secular starting point [the rest of the series is fabulous too]).

This, perhaps, is what gets most of the Christian goat. ...more »Many of the people who I know are planning on not seeing the film because they view it as offensive. They don't want to support an enterprise which they feel deliberately distorts their belief system. That is a fair enough proposition. Just becuase free speech says we can say what we like doesn't mean we have to support it. Boycotting and/or protesting a speech is a favorite liberal tactic.

The Christian community in America takes far more than its fair share of criticism and blows. This includes an incredible crusade by the ACLU and other far-left groups to remove all traces of Christianity from public life. It also includes public denegration and distortion (see the response to Gibson's movie a few years back). Outright taunting also comes to mind (piss Christ and elephant Dung Mary). These are far worse taunts than anything other communities have to tolerate (think the Islamic community).

With all that said, I plan on seeing the movie with my wife. If that goes well, I will probably take my kids to see it. My office is also planning a mass-outing to see the movie (most everyone in my practice group/lab read the book). That means I will probably see this movie three times. Cool. If people want to talk about the great "conspiracy," then bring it on. As I already said, academia has already relegated this particular bunk to the trash bin it belongs on.

I look forward to visiting with friends about any and all distortions portrayed in the movie. As I have yet to see it, I can't intelligently do that... yet. So, rather than boycott, I intend to discuss. But I greatly respect the boycotters. Hollywood doesn't really produce anything which I find worth forking out $10 for. If a sizeable number of people make that point, maybe we'll get some better offerings.

Re: Jesus and Mary Magdalene... their status as a couple is shrouded in mist. However, there is good evidence that it might have happened. The Gnostic gospels include evidence as do the accepted Gospels. Who precisely did the risen Lord appear to first? Who was at the crucifex?

This, of course, is hardly earth shattering. God did indeed say that it is bad for man to be alone. Why should the Son of Man, who is the prime exemplar in all other things, not provide an excellent example of how-to do the marriage thing?

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Fear of Fiction

2006-05-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

The furor over a movie by religious groups who have not even seen it once again illustrates the power of fiction to shake the beliefs of the faithful. The DaVinci Code has been called "anti-Christian," and the Catholic Church has been asking people to boycott the movie. This movie is apparently driving people into creating websites (www.defendyourfaith.com) and other groups (Opus Dei) issuing demands for disclaimers or retractions.

First, a disclaimer ...more »on my part. I haven't read the book, don't plan on it. I don't plan on seeing the movie. Why? This plot has been around forever, it's just that apparently Dan Brown made it somewhat more interesting than the other books that talk about it. I'm particularly remembering Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, but there have been many others. So, this whole "Jesus married Mary Magdalene" thing has been going around for a long time. Nothing new.

Look, people, none of you were around when this guy Jesus was living. Therefore, you are taking it on faith that what has been passed down for centuries about him is true. That's fine, faith in things unseen is something that has driven mankind probably since we were, well, mankind. However, if your faith is so weak that a piece of fiction is threatening it, then perhaps you need to reevaluate what you truly believe in.

If you truly believe what you say you do, than this movie shouldn't bother you at all. You don't have to see it, you don't have to read the book. Why should you care if someone goes to the movie or reads the book and believes that what is in this piece of fiction is true? If the fact that someone else believes what this movie says diminishes your faith one iota, then perhaps your faith is not as strong as you think it is.

After all, according to the latest figures at adherents.com, only 1/3 of the world's population believe in Christianity. That means 2/3 of the world does not. Yet, that fact doesn't seem to threaten the faithful as much as this piece of fiction.

Neither the fact that 2/3 of the world doesn't believe that you do, nor the fiction of the DaVinci Code should threaten the true believer. Yet, it seems to be doing so. Why is that?

Posted by JohnLex7.
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Tags: BotF | DaVinci | Christian | Catholic | Jesus

63% Of You Are Sheep

2006-05-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

I have two problems with the NSA program of collecting records of all telephone calls, and I don't think either one of them has occurred to the majority of Americans who seem to be telling pollsters they have no problem with it.

First, I think there's no logical reason, if the President's argument is accepted, why he *couldn't* randomly tap into domestic telephone conversations (or have computers tap into all of them), if he believed it was in the national interest. I find that extremely troubling.

Second, there's...more » absolutely no guarantee that the information the NSA gathers will be used *only* to hunt down terrorists. Until now, the very secrecy of the program acted as a sort of rough guarantee aganst its abuse. But if it's acknowledged that the program exists, and the public signals that it's O.K. with that, then the government can use the information it gathers for any purpose at all.

I predict it won't be long at all before the database's use is expanded to broader and broader classes of criminal investigations. Eventually, it could end up being used for *all* of them. Or even just to get them started. The Administration could even end up using unrestricted surveillance as a tool for tripping up its political opponents.

And THAT, I have a huge problem problem with. I could almost tolerate this program if I could be absolutely certain that the information gathered would only ever be used to investigate terrorists, and that it would never be expanded to include other types of information. But the Administration is claiming that the President has unlimited authority and can do whatever he likes.

That's an argument that we simply can't afford to tolerate.

Posted by Thrasymachus.
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Tags: BotF | NSA | Domestic | Telephone | Surveillance

Karl Rove, Fear, Catatonia, and Celine Dion

2006-05-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's start with the big news. Tragedy struck this week when French-Canadian pop singer Celine Dion wandered into a wax museum and came face-to-face with a dummy figure of herself. Within seconds, she became transfixed and unable to tell whether she was the real Celine or the dummy. Witnesses report she managed to gasp "so . . . lifelike" before falling into a persistent vegetative state. The Canadian Parliament not only refused to enact special legislation to keep her hooked up to life support but urged the wax figure to record a new album, saying they bet its voice would sound fuller and more human than Celine's own.

Now on to lesser things. That rogue of a rover, Karl Rove, is still lurking ...expand out there in the shadows and I am still concerned about it for Democrats. As I originally worried in a post back on April 20, Rove's relinquishment of his White House policy duties might seem like a sign of Republican weakness but it would free him to do the thing he does best – politics.

Various Democratic politicos within The Fray dismissed my concerns. If Rove could not improve the image of Bush or the GOP while it was a part-time job for him throughout 2005, they argued, what have Dems to fear from him now in a full-time mode? I attempted to answer these assessments in an April 24 post. In it, I explained –

GOP politics has long been about negative campaigning, especially when things get close and tough. Rove is the undisputed master at creating climates of fear and rallying those in fear to turn out and vote for Republicans, not so much as the Party that will make their fondest wishes come true but as the only Party that can save them from their worst nightmares.

Rove can do that in the upcoming Congressional elections and he can do it largely in the background. He does not even necessarily have to reverse the table on national issues where Republicans are currently weak. He need only find one or two issues of local interest that he can exploit against the Democratic candidate and his work is done.

A story on Wednesday from MSNBC correspondent Howard Fineman suggested that is more or less exactly what Rove had intended to do. However, even further Bush slippage in the polls has convinced him that a larger, more aggressive attack is needed than snipping from the undergrowth. So, in addition to localizing the attack on specific candidates, Rove now wants to pair that with a national message.

Once again, the theme here is not touting President Bush or the Republican-led Congress but rather a negative campaign painting a nightmarish picture of what our government and country would look like with Democrats in control again. Rove even thinks he has two magic words to center the whole assault around – President Hillary.

I can already hear the groans of those who disagreed with me earlier that this is clearly a wild, last-ditch attempt by a clearly weak and increasingly desperate Republican Party – an attempt to sell a wax dummy as a real threat. Well, maybe, but consider exactly why so many people are upset with the President these days. Karl Rove has.

On top of his already low approval ratings, the Gallup polling organization has recorded a thirteen point drop in Republican support for Bush in the past couple of weeks. No doubt $3 per gallon gasoline has something to do with this but most core conservatives cite other reasons, such as out-of-control spending, failure to "toughen up" immigration laws, failure to restrict same-sex marriage, bribery and other political corruption, and – oh, yeah – lack of progress in prosecuting the war in Iraq.

The Pew Research Center, another leading polling group, said it was struck by the growing number of conservatives who "don't see Bush as one of them" anymore. The head of the conservative Club for Growth echoes that sentiment, saying, "The problem in my mind and the only way to explain the very significant erosion is just a disgust with what appears to be a complete abandonment of limited government."

So for many (former) Bush supporters, both social conservatives and even some moderate who vote conservatively on certain issues, the problem is not that the President has gone too far but that he hasn't gone far enough. Those folks may be quite receptive to Rove's national message of Democrats as the Party of tax increases, gay marriage, secularism and military weakness.

That really is the crux of the matter. Democrats feel very confident that the public has lost trust in Bush. Yet that is not the same as building trust in them. To that end, "President Hilary" may be more damning than many believe.

In fairness, no less an impressive political guru as James Carville thinks voters will break the other way. It is true, he says, that Hilary Clinton lacks the charisma of husband Bill or even George W. Bush. But after first a glib slickster and then a folksy ideologue, voters may be getting tired of big ideas and looking for a little practical realism. That is Hilary Clinton's strongpoint. Carville also notes that people are increasingly turned off by the current Administration's hostility to shared sacrifice. Hillary, on the other hand, is the queen of the "it takes a village" philosophy.

Current polls show an impressive fifty-five percent of voters preferring Democratic control of Congress and government in general. But as soon as you move from the general to the specific, those numbers plummet. Hillary Clinton's approval ratings are only thirty-four percent. Compare that to twenty-eight and twenty-six percent for former Bush challengers Al Gore and John Kerry respectively. The Democratic Party sells; individual Democrats do not. That is what Rove will try to do at both the national and local levels – put frightening faces in front of pragmatic policies.

For example, Fineman predicts if you never heard of Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan, you soon will, thanks to Rove and company. The African-American and old-school liberal from Detroit is currently obscure but would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee if the Democrats regain control of the House. He has expressed interest in holding impeachment hearings against Bush. Rove will jump on him as the face of a Party dedicated to revenge, not reform.

More to the point, Rove's strategy will force the Democrats to start focusing on their national figures a full two years prior to the 2008 Presidential election.

And this comes at a time when Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, leader of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has been seen angrily storming out of DNC Chairman Howard Dean's office. Emanuel's grievance is that while Dean has proven an effective fundraiser for Democrats, he is spending its money too freely and too early in the election cycle. Emanuel and others fear this will leave the Party unable to help candidates compete on equal terms with Republicans this fall.

If people respond to Rove's fear-based approach the way he hopes, Democrats may be forced to do exactly what Emanuel believes will be disastrous for them.

The Democratic Party has reason to feel optimism at this moment. But rather like Ms. Dion in my whimsical report, they better guard against slipping into a state of catatonic contentment. Otherwise, they will be left not knowing if they are looking at the dummy or they are it.

Posted by The_Bell.
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Tags: BotF | Rove | Clinton | Political | Strategy

What Liberals/Progressives Can’t Bring Themselves to Do

2006-05-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

What liberals/progressives can't bring themselves to do: repeat, without equivocation, the equivalent of: "Al Gore claims he invented the Internet."

Or, if you like, liberals and progressives won’t spread a lie, perpetuate propaganda, settle for half-truths…

You might think this is true because liberals and progressives are better equipped to identify lies and are also fortunate in that the simple (?), logical truth already supports their opinions. You could say liberals and progressives are too engaged to waste their time on lowbrow noisemaking. Or, you could just admit that the first thing a liberal or progressive is inclined to do when faced with an error of fact is look to correct it. Yes, my above guesswork is targeted toward a friendly audience (generalizing). However, I happen to think there are kernels of truth in the above. Something that causes the left to be more self-critical and hold its members to a higher standard. Daily examples aren’t hard to find....expand

Thursday, May 11, 2006 - “Dean mischaracterized his party's platform on gay rights in an interview courting evangelicals, then set the record straight Thursday when an advocacy group called him on it.”

That’s all fine and good. It’s even great. But it’s also a mistake of a sort. If we’re each striving to be the sharpest tool in the shed--and who among us is not trying to be smarter than the next guy or gal--it doesn’t take long before our conversation stops making sense to those less engaged. Like it or not, the lie that Al Gore lied about inventing the internet resonated with a lot of people. People who are not as scrupulous as we are. People who would never take the time to dig deep enough to find out what Gore actually said. They’re generally disinterested. If anything, that’s all they were waiting to hear. That lie makes it an easy decision. That lie won Bush votes. And if you look at the margin of his 2000 win(sic), it’s not unimaginable that it, the lie, accounts for his margin of victory.

The point, however, is the willingness of intelligent conservatives to perpetuate and tolerate these simple little lies that, in the end, win them closely contested elections. Like those for President of the United States.

Let me be clear. In this Machiavellian age, idiotic sound bites are but one of the ingredients of a winning formula. The reason I think they deserve our attention is those stupid little lies, although unsophisticated in the extreme, still work. Yet we have failed time and again to fight fire with fire.

Instead, we’ve allowed patently counterfeit organizations like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), whose sole function was to generate and publicize these little lies, succeed unopposed on the field of dirty tricks. But is what they’re did really that bad? I don’t think it is.

Before any campaign even gets rolling, the majority of voters are already party affiliated. Campaigns change very few minds. But there are malleable, dull minds out there among the undecided. And as long as conservatives are willing to actively participate in perpetuating mistruths, or at minimum turning a blind eye to them, Republicans will win over the dim every time. And they won’t apologize. They’ll be as justified in their lies as a parent is justified in not telling the whole truth when answering their six-year-old's question about sex.

Did SBVT defame Kerry in your mind? Of course they didn’t. But did they change your opinion of Kerry? No. You’re not an idiot. No harm no foul. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, it’s only a stupid game. A stupid game that really only affects people who need affecting. People who need the world explained to them in the simplest of terms, and as is often the case, the truth just can’t compete when it comes to keeping things simple.

One crucial point is this. Conservatives don’t think less of Rove or Rush or any of their other generals for perpetuating these lies. Among conservatives there is an understanding that Rush doesn’t actually believe Gore claimed to have invented the internet. Rush knows exactly what Gore said. Rush’s public stance is that of a knowing liar to those who know better. He’s not stupid and he’s not to be criticized for pretending to buy into the lie. He’s selling it. He’s selling it to the simpleminded and listless. And it’s this understanding, this unwritten agreement that we liberals and progressives lack. We’d just a soon jump down each other’s throats as we would Rush’s. No sooner does a liberal or progressive fight dirty (tell a useful lie), than they’re in trouble with liberals and progressives.

Sure it was bullshit. In poor taste. Pedestrian. But I have to ask: was what NARAL did any worse that what SBVT did? No. And did NARAL stop because conservatives started foaming at the mouth? No. NARAL stopped because liberals and progressives joined the chorus of criticism. In stark contrast, SBVT never stopped or backed off one iota. In fact, the more press and criticism they got, the harder they pushed. Of course a SCOTUS nomination and a Presidential Election are apples and oranges. But the point remains. You can’t get a majority of liberals and progressives to not tell the truth.

The only counterargument to fighting smart but dirty that I give any credence to is the idea that negative, fallacious politics turns liberals and progressives off. The same can’t be said for conservatives. We know the latter to be true. I suspect this is because whatever kind of conservative someone considers themselves to be, they believe that the ends justify the means. In that light, when answering for the conservative’s reasoning, I suspect we don’t give ourselves enough credit if we think liberals or progressives won’t apply that same ends-justify-the-means logic when it comes to presidential politics. It’s not that you have to agree that the ends justifying the means. But when push comes to shove, are liberal and progressives really going to cut off our nose to spite their face on polling day? Not this liberal.

In retrospect, don’t you think it might have been a good idea to tolerate, if not promote little lies about Bush? It’s not as if the guy hasn’t given us plenty of material. I mean, how bad would it have been if we’d spread a lie based on this one quote:

"Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

How about, say, Bush supports of male prostitution, saying, "[They] aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." I mean, seriously, if we’d spread that little half-truth, if we’d fueled that little lie along with some others, we might have swayed some thousands of votes. Are these incurious minds not up for grabs? It would have made a/the difference:

Iowa - Bush: 751,957 Kerry: 741,898
New Mexico - Bush: 376,930 Kerry: 370,942

If only we’d given some traction to Bush, "I'm the dictator." And, as it turns out, sometimes a half-truth turns out to be a whole truth.

But Bush is a past example. Chances are the GOP’s next golden boy won’t enjoy the cover of a reputation for habitually misspeaking. The key is a lie that will embarrass. It has to be ego stripping and juicy. Past drug abuse? No big deal. Paid for your girlfriend’s abortion? So. Ducked out of military service? Prove it. Supports the rights of male prostitutes? Well, that’s a problem because everyone knows most male prostitutes are gay. It’s juicy too. It’s a square peg that settles nicely into the memories of people who prefer information that supports their close-minded prejudices.

This isn’t really an argument for dirty politics as it can be reasonably argued that both sides partake to varying degrees of success. What it is, is an argument for smart dirty politics. Again, SBVT. Unlike their near counterpart, movon.org, SBVT is a throwaway entity. They were a tool created solely to influence the 2004 presidential election and that’s all. They have no reputation to maintain. They have no need to attract and sustain a large membership. They were expendable. Kamikazes. They served their purpose. This is an argument for liberals and progressives to follow suit. To prepare to create a sacrificial organization whose sole purpose is to wound the 2008 GOP nominee for President without care or concern for their reputation, future or fortune.

My basic thesis is this. Remember the 1988 story about George H. W. Bush?

During a photo opportunity at a 1988 grocers' convention, President George Bush was "amazed" at encountering supermarket scanners for the first time. *

In 2006, that whopper wouldn’t have risen to the status of an urban legend. And who would have been responsible for debunking it in its tracks? Liberal and progressive webloggers. You and me.

So the next time you happen on a catchy whopper about a Republican, will you use your online publishing power to:

Take the poll

Free Poll by Blog Flux

Posted by Ender.
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Tags: BotF | Dirty | Politics | Political | Strategy | Whopper

Apocalypse Tomorrow

2006-05-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

If the apocalypse comes, beep me."
— Buffy Summers in "Buffy The Vampire Slayer"

My freshman year in college, we had to read Future Shock by Alvin Toffler for Sociology 101. I got about halfway through and decided I could find my own brand of malarkey, thank-you very much. I mean, there was an interesting premise, but after that it was just some guys imagination. But for finals we had to write an essay on this question:

According to Toffler, what will be the major problems facing the post-industrial society?

I answered 'Gonorrhea and...expand Zits'.

I explained briefly that I meant it metaphorically. A culture faced with nomadic technicians engaged in rapid technology changes driven by materialistic pursuit would become fixated on its appearance and people would turn to sexual gratification to escape the loss of their sense of personal value and that I didn't bother to read the rest of the book. In short, Toffler was wrong. I got an 'A'.

What made me think about this was in part Vimy's post on global warming and Keifus' post on negativity and the news that Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, recently died at the age of 99. One year short of a centenarian, she still experienced the tremendous change that one hundred years has brought. She lived roughly from goalpost to goalpost in a century like no other in terms of change.

Standing on the brink of this next century, I can't help but wonder what lies at the other end. I expect us to get through global warming and the related addiction to combustible hydrocarbons. It will be painful, but the remedies will be in incremental doses. Hundreds of millions of people will starve or be displaced, but what's a hundred million people these days? Most of them will be third world nameless and faceless statistics. It will also likely increase the economic stratification between thos who can step up and those left behind. Progress is not for everybody. And everyone expects something like the avian flu to thin out the herd anyway. We haven't had a good culling for a while. Anyway, we'll get past that. It looks like civilization will make it through the midterm.

But I was wondering, what then? What does the second half of this century look like? I confess a biased dismay in researching the views of most Futurists as they tend to be geeks and put their emphasis solidly on the exponential advance of technology. Moore's Law is their battle cry, but I think less of Moore's Law than they. People like Bill Joy, Ray Kurzweil, and Vernor Vinge anticipate a technological Singularity - a point at which our machines will become more intelligent than us and the future - particularly our own - becomes unknown. They all expect this event in this century and anyone who says otherwise is a neo-luddite.

I'm a technician.- a technological parasite living in the bowels of the beast that brung us. I'm too close the the end product to have an objective perspective, but I do know that intelligence is highly overrated. You don't have to spend much time in the BOTF to figure that one out. If I can simulate intelligence with ease, then a machine can't be far behind. My divergence with the futurists is that they think of these machines as 'others', where I suspect we as a society will embrace them - not as partners, but as body parts. As we become dependent on them, we will internalize those devices we cannot live without. Cellphones and GPS locators, media players, stock-quote feeders and analyzers, and infrared night vision. Not quite like the Borg in Star Trek - more like a Smorgas-Borg. They will be integrated, they will be in unison, they will be the cyborg-hybrid-matrix and they will not need you.

This will cost. Those with the money can get the right juice and start sailing away from the rest of the pack. No more Democrats and Republicans - only the Borgs of the Apocalypse and those Left Behind.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I do think that something short of the Singularity will happen in the latter half of this century. I don't plan on travelling that far, but some of you will. What will you see when you get there? Will you have telescopic infrared night vision?

Posted by Ducadmo.
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Tags: BotF | Toffler | Technology | Future | Artificial | Intelligence

The "Balkanization" of Conservatism

2006-05-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

Today's Washington Post includes an analysis of the abandonment by core some conservatives of both the Bush administration and Republicans in congress. Though the cracks in conservative support are now obvious, their origins date to the beginning of the "conservative coalition."

WaPo posits that "Bush won two presidential elections by pursuing a political and governing model that was predicated on winning and sustaining the loyal backing of social, economic and foreign policy conservatives." Therein lies the problem....expand Winning the "loyal backing" was the easy part. As with any coalition, the individual interest groups are initially willing to subvert their differences in order to achieve a grander goal, namely the power to govern. Once power to govern has been achieved the partisan bickering begins as each interest group within the coalition attempts to assert the primacy of its particular agenda. The problem is that the differences between "social, economic and foreign policy conservatives" cannot be reconciled.

The current condition of the conservative coalition is the inevitable result of the formation of a ruling coalition from such strange bedfellows. It seems to me impossible to reconcile either imperialism or the erosion of civil liberties with "smaller government." Waging war costs a lot of taxpayer dollars, as does snooping on the citizenry. I have a difficult time even imagining a civil conversation between a libertarian and either a Dobsonite or a WOT nut.

The supporters of smaller government seemed at first to have the upper hand. Tax cuts would force a Republican congress to reduce the size of the federal government, right? Well, maybe not so much. The attacks of 9/11 gave the imperialists and the super snoopers the opening they needed, deficits be damned. After a natural disaster and a little fear-mongering Congress started writing blank checks that the President was more than happy to sign. The ensuing orgy of corruption was likewise inevitable. Anyone with a sense of common decency (which conservatives claim as a conservative value) ought to be embarassed.

Rove thinks he can galvanize the coalition with "votes on tax cuts, a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, new abortion restrictions, and measures to restrain government spending." It seems to me that the tail continues to wag the dog. Restrain government spending first. That probably requires withdrawal from Iraq. Clean the sleaze out of the Republican party. Everything else will have to wait, because none of the rest is truly a core conservative value.

Posted by ed37.
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Tags: BotF | Washington Post | GOP | Congress | Bush | Conservatives | Republicans

Servitude

2006-05-10T15:44:00.000-07:00

As long as I can remember, I wanted to work like grownups. When I was a kid, my dad worked in the mailroom of the local paper. My sister and I would take turns picking out the shirt he wore for his long haul shift, Saturday night for the Sunday edition. When I was 16, I worked in the same mailroom for a summer. And, then, I later wrote for an alternative paper whose editor at the time considered the weekly as the competition of the daily, the "paper of note."

In some ways, the weekly rag beat out the daily in covering local news that the daily wouldn't touch or wouldn't have the connection to pick up and run. The connection being that everyone working at the weekly had a connection to someone who knew someone who knew someone with a story to tell.

If I learned anything there that I still hold true, it's that everyone...expand has a story.

The paper days are behind me. That makes me sound old. Inside, I still feel like my most uncertain age, 22. I don't want to be that age again, but I know what it is to want the time back. If that ages me, then let it be. I'm older. I'm not incurious. Just, well, older.

If anyone were to ask, the short list of reasons, I'm not writing for pay now (small as it is, it's a hell of a lot more gratifying than what I'm doing these days): Small market, lost/badly maintained contacts, and diminished motivation due to making more in an office.

It's a world that I think is killing me. Or, at the very least, is just really not healthy for me. I take the job, as nonexistent is the satisfaction ratio, because I've become accustomed to making the money, which doesn't mean I'm rich. I just have more debt.

I would down-size my life so I can take something that demands nothing more of me than waiting tables or serving coffee. It would be less energy spent on menial tasks assigned with urgency and being lorded over by idiots who don't know the basic functionality of an Excel spreadsheet when I finish the task. It would be not standing at alert for phone calls by people with no sense of boundary in their demands and self-importance.

The corporate scene functioned before me; it'll keep humming long after I leave it.

If I leave, I can free myself. But that also means decreasing my spending. I'm not a shopping addict, but, since one of my part-time jobs is retail clothing, I almost feel as though I have a responsibility to wear the clothes. So I buy the clothes. Along these lines, do I simply take jobs that are like a de facto bartering? Or, do I recycle more clothes and add to my savings and living expenses to watch my happiness factor shoot up?

Despite what it would mean in terms of housing, i.e. moving into smaller apartment with fewer of the amenities to which I've become aattached or getting a roommate, I'm willing to scale down. It would mean making adjustments to how I save and spend money, but the alternative looks increasingly futile.

My capacity to feel good is ebbing. I'm pretty sure this has something to do with sex. As in needing credit to get credit.

Every day, though, I'm on the same gerbil wheel: 5:30 a.m. run (which is the only thing that makes me function as well as I do, so I'm not hitting the snooze alarm), shower, bus to a job that fills me with dread and disdain, then a later bus to a part-time job with a modicum of the extras.

Could I live without the extras? Or should I keep the extras and just quilt together jobs that offer the extras? What are the extras? The things we spend our income on and probably don't need, but feel entitled to because we earned them. Maybe we really wanted them, maybe not. I look at people all the time, trying to figure out if they're happy. Maybe I don't let myself have enough time to figure out how to be happy. Even when I told myself I deserved whatever expenditure I just made.

It's not satisfying. In my bones, I just feel it. Is the American ideal to walk around well dressed and outwardly upwardly mobile but feeling completely dead on the inside? Twice yesterday, I had to stop myself from breaking into tears for no reason.

I've just gotten very exhausted playing corporate/ consumer roulette and calling it freedom.

Posted by Splendid_IREny.
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Tags: BotF | Life | Work | Story | Happiness | Freedom

This most terrible price

2006-05-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

I have watched the neoconservative popular movement since the mid 1990s. What began as an interesting sideshow in the form of the hyperventilating pundits like Rush eventually unfolded into a full blown pathology of angry white males numbering in the tens of millions. It took form also in the Congress, with a GOP delegation that can only be described as throwing a full blown tantrum – complete with showdowns, shutdowns, and endless self-absorbed witch hunts – but exacting its deepest costs in the more mundane aspects of social fabric and governmental infrastructure which were systematically (and not so systematically) deconstructed in gleeful rampages. The partisanship was all enveloping, as was Expand...the underlying anger and ungoverned vindictiveness.

The early waves of the movement rose on the backs of a small handful of legitimate gripes and necessary corrections due to the previous incumbency of an entrenched party. But this populism and idealism was quickly enveloped by a food fight of aggrieved white American males with some serious psychological issues regarding entitlement and victimology. All the while providing cover to some very high level piracy.

Many reactionary movements rise in periods of crisis, but this one rose initially in a period of peace of prosperity. Eventually, it created its own crisis's under which it consolidated power. Yet this remains a peculiar feature of the American right, it gains most of its legitimate widespread power when it has peace and prosperity to rally against.

The oddest and increasingly disturbing element of this movement was the insatiability of the adherent's anger. The more power they gained, the more intense their rage became. With every electoral victory, their complaints became louder, and also more generic. By generic I mean that the complaints stayed the essentially same, only the names and topics kept changing. Eventually, many complaints became ridiculous on their face and often self-contradictory. But the stridency increased with power.

With the election of George W Bush – the ultimate know-nothing post-post-modern media age President – the neoconservative movement arrived into full power. They were joined in a coalition of crony pirates and religious zealots in what is surely the most widespread episode of institutional regression in the nation's history.

This coalition is now in rapid decline. I have literally waited years for this moment; repeating to myself that all things indeed do pass. Good riddance to them.

Now the costs are becoming clear. Everyone one of them were predicted. Many by me right here in these pages.

Skipping over the backsliding in environmental quality. Skipping over the decline in education and public health. Skipping over stagnating middle class and an eviscerated economic engine for widespread prosperity and upward mobility. Skipping over declines in nearly every quality of life and health indicator. Skipping over the incarceration rate. Skipping over stripped off assets and infrastructure. Skipping over the dying main streets and small towns and disappearing family farms. Skipping over teetering, propped up facades where a robust and real diverse economy once stood. Skipping over the inept level of public discourse and problem solving. Skipping over the decline in public ethics and lawfulness. Skipping over the decline in honesty and integrity. Skipping over the twin deficits and teetering dollar and bubbling real estate. Skipping over consumer debt. Skipping over the divided and bickering nation. Skipping over the national malaise hiding behind shopping and obesity. Skipping over the decline in public and community spirit. Skipping over the bloated incompetent government. Skipping over the loss of a mature understanding of freedom and democracy and responsibility. Skipping over the fascism and the death of enshrined liberty in a million ways. Skipping over the castration of the media. Skipping over the lies and the lies and the lies.

Let's focus on just a couple things.

This strategic gamble has been the worst blunder in the history of the nation.

- Our nation is despised and cursed universally – we are hated by billions of people. We are a global pariah.
- Our allies don't trust us and are looking for ways to defy us and get by without us.
- We have driven our opponents into each others arms; into productive and dedicated partnership intent on unseating us.
- We have emboldened our enemies and challengers at all levels. From suicidal terrorists to democratic nationalists.
- We are bankrupt.
- We are over our heads in debt; and owned by our opponents.
- Our military is hamstrung for a generation.
- Our government is dysfunctional and inept and not trusted. And addicted to lies and corruption.
- We have endorsed torture. We have endorsed secrecy.

Worse yet, this effort failed even at its most basic goals
- oil is neither secure nor cheap nor necessarily dominated by the US
- our permanent bases in Iraq will not likely stand
- Iraq is a bloody mess
- Afghanistan remains a fertile ground for Islamic fundamentalism and drug production
- Terrorism is neither defeated nor necessarily "on the run"
- Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Indonesia are no closer to being security partners
- Osama is still on the loose
- Saddam tweaks our nose as the world jeers

In short, George Bush double-dog dared the world, and now he has our tongue stuck to the flagpole.

And with that trite movie quote, I hope to dampen the full tragic scope of this unprecedented carnage unleashed on the United States by a single administration and its pathological army of pundits and angry white male losers.

Sure, the pirates are happy.

That's about it.

Goodbye neocons. Good riddance.

Posted by Sarvis.
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Tags: BotF | neoconservative | neocons | GOP | George W. Bush

When even Iran makes sense...

2006-05-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

If the polls hadn't reflected it, you'd know President Bush is in deep trouble when the disgustingly anti-Semitic and possibly psychopathic President of Iran actually makes some sense. In its more focused parts, Ahmadinejad's letter presents a blistering attack on Bush and his policies, framed, of all things, by essentially asking our self-professed Christian leader "What would Jesus do?" Thus, spending hundreds of billions on preemptive war based on lies that costs tens of thousands of innocent lives, setting up secret prisons, holding people without legal representation in Guantanamo, it isn't just wrong – its anti-Christian. And Amadinejad also notes, it is also anti-American.

More than that, Amadinejad asks "what has the hundreds of billions of dollars, spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign, produced for the [American] citizens?" It's a good question Expand...one wishes the media would ask President Bush. But lest you think Amadinejad has no idea for how we could have spent that money better, he suggests "investment and assistance for poor countries, promotion of health, combating different diseases, education and improvement of mental and physical fitness, assistance to the victims of natural disasters, creation of employment opportunities and production, development projects and poverty alleviation, establishment of peace, mediation between disputing states and distinguishing the flames of racial, ethnic and other conflicts." He even notes American poverty, homelessness, and unemployment.

Of course, it is not good for the Democratic Party either when the Holocaust-denying President of Iran articulates the ideal Democratic Party platform with more succinct clarity that any of its elected officials have in recent memory.

Amadinejad is wrong that Liberalism and Western style democracy have failed. After all, if it weren't for Liberalism and Western style democracy, Amadinejad wouldn't be able to wonder how America and the West could better spend its riches. And his detour on Israel is a rehash of tired canards. But he is right that Bush does not have his priorities in the right place, and that years of lying, conceit, killing, and corruption hardly endear us to the rest of the world.

That Amadinejad makes some sense is deeply troubling. When our psychopathic foreign enemies can correctly eviscerate the arguments the President advances in support of his Administration, it is long past time for even his staunchest supporters to abandon ship. What's worse, that Amadinejad can make sense will only bolster his credibility in the Mulsim world when it comes to his insane ideas.

If Bush were man enough, he'd write back. Certainly Iran presents more than sufficient grounds for a retort, and any college history student can craft an appropriate response. But signs are that Bush will simply ignore the letter, as he does all of his critics, and Iran will continue to do pretty much whatever it wants.

Posted by Catorce.
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Tags: BotF | Iran | Ahmadinejad | Christian | Bush

Hayden right; Kaplan, as usual, wrong.

2006-05-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

Over at War Stories, Kaplan seems mildly approving of Gen. Hayden but frets about the NSA's "domestic eavesdropping" particularly in light of his answer to a Knight-Ridder reporter's pestering him about the Fourth Amendment. The General said he was square with the Fourth since it required searches to be "reasonable," while the reporter seemed to think it required a warrant for any and all searches, a view Kaplan endores.

However, Hayden is right and Kaplan and the reporter wrong. The Fourth Amendment requires that all searches be "reasonable" and Expand... also makes "probable cause" supported by a sworn statement the basis for issuance of a warrant. This certainly does not mean -- nor did it ever mean -- that there can never be warrantless searches. It does mean that all searches, with or without a warrant, must be reasonable. This is the distinction that Hayden made – and has expounded on in greater detail many times elsewhere.

In fact, there are a myriad of circumstances where the courts have upheld warrantless searches. One of the most important of these is precisely the interception of "foreign intelligence information" – including information on non-state terrorist groups – which is the mission of the NSA. In all four cases where federal appeals courts have addressed this issue, those courts have ruled that foreign intelligence gathering is an exception to the general warrant requirement for electronic surveillance. To be sure, the courts have not yet addressed the specific issue of the post-9/11 NSA program (and may never), but Hayden was surely on solid enough ground with the relevant court decisions outstanding not to question the President's authority to order him the undertake the warrantless monitoring of some targeted international communications involving persons inside the United States. Of course, no court would permit such "foreign intelligence information" obtained withou warrant to be entered as evidence in a criminal trial, but that is a separate matter.

Underscoring the fact that there is no hard and fast "thou shalt never search without a warrant" rule, here are just a few of the situations where courts have held that warrantless searches or seizures may take place;

- Search of persons who have been detained lawfully;

- Searches of persons who are on bail, probation or parole

- Search of a home of any person in order to secure the premises while a warrant is being obtained;

- Search and seizure of items displayed in plain view and that are obviously criminal or dangerous in nature;

- Search of anything belonging to a person under exigent circumstances if considerations of public safety make obtaining a warrant impractical;

- Search of the home and belongings of one person if another person, who has apparent authority over the premises, consents;

- Search of a car anytime if a law officer concludes there is probable cause to believe it contains contraband or any evidence of a crime;

- Search of any closed container inside if a law officer concludes there is probable cause to search the car;

- Search of any apparently abandoned property, regardless of its ownership or the reason it was abandoned;

- Search of any property that has lawfully been seized in order to create an inventory and protect police from potential hazards or civil claims;

- Search — even a strip search — at the U.S. border of any person entering or leaving the country;

- Search at the U.S. border of the baggage and other property of anyone entering or leaving the country;

- Search of any person seeking to enter a public building;

- Random searches of persons at police checkpoints established for public-safety purposes (such as to detect and discourage drunk driving);

- Search of anyone, including U.S. citizens and their vessels on the high seas;

- Searches of docks and piers;

- Searches of bars or nightclubs to police underage drinking;

- Searches of auto-repair shops;

- Searches of the books of gem dealers in order to discourage traffic in stolen goods;

- Drug screening of persons working in government, schools; emergency services, the transportation industry, and nuclear plants;

- Drug screening of kids at school.

Posted by Publius.
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Tags: BotF | Hayden | NSA | CIA | Warrantless | Wiretaps | Domestic | Eavesdropping

Who Shall I Marry?

2006-05-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggarman, Thief

Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief,

Sailor, Tailor, Millionaire...

I used to jump-rope to that song when I was a little girl, always purposely making an out on "millionaire." Little did I know way back then that I'd grow up and get married and have 4 kids and end up getting divorced and only then, after first living through all that - would I actually get an opportunity to pick and choose for real, Expand...from a list of men similar to the ones in that old schoolyard song. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is internet dating. A fascinating process.

I'm just sort of in the investigative stage right now, looking and reading different profiles that stand out for one reason or another. Of all the dating/matchmaking websites out there, I've found the offbeat ones (The Onion Personals, Salon, etc. for example) to be the ones I'm liking the most. Unlike sites like EHarmony (ugh) and Match.com, these lesser known sites seem to attract a much more diverse crowd of well educated, sophisticated, interesting men.

I learned right off the bat that I shouldn't look in the immediate vicinity of where I live, as initial searches turned up lots of truckdriver types*, lots of somebody else's cast-off husbands, and one lecherous recently divorced neighbor who happens to live only a few blocks away (double ugh).

The men who show a little class, a little taste, a little originality with their title headers and attached profiles, they're few and far between, but I'm encouraged in that there's a surprising healthy number of them.

So far, my main rule of thumb while browsing through these kinds of websites is that anyone who features a picture of themself without a shirt, or sitting in front of their computer like a deer caught in the flashbulb, gets immediately tossed.

My trash bin is looking pretty full from those kind of guys. But I can't complain, sitting here in the comfort of my home, cup of tea, looking at the vast array of all these doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs.

Posted by topazz.
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Tags: BotF | Internet Dating | Online Personals | Onion Personals | Salon | EHarmony | Match.com

Negativity

2006-05-08T14:58:00.000-07:00

I'm a negative person. I have, by most measures, a good life, but I can have a hard time appreciating it. When life hands me lemons, I become sour. And the grinning retards who eagerly slurp down what comes to them all aggravate me.

When my team wins, I'm pissed Expand...I sat on the bench. When my wife calls me handsome, I point out that we haven't had sex in [mumble]; when she calls me thin, I point out that those last ten pounds just won't drop. I've got a house, but I hate that it's small and 30 miles from where I work. I get paid well, but I hate that I can't get the things I want for the debt. I get paid well, but I hate that I'm not challenged, nor valued for my skills. (It shouldn't be like this.) There are things I enjoy doing, like music and a sport or two, but I basically suck at them. People I respect say I sometimes post well, but I couldn't blow the editor for a fucking checkmark. I have a great family, and I'm miserable because I can never leave the house. I'm a negative, ungrateful little shit.

Negativity sucks because you can't win with it. An accusation of negativity is rebuttal-proof. You can't respond to that statement in the negative any more than you can always state lies.

Negativity is self-fulfilling. Expect things to go poorly, and they will. Never mind that you have reason to expect it; never mind that nature only rewards the sunny optimists.

Negativity is a vicious cycle. To re-use my own phrase, just as when you're in love and everything is lovely, when you're stressed, everything has got to be a fucking challenge. When you're negative, you see problems everywhere, even in the positive. The more negative you are, the more negative the world around you looks, which makes you more negative, and so it goes.

Negativity is funny. I don't know any 100% positive humor that actually manages to be funny, and I think that the human impulse to laugh exists mostly as a means to cope with the universe's fundamental negativity (because hey, no one gets out alive), or at least that's what I use it for. You can't be ironic without being contrary to literalness, and you sure as hell can't be sarcastic without being negative. Even clowns, those most upbeat of creatures, cry notoriously on the inside, and you know those pratfalls have to hurt just a little too. You can be negative without being mean to others, but then you turn the blade it on yourself or just laugh unspecifically at the caprice of nature that drops yellow citrus on everyone's head and cheating some of us out of the sugar. Sometimes, it seems like humor is the last rusty nail keeping me from going over the ledge from mere negativity into full-bore cynicism.

Maybe it'll turn around. Sometimes it feels like it is, but to be honest, I'm at most capable of trending positive for awhile, floating to someplace less negative, but still netting in the red. Maybe one of these days I'll actually break the surface. Maybe if I stop working so hard at not being non-negative.

Or not.

Posted by Keifus.
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Tags: BotF | Negativity | Life

well i had a lovely weekend....

2006-05-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

a relatively mild (if such things are possible) tornado (an f2, it turns out) cruised through waco early saturday morning. i had, as usual, fallen asleep on the couch while watching a movie, and i woke up to portentous tones of disaster emanating from the weatherman's mouth, plus tornado sirens, around 12:30 am. Expand...i am not mentally clear at the best of times when woken from a sound sleep, but to be woken up by loud scary whooping is never good for my thought-processes. i checked the local channels (only one was working) and a scary radar color was hovering over my section, so i collected my flashlight, blankets, pillows and book and sat in the closet. for about two hours. the power went off as i settled down, so i called my mother on my mobile to find out what she knew. we weren't important enough to show up on her weather channel, so she went onto the internet. afrter a moment i heard a concerned 'oooooh!' come across the line, then a brief, troubled, silence, and the question, 'you are in the closet, aren't you?' so that was tremendously reassuring.

we got disconnected, then hail started pounding at the roof and a huge wind-sound made the whole house creak. this was alarming enough, but to have it followed by groaning, snapping, and banging sounds was really unsettling. after about five minutes it calmed down a bit, but the sirens kept going, and did for another hour or so. my mother called me back, worried that the house had fallen in on me and broken the phone, apparently, but i was still safely squashed in the closet. after the sirens stopped i went outside and discovered the origins of the groaning, snapping, and banging sounds---on my back porch was a section on fencing, several items which belonged to the neighbors, and bits of tree. half of the tree behngd the house was on the ground, and the ones in the front and on the side of the house had lost significant chunks as well.

the power came back on a three o'clock, more or less, so i was able to check the one functioning local channel and reassure myself that the storm had gone off to plague texas a&m. i found out that my street was one of the few to have power back so soon (some areas still don't have any) so i can only assume that txu is aware of my slightly nervous temperament when it comes to tornadoes, and made sure that i had access to news as soon as possible. they are quite thoughtful people, apparently.

the next morning, the one channel was joined by one more, and the original channel was broadcasting their regular saturday morning lineup, a mistake which they quickly rectified when someone showed them what the cbs station was doing. i was treated to arial shots of local business with their backsides torn off, shots of our neighborhood, a house in speegleville with a trampoline firmly inserted into someone's roof, and various gas stations in differing degrees of collapse. the most entertaining, and yet horrifying, part of cbs' broadcast was when the female anchor chirped out that gawkers were requested to avoid franklin avenue because of the downed power lines and assorted debris, concluding with, '...besides, you can see all of the damage right here on this network!' i thought that was an example of excessive pandering to the train-wreck school of thought. yet i thought this as i avidly watched the images of damaged businesses, so that doesn't speak all that well for me either.

my daughters were spending the weekend at their father's which, although only about twenty minutes away by car, was spared a lot of the damage that our house was subjected to, so it's all for the best that they weren't at home. my younger daughter was probably panicking as it was, but to have had to hear bits and pieces breaking off and flying past would probably have been too much for her to bear.

this is two tornadoes for waco in as many weeks, which i feel is quite enough. i already am not especially fond of texas, and this is really not helping. maybe the state doesn't care much for me either, and this is its way of telling me that i ought not let the door hit me on my way out.

Posted by andkathleen.
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Tags: BotF | Texas | Tornadoes | Life

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

2006-05-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

President Bush has been tinkering with the U.S. intelligence services ever since it became clear that potential problems/failures within them might have helped lead up to the September 11 attacks. One of those moves was to appoint Porter Goss as a kind of tailor to repair the rips in the CIA's image. After Goss's surprise immediate departure last Friday, Bush has now decided to take a soldier, Air Force General Michael Hayden, and turn him into the country's top spy.

That choice has already met with skepticism and even outright criticism. One obvious reason is Expand...that Bush is weak politically at the moment and thus open to easy disparagement. Another reason is that many fear still one more Bush loyalist in a top job. Not only did Hayden formerly oversee the start of Bush's then secret domestic wiretapping/terrorist surveillance program at the NSA; he was one of its strongest defenders once it was made public.

Congressional Democrats are largely adopting a wait-and-see attitude regarding Hayden. That is partly because word on the street is that Bush is hoping for a fight over Hayden and wiretapping as an opportunity for him to re-paint Dems as weak on national security. However, some Republicans have already expressed dissatisfaction with Hayden for what might seem a surprising reason.

Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a respected voice on national security matters, told FOX News Sunday he worries having a general in charge of the CIA will create the impression among agents around the world that the agency is under Pentagon control. Hoekstra sees that as a real minus at a time when the Defense Department and CIA have been perceived as in a power struggle.

"I do believe he's the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," Hoekstra said. "We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time."

Several Democratic lawmakers have suggested that Hayden should immediately resign from the Air Force if confirmed. However, Republican Representative Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who also calls Hayden's military background a "major problem," feels that would not be enough. "Just resigning commission and moving on, putting on a pinstriped suit versus an Air Force uniform, I don't think makes much difference," Chambliss said on ABC's This Week.

That some within the GOP would attack the President on his choice is equally unsurprising, given a recent Associated Press–Ipsos poll that shows forty-five percent of self-described conservatives now disapproving of the job that Bush is doing. I have counseled caution to Democrats about jumping onto anti-Bush bandwagons started by disaffected Republicans out of the danger of being branded as indistinguishable from the rival Party. However, I think they would do well to oppose Hayden – for his military background rather than his previous wiretapping role.

This may seem far the less of his evils to many. Yet it is not one of Hayden's GOP detractors but rather a supporter, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who underscores why is it so important. McCain, of course, is rushing to embrace almost anything Bush does these days in order to curry favor with the Republican core for his own anticipated Presidential bid. While appearing on CBS News' Face the Nation, McCain was asked about Hayden and immediately laid out three key points – albeit unwittingly – in the argument against him.

"I think that we should . . . remember that there had been other former military people who have been directors of the CIA," he told interviewer Bob Schieffer.

That is absolutely true but it is also misleading. Many CIA Directors have had previous military experience. In fact, in the agency's early years under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, it was not unusual for Directors to move into the job straight from active military duty. That is not surprising since overseas intelligence had been strictly a military function up to that point. Indeed, many high ranking CIA officials remain military officers, perhaps for that very reason.

For example, the number two man at the CIA under Gross has been Vice Admiral Albert Calland III. NBC News Senior Correspondent Andrea Mitchell reports that a move is likely afoot to oust him in an attempt to fight the perception of a military takeover of the CIA with Hayden's elevation.

Yet the fact remains that four decades have passed since a military officer on active duty moved immediately into the CIA Director's chair.

"In all due respect to my colleagues . . . General Hayden is really more of an intelligence person than he is an Air Force officer," McCain also told Schieffer.

That such types must, of necessity, exist within the military is understood. Yet one on the hazy line between soldier and spy seems a particularly poor choice for the top spot at CIA. Some may see no issue here, since as head of the CIA, Hayden's boss is the President and as an Air Force General, he also reports to Bush as Commander in Chief. I think this all-too-easy solution is where the potential danger lies.

McCain's very first point on Face the Nation was to call for a quick confirmation of Hayden, saying, "[He] is a very highly qualified individual. He is the President's selection, and so I hope we can move forward with it, Bob, because we are in a war."

Yes, we are. If we were referring to the active hostilities in Iraq or ongoing operations along Afghanistan's borders, then the issue is less troublesome. Although long-lasting, these conflicts are still finite, with measurable levels of current enemy hostility. But both the President and Vice-President have insisted since September 11 that America is engaged in a larger war – a hazily-defined war with no single enemy or any end in sight. A war they keep warning us is unlike any other war this country has ever fought. I mean, of course, the war on terror.

Civilian control of the military has long been an important means to keep unprecedented power out of the hands of non-elected leaders within our nation. Yet this Administration has repeatedly claimed unprecedented powers for the Executive Branch as the result of the exigencies of war. Under such circumstances, I would prefer for them to push ever harder away from the military, not begin to interweave the two ever closer together.

I cannot say that I am sorry to see Porter Goss leave. His imperious style is said to have driven away many experienced senior agents. But if we allow the President – deliberately or otherwise – to continue consolidating power in this manner, then whoever wins the Presidency in 2008, be they Republican or Democrat, will need to have a true Cincinnatian nature to beat the sword Bush will have handed him or her back into a plowshare of civilian focus and non-ambition.

Likewise, I am sure that General Hayden is an honorable and sincere man. When the outcry over the domestic wiretapping program first broke, he chose to defend it vociferously during a speech he was scheduled to make at the National Press Club. "Let me make one thing very clear," he said at that time. "As challenging as this morning might be, this is the speech I want to give."

I guess I would just like to make sure that any person in this country can make the speech they want to give in the future as well. This appointment does not seem a good idea to me in general along those lines. If Bush and Cheney want to insist we are perpetually at war with terrorism, then in general let them use generals to fight that war and not for other purposes.

Posted by The_Bell.
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Tags: BotF | Hayden | CIA

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