The Hollow Men (A Hollow-een Story)


Here's a spooky story that tells you why Iraq is related to Christmas toys. It takes us to Baghdad and China, Washington and Wal-Mart, and ends (or begins?) under the Christmas tree. It's our 2007 version of the 1925 poem by T.S. Eliot:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpieces filled with straw

It starts with the scary mercenaries of Blackwater and the evil sorceror Rumsfeld...

Episode 1: The Hollow Military (Read on if you dare...)

The response of the Iraqi government to armed members of Blackwater USA, a for-profit corporation, killing 17 Iraqi civilians in one incident in September has led to an avalanche of attention on the role of private contractors, armed and not, in Iraq. This led to a number of revelations, including the recent U.S. government study that could not account for about a billion dollars paid to another for-profit security company, DynCorp International, ostensibly to train police in Iraq.

Yet these firms have operated in Iraq from the beginning of the war through the occupation. There are an estimated 180,000 civilian contractors in Iraq, at least 45,000 in armed roles (according to Joan Walsh of Salon in a TV interview), while there are 160,000 U.S. troops.

Moreover, this use of contractors is not, as some media reports would have it, an accidental byproduct of a tiff between the Defense and State departments, forcing State to hire private security when the Pentagon refused to protect their diplomats in Iraq. It is the result of deliberate policy, articulated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It is part of his philosophy of the "hollow military."

Here's what Naomi Klein writes in her book, The Shock Doctrine:

"...Rumsfeld saw the army shedding large numbers of full-time troops in favor of a small core of staffers propped up by cheap temporary soldiers from the Reserve and National Guard. Meanwhile, contractors from companies such as Blackwater and Halliburton would perform duties ranging from high-risk chauffeuring to prisoner interrogation to catering to health care." [p.285]

But the reality in Iraq has turned out to be even more extensive than Rumsfeld's dream. In his detailed report in Salon, P.W. Singer wrote:"The use of contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in both its size and scope...What matters is not merely the numbers, but the roles that private military contractors play." They "handled logistics and support during the war's buildup," built and operate massive U.S. bases, maintained and even operated sophisticated weapons systems.

"Private military firms...have played an even greater role in the post-invasion occupation," he writes. "Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root division, recently spun off into its own firm, currently runs the logistics backbone of the force, doing everything from running military mess halls to moving fuel and ammunition. Other firms are helping to train local forces, including the new Iraqi army and national police."

It's also worth noting also, that according to A Pretext for War by James Baxter, these same corporations--whose infamous work in Iraq first came to light in the Abu Ghraib scandals--were influential in Pentagon circles before the war started.

"As it has been planned and conducted to date," Singer asserts, "the war in Iraq would not be possible without private military contractors." Apparently the armed contractors are so essential that AP is reporting the Blackwater mercenaries accused of those killings will get immunity. Singer quotes an estimate that over 1,000 contractors have been killed and 13,000 wounded, but they aren't counted in official casualties.

So it should not be surprising that, as Singer writes, "Halliburton's contract has garnered the firm $20.1 billion in Iraq-related revenue and helped the firm report a $2.7 billion profit last year. To put this into context, the amount paid to Halliburton-KBR is roughly three times what the U.S. government paid to fight the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War."

Episode 2: The Hollow Government

Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

The Hollow Military is not only a strategy, it is part of an ideology. Conservatives who want the smallest possible government are getting their wish with the Bushite government, but in a perverse way. The Bushites have shed actual government employees, either by underfunding government agencies and functions, or by replacing real managers, experts, technicians and career public servants with appointees hired for their political party activism and ideological fervor. But they have not cut government spending. In fact they've turned the Clinton surplus into a huge deficit, financed by a foreign power with a putatively Communist government: China.

Under Bush, the basic function of government has become to distribute taxpayer money to select corporations. As Naomi Klein points out, this is a process that G.W. Bush began as governor of Texas. Klein writes: "The future president's commitment to auctioning off the state, combined with Cheney's leadership in outsourcing the military and Rumsfeld's patenting of drugs that might prevent epidemics, provided a preview of the kind of state the three men would construct together---it was a vision of a perfectly hollow government." [294]

9/11 provided them their major opportunity, so untold billions went through the hollow Homeland Security department to favored corporations, and billions more to Iraq. This was part of "a straight-up transfer of hundreds of billions of public dollars a year into private hands. It would take the form of contracts, many offered secretively, with no competition and scarcely any oversight, to a sprawling network of industries: technology, media, communications, incarceration, engineering, education, health care."

It is the realization of a "radical vision of a hollow government in which everything from war fighting to disaster response was a for-profit venture." [298]

Conservatives laud privatization for the efficiency supposedly inherent in for-profit ventures. But it hasn't worked out that way, partly because of the dynamics of monopoly capitalism, and partly because the Hollow Military and the Hollow Government depends on the Hollow Corporation.

Episode 3: The Hollow Corporation in Iraq

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

The money from the Hollow Goverment to supplement the Hollow Military goes to the Hollow Corporation. Just as the Hollow Government doesn't actually do the public business, and the Hollow Military doesn't conduct the war, the Hollow Corporation doesn't do the work. They all hire somebody else to do it. And often enough, the people they hire, hire somebody else. And so on.

Sometimes this results in luxurious overspending and immense waste, as in the Green Zone and military installations in Iraq. As Singer writes, "The operation is one of the most lavishly supported ever, and most of that has been due to contractors to whom we have outsourced almost all the logistics, and the protection of that enormous supply chain. But it has proven to be remarkably inefficient, all the while undermining our counterinsurgency efforts. According to testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified more than a staggering $10 billion in unsupported or questionable costs from battlefield contractors -- and investigators have barely scratched the surface."

In other situations, such as the billions wasted on the supposed "reconstruction" efforts in Iraq, it's a chain of subcontracts leading to no results at all, except waste and fraud, and to such situations as Bechtel being contracted to fix the electricity system, and after years, leaving Iraq with the electricity system in worse shape than when it arrived. Much of this travesty is a matter of public record through congressional investigations. As Klein writes:"Freed of all regulations, largely protected from criminal prosecution and on contracts that guaranteed their costs would be covered, plus a profit, many foreign [non-Iraqi] corporations did something entirely predictable: they scammed wildly. Known in Iraq as 'the primes,' the big contractors engaged in elaborate subcontracting schemes."

Money would pass through one subcontractor after another, each taking their cut, until there was little left for the actual work, so it isn't too surprising that the materials were cheap, the work shoddy, and nothing was accomplished--while conditions got worse, and insurgency grew.

Didn't you ever wonder why a country that was capable of building electrical and water systems, bridges, schools, etc. before they were destroyed by U.S. bombs, couldn't re-construct these very same things? I recall reading riverbend's blog early in the occupation in which she wrote about Iraqi firms eager to reconstruct their own country, and with the skills, knowledge and creativity to do it quickly and cheaply--but they were being ignored. These were the same people who constructed all this infrastructure in the first place--but U.S. based multinationals saw Iraq as a major opportunity to get richer quickest, and so Iraqis were rarely hired to rebuild their own country, especially not professionals. Which of course added immensely to the frustration and emnity of the Iraqi people, who had no electricity, no water, and--with all that work to be done--no jobs.

But the story of the Hollow Corporation does not begin in Iraq--nor does it end there. It has come home.

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Episode 4: The Hollow Corporation at Home

Donald Rumsfeld did not invent the concept of the Hollow Military out of thin air. It came, as Naomi Klein asserts, from the Hollow Corporation of 1990s America. Companies that had previously manufactured their own products and "maintained large, stable workforces" in America went beyond moving factories to the South (the 1970s) or to Mexico and Asia (1980s). They stopped owning and maintaining factories at all. This became known as the "Nike model: "produce your products through an intricate web of contractors and subcontractors, and pour your resources into design and marketing." The other Hollow model was based on Microsoft: a small, tight workforce concentrating on "core competencies," while everything else ("from running the mailroom to writing code") is outsourced to temp workers. [Klein, 284-5.) Rumsfeld came from this business background, and came to the Pentagon (Klein quoting Fortune magazine) "to oversee the same sort of restructuring that he orchestrated so well in the corporate world." [Klein, 285.]

By now--by 2007--the Hollow Corporation is a global fact. Another large factor in spreading it in the consumer goods area has been the spectacular rise of Wal-Mart, which as several books show (for instance,The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman) has transformed the companies that supply the products it sells. Because Wal-Mart insists on huge quantities at low cost, companies have been forced to find the very cheapest materials and labor. In the vast majority of cases, they can't find labor cheap enough anywhere in America. They must subcontract to China.

As Wal-Mart grew to become "both the largest company in the world, and the largest company in the history of the world" (Fishman), so did the number of products supplied from China, so that as one scholar told Frontline, "China and Wal-Mart are a joint venture." And most big U.S. corporations that sell products must sell a lot of them through Wal-Mart, so they restructure to please Wal-Mart, and so they become part of that joint venture.

But just as a scandal involving Blackwater alerted many to the Hollow Military, the current scandal over the safety of products manufactured in China is alerting the public to just how much of what we buy is made (in whole or in part) in China, and how little is made by the American company whose name is on the label--including traditional and trusted names such as Fisher-Price, Mattel and General Foods.

The news came fast and furious, in a bewildering array of products, from deadly pet food and tainted toothpaste to leaded toys. It turned out that something like 80% of imports stopped by U.S. officials came from China, and close to a fifth of China's export products did not meet China's own health and safety standards.

At first, Americans were very alarmed, and they became extremely wary of Chinese products, especially food products. But then it became clearer that avoiding processed foods, vitamins and health products that don't have some ingredients made in China (including ascorbic acid in Vitamin C) is almost impossible.

Then such trusted American companies as General Mills announced they would be doing more testing (while quietly admitting they hadn't been doing much before, or testing additives at all.) Whether the public was reassured, or simply in despair and denial, this storm passed. But it was a teachable moment in the extent of the Hollow Corporation.

For there are no Colgate Toothpaste factories in Anytown USA, not Anymore. (When U.S. Customs seized a supply of toxic Colgate, it was marked "Made in China" and "Made in India.") There are no Mattel or Fisher-Price toy factories with happy American elves at their workbenches. There is just a board of directors and a flotilla of managers coordinating subcontractors, including the well-paid ones (advertising and marketing agencies) and the very poorly paid ones (the workers who actually make the products.) That's American Know-How in 2007. Welcome to Hollow-een.

Long-term, doesn't it concern anyone that the skills and infrastructure to actually make things are disappearing from America, and that if anything happens to short-circuit the supply line from Asia, this nation may become a pitiful helpless giant?

But in the short-term, Christmas approaches, and problems with toys made in China continue. Just last week, Mattel recalled another 38,000 toys imported from China by Fisher-Price, as part of a larger recall of 665,000 toys for containing too much lead.

China has rightly pointed out that checking for the health and safety of products is the responsibility of the importing country. But our Hollow Government doesn't have a sufficient number of expert personnel to do it anymore. Our Hollow Corporations would rather not spend the money on it, preferring to concentrate on marketing and advertising. They import from China because the products are made there as cheaply as possible--and they are shocked, shocked that corners are cut affecting health and safety.

And even if the U.S. government had the capability to protect the consumer, just how far they could afford to push China is a real question, since China owns so much U.S. government debt--in effect, owns so much of the Hollow United States and its future.

This leaves a real conundrum for many Americans this Christmas, especially for the millions whose hold on the middle class is tenuous: without the good wages for actually making things that these corporations used to pay, they work several lower-paying jobs to make ends meet. Paying for more expensive toys and gifts for Christmas from smaller exclusive U.S. firms is not a good option, assuming such toys and gifts can be found.

For those with sufficient discretionary income, there are continuing ethical problems of buying from companies dependent on sweatshop labor. Recently another trusted brand--The Gap-- has been tarnished by evidence of child labor sweatshop abuse exposed by journalists, forcing them to drop a subcontractor in India: they are shocked, shocked that 10 year olds were virtually enslaved by a lowest-bid subcontractor. The Gap reassures American consumers that the clothes they sell for Christmas will not include any tainted by this company. There are many roads from the Hollow Corporation and the Hollow Government to a hollow Christmas.

So as Americans cross their fingers and shop for Christmas, they may know that in the companies they once trusted for quality, and in the government they depend on to protect them, there is no there there. They are all hollow.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Happy Holloween!

It Only Looks Like Suicide: The Politics of S-CHIP

As Rescued at Daily Kos and frontpaged at E Pluribus Media.

Why would the very unpopular lame duck President lead Republican members of Congress to defeat a bill to expand SCHIP, a successful program favored by 81% of Americans (according to CBS) to save the lives and health of children?

It's counterintuitive, even for Republicans. Next to advocating arsenic for babies, this was the most daringly callous, profane and seemingly brain-dead political stand possible. It seems like political suicide.

So, why do it?I believe the answer is this: the Republicans are gearing up to fight Hillary Clinton, the presumptive nominee (in Bush's eyes), and they are going to do so on the issue of government-run health care, the issue they defeated her on before.

Here's briefly what the debate is about, as summarized by Keith Olbermann: SCHIP currently covers six million children too poor for insurance but not poor enough for Medicaid. But a growing number of Americans, two out of five, are not covered by employer insurance; 47 million don‘t have any health insurance. That number is also up. The uninsured children increasing by 600,000 last year alone. So Democrats want to expand S-CHIP to cover four million more kids. The cost, seven billion dollars a year.

Last week the White House and Republican congressional leadership fought hard to deny Congress enough votes to override the Bush veto. Moreover, they did it by distorting what the law would actually do, including who it was intended to cover. And by the viciousness cited here in the previous post.

The answer to "why" is partly in the White House statement, and partly in exactly how they distorted the bill. And the most direct part of that answer is this: the Republicans are gearing up to fight Hillary Clinton, the presumptive nominee (in Bush's eyes), and they are going to do so on the issue of government-run health care, the issue that they won against her before.

Bush said his opposition to SCHIP was partly on principle, because the bill goes down the road of "socialized medicine." That's been a regular Republican refrain for at least a half century; they used it to oppose what became Medicare in the Kennedy administration. Now it's being linking directly to Hillary Clinton's health care reform proposal, not only by Republicans in Congress, but by the leading Republican presidential candidates, as reported by Brian Tummulty for Gannett and published in USA Today:

At a forum for Republican presidential candidates Wednesday in Detroit, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani sparred on some issues, but they were united on Clinton's health care plan."If we do HillaryCare or socialized medicine, Canadians will have no place to go to get their health care," Giuliani quipped, referring to the Canada's single-payer national health system."HillaryCare is government gets in and tells people what to do from the federal government's standpoint," Romney said.

Ironically, the "socialized medicine" charge was not made so often or so boldly against President Clinton's universal health care plan, which was organized in a very public way by Hillary Clinton. Universal health care was immensely popular, and one of the issues that elected Clinton. (Its potency was first discovered a couple of years before when one ad on the subject virtually propelled Harris Wofford into the U.S. Senate in a Pennsylvania special election.)

Clinton's proposal was defeated, not by Republican political bombast, but by a very well financed campaign against it by the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries. When a series of TV ads began changing the poll numbers, Republicans eagerly pounced on the issue again.But though the term "socialized medicine" wasn't so prominent, the arguments behind it were. They were prominent in the ads especially: individuals and families would lose their right to choose their doctor, and their doctors would not decide on their treatment--government bureaucrats would. Further, a huge, faceless, powerful but unresponsive federal bureaucracy would waste billions of taxpayer dollars, driving up health care costs.

So the Clinton proposal for universal health insurance was defeated, and the private corporate HMO and health insurance industry grew so fast and so big that few seem to remember when it didn't totally dominate medicine in this country. The reality that everyone knows is that everything the opponents of the Clinton plan said did come true--but it is the huge, faceless, powerful corporate medical insurance system that routinely decides what doctors patients can see (or if they can see any), and what treatments and services doctors and hospitals can provide. They spent a high percentage on "administration," and they have driven health care costs higher and higher, until now they are bankrupting middle class families and small businesses, and threatening the financial viability of large and otherwise successful corporations.

Yet the Republicans are using exactly the same arguments. And they may be successful. And they know it.Why is that possible--when health care is emerging as the domestic issue that voters care the most about? Because Hillary's health care plan--as well as those of most of the other Democratic candidates--include private insurance companies. They mostly funnel taxpayer dollars to those companies. So it is very hard for these Democratic candidates to point out the obvious: corporate run health insurance has been a cruel travesty.

One of the reasons that it never made sense was the demonstrably false argument that corporations could run health care for their own profit, and do it cheaper than the government, which does not seek to make a profit. But for-profit healthcare has amassed not only huge profits, but huge amounts of money these companies use to destroy and buy up their competitors, and--very much to the point--to lavishly lobby government officials and finance their increasingly expensive campaigns. All paid for by that chump, the consumer, otherwise known as the taxpayer.

The amounts of money are huge because of another fallacy in the Republican argument, trotted out for every attempt to "privatize" a formerly public responsibility, but used especially to argue against government financed health insurance. Corporate care is more efficient because corporations compete, and have to be efficient to make a profit. But corporations compete, not by efficiency, but by destroying or absorbing their competitors--then they expand, and keep expanding until there is no competition, unless limited by regulation.

This has happened to private health insurance, which means that the amounts of consumer-dollars they have to spread around to politicians are huge. No presidential candidate can apparently afford to offend them.So that's the second part of the answer to "why." Republicans are representing the interests of medical insurance and related corporations, such as Big Pharma.

It's also likely that Republicans will actually do much the same on health care should their candidates be elected (this same USA Today article points out that Mitt Romney's plan is not very different from Hillary's.) After all, the most successful innovation of the Bush administration was turning the federal government into a funnel, transferring taxpayer dollars to selected corporations, as Naomi Klein has shown so well. Eventually they will pass laws that will further enrich the criminal enterprise known as health insurance corporations. They are already passing such laws in the states, making it against the law not to do business with them.

So while the Republican "death to children" march seems like suicide, and indeed it may turn out to be politically fatal, it had a purpose--to breathe life into their Get Hillary campaign. And it's not going to be pretty.

It's Not Just the Heat

It's also the humidity, among other things. The planet is getting more humid as well as hotter, according to a new study. "This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming," said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study. According to this AP report:

The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett's study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

And that's just One More Thing. The same story says that climate scientists have now seen the man-made fingerprint of global warming on 10 different aspects of Earth's environment: surface temperatures, humidity, water vapor over the oceans, barometric pressure, total precipitation, wildfires, change in species of plants in animals, water run-off, temperatures in the upper atmosphere, and heat content in the world's oceans.

The Climate Crisis will continue to offer surprises to nonscientists and scientists alike, because one big shift like this leads to consequences that result in other changes. Some, like drought, are big and obvious. Others, like excessive pressure on plants (including trees) and animals, play out over time, but when plants and animals leave an ecological niche, a cascade of effects can follow fairly quickly.

High humidity causes physical stress to humans, but as we all know it also shows up in behavior---people get short-tempered and miserable, and their judgment is often impaired. The Nobel committee officially recognized the part that the Climate Crisis can have in causing warfare over resources. But it is also likely to cause other stresses that can make warfare an impulsive choice, when cooler heads don't prevail, because there might not be any.

Right now humidity isn't rising everywhere. Australia, South Africa and the western U.S. are getting very dry. There's drought in the American southeast and now in the Great Lakes region (although that is probably caused by warmer winters and less ice melt.) But the humidity is getting higher in the eastern U.S.--you know, where New York and Washington are.

Normal Viciousness

For Bushites, (right) winger pols, media bobbleheads, bloggers, and often enough, Republicans in general, no "new low" stays new very long, before they take themselves and the political dialogue even lower.

There's the latest attacks on the children and their families who provided their stories to support what's called the S-Chip program, that helps working families pay extraordinary medical bills for their children. A couple of families made commercials explaining how the program made a major difference in their lives, and supporting its expansion to other families.The attacks include the usual viral lies but also a call for them to be hanged. These are children severely injured in an accident, and even after extensive care, the boy speaks with a lisp and the little girl is blind in one eye.

When Keith Olbermann asked New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who'd just written about why Al Gore drives Republicans insane) if this attack didn't just leave him speechless, Krugman said it was not really exceptional, that it was "normal in its viciousness."

What happens to a democracy when viciousness becomes normal? Some say it has always been so, but I wonder if that's much consolation. I think we all wonder what happens to a society when viciousness really becomes normal. The answer would seem to be: it ceases to be a society. There is a continuum between civilization and savagery, and we are clearly moving towards savagery--faster than we realize.

But apart from the pragmatism of those like Krugman who are exposed to this political viciousness pretty much every day, this savagery can be seen to follow logically from the belief that this is a dog eat dog world, that the winners are those who destroy their competitors by any means necessary. Ironically, it is a twisted variation of Darwinism, a natural selection based on the simplistic but (to some) viscerally convincing criteria that the winners win by being clever (including deceptive) as well as by using power (including violence) without conscience.

Our "entertainment" these days is often about those situations in which survival depends on using any means necessary, especially violence. There is something reassuring about these movies and TV shows, in an elemental way--the way that children are reassured by stories in which the hero and heroine survive the wicked witch in the forest, the ghosts, the monster. It reassures us that the bad forces aren't all powerful, and in this bewilderingly complex society, we aren't powerless.

But we all know that these situations are relatively rare--that more often, in our human-dominated world, we survive through non-violent means--through responsibility and keeping our word, through negotiation, conciliation, cooperation--as well as by helping each other. That's the basis of every civilization, including (ironically again) the ones we consider primitive. It's not the kings and the armies--they change things, they destroy, but they mostly serve the rulers, not the society. For most people, it's playing fair and expecting fair play, it's empathy and altruism, and there's no getting around it. It's the Golden Rule, it's "you'd do the same for me."

And not very ironically, in fact both sadly and grandly, civilization depends on precisely the people the wingers are going after now: the families who are grateful that their government helped them literally save their children's lives, and provided them with help towards something like a normal life, but who haven't just taken what they were given--they want it for others, as many others as possible. And they have the courage to say so.

It's absurd to think we can't afford such a program. There are other reasons for Bushite opposition, which I'll get into later, but this isn't about the program--it's about who we are, what we value, and what kind of a society we want to live in. We might start with a civilized one. We're going to need it.

"Good Germans"

The earliest reference the Wikipedia has to the expression, "good Germans," is a New York Times report from 1945: "There's a saying among our troops, that there are no real Nazis in Germany, only 'good Germans.'" The phrase dripped with hypocrisy, and came to mean Germans who claimed not to have supported Hitler, but did nothing to oppose him.

The truth is, for a long while, that described many people in Europe and elsewhere, but the phrase stuck, and as the Wikipedia says, "The term has come to be used to refer more generically to people in any country who observe reprehensible things taking place — whether done by a government or by another powerful institution — but remain silent, neither raising objections nor taking steps to change the course of events."

Like anything to do with Hitler and the Nazis, the phrase is heavily weighted. And so when on Sunday New York Times columnist Frank Rich used it to describe contemporary Americans, it ignited a controversy that still rages across the Internet.But it is an historical analogy that is work taking seriously, especially given the case Rich assembles. “BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves, he begins.

That the Bushites have been able to perpetrate a dizzying array of policies and activities that for at least the past few generations would have seen impossible, that no Americans would stand for torture, rendition, domestic spying, armed thugs, better equipped and much better paid than U.S. troops, acting beyond any laws in Iraq and then brought back to the U.S. to patrol the streets of New Orleans; the attempted hijacking of the justice system for partisan and ideological gain; the suffering being caused or tolerated in Iraq, Africa, so many places...the list just goes on and on. And a President, with the support of less than one quarter of the country, continues without effective public outcry. How in the world can this be explained?"Good Germans" comes as close as anyone has. Maybe because people don't want to lose what comforts they have--and those closest to centers of power have quite a lot.

Rich begins at the centers of responsibility: Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top. But he does not absolve the rest of us, nor should he: As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.

He brings the analogy closer to the source: Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

Sometimes such a shocking analogy cuts through the fog, helps us find a moral definition. The analogy of the Good Germans is much too close for continued comfort.

The China Syndrome

Bringing the Dalai Lama to the White prior to officially presenting him with the Congressional Medal of Freedom was a welcome distraction for the Bushites. Photographs with one of the most respected and beloved people in the world and especially in the U.S. helps diffuse the image of the vetoer of life-saving medical care for children, and it draws attention to the 1989 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and away from this year's winner, Al Gore, whose honor is yet to be acknowledged at the White House.

But it sure pissed off the Chinese government. Like most imperialists, it goes nuts when its brutal aggression and even more brutal colonial administration is even implictly, even theoretically or possibly questioned. In this case, China's armed takeover of Tibet included the murder of thousands of Buddhists, and its war against the Dalai Lama (the traditional political as well as spiritual leader of Tibet) has forced it into absurd embarrassments, the most recent of which is outlawing reincarnation without government approval.

But the White House doesn't want to piss them off too much. "We in no way want to stir the pot and make China feel that we are poking a stick in their eye for a country that we have a lot of relationships with on a variety of issues," said press secretary Dana Perino. " No, not with China financing the Iraq war and the further mega-enrichment of Bushites and their cronies, and leaving the piper to be paid by future American generations, one way or another.

Besides, China has become a kind of model for the Bushites: it has shown that a nation can get good p.r. for coming out against tyranny and murder in Darfur and Burma while still do nothing to endanger profits gained in relationships with those countries. And above all, the greatest lesson of China today, though no one wants to say it out loud, is that capitalism without democracy works just great. Something that the Bushites have certainly taken to heart.

Signal v. Noise on Iran: S.O.S.!

The noise is killing us in more ways than one. We keep missing the important stories. Sometimes because they're deliberately hidden and those whose job it is to discover and tell these stories just aren't doing it. When the Bushites sneaked a provision into the huge Defense Authorization Act last October that allows the President to declare martial law--to override state and local officials and use the military as domestic police in response to unspecified "emergencies"-- virtually no one reported it. It remains what it was supposed to be, a secret.

In this case, one which potentially makes dictatorship legal. For the entire history of the Republic, every President could declare martial law only if threatened with an armed insurrection. That's how seriously this nation's founders considered it, and not in the most perilous times in our history has this law changed, until last October.

But right now we're missing a crucial story that's totally public, that in fact President Bush announced in a media-covered speech. Even most of the lefty blogs, currently feasting on the Idahomosexual story, ignored it. Fortunately one of the more respected bloggers, Glenn Greenwald, didn't.

Perhaps Bush's threat against Iran sounded like the same old. Greenwald calls it "the most disturbing speech of his presidency." It sounded to me when I heard just the soundbite that it was tantamount to an announcement that this administration is going to militarily attack Iran, very soon (as reflected in my post yesterday.)

Nobody wants to believe Bush will do it. It's too much of an utter nightmare. The military is overstretched to the breaking point in Iraq. There's some question as to whether orders would be followed, although Bush--or should we say Cheney--is likely to depend on the Air Force and Navy who have paid less of a price and may want more of the action. And nobody wants to contemplate what a disaster it could very well begin.

It seems in fact like madness. Apart from the rising guilt over needless death in Iraq, the Washington and media establishment is apparently willing to tolerate a crazy President and an insane Vice-President for a year and a half more, assuming they will confine their looniness to surreal speeches and delusional press conferences. We wish. But it seems increasingly like we're not going to get off that easy.

So far the human price of Iraq has been paid (at least directly) by a relative few, and the bulk of the cost has been pushed into the future. Bush's design in Iraq seems to be to push obvious failure past the expiration of his term, so Republicans can blame Democrats should they win the White House and retain Congress. But a sustained bombing of Iran would likely begin a sequence of events that would make Iraq pale by comparison. The calculation might be that an even greater war, a regional war with global reach, would force voters to support the war party and its candidate, Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson.

Such an attack and such a war have endless possibilities for catastrophe that might transform the country, and could very well destroy it. A wrecked domestic economy, energy rationing, a military draft--it could well end up with the realization of that first untold story: martial law in America, brought to you by Halliburton and Blackwater.

And don't forget, the plans for attacking Iran as initially revealed involved the U.S. using tactical nuclear weapons. It is a particularly dangerous moment, when the fundamentalist neocon ideology still drives the Bush-Cheney government, and when that government has little power beyond blackmailing Congress to continue the Iraq war and using military power against anyone it chooses. The dirty secret of declining American power in the world under Bush is that this government is forced more and more to consider, if not rely on, its trump: the world's most obscenely powerful stockpile of nuclear bombs.

But even without nuclear weapons, a sustained air campaign against Iran could turn the tinderbox of the Middle East into a raging fire of regional war, with consequences too long-lasting and too extensive and damaging to contemplate.

Four More War

President Bush, true to form, ignores reality but has the power to create his own. In his speech to yet another ancient veterans group, he virtually declared war on Iran.

If Bush attacks Iran, Republican candidates like Guliani will run on the warmaking platform. If he is elected, the US will essentially destroy itself in the next four years with war in the Middle East. It's war we can't afford and which this time the nation will not survive intact.

Mark my words. Look back into time on this blog and see what I said about Bush in the beginning.

Don't let this happen.

A Dream Darfured

Everybody talks about the killing in Darfur but nobody does anything about it. When Joe Biden repeated the fact that people are being killed every day there at a Democratic presidential debate, his fellow candidates stood in embarrassed silence. Clearly, China bears a lot of responsibility for international sanctions not working. But Western countries don't want to send a peacekeeping force there, which some observers (including Biden) say could stop the killing virtually overnight. Instead we send them to Iraq where it contributes to more death, including more dead and maimed Americans. And even though the UN is expected to authorize a peacekeeping force, and the Bush spokespeople--including most recently, Condi Rice--talk a lot about genocide and how the world is failing Darfur, it's the U.S. and its failure to pay its UN dues that threatens the peacekeeping effort before it starts.

Broken

The United States of America is founded on two basic functional principles: our democratic system and our rule of law, both set forth in the U.S. Constitution. In both categories, thanks to the Bush administration, this nation is in grave danger of failing. And by failing I mean setting itself up for chaos and blatant dictatorship, which in effect will threaten the future of the civilized world and perhaps life as we know it on Earth.

Our rule of law is challenged again and again, so obviously this past week when the Bushites try again to override a court decision that denies them their ability to destroy constitutional and international rights. The principle of habeus corpus is obscurely named --perhaps it should be repeated as "the right to your day in court" or to be charged and put on trial according to law. But its bad branding shouldn't obscure how fundamental a right it is--basic to every other right in the Constitution, including free speech and freedom of religion. As Constitutional law expert said on Countdown: "...it is actually the foundation for all other rights. When the president—when the government throws you into a dungeon for what you say or who you pray to, it‘s habeas corpus that‘s the right that allows you to see the enforcement of the other rights."

We learned more last week about the lengths to which the Bushites go to deny these rights, in the effort to circumvent the law by appealing to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft when he had relinquished his authority temporarily to have surgery and recover from it.

But these are not new efforts--the Bush administration has been doing all this persistently, and yet they continue to do so, with no one effectively stopping them. Such brazen success emboldens others to defy the rule of law, such as the Republicans who lined up last week to demand the immediate pardon of Scooter Libby, despite his lawful prosecution and conviction, despite the fact that he was convicted of obstructing justice by preventing effective investigation and possible prosecution of larger, underlying crimes in the Valerie Plame affair, and despite contravening the established procedures for pardons in the most outrageous ways. Pardons are normally given after the sentence is served or at least begun, and after the convicted admits guilt, repents and asks for mercy. But Republicans want the law and the courts to simply be ignored and overpowered by the executive.

What if President Clinton had looked at the Supreme Court decision of Gore v. Bush that gave the election to Bush in 2000, rightly concluded that it was a flawed decision, against precedent, and made by justices with political conflicts of interest, and simply voided it? The principle is exactly the same.

But from this, we get supreme irony. Clinton respected the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary. And so we got a guy who doesn't.

In other times, actions of which President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are accused or have admitted would be sufficient cause to bring articles of impeachment against them. But no such congressional action is forthcoming.The Bushite challenge to the rule of law is an aspect of their challenge to the fundamentals of our democratic system. The Iraq war is opposed by three-fourths of the American people, yet it goes on. Three-fourths of the American people believe the country is on the wrong track, and yet the Bushites persist. Even though the Bushites are legitimately in power until the next election, this indecent ignoring of the opinions of citizens is very dangerous to democracy.

More serious still are the Bushites direct threats to electoral democracy. The pattern of firing and hiring officers of the law in the U.S. Justice system based on political party and ideological loyalties is itself a major threat to our system. Yet the people responsible for this have not been held accountable. After many calls for his firing, after many predictions that he would not last out the week or the month, Alberto Gonzales is still the Attorney General of the U.S., despite evidence which continues to mount that he has been dishonest, incompetent and acted against the rule of law, and against fairness necessary for the democratic electoral system to function.

Moreover, the intent of these manipulations of justice seems more and more clearly to be to suppress votes that may go to Democrats, by appointing judges who would prosecute charges of voter fraud against Democrats, no matter how dubious those charges might be, and to ignore charges of voter suppression and fraud against Republicans, no matter how substantial the evidence might be.

The intent clearly is to create a permanent majority for Bushites, who might more properly be called Rovians, because they intend to continue beyond this administration (possibly with Fred Thompson.) So simply waiting for Bush to leave office won't be enough. The intent is to subvert the electoral system.

The Bushites have so far successfully acted like a dictatorship, and no one has stopped them. There are ongoing investigations but they are painfully and perhaps fatally slow. The Bushites, the Rovians seek to establish the means for further dictatorship, and no one is preventing them. The U.S. is in deep trouble, and so is the future.

Ever Learn?

Once again, we had no phony Memorial Day around here. All the false and misguided pieties can't obscure the conviction that a people that truly cares about fallen soldiers would be intent on making sure needless war never takes another. We're very far from that these days.

The reflex to call such sentiments pacificism and ask the sophomoric question about standing by while your grandmother gets attacked is so bitterly out of place these days, in view of the kind of war we're sending soldiers to die in. And dying they are, at record speed. All you need to know about the disposition of this war now is in this report on what soldiers in Iraq told a blind warhawk senator and his response.

That this war is so obviously wrongheaded that even soldiers are speaking out, and that this war was founded on lies from the start--the most recently one to be exposed being that the "intelligence" was faulty.

The soldier defending the homeland from attack is so seldom the actual cause of war--and hasn't been in the wars America has fought since at least World War II, not counting at least the intent of military action in Afghanistan. The cynicism of those in power who speak piously of patriotism and supporting the troops for political and monetary advantage and nothing else is disgusting. The awful truth is that many if not most warfare is to make the rich richer, and for that, the non-rich will die and be maimed, and their families and the rest of the non-rich are tricked and manipulated into believing it's all for a noble cause.

The noble cause is developing, acquiring and using the skills of peace. It is facing the real threat to our people, like the climate crisis. It is facing the future together, rather than repeating the terrible patterns of the past that benefit the undeserving few.

No Crook Left Behind

Just when you were beginning to forget the Bushies are ultimately about stealing huge profits, the ends to which the obsession with partisan politics is just the means, comes more news about old fashioned money-grubbing corruption in one of those programs with weepy names, No Child Left Behind. According to the Washington Post, it's so blatant that even this Justice Department can't ignore it.

The disclosure came as a congressional hearing revealed how people implementing the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program made at least $1 million off textbooks and tests toward which the federal government steered states.

Since this program was all about these tests, the intent is clear. Now we know for sure what "compassionate conservatism" means to the Bushies. It means you sound compassionate as a way to rob the Treasury and privatize for personal profit.

Hillary Divorces Bill, Declares Love for Whoopi Goldberg!

While supposed statesmen like John McCain and Lindsay Graham claim Baghdad is safe, American soldiers and correspondents in the field laugh at them. One veteran reporter said that everyone knows an American alone wouldn’t last twenty minutes anywhere in Baghdad—if not killed, then kidnapped for politics or money. Millions are homeless and hundreds of thousands dying in Africa in wars invisible here, while Americans obsesses over the final resting place of a model. The fate of civilization and the health of the planet are in grave jeopardy, according to a scientific consensus nearly as strong as that suggesting there are laws of gravity, but in the leading nation of the world deniers rule and no action is taken, as every moment brings future generations closer to a cursed and inevitable fate.

Hah hah—didn’t mean it! April Fool!

Hah hah—didn’t mean that! It’s true! So who’s the April Fool now?


April Fool’s Day has roots in many cultures that reach as far back as history goes, and probably farther. Part of its complex pedigree is a fairly direct relationship to the Bill of Rights.

The historical roots of the day include ancient festivals of spring which often had some component of comedy, trickery and release from ordinary rules, which in the western world at least usually included orgies of gluttony, drunkenness and sexual licentiousness. The probable direct ancestor of April Fool's Day is more specific—when France adopted the Gregorian calendar in the sixteenth century, New Year's moved from April to January 1. But old habits are hard to break, especially those beginning in 45 B.C., which was when Julius Caesar set up the old Julian calendar. Some gullible Parisians were tricked by clever neighbors into celebrating New Year's on what was now the wrong day.

Out of this was born the classic cry, April Fish! Which is something that did not cross the Atlantic when the calendar was later changed in America. No one is quite sure what the fish thing is about. Still, the first April Fool's Day jest was probably, "Happy New Year!"

But the more important aspect of this history relates to the tradition of the licensed fool. America never had court jesters, but for all the time this continent was being explored and populated as well as centuries before, most European countries did. From imperial Rome through the medieval period and the Renaissance, official fools were not only a popular and well known presence in royal courts, but for part of that time were also employed by cities, clergy and wealthy families.

Their duties ranged from song and dance to pratfalls and acrobatics, ribaldry and general foolishness. At times no fashionable dinner party was complete without a fool hired to insult the guests. But the key element of the "allowed fool" was his (and occasionally, her) freedom to do and especially to say anything to anyone.

The official fool also has roots in an aspect of the aforementioned festivals, which featured a Lord of Misrule— a commoner who took on the trappings of the king or bishop or town mayor for a day. As far back as the tenth century, these became elaborate performances, mixing entertainment with social comment, and topical plays or burlesque sermons that satirized the real rulers of state and church, who had to at least pretend to enjoy it. These events became hugely popular, but nobody was fool enough to criticize the powerful if there were going to be reprisals. So the tradition included immunity for the fool.

When kings hired permanent court jesters, political satire as well as pointed personal remarks were part of their repertoire, and the tradition of immunity came with them. Archibald Armstrong, one of England's last and most political jesters replied, "No one has ever heard of a fool being hanged for talking, but many dukes have been beheaded for their insolence." So it happened that the only people in Europe with the absolute right of free speech were kings and queens, and fools.

This fact was not lost on others who were agitating for that kind of freedom for all. The original document of the Magna Carta, England's first great challenge to absolute royal power in 1215, was decorated with the figure of a court jester. From the late 15th century until well into the 17th, "societies of fools" flourished in France, composed of young men who criticized the government and agitated for freedom while wearing the traditional court jester motley.


America never had court jesters, though some of its first expressions of freedom and identity were in the foolery tradition, from the burlesque of the Boston Tea Party (a bunch of Anglos badly costumed as Indians who struck a blow for political independence by dumping tea into cold water) to some early symbols such as Yankee Doodle and Uncle Sam. "Yankee" was a British ethnic slur which New Englanders turned into a badge of honor, and Yankee Doodle Dandy was a clown figure (what else can you say about a guy who sticks a feather in his cap and calls it macaroni?) made immortal in the song sung at key moments in the American Revolution, including at the British surrender. A similar figure, a Yankee "wise fool" stock character popular in early American stage comedies, was a source for Uncle Sam.

Americans also pride themselves on being straightforward, so there's also a tradition of mistrusting the tricky. But today our Zeitgeist depends so heavily on some forms of deceit--spin, disinformation, oversimplifying and the straight-faced lie--that selectively moralizing about other forms rings hollow. Historians are dishonored for missing quotation marks, but not if the history they write is dishonest bunk. Injustice wears clothes of obscurant nomenclature, and success by any means necessary is our guiding morality. Mendacity is a trick of power.

The heart of the fool's relation to free speech is speaking truth to power. For awhile we may have thought that serious journalism was going to speak truth to power, but when the most powerful owns the most presses, and the line between editorial and advertising becomes more and more imaginary, it's looking like a piquant hope.

The rich and powerful can easily ridicule the countrified (the original meaning of "clown") and unsophisticated, but the figure of the fool deflects the ridicule back upon the pretentious and corrupt. Freedom to criticize the powerful is at the heart of both the fool tradition and free speech.

The pretensions of power are automatic, perhaps the inevitable product of consciousness equipped with opposable thumbs. Our particular social systems depend on some forms of deceit while moralizing about others. Historians are dishonored for missing quotation marks, but not if the history they write is dishonest bunk. Injustice wears clothes of obscurant nomenclature, while paradox or irony shade into hypocrisy as we deny freedoms in the name of protecting freedom.


Today April Fool's Day is just about our only nod to this tradition. You can play tricks on people any day of the year, but the idea is that on this day, you are allowed to. This year it falls on a Sunday, so the usual office trickery is shall we say a bit trickier this year. Yet the Internet more than makes up for this as a celebration of intentional foolery that unintentionally looks like every other day on the Internet.

Since laughter seems to override anger, wit is often its own protection, at least temporarily. The cosmos itself seems designed with persistent uncertainties, which is perhaps why many religious and cultural traditions make the trickster a major myth.

Historically and perhaps in practice, the freedom of the fool makes way for freedom of speech in all its aspects. Humor often seems to make the truth clearer and perhaps easier to acknowledge. We have to be tricked into seeing what we would rather not see. We can have tricksters without truth, and in our entertainment-dominated society we mostly do. But rarely can we fallible humans have truth without tricksters.

When They Stand Up, We Fall

From the AP: The U.S. military death toll in March, the first full month of the security crackdown, was nearly twice that of the Iraqi army, which American and Iraqi officials say is taking the leading role in the latest attempt to curb violence in the capital, surrounding cities and Anbar province, according to figures compiled on Saturday.

The Associated Press count of U.S. military deaths for the month was 81...

Valerie Plame Wilson. AP photo.

Exposing the Masters of Deceit

They lied us into the war that began four years ago today. They said Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and were collecting materials to build nuclear bombs. We now know that they knew there was little evidence that those weapons existed, and the one bit of supposed evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear material was false. They not only insisted it was true--they went to treasonous lengths to keep their lie from being exposed.In an effort to destroy the credibility of the messenger--Joseph Wilson, who the CIA sent to track down the nuclear rumor--at the interfering insistence of VP Cheney--the White House exposed the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA officer, and falsely accused her of sending her husband to Niger. (As if, by the way, that alone is enough to make the fiction of Iraq's nuclear attempts true.)

On Friday, Rep. Henry Waxman began his hearings into security breaches with a statement in which General Hayden, current head of the CIA, affirmed that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent when her name was published, having been distributed to the press no fewer than 20 times by multiple members of the Bush administration. In her testimony, Plame said under oath that she had been on covert status, that she had in fact travelled outside the U.S. as a covert agent within five years (a technicality in the law protecting the identity of covert operatives), and that her outing had destroyed her 20 year career investigating weapons of mass destruction programs that might threaten the U.S.

Despite President Bush's statements that he would investigate the leak of her name, and fire anyone involved, there was further testimony from the Director of the White House Office of Security that there was no investigation whatever. And Karl Rove, one of the leakers, is still an official force in the White House.

Plame said that she knew that her identity might be discovered and exposed by a foreign government. She never imagined it would be exposed by high officials of her own government.

Still, the supporters of Bush, the right wing TV and radio babbleheads, continue to insist that Plame was not covert, and that this is mere politics. Which leads to the question: if killing more than 3,000 American soldiers and maiming thousands more, as well as killing and maiming countless thousands in Iraq as well as destroying that society, all based on lies, and the outing of a U.S. covert agent for political purposes, and the continung defense of these acts by means of more lies--if all this is not treason, what is?

It Can Happen Here (Latest Chapter)

The Bushite scandals come so fast they are hard to keep track of, and start becoming indistinguishable, but the latest is worth isolating for its meanings and implications.

What is it? A number of federal attorneys--at least 7, probably more--were fired by the Bush Justice Department, officially by the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. After some local news stories and blogger investigations, congressional hearings revealed that many of them appear to have been fired for not being sufficiently zealous on behalf of Republicans, in several cases after improper questions and pressure on their current investigations--suggestions that they ought to be prosecuting Democrats (for "voter fraud") and not prosecuting Republicans (for corruption.)

At first, Gonzales denied to Congress there were any political considerations--these were personnel matters, based on performance. When evidence of good performance reviews etc. appeared, Republicans changed their tune to: the President has the right to fire these officials, and all Presidents do it on a political basis. But, in fact (they said) it wasn't political, at least the White House wasn't involved, specifically Karl Rove.

Now it's come out that this was a political decision from the beginning, going back to early 2005, and that Gonzales was involved even before he was Attorney General, when he was on the White House staff, and that Rove was involved--in fact (according to emails revealed Thursday), he was a chief instigator.

What's the underlying problem with this? Presidents often change federal prosecutors at the beginning of their terms, as Bush did--they are in that sense political appointments. But firing prosecutors selectively based on how they are prosecuting Republicans or not prosecuting Democrats strikes at the heart of the justice system, already admittedly weakened by the political appointee tradition. What the Bush White House is doing in this instance, as in others, appears to be unprecedented. It's also unusual to replace one Republican appointee with another because Karl Rove wants a pal in his place--especially when the office is in Little Rock, where yet another round of investigations into the Clintons could begin, just as Hillary runs for President.

What else is behind this? Howard Fineman for MSNBC points to the practices and intents of Rove and the other Bushites as far back as Texas:

Judges are elected in Texas. Karl Rove made his fortune not by running George W. Bush for office, but by training, building and running slates of conservative Republican judges. If the judges are purely political, what does that make the lawyers who practice in front of them? Surely not just “officers of the court.”The Austin Gang – Bush, Rove, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers – saw the legal world as something to control, if for no other reason than if they did not, the Trial Lawyers – the backbone of the modern Texas Democratic Party – would.

Gonzales made his bones literally keeping Bush out of court when, as governor, Bush was called to jury duty. Had Bush been subject to questioning by attorneys over his suitability to serve, he would have had to reveal that he had been arrested for drunk driving. Not a good thing to do before a presidential campaign. Gonzales managed to get the Boss out of the jury pool.

But it's even more specific, according to a New York Times editorial:

In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings. In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on “fraud,” the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system.

The integrity of the election system, the integrity of the justice system--just two attacks on the integrity of the Constitution that characterize this Bush administration. I don't know if it is possible, but impeachment is more warranted now than ever.

The Long Dubai

So after screwing the U.S. taxpayers from here to eternity for their billions in no-bid contracts to serve tainted food to U.S. soldiers, and various other hyperinflated and substandard services in Iraq, Halliburton is getting out of town. Way out. Moving headquarters to Dubai. Yes, that same sandy paradise where corporate capitalism on steroids meets the terrorist network, and where the companies are that the Bushites wanted to put in charge of U.S. ports.

Halliburton, the company that gave its former prez and now ours, Dick Cheney, a $35 million severance package, though its doubtful the severance was all that, shall we say, severe. They are leaving the building. In fact, the whole country.

Gee, what do you think they have in mind? Your first guess may be as good as Hillary Clinton's: "I think that raises a lot of serious issues we have to look at," said the former First Lady. "Does this mean they are going to quit paying taxes in America? They are going to take all the advantage of our country but not pay their fair share of taxes?"She continued, "They get a lot of government contracts - is this going to affect the investigations that are going on? Because we have a lot of evidence of misuse of government contracts and how they have cheated the American soldier and cheated the American taxpayer. They have taken the money and not provided the services, so does this mean that we won't be able to pursue these investigations?"

I expect that within a year or two of the move (into the Cheney Complex in Cheney City), they'll quietly change their name and go after U.S. contracts again, although thanks to them there may not be any money left by then.

But Senator Frank Lautenberg has even darker thoughts than this: he suspects the move is a way to circumvent U.S. law so that Halliburton can continue to pursue contracts with--get this--Iran. Yeah, the one with the "n" at the end.It seems a Halliburton subsidiary already in Dubai has been doing business with Iran for years.

There is a possible upside: if Halliburton does get some big contracts for Iran's nuclear program, that's virtually a guarantee that it will be set back for years. If the Iranians think they're the Axis of Evil, they are about to meet the real thing.

The Lies That Bind

It's a sad day in a sad time. With the Lewis Libby conviction on obstruction of justice and perjury, we have the spectre of a White House--most specifically, the Vice President's office but also others in the Administration-- that consciously lied to get the country to invade and occupy Iraq, then tried to suppress the truth, then tried to punish Joseph Wilson, the former Ambassador to Iraq under Bush Sr. who actually saved lives there, for exposing one of these lies, by revealing that his wife was a covert operative at the CIA, thus endangering her life and ending her career, as well as ending her decades-long work in uncovering weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the U.S.

President Bush said repeatedly that he would fire anyone who leaked Valerie Plame's identity. During Libby's trial, several other officials were implicated in doing so, including Rove and the VP. The statement about firing people who committed what some would call treason is currently inoperative.

Lewis Libby obstructed justice and lied to the Grand Jury to protect his boss, VP Cheney, and the White House. Some speculate he did so after being given assurances that he will receive a presidential pardon. A sad-eyed John Dean appeared on "Countdown" to say he expects that Bush will pardon Libby before Libby spends a single day in jail. The corruption of this White House was further revealed today in congressional hearings that are showing that several federal prosecutors were fired because they didn't play politics with their offices.

Other congressional hearings are detailing how this administration, after sending young Americans to Iraq on false pretenses, for brutally long tours of duty, with poor planning, confused mission, and insufficient resources, including insufficient armor and other protection that led to needless serious injuries, failed to provide the proper care to those who were so injured after they returned.

I've said here before that to confront the problems ahead, we need to get away from knee-jerk us/them, either/or responses. We need in many cases to understand the concerns that underlie the otherwise inexplicable positions and behavior. We need to listen to contrary evidence and arguments. We need to honor sincerity. We need to communicate and find common ground.But we also need to be clear. What this administration has done and is doing is evil. It is corrupt and corrupting, and it is dangerous.

It also goes hand in hand with practices and attitudes by those who identify themselves as conservatives or the Right, that are unacceptable in a civilized society, let alone a democratic one. Though the left is not without its vitriolics, its knee-jerk responses to opposition, I believe Kos was right today in noting that "Michael Savage is the third most popular talk radio host in the country, a hero to millions of conservatives" thanks to venomous rhetoric." Like Coulter, Savage knows what the conservative movement craves and delivers -- a steady diet of hate and rage." In an earlier post, Kos quotes another blogger, Glenn Greenwald on Ann Coulter: [T]he significance lies not just in this specific outburst on Friday but in the whole array of hate-mongering, violence-inciting remarks over all these years. Its significance lies in the critical fact that Malkin expressly acknowledged: "She's very popular among conservatives." The focus of these stories should not be Coulter, but instead, should be the conservative movement in which Ann Coulter -- precisely because of (not "despite") her history of making such comments -- is "very popular."

I heard Coulter herself on TV say that the lesson of this latest flap should be that conservatives need not restrain themselves, because she's done this many times and it hasn't damaged her career at all.

We have reached this point where baseless accusations, open bigotry, and expressions of hate and rage are normal discourse, and this is not unrelated to the ideological justifications for an us/them partisanship that knows no bounds--not the law, not the Constitution, not common decency, and certainly not accuracy or the truth.

Our leaders feel justified in doing anything they can get away with, and they are supported loudly by the most watched news network which routinely distorts for ideological effect (Fox's coverage of the Libby conviction was a screenful of "Libby Not Guilty," which applied to one of the five counts, and that, according to a juror, because a single juror voted against that particular count) and by an entrenched ideologically driven political force that has no respect for the truth, and traffics in hate, rage and venom. It's a sad day indeed.

The Outrage Basket

The Injoy basket is empty, but as usual the Outrage basket is overflowing. A few of the items tumbling over the top and onto the floor: A federal court, in perhaps the most legally torturous (in both senses) decision since the Supremes played Bush V. Gore, formally stripped detainees of their rights. So we're going to continue to pretend that "24" is reality, and that due process is some prissy thing we can't afford anymore, torture is necessary, torture works, and it's good for you, too--although there's the inconveniently authentic account in the Washington Post by Eric Fair, about his own experiences doing his country's dirty work, his current nightmares and self-recriminations:

I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

But at least he's not an amputee dumped in an abandoned motel across from Walter Reed hospital, although judging the relative pain of traumatic stress for life versus traumatic head injuries for life is as debased as this war has always been. The Iraq war is creating a generation of physically, psychologically and mentally maimed people who will be around long after the last haunted Vietnam vet has faded completely out of existence. And there are people who with a straight and noble face are proposing a new Draft.

But then we're deep into government by hyperbole. Countdown quoted some right wing radio nut job as saying that teachers unions are a worse threat that al Qaeda, and a Repub Florida congressman who is also a party campaign official as saying that he doesn't really care if the lies he spread about Speaker Pelosi were true or not. Unfortunately I don't think he's lying about that.

We've heard about the ideological extremes this administration has gone to, in hiring people for those inconsequential jobs reserved for political favors, like running the Iraq occupation and FEMA. But it wasn't until I ran across a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times that I realized there was a playbook involved. (I would read everything Krugman writes online except he's part of the "times select" group of columnists, and I can't bring myself to pay for Dowd and Friedman, who are also a mandatory part of the package.) So I saw this in the print edition. Krugman quotes a Heritage Foundation document that instructs the administration to "make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second." Which of course the Bushites took one step further by eliminating the second consideration altogether.

So it shouldn't be surprising that a story in today's New York Times notes that: Scholars say Mr. Bush has been more strategic than most presidents in sprinkling loyalists throughout the administration. Paul C. Light, an expert in public service at New York University, says it has created an “echo chamber” in which the president gets advice he wants to hear.

Krugman's column (from 2/05) also notes that privatization, another ideologically driven obsession of this administration, may have added to the amount of government work hired out to corporations, but not to the competition for contracts. Competitive contracts have nose-dived from nearly 3/4 of the total to less than 1/2. No word on how many of those Halliburton got. And of course, contractors are often getting paid far more than ordinary employees of government would be. Especially if they don't vote Republican.

Columnist and author Molly Ivins died Wednesday. She was 62.

Intelligent, incisive, intrepid, heroic and very funny. And irreplaceable.

R.I.P.

African cichlid. Very logical.

Scientists have "discovered" another species capable of logical thinking.

It's a fish.

According to experiments, an African cichlid demonstrated "transitive inference," or the ability to figure something out by example.

So fish are added to the species known to think logically: monkeys, rats and birds.

There must be another one.

Oh, yes.

Vulcans.

Are there Klingons in the White House?

And are they friend or faux?


(Thanks to Axinar for these photos)

Controversy continues at Southern Methodist over the proposed Bush Library. This won't help.

Bush's Address on Iraq--A Sneak Preview

My fellah Amuricans. I've been listening to a lot of people with ideas about what to do about Iraq. Lately I've been spending quality time talking to the portraits of LBJ and Nixon downstairs. So now I'm ready to announce my New World Order---I mean, New Way Forward.

I'm going to escalate--I mean surge--by sending 20,000 more soldiers to Iraq to take care of business and bring us to victory, so I can wear that flight suit again and land on the aircraft carrier out in the Gulf just before we start bombing Iran and the weapons of mass destruction they will be building in a decade or two.

Now everybody wants to know where am I going to get 20,000 more troops? Well, we had an election in November, and a lot of good Republicans lost their jobs. So I'm combining my surge with a jobs program, and I figure we can find 10,000 or so unemployed Republicans to send over there. Of course they'll all be officers, which right away ups the quality of our forces. The other ten thou I figure we can get from high school juniors--we'll give them an Ipod as a signing bonus, plus an Xbox or something for every year they survive--I mean, serve.

I look forward to working with Congress to get this done--the Democrats ought to like it, heh heh, heh heh. But it doesn't really matter cause I can do whatever the hell I want. It says right here in my signing statement to the bill making January 9 National Oil Your Squeaky Doorhinges Awareness Day. I like that part about the oil. May God bless the United States of America and the Republic for which it used to stand.

Nuclear Alert(s)

From the Sunday Times in London:ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

From AP:Iran's chief nuclear envoy Ali Larijani said on Friday that Iran is committed to the peaceful use of nuclear technology but warned the situation could change if his country is threatened. "We oppose obtaining nuclear weapons and we will peacefully use nuclear technology under the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty, but if we are threatened, the situation may change," He told a news conference after two days of talks in Beijing.

From Ynet:
During summit with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Egyptian president hints that if Iran attains nukes, Egypt will have to also in order to defend itself. Up until now Egypt has claimed its nuclear program was for energy purposes only...“We don’t want nuclear weapons,” Mubarak stated, “But since they appear highly present in the area, we must defend ourselves."

From the Sunday New York Times:The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. It will propose combining elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky.

Perhaps it's time to review our Duck & Cover drill. At the first sign of nuclear madness, get under your desk, bend over, put your hands over your head, and kiss your ass goodbye.

The Truth At Last

In 2005 it was reported that Smirk (otherwise known as GW Bush) let it be known that in invading Iraq he was obeying the voice of God.

But now the true source of that voice has been revealed, and as usual, it's the Onion that breaks the story.

Frank & Ernest

Media (Not Enough) Blues

Pity the poor news media. For the past several years, major newspapers, magazines and TV networks have slowly but surely responded to what they must have thought was a major conservative shift in the country, as well as the legendary permanent Republican majority. They got rid of their less-than-conservative executives, editors, writers, columnists and replaced them with neocons, fundamentalists and right wing crazies. Now that their transformation of the media is just about complete, what happens but the American public ain't buying that crap anymore.

Fox News ratings are tanking, which is only the beginning. Really too bad for the newspapers especially, because it took them so long to divest themselves of journalistic standards to wallow in far right bilge, and now it will take years for them to shed these hapless pounds. If they ever can. News as entertainment has already limited the intelligence of the news media gene pool.

Meanwhile we can watch The Daily Show (which some study showed features as much news content as actual news programs) and Keith Olbermann. Maybe someday there will be a newspaper or magazine worth reading that isn't British.

The Wave of Democratic Progressive victories washes over the nation...  

so voters Wave goodbye to the Republican Congress, Rumsfeld, Pombo, Allen... 

The Wave

The dimensions of this, summarized by kos: We won, and won big. Not only did we take the Senate, take the House, and destroyed Republicans at the state legislative level, but we didn't lose a single senate seat, we didn't lose any House seats, we didn't lose any governorships, we didn't lose any state legislatures. It was a rout of epic proportions.

Kos is also trenchant on the Democrats' agenda, and shoots down the notion that the Democrats elected were conservatives. While some have different positions on social issues (most of which they'll never have to vote on), they are much more progressive and populist on economic issues, against the war and torture, and for constitutional rights. In other words, they aren't extreme right wing lunatics, like the ones who have been running the country. Matt Stoller has more specific details on Dem candidates--the more conservative tended to lose, while the more progressive won. Note especially the support for universal health care.

Georgia10 adds this: When you can't get an abortion ban passed in freakin' South Dakota, America isn't trending conservative. When you can't get a gay marriage ban passed in Arizona, America isn't trending conservative. When opposition to gay marriage bans was more than 40% in 5 of the 8 bans that passed, America isn't trending conservative. When a majority of Americans choose Democrats to represent them, America isn't trending conservative.

Apart from the governator, the Wave swept Democrats into state offices in California. Results on propositions are mixed, but the worst ones were defeated.

Think Progress outlines some of the "firsts" in this tidal wave: the first woman and first Italian American Speaker of the House, more women in the Senate than ever before, the first Muslim elected to Congress, three House committees with African-American chairs, and of course (though TP doesn't mention him) Senator Bernie Sanders, the first declare socialist, who is so down to earth that his socialism is not an issue in Vermont or probably anywhere else.

The first victim of the wave was Rumsfeld, who promptly quit as secretary of Defense. But Bush promptly appointed an insider cut from the same cloth, who may go along with a change in policy but is an interventionist and Republican loyalist deeply involved in Iran-Contra and past machinations that helped create enemies in the Middle East and elsewhere. It seems Bush really wanted to appoint Kissinger, but even the lame duck Senate might not confirm a zombie.

Stop The Insanity

Get rid of the Republican rubber stamp Congress that enables Bush's Iraq madness, that believes getting tough with terrorists means taking away fundamental American and human rights, that cuts taxes to enrich the superrich and impoverish everyone else, that hasn't done anything to address the Climate Crisis but deny it, or make America energy self-sufficient but finds the time to enrich a lot of crony corporations, from Exxon to Halliburton to Enron.

Get rid of this arrogant Republican Congress that has shirked its responsibilities of oversight--that spent all of 12 hours on finding out who was responsible for Abu Gharaib but these same Republicans spent more than 140 hours of hearings on investigating the Clinton Christmas card list.Get rid of this arrogant Republican Congress that has devastated this institution by refusing to listen to minority views, while it invites its favorite lobbyists to literally write the laws it passes.

Get rid of this dangerous Republican Congress that, together with President Bush, gave away nuclear secrets to terrorists and rogue states, while refusing to join the world in limiting nuclear proliferation.Stop Bush's power to intimidate his political adversaries, and his power to disrespect and disgust the world. In the eyes of many Bush has become one of the most dangerous men in the world--in England Bush is rated more dangerous than the president of North Korea. Stop the Torturers in Chief from destroying America's place in the world--from corrupting America's soul.

Get rid of this clueless Republican Congress that won't even raise the minimum wage, that does nothing about health care as businesses fail, families fall apart, individuals die.Send a message to those who support Bush's insane, tragic war in Iraq, who helped him lie his way into it, who together ignored the disaster they should have foreseen. Just as they ignored the lessons of a simulated hurricane in New Orleans, they utterly ignored the recently exposed results of a 1999 war game that predicted every awful consequence of the war they nevertheless arrogantly pursued. They have spilled our blood, spent our treasure, and they kill and maim the innocent and destroy another country, and they will keep doing it until we stop them.

And if you need more reason to dump the Republican 109th Congress, Think Progress has 109 more.Stop the death, stop the madness. Vote Democratic today. It won't solve everything, but it will slow this insanity down. This is for the future.

Fix It AND Stop It

This is what I've been afraid of. This is what I saw coming: A debate among climate change experts has some researchers now suggesting that we focus on limiting the damage done by climate change, rather than on passing laws intended to prevent global warming.

This piece by Kate Raiford chooses two advocates to represent these opposing views. On the Fix It side is Sterling Burnett, an environmental ethicist and senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative nonprofit organization in Dallas dedicated to free market solutions. On the Stop It side is J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director at Fresh Energy in Minnesota.

Burnett says we should concentrate on efforts like building seawalls on threatened coasts and innoculating people in Africa who are in greater danger of malaria because of the spread of mosquitos in the regions getting hotter: that is on dealing with the consequences of the Climate Crisis, and even preparing for what effects we anticipate in the short term. Hamilton says that we must reduce greenhouse gases by 60% by 2050 to "protect against the most dangerous consequences" farther in the future, which according to scientists could include the end of civilization and a planet scoured of most life as we know it.

This is not an academic or even political argument (though it has elements of the latter), nor is it just a trumped up debate for the sake of a story. It is a battle for commitment, attention and resources, with the explicit premise--at least in Burnett--that there is only enough to do one or the other.

As consequences of the Climate Crisis become more obvious, more frequent and more serious (even when not everyone agrees to the causal link) the demand for action to respond to effects will grow. We are learning as we go, as we have already in the Californa heat wave of July and early August; there are problems (and solutions) few have anticipated.

The demands to concentrate on Fix It will grow louder. But can we really afford to concentrate only on that? Burnett argues additionally that we don't know enough about what might happen in the future to act now, especially on large scale changes such as dramatically scaling back greenhouse gases and switching to alternative energy.

Hamilton argues that we can't afford not to act to Stop It--stop the heating from reaching the tipping point of global catastrophe-- for scientists are telling us how horrendous the future is likely to be if we don't. Morever, by its very nature we must anticipate it, because the greenhouse gases we'll send into the atmosphere now and in the next decade will affect the climate years later. Once we find out the tipping point is passed and the accumulating climate changes are feeding on themselves, it will be too late to stop it.

Hamilton also maintains that action towards stopping it will improve the present: cleaner energy reduces dependence on foreign oil, reduces pollution and can help create a stronger economy and a healthier world.

Hamilton is right that many of the necessary steps to stop it in the long term will be of benefit in the short term. But those steps alone will not fix it. Wind turbines will not attack malaria; solar power doesn't help elders endangered by heat stroke.

Burnett is right that we have to pay attention to the effects of the Climate Crisis in the short term, in the now. But he is wrong that we would be wasting resources or taking an unnecessary risk by working to stop it. Both are necessary.

They are in fact equally necessary. But the reason I have been pounding on this theme of fix it and stop it is that very soon there is going to be a lot of pressure to fix it, and this is likely to be a right wing theme. Working to stop it has become identified as a left wing theme. Neither side so far embraces both, even though both are crucial. We must be here for each other now. And we must work and sacrifice for our children and grandchildren and the future.

The left so far is largely ignoring the fix it side. And they leave that issue to the right, which will sooner or later take it up, and run with it hard. Some will use it to end efforts to stop it. This is an early indication of that. But we can't let that happen. It is defeatist to say we don't have the resources to do both, before we've tried to do either. But we will certainly waste the precious resources of time and energy by getting into a political war about doing one and only one, take your pick.

We must work simultaneously to fix it AND stop it. Doing both is the test of our civilization. Even if we fail to see this we will surely fail as a civilization, and we will deserve to fail.