on notice

you're on notice, pal!

i just found a new toy on the internets: the stephen colbert "on notice board" generator.

have fun.

one year later

almost one year ago, clinton administration jetsam dick morris washed up on fox news and made this bold prediction about hurricane katrina's impact on bush's popularity:

y'know, george bush basically believes the federal government should do two things: fight wars and help people recover from disasters and now he's got both on his plate. i think that his ratings are gonna soar! not necessarily in the next three days, but over the next year he's gonna look so good doing all this stuff.

morris' hosts — even bush apologist-in-chief sean hannity — were understandably skeptical:

morris: ... the people who said this storm is gonna hurt bush's presidency are just wrong. he can get all the money he wants out of congress 'cause of this disaster, the people will be solidly behind him, the media will cover it like crazy, and he's gonna look like santa claus. colmes: so if you're advising democrats now, how would you advise them to react? morris: to shut up and stop harping — colmes: ha! "shut up" ... ! morris: — and screaming and hollering and pointing fingers, and start amassing national credits by showing the same liberal democratic compassion bush did. colmes: so they should just agree with him and say he's doing a great job. morris: yeah, they — just like right after 9/11, they hurt themselves by any kind of carping. ah, bush — this speech was fantastic! [ snip ] morris: ... you have a president that doesn't think government should do a lot. but he believes they should fight wars and that was the first term, and they believe they should recover from disasters and that's the second term. man, is this guy fortunate! hannity: [chuckling] fortunate to have a disaster? morris: fortunate to be able to be president at a time when he can respond without violating his principles.

with bush's approval at 41% (according to a fox news poll released on the day of the broadcast), dick probably thought his analysis was not completely ludicrous, since bush seemed to have nowhere to go but up:

today, 41 percent of voters approve and 51 percent disapprove of president bush’s performance, which is the lowest job rating he has received in a fox news poll. the president’s approval rating is down 4 percentage points from two weeks ago (45 percent, august 30-31), around the time the magnitude of katrina’s damage was becoming clear. before the hurricane, 47 percent approved and 44 percent disapproved (july 26-27).

well, after a year of bush's "liberal democratic compassion", dick may have been at least half-right — bush had nowhere to go. nowhere but down, that is, and he's dragging his republican-led congress down with him:

the new poll finds the [sic] 36 percent of americans approve of president bush’s job performance and 56 percent disapprove. these results are in line with the ratings the president has received for the last couple of months. moreover, for the past three surveys the gap between approval among republicans (76 percent) and democrats (10 percent) has been 66 percentage points. the assessment of the job congress is doing continues to be abysmal, as more than twice as many americans say they disapprove (58 percent) as approve (24 percent).

to be fair, dick's fawning pronouncements would not necessarily have been so pathetically absurd had he been prognosticating about any other president than the dismal one we are presently stuck with. to vindicate dick's wet dreams of republican munificence, all nero bush needed to do was to roll up his sleeves and simply deliver on dick's assurances of timely and tangible material support to katrina's victims.¹ compassion — if bush actually has any to give — without assistance is nothing more than contempt.

it was sickening enough that dick neglected to acknowledge the federal government's own culpability in the disaster that so fortuitously befell louisiana. but did dick truly believe that this potemkin administration ever intended to provide new orleans with more than a white wash and red tape? did he truly believe that the destruction of a major american city ever meant more to bush than just an opportunity for another series of woefully ineffectual photo-ops in bush's non-stop dog-and-pony tribute to himself?

---

¹ and of course, while he's at it, bush would also need to pacify iraq and lower oil prices and catch osama bin laden and jump-start the economy and ...

a message for dick cheney

seen on a bus in queens, new york:

photo by dave hill © 2006.

since i doubt the vice president frequents that particular route, i thought i'd pass the sentiments along.

anyone?

josh marshall, a liberal blogger still trying in these partisan times to hold fast to the middle — wherever that may be going — has just reached "like a sort of epiphany":

is there anyone in the country who can say honestly, in their heart of hearts, that when that moment of fear hit them after the recent reports out of london, they said to themselves, "god, i'm glad we're in iraq"? anyone?

red alert

boys, it's time to duct tape the windows, strap on your diapers and man the keyboards — the islamo-irani-talibani-qaeda-o'fascists have taken connecticut!

chuck roberts, anchor @ cnn headline news:

how does this factor into the lieberman/lamont contest? and might some argue, as some have already argued, that lamont is the al qaeda candidate?

tony snow, press secretary @ the white house:

... the real question for the american people to ask themselves is, do you take the war on terror seriously? with all the developments around the world — and, if so, how do you fight it to win? there seems to be two approaches, and in the connecticut race, one of the approaches is ignore the difficulties and walk away. now, when the united states walked away, in the opinion of the osama bin laden in 1991, bin laden drew from that the conclusion that americans were weak and wouldn’t stay the course and that led to september 11th.

dick cheney, vice president @ the white house:

the thing that's partly disturbing about it is the fact that, the standpoint of our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al qaeda types, they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the american people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task. and when we see the democratic party reject one of its own, a man they selected to be their vice presidential nominee just a few short years ago, it would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today if that's becoming the dominant view of the democratic party, the basic, fundamental notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won't — we can't be.

bill o'reilly, talking head @ the o'reilly factor:

i believe this is a chilling indication of what lies ahead in american politics. iran’s betting we americans have no will to restrain their jihad, and judging from the connecticut vote last night, they might be right.

cal thomas, columnist @ the washington times:

the narrow primary defeat of veteran sen. joe lieberman in connecticut's democratic primary is more than a loss for one man. it is a loss for his party and for the country. it completes the capture of the democratic party by its taliban wing. they used to be "san francisco democrats," a phrase coined by former u.s. ambassador to the united nations jeane kirkpatrick to describe the party's 1984 convention. but they have now morphed into taliban democrats because they are willing to "kill" one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party's kook fringe.

joe lieberman, sore loser @ the new york times:

if we just pick up like ned lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in england. it will strengthen them, and they will strike again. i'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to american security and the evil of the enemy that faces us — more evil, or as evil, as nazism and probably more dangerous than the soviet communists we fought during the long cold war. how the heck can we be in a battle in which we are fighting as democrats and republicans against each other, when these terrorists certainly don't distinguish based on our party affiliation? they want to kill any and all of us.

post mortem

let us examine the corpse, shall we?

admiralnaismith @ mydd:

lieberman was the goliath candidate. when you're goliath, you win by being as gracious as possible, trying to keep the condescension out of your voice as you welcome the chance for an amicable primary contest and talk about how democracy is so wonderful and your little-known opponent has every right to run, and then you swamp him financially with positive, upbeat ads about your record, mentioning the "david" by name barely if ever. "goliath" wins popularity contests by being a gentle giant, not by being a brutal bully. lieberman didn't do that. he was fred sanford, clutching his chest and yelling "lamont! lamont!" every chance he got. he didn't even bother to hide his contempt for the democratic process as he screeched and raged at how this bloody peasant was daring to besmirch the divine right of incumbents. he publicly insulted not only the "david" but anyone who held "david"s views — which happened to be popular, majority views. and to cap it off, he unveiled his spoiler independent bid, stabbing his own party in the back before he had even had the primary. it was lieberman, and not lamont, who turned this race from nothing into a real contest, and then an upset.

thereisnospoon @ daily kos:

let's face some cold, hard facts, people. we didn't do this, because what we supposedly did was impossible to do — in any politcal climate. in one corner, you had a bunch of unpaid volunteers, internet rabble-rousers, and an inexperienced politician whose highest post had been county selectman. in the other, you had the three-time senator, former vice-presidential candidate, visible party statesman, bill clinton, hillary clinton, harry reid, barbara boxer, the other popular ct senator dodd, most of organized labor, the women's groups and the environmental groups, most of traditional democratic party support, paid lobbyist support, paid armies of gotv staff, the slick ad money, the top dlc consultants, and a 3 to 1 budget gap. i'm sorry. that's not david vs. goliath. this isn't even the nba champions versus a rec league team. that's more like an ant vs. my shoe. and the shoe lost. but then, the dlc is an old shoe — and the most politically incompetent shoe i've ever seen. the truth is that the dlc couldn't beat my dead great-grandmother. or yours. they couldn't beat their own shadow. so why did anyone think they could beat karl rove?

josh marshall @ time:

he's seemed almost militantly indifferent to the disaster iraq has become. and his passion about the war seemed reserved exclusively for those who questioned it rather than those who had so clearly botched the enterprise. his continual embrace of president bush — both literal and figurative — was an insult to democrats, the great majority of whom believe bush has governed as one of the most destructive presidents in modern american history. it's almost as though lieberman has gone out of his way to provoke and offend democrats on every point possible, often, seemingly, purely for the reason of provoking. is it any wonder the guy got whacked in a party primary? lieberman got in trouble because he let himself live in the bubble of d.c. conventional wisdom and a-list punditry. he flattered them; and they loved him back. and as part of that club he was part of the delusion and denial that has sustained our enterprise in iraq for the last three years. in the weeks leading up to tuesday's primary, a-list d.c. pundits were writing columns portraying lieberman's possible defeat as some sort of cataclysmic event that might foreshadow a dark new phase in american politics — as though voters choosing new representation were on a par with abolishing the constitution or condoning political violence. but those breathless plaints only showed how disconnected they are from what's happening in the country at large. they mirrored his disconnection from the politics of the moment.

juan cole:

first of all, the man was brain dead on the iraq issue. ... lieberman had bought into the rove master narrative. bush went to war electively, thus very conveniently making himself a war president and therefore above criticism. he got a second term that way despite having been among the worst presidents in history. lieberman ceded to bush a kind of invulnerability on the most important republican party snafu since its policies contributed to the onset of the great depression. why would a democrat do that? the answer is that on foreign policy issues, lieberman is a neoconservative, and supports the iraq project for the same reasons that douglas feith and paul wolfowitz (then number 3 and 2 respectively at the pentagon) did. ... lieberman may run as an independent, and we cannot know what will happen in that case. but for the reasons given above, it is important that he has been repudiated by democratic voters. the rest of the party now has a shot at taking the house, without risking having their colleague's pro-bush sanctimonies on iraq constantly thrown in their faces.

christy hardin smith @ firedoglake:

at some point, the folks who report on politics and the folks who run for office will wake up and understand that bloggers are merely americans who try to amplify the sentiment of thousands more just like them. and the overwhelming sentiment that i have been hearing for months and months is that people have had enough of the lies, the manipulation, the self-dealing, the egos, the idiocy, the selfishness, and the outright dereliction of duty and lack of accountability from so many in washington, d.c. in this rubber stamp republican congress … we’ve had enough.

time for a change, pt. ii

from ned lamont's victory speech:

this race started out as a dream, many thought an impossible dream, but thanks to all of you and thousands of citizens across the state ... we have a coalition that believes this is a time for change.

time indeed. couldn't have said it better.

time for a change

well, it's primary day in connecticut and the country finally gets to see if democratic and independent voters there want a new senator. although lamont has enjoyed an amazing 13-point lead in the polls over the last week, that lead was halved over the weekend, and polls have been known to be wrong anyway. lamont's "netroots" supporters have been careful to temper their enthusiasm, having bitterly tasted defeat too often before.

i've been trying to step back and look at the race in more fundamental terms, beyond the particular issues being argued in it. in most regular elections the voters are offered two choices: the incumbent or the challenger; the status quo or change.

and right now the entire country is disgusted with the direction the white house and congress has taken the country, and nowhere is that truer than in connecticut, one of the bluest of the blue states. the country is aching for change. it's a fundamental dynamic that seems only today to be getting the emphasis it really deserves:

americablog: people are frustrated. they're tired of the republicans and their arrogance, their failed policies, their incompetence, and their inability to learn and grow from their mistakes. that is why the blogs came about, and it's why we've been successful at getting a voice. we are tapping into that frustration and, yes, anger, and channeling it towards an effort to change things for the better. and that, my reporter friends, is what is happening in connecticut and across america. joe lieberman is a victim of the anti-incumbent, anti-republican times in which we live. he is not a victim of the peace movement. he is not a victim of the iraq war. he is part or the larger passion play that is taking place across the country against the incumbent party in power. republicans control the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. americans believe our country is heading in the wrong direction and we, rightfully, are finally holding those running the country accountable, in addition to those who enable and embrace them.

mydd: luis, a poll worker who came out for some fresh air, said "lots of democrats today!" — the polling place had separate doors for the republican and democratic primaries, and i could see fewer than 1 out of 10 voters were going in the republican door. luis said he's seen a lot of new voters and young voters today. "they want change."

for all his vaunted experience in politics, lieberman strangely has been either unwilling or unable to recognize or respond to that basic dynamic. he's lost touch with his own constituents. he's been taking them for granted.

this race shouldn't have been a contest. it's been lieberman's to lose all along, and he will. what finally convinced me was lieberman's last big media statement, his "closing argument", which he delivered as a speech on sunday in east haven.

in it he reiterated his record and ticked off his democratic bona fides. but not once did he say the magic words: i'm going to change.

lieberman insists that he's been good for connecticut for 18 years and connecticut needs him to continue to do what he's been doing.

he even insists that he hears the criticism:

what i will say is this: i not only respect your right to disagree or question the president, i value it.

but just how does he demonstrate that? he never explains how his constituents' views influence his behavior, if at all. i get the impression of joe patting a boy on the head, telling him, "i know you're upset — i really, really do — you just need to understand your daddy knows what's good for you."

so it comes as little surprise, according to markos of daily kos, that lieberman omitted these words from his planned ending for that speech when he finally delivered it:

if after hearing the truth about where i stand on iraq, you still want to cast your vote solely on that one issue, then i respect your decision.

lieberman apparently had second thoughts about legitimizing that rationale for the voters.

and when asked early sunday for his position on iraq by george stephanopolous on abc's this week:

gs:	you're right that iraq is the number one issue, there's just no question —
jl:	— there's no question about it and you see not only — you see it in the opinion polls.
gs:	and you said in the debate [with lamont on july 7] that iraq is better now than a year ago. do you still believe that?
jl:	it is better now ... it- it- it’s better and worse if you’ll allow me to put it that way ...

joe just can't let go of his support for the failed occupation. even while suffering the damage it's done to his career — which explains his fumbling bush-like doublespeak.

so joe's not gonna change his tune or his behavior, and he expects connecticut voters to simply accept that.

and they will, but only for a few hours longer.

a good old-fashioned space opera

"rally 'round me boys, we have the heretic on the run!"

this coming tuesday, a long-anticipated, closely-watched and hotly debated showdown will climax in connecticut, deciding not only the democratic nominee for senate (and the de facto next senator of the blue state), but also (in the words of one breathless pundit) for "the soul of the democratic party — and possibly the future of civility in american politics", as well as for the continued relevance of the "netroots", who have invested a great deal of political and emotional capital in the race.

of all the intense coverage of the impending shootout, the most entertaining analysis is being delivered by steve gilliard, who for the past month has been staging the unfolding drama in the brightly painted miniverse of the warhammer 40,000 fantasy wargame:

so why use this? because of a few reasons. one, the figures are widely available online, usually well painted, which makes great illustrations. two, it seems enough people are familiar with the back story so that using it as an allegory to describe joe lieberman's troubles makes sense. it may seem like gibberish to some, but it's really effective. the horus heresy, which has betrayal at it's [sic] core, seems to describe lieberman's predicament pretty well. three, there is no historical or social bias to the w40k world. if you use historical figures, all kinds of meanings can be inferred where there aren't any. so to depict lieberman as a ultramarine and lamont as a blood angel, with various other participants as members of space marine chapters is a wonderful way to take a lighthearted look at the politics of the connecticut race and not feed the need for lieberman's people to infer some insane bias against him. sure, there's geekdom involved, which is no handicap here, especially when jen painted a ton of ad&d figures, but it's also a way to express issues of loyalty and opposition in a fictional world where those are the defining characters. more than any other fictional setting, warhammer 40k is about the duty of citizens to the state and to each other and the value of loyalty.

while not myself familiar with warhammer, only someone who's never seen star wars or lord of the rings could be stumped its simple dynamics, which pit the loyal forces of the imperium (progressive democrats) against the corrupt gods of chaos (republicans and their enablers like the traitorous lieberman).

"defend the leader at all costs!"

the series thus far:

august 3 betrayal "chaos marines, follow me" august 2 chaos space marines to the front july 30 so what does the times endorsement mean? "boys, the imperium is with us, attack, attack, attack!!!!!!" ned lamont for senate: ny times "ned lamont. in his non blood angels uniform" july 29 lamont to get times endorsement "rally 'round me boys, we have the heretic on the run" july 23 about the lamont race "once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our blood angel dead" july 22 the last, desperate gasp "join us and fight the joerus heresy" defend joe "how dare anyone challenge the commander? if he makes an alliance with the chaos space marines, it is for our benefit." july 20 lamont in the lead "rally to me boys, rally to me. we have the heretic joerus on the run" chaos space marines for lieberman "we're for joe, why not you? chaos space marines for lieberman" july 19 all hail the joerus legacy "see how the robes feel, commander, come join the chaos marines, you want to be one of us, forget the imperium, come join us." joe's problem "who will stand with the commander?" july 17 nobody loves the commander any more "poor commander lieberman" july 15 about warhammer 40k and the space marines "blood angels for lamont" "ultramarine legion of lieberman" july 14 defend commander lieberman "commander lieberman" hosanna, someone gets it "ned's army of gentically mutated blood angel warrior-volunteers on the march" july 12 joe's problem "defend the commander at all costs" july 11 lieberman to form own space marine legion "so we fight with chaos space marines, we're still loyal" july 9 the fear of losing joe "the only people lieberman can trust, his legion of space marines" july 7 the lieberman lie "defend the leader at all costs" july 6 the lieberman conundrum "a party at war"

sunday funnies

george bush:

this moment of conflict in the middle east is painful and tragic, yet it is also a moment of opportunity for broader change in the region. transforming countries that have suffered decades of tyranny and violence is difficult, and it will take time to achieve. but the consequences will be profound — for our country and the world.

richard hass, bush's former state department policy director:

an opportunity? lord, spare me. i don't laugh a lot. that's the funniest thing i've heard in a long time. if this is an opportunity, what's iraq? a once-in-a-lifetime chance?

umm, that's no disguise

baghdad, iraq, july 28 — the two armored vans left a branch of the warka bank on thursday around noon, loaded with 1.191 billion dinars, or nearly $800,000. almost immediately, on a busy street near the baghdad zoo, the drivers spotted an oncoming iraqi army convoy, led by a shiny new humvee. they followed standard procedure and pulled over. but the convoy stopped, and an officer politely ordered the surprised drivers and guards to lay down their guns while his men searched the vans for bombs. within minutes all eight drivers and guards had been handcuffed and locked in the back of one of the vans on a suffocating 120-degree day, the cash had been stolen by the men in the convoy — whoever they were — and the iraqi banking system marked another day of its slow slide into oblivion. the only thing atypical about thursday’s robbery, which was described by bank and interior ministry officials, is that most private banks try to avoid using armored vans, because they draw too much attention, and instead toss sacks of cash into ordinary cars for furtive dashes through the streets of baghdad. however the cash goes out, it risks being lost in the wash of robbery, kidnapping and intrigue that now plagues the system. praised by the united states as a success story as recently as a few months ago, that system has quickly become a wild landscape of clandestine cash runs, huge hauls by robbers dressed as police officers and soldiers, kidnappings of bank executives with ransoms as high as $6 million, american allegations of tie-ins with insurgent financiers, and legitimate customers turned away when they go to pick up their savings and flee the country. "it is a crisis," said wisam k. jamil, managing director of iraq’s oldest private bank, the bank of baghdad, which lost $1.5 million in a literal case of highway robbery by men wearing police uniforms last december. because of that robbery, the bank lost much of its insurance coverage. even more galling for mr. jamil, the insurance policy had a standard disclaimer saying that losses due to acts of war or terrorism were not covered, and as the warka holdup on thursday illustrated, no one can say if a theft in iraq is committed by insurgents, bandits or genuine members of the security forces. so the insurance company has not paid mr. jamil’s claim ...

the times might prefer to whistle past facts aimed straight between its eyes, but it's all too crystal clear to the rest of us that iraq's highwaymen aren't just outlaws masquerading as police and military — it's far worse: they are the police and military.

(hat tip to steve gilliard.)

don't even think about it

tristero at hullabaloo offers some free advice — the most undervalued kind, as always — in an open letter to liberal hawks:

dear liberal hawks and other fence sitters from 2002/2003 (you know who you are), don't even think about a "thoughtful, measured response" to this bullshit: president bush proudly declared that american foreign policy no longer seeks to "manage calm," and derided policies that let anger and resentment lie "beneath the surface." bush said that the violence in the middle east was evidence of a more effective foreign policy that addresses "root causes." this is sheer, abject lunacy of the sort that imagined the invasion of iraq would lead to city squares in iraq named after george w. bush and the invasion would pay for itself out of oil revenues. the only appropriate reaction is to very loudly proclaim this is the reasoning of madmen. no rational human being thinks like this. your credibility has been ruined already by falling for the preposterous lies and rationalizations prior to the iraq invasion. if you take this seriously, your immortal soul is majorly on the line ...

bloodsuckers

steven d at booman tribune on the neocons, their bottomless thirst for conquest, and its role in the coming midterm elections:

... a while ago i predicted we were in for a wild ride this summer in terms of a coordinated campaign by conservative supporters of president bush to generate support for war with iran, in part to bolster the republican party's prospects for the mid term elections this fall. yet even i didn't anticipate the bush administration letting israel slip off it's [sic] leash to attack both the palestinians in gaza and hizbollah in lebanon. mea culpa. i should have anticipated such murderous manipulation from the most immoral and deceitful administration in our history. if killing a few more arabs (and israelis) is what it takes to assure continued majorities in the house and senate for republicans, the bush team is more than happy to oblige. the fact that this approach has already failed miserably in iraq is of little consequence. retaining their power, and implementing the folly of an expanded war in the middle east is all that matters to them.

monstrous as this picture of the administration is, the reality may be even uglier. while steven portrays the israeli offensive merely as a means to an end — continued domestic political domination — the offensive may be an end in itself, as an irresistible incitement to war with the archnemesis iran.

the war trolls know that they're running out of time. they know that their clutch on the body politic may be significantly weakened come november. they know that they may never again in their lifetimes get another chance to dismember and resurrect a servile middle east — a chimera which never seemed more achingly close to birth.

this administration has only one modus: raising bogeymen. it has only one note: a shrill screech. it has only one concern: its own blasphemous survival. forget about acts of governance or evidence of accomplishment from these bloodthirsty maurauders. true leadership cannot hope to thrive as long as they remain battened onto a host as torpid and succulent as america. will the world will have strength enough left in 2008 to exorcise the vampires of vietnam for once and all?

i once called this administration a potemkin government, for its perverse devotion to pretense, but i was mistaken, because a potemkin government accomplishes nothing. as the bones, sucked dry, pile higher and higher in the desert, their leavings, their real achievement, can be seen for miles and miles: it is a charnel house.

painting by alex ross © 2004.

less than human

those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. (voltaire)

even in an age of laser-guided precision instuments of mayhem, warfare still remains an untidy business. civilians still get slaughtered, exposing the slaughterers to bad press and, more inconvenient, the risk of legal sanction. just how can an honest warmonger do what he does best — mass murder — without all the headaches?

never fear, celebrity lawyer-pundit alan dershowitz is here! and he has just the solution you need when you can't — or won't — let pesky civilians hamstring your efforts to bomb your opponent into the stone age:

just redefine the term "civilian" — no purchase necessary!

... we need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. a new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the middle east: "the continuum of civilianality." though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who are killed, wounded and punished. ... the israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern lebanon that have been turned into war zones. those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims. ... every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others.

it is epiphanies like these that honestly make me wonder if it is actually embarassing to be as brilliant as alan. i mean, this is so simple! no need to retool weapons or rethink strategies. (or — god forbid — question the legitimacy of the attacks!) just relabel the dead!

of course, a nonetheless elegant solution, even one as brilliant in its simplicity as this, can sometimes be a little too simple. as juan cole explains, does relabeling really go far enough?

alan "torture is ok" dershowitz is annoyed that the israelis have been accused of killing innocent civilians. he is now arguing that there are degrees of "civilianity." he wonders how many innocent civilians killed by israel in lebanon would still be innocent if we could make finer distinctions. (he should read the lebanese newspapers and he would get the answer. one third of those killed by the israelis are children. i'd guess they are all civilian all the time. and then there are the families, like the canadian women, children and men blown up at aitaroun. i suppose they are really civilians. etc.) but i don't know why dershowitz stops there. let me reformulate his argument for him. shouldn't we recognize degrees of humanness? after all, isn't that the real problem? that the enemy is considered a full human being in the law of war? that horrible supreme court judgment that hamdan had to be given a trial of some sort was based on the misunderstanding that he is a human being. israeli officials have already showed us how arabs can be reclassified away from a full "human" category that they clearly, in the view of the kadima government, do not deserve. for instance, israeli ambassador to the united nations dan gillerman angrily denounced kofi annan for neglecting this key fact. the guardian reports,' mr gillerman said "something very important was missing" from mr annan's speech: any mention of terrorism. hizbullah were "ruthless indiscriminate animals", he told reporters.' so you see, one reason that you can just bomb the hell out of the lebanese in general is that they aren't human beings at all. they are "animals." you might quibble that gillerman is only referring to members of the hizbullah party as animals, not all lebanese. but most shiite lebanese, some 45 percent of the population, support hizbullah. and the lebanese government, made up of christians, sunnis and druze, let hizbullah into the lebanese government and gave it cabinet posts. so probably those who tolerate hizbullah are at most half-human. this has yet to be worked out. it might be possible to declare them .66 animal. or maybe they are just all animals. they speak arabic, after all, right mr. gillerman? there is a problem with stopping here, however. it is not enough to reclassify some human beings as animals. after all, you have to treat animals humanely. you can even be fined for mistreating an animal, though probably you would not go to jail. the staff of us secretary of state condi rice has made a suggestion for another, more convenient level, that of snake. thus, a senior white house official referred to the massive israeli bombing campaign and destruction of lebanon's civilization and killing of hundreds and wounding of over a thousand as "defanging" hezbollah. i am pretty sure that language is meant to suggest that the shiites of lebanon, although apparently human beings, are actually snakes. i suppose it is possible that another sort of reptile is is intended, but i suspect that "snake" is the intended classification. but some snakes are protected species. we need a lower category. it is clear that some human beings are neither human nor animal. hamas and hizbullah members, for instance, are actually not even full organisms, just diseases. israeli deputy consul general for san francisco, omer caspi, said of the lebanese and palestinian publics concerning hamas and hizbullah members, "we say to them please remove this cancer off your body and soul before it is too late." caspi did not specify whether members of hamas are leukemia and those of hizbullah melanoma, or the reverse. the good thing about finding out that some apparent human beings don't have to be treated as well as whales (which have almost been wiped out) is that it allows us to put behind all wimpy hesitancy just to do what needs to be done. i mean, a cancer. everyone knows what you have to do with a cancer. it requires chemotherapy. it needs to be just exterminated, before it kills the snakes, animals and humans. so we have the human beings, like israeli prime minister ehud "bomb'em back to the stone age" olmert and torture defender, attorney alan dershowitz. then we have the animals, like the "persons" who vote for hizbullah and hamas. then we have the level of human-appearing snakes, who need to be "defanged," which apparently involves killing their wives and children with air strikes. then we have the cancers, who need to be "wiped out" immediately. i understand that president bush is appointing alan dershowitz to be head of the "human-non-human metrics" commission that will decide which people are full human beings, and which fall into other categories, such as "animal," "snake," and "cancer." it is rumored that that dershowitz intends to create a special category, of "cockroach," for the human-appearing creatures who dare to criticize him.

punked by putin

when president bush was asked at the end of today's joint presser with russia's president vladimir putin — in prelude to the weekend g8 summit in st. petersberg, russia — about his "concerns about russian democracy", bush responded:

... i talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and i told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that russia would do the same thing ...

um, nice setup, dubya. his iraq comparison allowed putin to deftly close the session with this quip:

we certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in iraq, i will tell you quite honestly.

heh.

all dubya could do amid the laughter was helplessly blurt: "just wait — !"

but i have a feeling no one, especially putin, will be holding their breath.

man, that vladimir can be a tough act to follow ... especially when you try to pretend iraq isn't an ungovernable disaster.

the complaint against king george

to celebrate the 230th birthday of the united states, juan cole is having a little holiday contest. can you identify how many of the complaints which thomas jefferson and his fellow signatories leveled against king george and britain in the declaration of independence could be leveled against george bush and his administration by current american and/or iraqi citizens?

the first one on jefferson's list is easy:

he has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good

this complaint against the department of homeland security is oddly comical in its archaic construction:

he has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance

while these offenses of the military occupation should be familiar to the iraqis:

he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us for protecting them, by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states

and these offenses familiar to the anonymous captives at guantanamo bay and hidden elsewhere in once-abandoned gulags scattered around the globe.

for depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences

jefferson's list is quite long. for now, the rest of king george's crimes i leave to you.

still on the hook

in light of karl rove's apparent public relations victory this month, for the sake of all the depressives on the "karl rove indictment watch", it's very important to clarify one important truth. in fact it is the only truth we know for certain. everything else is simply speculation, spin and rumor.

karl rove is not off the hook. if karl rove were off the hook, the man dangling rove at the end of his line, special prosecutor patrick fitzgerald, would have said so himself. to this day he has not.

despite all the noise of the past month, only one rove-related development concerning the plame cia leak investigation actually occurred in that time: the june 13 announcement, by karl rove's attorney robert luskin, that fitzgerald "formally notified" him that "absent any unexpected developments, he does not anticipate seeking any criminal charges against rove".

that's it.

luskin did not announce "my client will not be charged" or "my client is in the clear" or "my client is no longer being investigated". he announced that his client does not anticipate any criminal charges. big difference. especially when you're a lawyer.

regarding that announcement, there was no public statement from the prosecutor's office. no confirmation. no denial. nada. zero. zilch.

so luskin's statement to this day dangles without corroboration from the only person who could definitively confirm it.

as rove's attorney, luskin is of course in business to present his client in the best light possible. if fitzgerald had let rove "off the hook", luskin would have unequivocably said so. and probably with greater fanfare, if that were possible. but in fact, to this date, luskin has not offered any documentary evidence or any transcript of any communication from fitzgerald that his client is "off the hook".

so all this talk of karl rove being "off the hook" and "in the clear" is still wholly premature, until fitzgerald himself says so. the rest is just spin.

as i had earlier posted in "still waiting", what we're all waiting for is an announcement from patrick fitzgerald himself. his is the only statement worth anything. and as i had posted in "the waiting game", it was an uncorroborated statement by rove's attorney, that "they expect that a decision will come sometime in the next two weeks", that originally set the waiting game in motion.

so what, if anything, may have happened to precipitate this latest spin from the rove team? clearly fitzgerald wants something from rove. fitzgerald already has libby. it appears fitzgerald has rove, otherwise, he'd have nothing to pressure him with, and more importantly, he'd simply let rove off the hook. so, in a pattern already established with his prosecutions in chicago, fitzgerald's looking up the food chain for much bigger fish.

that of course would be rove's boss, george bush, and/or libby's boss, dick cheney.

i think fitzgerald got what he wanted from rove. especially after turdblossom's five trips to the grand jury.

but fitzgerald will not cut him loose until rove's testimony pans out, which might not be determined until the end of the libby trial sometime in 2007.

so rove's still on that hook.

and he'll wriggle there, like the worm that he is, until fitzgerald himself says so.

liar

yes, i know — politicians lie, fib, equivocate, prevaricate, fabricate, dissemble, misinform and mislead like fish breathe water — not exactly breaking news.

but senate intelligence committee chair arlen specter seems to have told us a desperate ass-saving whopper that needs to be called out.

you'll recall my post "the not ready for prime time players", which highlights specter's cowardly proposal to grant amnesty to administration officials who may have broken federal law by engaging in the widespread warrantless wiretapping of american citizens. if blanket amnesty for the bush administration weren't craven enough, specter's proposal, if granted, would also make that amnesty retroactive to 1978, the year congress enacted the fisa statute, which created the fisa court, the only judicial body charged with reviewing federal warrant applications on matters of national security.

which means that every illegal espionage act for the past thirty years would be summarily disregarded with only a signature. so much for the party of accountability.

you'll also recall in the update to that post, that news of specter's call for amnesty seems to have been the result of a gross misreading of the proposed legislation by the washington post. it seemed that specter's bill wasn't quite as servile and loathsome as we've come to expect from the rubberstamping politburo we used to call congress. specter's immediate, vociferous and unequivocal prime-time denials seemed so genuine — or was it our desperate wish to believe that congress would not so eagerly castrate itself for a president whose approval ratings rival nixon's that made us so gullible?

glenn greenwald: i have now obtained (with the help of the aclu) a copy of specter's marked-up proposed legislation, which makes quite clear that specter simply was not telling the truth when he denied proposing amnesty to the administration. the bill in question was one which specter substituted last week in the judiciary committee for the prior legislation he proposed back in march (the reason the new version was not available online was because — according to the aclu — he introduced it only in the committee, but not yet on the senate floor). in sum, specter's legislation amends the provision of fisa which provides for criminal penalties, and then, astonishingly, makes those revisions retroactive all the way back to 1978 (when fisa was enacted). the effect and almost certainly the intent of those revisions is to immunize the president and anyone acting under his authority from criminal liability for violating fisa — just as the post and the aclu correctly reported, and just as specter falsely denied. ... currently, section 109(a) of fisa provides that "a person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally - (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute ..." that means that anyone who eavesdropping on americans without complying with the warrant requirements of the statute (fisa) is committing a felony. to amend this provision to include the phrase "or under the constitutional authority of the executive" after "authorized by statute," makes it legal to eavesdrop not only in compliance with fisa (i.e., by obtaining a warrant), but also under the "constitutional authority" of the president to engage in warrantless eavesdropping even if that warrantless eavesdropping is prohibited by fisa (which it is). ... section 801 of specter's proposed bill specifically provides that "nothing in this act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the president to gather foreign intelligence information or monitor the activities or communications of any person reasonably believed to be associated with a foreign enemy of the united states." that language tracks precisely the language used to define the parameters of the warrantless eavesdropping program, and it makes crystal clear that its intent is to declare legal the nsa program. and that provision is one of the provisions that has retroactive application back to 1978, which means the specter bill goes back in time — 28 years — and transforms fisa from a statute which has always regulated the president's eavesdropping power into one which places no limits on that eavesdropping power of any kind. ... what is extremely noteworthy — and worth emphasizing — is that arlen specter amended his legislation to include the most extremist provision imaginable (retroactive amnesty for criminal behavior), all in order to please the president's allies on the judiciary committee (led by sen. kyl) — who, as always, are marching to the dictates of the white house, which obviously is willing to accept new fisa legislation only if it provides them with immunity from criminal prosecution for their lawbreaking. but even more notable still is the fact that after engaging in this behavior, specter went on national television and dishonestly denied that he was doing that.... specter was so embarrassed by his amnesty provision once the post revealed it that he simply denied that his legislation contained it even though it so plainly does. specter's dishonesty aside, these shenanigans reveal what the white house is really after. their senatorial minions are going to support nsa legislation only if it contains full amnesty for the lawbreakers in the administration. the white house will then "reluctantly" agree to a newly revised fisa, and will have full immunity from criminal prosecution. specter will be the primary sponsor of this, and the media will drool over his "maverick" status and suggest that it's unreasonable to argue that specter is acting as the obedient white house shill that he always, in the end, becomes. if even the independent, rule-of-law-loving specter advocates amensty, then doesn't that show that it's reasonable? the white house insists that it has clear legal authority for warrantless eavesdropping, so why are retroactive amendments to fisa's criminal provisions necessary at all? and if we stand by and allow the republicans in congress to legislatively exonerate the president and his aides from breaking the law, it is hard to imagine what we won't stand by and tolerate. if the president can break the law and then use his party's control over the congress to grant him legislative immunity from the consequences of his criminal behavior, no hyperbole is required to say that the rule of law exists only as an illusion.

the joke is on us

from the daily papers juan cole brings us a taste of mideast humor. who knew the iranians were so damn funny?

[an official inside president mahmoud ahmadinejad's circle] joked that there was not [sic] need for the us to invade iran. he said that the us had invaded afghanistan and established an islamic republic there. then it had done the same thing in iraq. since iran has had an islamic republic for 27 years, he said, there really isn't a point in a us invasion.

the not ready for prime time players

it's saturday night, so let's tune into the not-ready-for-prime-time players. but it's not the cast of nbc's saturday night live we'll be watching, though this season's replacements from washington d.c. — that tragicomic capital of calumny and calamity — should prove as entertaining as the originals, if nothing else. we should by now be used to nothing else.

as i forewarned in my post "elegy", the constitutional crisis facing the country can only be resolved by congress' resumption of its responsibilities to both its constituents and itself as a concrete bulwark against any encroachment on its powers and duties by either of the other two branches of government — in these circumstances, the encroachments of the bush administration against the nation's time-tested system of checks and balances.

as glenn greenwald argues with his characteristic clarity — and frustration — in his post "a new low — the senate seeks to 'pardon' the president for past lawbreaking", from which i excerpt liberally, the 109th congress, especially as represented by senate intelligence committee chair arlen specter, is not quite ready for prime time:

observing and commenting on the behavior of arlen specter is one of the most unpleasant obligations a person can have, but for anyone following the nsa eavesdropping scandal specifically, and the bush administration's abuses of executive power generally, it is a necessary evil. the principal reason that the bush administration has been able to impose its radical theories of lawbreaking on the country is because congress, with an unseemly eagerness, has permitted itself to be humiliated over and over by an administration which does not hide its contempt for the notion that congress has any role to play in limiting and checking the executive branch. and few people have more vividly illustrated that institutional debasement than arlen specter, who, along with pat roberts, has done more than anyone else to ensure that congress completely relinquishes its constitutional powers to the president. congressional abdication is so uniquely damaging because the founders assumed that congress would naturally and instinctively resist encroachments by the executive, and the resulting institutional tension — the inevitable struggle for power between the branches — is what would preserve governmental balance and prevent true abuses of power. but for the last five years, congress has done the opposite of what the founders envisioned. they have meekly submitted to the almost total elimination of their role in our government and have quietly accepted consolidation of their powers in the president. if the congress is unmoved by their constitutional responsibilities, then at least basic human dignity ought to compel them to object to the administration's contempt for the laws they pass. after all, the laws which the administration claims it can ignore and has been breaking are their laws. the senate passed fisa by a vote of 95-1, and the mccain torture ban by a vote of 90-9, and it is those laws which the president is proclaiming he will simply ignore. and yet not only have they not objected, they have endorsed and even celebrated the president's claimed power to ignore the laws passed by congress. and that failure, more than anything else, is what has brought us to the real constitutional crisis we face as a result of having a president who claims the power to operate outside of, and above, the law. a bill proposed yesterday by arlen specter to resolve the nsa scandal — literally his fifth or sixth proposed bill on this subject in the last few months — would drag the congress to a new low of debasement. according to the washington post, specter has introduced a bill "that would give president bush the option of seeking a warrant from a special court for an electronic surveillance program such as the one being conducted by the national security agency." this proposal is the very opposite of everything specter has saying for the last several months: specter's approach modifies his earlier position that the nsa eavesdropping program, which targets international telephone calls and e-mails in which one party is suspected of links to terrorists, must be subject to supervision by the secret court set up under the foreign intelligence surveillance act (fisa). a law which makes it "an option" — rather than a requirement — for the government to obtain a warrant before eavesdropping is about as meaningless of a law as can be imagined. but that complete change of heart by specter is not even nearly the most corrupt part of his proposed bill. for pure corruption and constitutional abdication, nothing could match this: another part of the specter bill would grant blanket amnesty to anyone who authorized warrantless surveillance under presidential authority, a provision that seems to ensure that no one would be held criminally liable if the current program is found illegal under present law. the idea that the president's allies in congress would enact legislation which expressly shields government officials, including the president, from criminal liability for past lawbreaking is so reprehensible that it is difficult to describe. ... what makes this proposed amnesty so particularly indefensible is that specter himself has spent the last two months loudly complaining about the fact that he — along with the rest of the country — has been denied any information about how this illegal, secret eavesdropping has been conducted. has that power been abused? has it been exercised for political, rather than national security, reasons? before one even considers shielding those responsible for this lawbreaking from liability, wouldn't one have to at least know the answer to those questions? ... specter receives substantial criticism because of the flamboyant way in which he engages in what can only be described as sado-masochistic rituals with the administration. he pretends to exercise independence only to get beaten into extreme submission, and then returns eagerly for more. it is as unpleasant to watch as it is damaging to our country. but specter's unique psychological dramas should not obscure the fact that it is the entire congress which has failed in its responsibilities to take a stand against this president's lawbreaking and abuses, and there is plenty of blame to go around in both parties. the reason the president has been allowed to exert precisely the type of unrestrained power which the founders sought, first and foremost, to avoid, is because the congress has allowed him to.

update:

to glenn's further consternation, it looks like the post may have only imagined the heinous amnesty proposal in specter's bill:

before i wrote the post, i searched for the actual text of specter's bill in order to read it myself, but could not find it (specter's website is one of the worst sites for any senator, as it is usually a month or more behind). as a result, my post ... was based upon the post's reporting about specter's bill, rather than my own reading of it. i have now had a chance to review the actual text of specter's bill and cannot find any basis for the post's claim that it contains an amensty [sic] provision for past violations of the law. ... there is simply nothing in it which supports the post's report.

glenn had good cause to be cautious — this wasn't the first time that the post bungled the reading of the ever-multiplying proposals spawning from the senate intelligence committee:

before i wrote the post on friday, i was very reluctant to post anything about specter's bill in reliance on the report of the washington post. that's because the post previously published a front-page article about another fisa-related bill, this one proposed by sen. michael dewine, which was completely inaccurate about what the bill actually provided — not with regard to minor details of the bill, but with regard to its fundamental provisions. this is what happened. on march 17, the post published a front-page article by charles babington regarding the proposed legislation introduced by dewine (co-sponsored by sens. snowe, hagel, and graham), which was offered by those senators as the "compromise" solution when the republicans on the senate intelligence committee refused to hold hearings to investigate the nsa warrantless eavesdropping program. the post article falsely depicted this gop bill as vesting oversight power in the congress to stop warrantless eavesdropping, even though the bill provided nothing of the kind. specifically, the post article claimed — erroneously — that the bill would allow the administration to engage in warrantless eavesdropping only if a newly formed senate intelligence subcommittee approves of the program's renewal every 45 days. in fact, the legislation provided nothing of the sort. it gave no power whatsoever to any senate committee to approve or disapprove of warrantless eavesdropping. contrary to the post's front-page claim, that legislation would have vested no power whatsoever in the congress (or the courts) to stop the warrantless eavesdropping. it merely required that the administration "brief" the subcommittee, but the subcommittee (along with everyone else) would be completely powerless under that bill to stop the administration from engaging in warrantless eavesdropping. on that day, i first read the post article about this proposed legislation, but then found the legislation itself and read it. it was very clear that the post was simply wrong in what it told its readers on its front page about this significant legislation — wrong about the legislation's fundamentals.