What Values?

Responding to the Supreme Court Decision on Guantanamo tribunals, President Bush stated that he will continue to do everything in his power to protect the American people.

But what ever happened to protecting American liberties and values?

For years, Radical Right Republicans have been screeching “Family Values” and pointing fingers at the immoral “Liberal Elite.” Bibles in hand, they assert that they alone possess the moral high-ground. But their actions demonstrate the opposite...

Bush urges others to follow the law, but scorns it to suit his purposes. Alberto Gonzales, in charge of enforcing the laws, has become the President’s Chief Enabler when it comes to deciding which laws to follow and which to reject. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have orchestrated a top-down policy of prisoner treatment that goes against everything our nation says it stands for--dignity, human rights, justice. And leaking is a crime against our nation…unless it’s the President’s inner circle doing the leaking. Supporters of Bush, including smirking, arrogant Ralph Reed, are less pious Christians than greedy, money-grubbing con men.

The Executive Branch seems to know no bounds when it comes to hypocrisy.

They’ve lost sight of the principles that made our nation great, principles that we want to export to the rest of the world. Innocent until proven guilty. Facing your accuser. Due process. Transparency. Accountability. Open-mindedness.

Conservatives speak as if they have already determined the guilt of those we have detained in Guantanamo and elsewhere, yet in case after case we discover that we have rounded up scores of innocent people whose lives have been forever damaged by torture and lengthy detention.

I would rather be less safe and have our nation’s principles preserved than have the blood of torture on my hands or the injustice of indefinite detention without recourse on my conscience.

Lt. Commander Charles Swift, lawyer for Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed, spoke to Chris Matthews of Hardball yesterday. When asked about the crux of the Supreme Court’s decision, he put it perfectly:

It‘s how we conduct ourselves. It has to do where if we say that our opponent can cause us not to follow the rules anymore, then we‘ve lost who we are. We‘re the good guys. We‘re the guys who follow the rule and the people we fight are the bad guys and we show that every day when we follow the rules, regardless of what they do. It‘s what sets us apart. It‘s what makes us great and in my mind, it‘s what makes us undefeatable, ultimately.

These are the rules--the principles--that matter to me. The principles that seem to matter to conservatives--vengeance, injustice, retribution, secrecy, prejudgment, preemption, propaganda, torture--are what used to be called vices.

Washington Flood...Of Incompetence

I haven’t written anything in almost a week because I don’t know where to begin. President Bush and the GOP have made a mess of so many important things...

Iraq

Like a circle of toddlers at nap time, Republican Senators whined and pouted last week about two Democrat-proposed timetables for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, one date-certain, the other open-ended.

But the moment Republicans took a break from shouting “Cut And Run, Cut And Run”, General Casey, the top military commander in Iraq, announced...a tentative timetable for withdrawal!

President Bush stumbled into the fray by stating that, unlike the Democrats, Casey’s plan will be “aimed toward achieving victory.” The subtext being that the Democrats are wimps and only withdraw in defeat, while withdrawals orchestrated by military brass are somehow more noble and likely to be characterized as victory.

Of course, neither Bush nor his spineless party articulated what their notion of “victory” might look like. It seems to include chaos, kidnappings, torture, beheadings, assassinations and civil war, which is a mighty strange, if not grotesquely inadequate and dishonest, definition.

And speaking of dishonest, Bush told graduating cadets at West Point that “the war began on my watch but it’s going to end on your watch.” But not if General Casey and the GOP incumbents have their way. Their noble, victorious withdrawals from Iraq are already being timed to coincide with the election cycle. Casey’s plan calls for the first large shipment of troops to arrive home beginning this September. How convenient.

The Environment

The HBO series Real Sports did a piece this week concerning the epidemic rise among young Americans of asthma, directly attributable to power plants polluting at levels that used to be illegal. The show highlighted how the Bush Administration gutted parts of the Clean Air Act and vacated lawsuits that were well on their way to forcing huge polluters to clean their emissions. That’s right, folks--Bush and the GOP just walked away from enforcing the laws, then changed the laws, all in favor of the power companies.

This is old news, but in light of the headline this week from scientists that the earth is at its warmest point in at least 400 years, the story was heartbreaking in an entirely new way.

Republican greed-whores argued that enforcing the laws would have made energy costs higher. But what they really meant was that the lawsuits would have forced their CEO buddies to buy seventy foot yachts instead of the ninety footers. Those plants were quite profitable--at the expense of our nation’s children. It’s a crying shame, and the executives of that industry should be disgusted by their own greed and toxic callousness.

Liberty

The New York Times disclosed last week that the government has been recording and analyzing every wire transfer of every person on the planet. Bush and Cheney were screaming mad at the story, not because it harmed our war on terrorism--it didn’t--but because it was yet another high-profile instance of executive-branch excess and potential illegality. Of damning importance was the fact that Congress was notified of the program only after it was in jeopardy of being exposed by the media.

The spying came as a surprise to most Americans, but the terrorists have known about it for some time--wire transfer traffic among Islamofascists has steadily fallen since the program started because terrorists eventually caught on. “We’re no longer using phones, beepers, smoke-signals...and still we’re getting caught. Duh, it was those wire transfers through Pakistan!”

Wages

Congress recently voted to give itself decent pay raises (in line with inflation) while almost simultaneously voting, for the ninth straight year, to leave the minimum wage where it is. It was their formalized way of saying “f-you” to blue-collar Americans, who should be happy to live in a country where they can buy a lottery ticket giving them the same chance of lifting their economic fortunes as they have through hard work. In other words, virtually none.

If anybody out there still thinks that the Republicans in Washington care about anybody but corporate executives, I’d be happy to laugh loudly in their face. Never in my lifetime have I seen a more brazen group of political pirates than the greedy, money-soaked corporate puppets running Congress.

I’ll leave these other items for later: massive voting fraud in Ohio during the ’04 election; the essential Voting Rights Act renewal being delayed by the meddling GOP; FEMA being bilked out of billions of Katrina dollars; the swing vote on the Supreme Court now seems to be Radical Right Posterboy Samuel Alito; what a pitiful mess.

Staying The Course Of Failure

Vice President Dick Cheney crawled from the shadow of his bunker this week to throw a few pearls of wisdom to the little people. But when asked about his now-famous “Last Throes” comment, a stone-faced Cheney tersely confessed, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we’ve encountered [in Iraq].”

Anybody in Cheney’s small circle of radical neo-con friends, that is. But a long list of politicians, analysts and intelligence officers did. And they were ignored. That’s the tragedy of the Iraq invasion, and the reason Cheney and his assistant, President Bush, are now considered dangerously incompetent and no longer trusted by the public to administer foreign policy.

But these realities don't keep Republican lawmakers from clinging to the pseudo-strategy of “Staying The Course” in Iraq. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, they insist that we should be patient, citing the killing of terrorist Zarqawi as a sure sign of progress. Which is like deciding to stay in a burning house because you find a ten-dollar bill on the floor.

From all first-hand accounts, Iraq continues to disintegrate. By any measure--IED explosions, civilian deaths, gas lines, electric service--life in Iraq is getting worse, not better. Growth in the ranks of Iraqi security forces has been offset by a splintering of militia factions along sectarian lines, producing torture and death squads with ethnic cleansing as their objective.

Average Americans understand that a few new school houses and a few more minutes of rationed electricity have no value in a community where kidnapping, rape, torture and indiscriminate death stalk every street, where people are caught between car bombs and so-called smart bombs on a daily basis.

Americans are also beginning to understand that open-ended occupation emboldens terrorists and empowers their recruiters, whereas deadlines motivate citizens in Iraq’s political center to establish control of their country. Iraq has faced numerous deadlines--to form a constitution, to hold elections, to form a cabinet--and they have been modestly effective.

So when Cheney, Rove and Bush bash deadlines, remember their track record and imagine how much better our nation and world would be if we had done the opposite. “Staying The Course” is no different. It is a course of continuing failure, stagnation and waste, and its supporters care more about staying in office than facing the reality of their party's mistakes.

By contrast, deadlines are the course of motivation and encourage the fleeting possibility of peaceful Iraqi self-determination.

Coulter Conservatism

The moment Karl Rove knew he was not going to be charged with a crime he went back to doing what he does best. Smearing—or Coultering—his opponents. At a recent event, Rove declared that if Jack Murtha had his way, terrorist Al Zarqawi would never have been captured. But Rove conveniently missed the bigger point:

If Kerry or Gore had been President they wouldn’t have created the mess that gave rise to Zarqawi.

The Bush invasion of Iraq made Zarqawi the terrorist he was, and jump started a new Queda cell in the mismanaged turmoil of Iraq. But Rove won’t take responsibility for that any more than he will take responsibility for leaking a CIA operative’s name to journalist Matt Cooper.

In a TV interview, RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman felt emboldened to ask critics if they "owe Karl Rove an apology?" Only after Rove apologizes for leaking. In other words, when hell freezes over. Apparently, according to Bush, if it isn’t against the law, it can’t be bad. Or immoral or unethical. Those are his so-called values.

But Rove wasn’t finished. At the same age soft, saggy Karl Rove was turning the College Republicans into a hate organization, John Kerry and John Murtha were dodging bullets and winning medals on the front lines of war. Now Rove has the disgusting audacity to denigrate their service by suggesting that "they may be with you for the first shots. But they're not going . . . to be with you for the tough battles."

Rove failed to mention that neither he nor his buddies Dick and Dubya have ever served in a war. They won't even be with you for the first shots! Rove and Cheney aren’t warriors, they are garden-variety nerds. Cheney can’t even handle a gun properly. And in college, Bush wasn’t an athlete--he was a cheerleader. Not that there is anything wrong with being a nerd or a cheerleader. It’s just wrong to pretend that you’re a tough guy, and slander and smear true heroes, when you are neither. Unindicted...and unethical.

Rove wasn’t the only conservative making hypocritical, idiotic statements this week. In a recent interview, Conservative David Horowitz declared that "you cannot support the troops and not support the war." Well David, speak for yourself. Most of the rest of us apparently have a greater flexibility of mind, depth of sense and a grasp of basic logic than you do. You might as well have said, "you can’t support the GOP and not support Jack Abramoff."

In today’s Congresional war debate, Georgia Rep Charlie Norwood asked "do we have the will to win?" But he and his Republican colleagues have never had the backbone to ask, much less answer, a more fundamental question:

Do we have the will to confront the mistakes and incompetence that got us into an unnecessary war, and hold those responsible to account.

Also, Ann Coulter remained on the airwaves this week, trying to claw her way back to the land of sanity by criticizing Democrats for using tragedy victims and limbless war veterans as spokespeople. But her statement reveals an ugly truth:

Because Republicans "argue" by slandering, smearing and assassinating character, the Democrats have been forced to speak through people whose character is more virtuous than the scum who attack them.

Perhaps Ann should do what so many 9/11 widows have done. Create a charitable foundation for the betterment of the world. Then again, do we really need the Ann Coulter Foundation for Anger, Hatred, Hypocrisy, Inaccuracy, Exaggeration, Superstition and Intolerance?

Bloggers, the Fifth Estate

In theory, each of the three branches of the Federal Government hold a check and/or balance on the other two. The executive branch is like a rock, the judiciary like paper and the Congress like scissors. But since the near-election of George Bush as President, the executive branch has expanded to the size of a boulder, impossible for the judiciary to cover or the GOP-controlled Congress to cut.

For example, despite a non-stop stream of executive branch abuses, scandals and unprecedented constitutional re-interpretations, nothing of substance has been done by Congress to mitigate the President’s power grab or hold his team accountable for any number of grotesque strategic blunders. In short, Republican office-holders remain absolutely terrified of losing their newfound power. Incapable of providing meaningful oversight, they are willing to let Dick Cheney and other mean-spirited Bush thugs reinterpret the entire political dynamic, even when it forces them to support positions in direct opposition to their values--policies they secretly despise.

Enter the fourth estate. In theory the final check and balance on political power should be the media. Yet many huge stories in the past five years have been altogether avoided by televised media and given insignificant coverage by print media. The case for invading Iraq tops the list. Rather than question the President’s so-called-facts and risk being labeled unpatriotic (by the very same “fact” creators), the media meekly accepted administration statements. And on the rare occasions when media members criticized, GOP operatives bullied and smeared until the criticism went away.

Recently, the media shied away from the issue of global warming, focusing instead on Al Gore’s potential political comeback rather than his rock-solid data showing our planet is in deep trouble. This should be the biggest story in our lifetimes, but it barely hits the media radar. Why?

A mountain of evidence has been compiled, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, demonstrating vast and unexplainable 2004 voting irregularities in Ohio favoring the Republican ticket. If true, it should be the second biggest story of a lifetime, but the mainstream media remain unwilling to cover any story requiring complex analysis or risking political upheaval. Why?

Republicans slipped an item into a recent bill authorizing bases in Iraq staffed by at least fifty-thousand soldiers for at least the next ten years. Where is the story in the media? So much for standing down while the Iraqis stand up.

Anyone still puzzled by the explosive growth of the blogosphere should go back to kindergarten and start over. It has become exceedingly clear that blogs are a reflexive attempt by citizens to highlight important issues and draw conclusions about information that mainstream media are too cowed or frightened to touch.

In a recent NY Times column “Bloggers Double Down,” Maureen Dowd wonders whether bloggers are just media outsiders hoping for a seat inside. But she fails to address the core of their movement. Bloggers dream of restoring the mainstream media to what it used to be: a effort to find facts and draw conclusions, wherever that may lead. Many bloggers have neither the desire nor the training to be journalists, but they can draw conclusions as well as any editorialist. And, thanks to the internet, they have access to the same information as any newsroom.

When the mainstream media refuses to call intentional dishonesty “a lie,” something stinks. When huge stories are ignored because they might be controversial, depressing or turn off corporate sponsors, something is rotten at the core of the media enterprise. When a story always has two sides, as if facts are always purely subjective, something vital has been lost.

Blogs fill the interpretive void left by an inept, scared, profit-focused media. And given the incompetence of the Bush Administration, the failures of congressional oversight and ever-expanding Republican party scandals, bloggers are becoming an essential fifth estate.

Ann Coulter, Media Whore

Ann Coulter is the most vile, offensive media whore in America today. It's been said by her friends that she is actually a normal, balanced person in private, and that her public persona is a schtick. But whether contrived or authentic, her opinions and persona are thoroughly repulsive and intellectually bankrupt.

Treated by the media as a legitimate commentator and pundit, she is neither. Indeed, she is simply a hate-filled, bile-spewing, stereotyping sensationalist. Her opinions never visit the land of balance nor reason, but she earns millions selling books based on hyperbolic slurs and outrageous insults.

Her most recent, accusing the outspoken 9/11 widows of “enjoying their husband’s deaths,” is yet another in a long line of disgusting, shock-value garbage. More lamentable than her statements, however, are the people who believe her. According to MSNBC, 24% of poll respondents say her comments do not go too far.

I never take her deluded ramblings seriously, but trying to grasp the mentality of those who do is truly horrifying. They represent everything I loathe about humanity, and lately, about the Republican party--the party of my favorite President, liberal Abraham Lincoln.

Who are these people? The same medieval morons who think Global Warming is a lie, who think Iraq was responsible for 9/11, who think Hillary murdered Vincent Foster, who think the Bible is infallible, who think the End Days are coming soon, who think contraception is evil, who think marriage is unchanging, and who think George Bush is doing an “excellent” job. In other words, Ann Coulter’s base.

Whether out of dumb luck or calculation, Coulter doesn’t hesitate to smear, insult and offend anyone in order to sell books to a small segment of Americans who live to be angry, intolerant, arrogant, divisive, narrow-minded haters. And I'm sure her latest outrageous statements will only help her sales.

Ann Coulter will continue to operate behind the facade of legitimacy until televised media stop giving her a platform to spew her hatred. That the media has access to thousands of balanced, rational commentators on both sides of any issue makes their periodic choice of Coulter an indication that they are less journalists than tabloids. And that’s yet another disgrace.

Haters, Dividers, Republicans

The politics of bigotry is alive and well among intolerant conservatives. Topping a recent Worst President Ever poll, George Bush threw his Gay Marriage Amendment life-preserver into the political water today to try to save his sinking party, giving an angry and divisive speech supporting the Amendment. By stoking hatred and division in an election cycle, Republican spinmeisters hope to stave off in November a mass defection of voters horrified by the long list of failures and scandals produced by Bush and his inept cronies.

But confronted with this filthy strategy, White House Spokesman Tony Snow lied through his newly whitened teeth, saying that the Amendment timing had nothing to do with politics. He obviously thinks his audience is retarded.

In today's speech, Bush repeatedly used the tired Republican spook phrase “activist judges”, blaming them for overturning state laws prohibiting gay marriage (that, in fact, go clearly against the spirit of the constitution and our nation’s history of civil liberty). There was nothing arbitrary about the judges actions, as Bush cynically suggested.

And Bush kept angrily insisting that marriage is the most “enduring and important human institution.” If so, then why not an amendment to prevent divorce? Why not attack people who bear children out of wedlock? Because this Amendment isn’t about marriage. It’s about people’s fear and hatred of gays. Period.

Slavery was a fundamental and enduring part of human life for centuries, until we decided it was unjust and violated the spirit of our nation's founding documents. But that truth is irrelevant if you believe the lie that sexual orientation is a matter of choice.

The fact is, marriage has been redefined constantly. For the majority of the last two thousand years, marriages in the West were arranged, not the product of romantic love. For centuries, and within the last hundred years, middle-aged men were often encouraged to marry fourteen-year-old (or younger) girls. Brides could be traded by families like chattel. In most of the rest of the world today, marriages are still arranged. And many parts of the world still encourage plural marriage. There is nothing unchanging about it. To suggest so is a distorting, manipulative lie that plays to our most base fears and prejudices--fear of the unknown, of the other, of change.

When I listen to Bush twist and turn his way through this issue, here’s what I hear:

Humans should be treated with respect and reverence. Our humanity is the most fundamental aspect of our lives. And while I harbor no ill will towards gays, they don’t deserve to be considered human. For two thousand years, humanity has been doing just fine, but now gays want to tear down the definition of what is means to be human. In order to protect the health of humanity, we have to protect what it means to be human. Despite the fact that study after study show that gays are predominantly born gay, they should decide to ignore their genes and fundamental urges and stop being gay. In which case, they would become human. But activist judges, using their demonic “logic” and “reason” and “sense of justice,” want to pretend that gays are human, and we must stop them. Sure, gays can continue to live among us without being killed…for the most part. But we, the people, need to stop evil judges from undermining the structure of humanity, because our superstitions require us to. I know, with all humility, that God really wants us to exclude gays from humanity. He made them gay as a way to perfect our intolerance and hatred. And we must pass this amendment to prove that we are worthy. Our society and political offices depend on it.

What a sad, narrow, divisive, hate-filled position.

LATE ADDITION:

MSNBC Host Tucker Carlson tonight pleaded for Democrats and Republicans to come together and discuss banning gay marriage. "Isn't it time for an open discussion?" he asked, his anger barely masked by a veneer of phony earnestness. But when his gay guest countered that we should instead have a discussion about divorce, since Republican Senator George Allen--a big opponent of gay marriage--is a divorcee, Tucker blew his lid, enraged that the guest would be so cruel to Allen.

Tucker was angry because his guest had so clearly exposed the ridiculous hypocrisy of Allen and Tucker's conservative gay-baiting. And Tucker's wide-eyed denial that the Marrige Amendment is pure politics smells of posturing and intellectual dishonesty. It has never escaped my attention that Tucker Carlson is the picture of what conservatives claim to loathe--an elite, bow-tie-wearing dandy, straight from prep school/Ivy League central casting. That an old woman could probably beat him at arm-wrestling makes taking "tough" stands all the more imperative for Tucker, whose childhood must have been filled with teasing and slurs. He should stop the phony tough-guy pose, the manufactured outrage and the fiction of objectivity and start learning how to be honest to his viewers.