"I was afraid that if I didn't kill him, he would kill me."

The following conversation took place recently in a courtroom somewhere in America: Judge: So what exactly happened? Defendant: Well, your honor, I killed him. Judge: And why did you do it? Defendant: I was afraid that if I didn't kill him, he would kill me. more...

Problems with Bush? What problems with Bush?

Allow me to present (i.e., steal) a posting by MadMathew over on Table Talk.

Here's my reply to a coworker's observation that "Boy, you really seem to have problems with Bush."

Aside from the fact that he’s a drunken, coke-snorting frat boy who partied his way through life, never doing a damned thing except trading on his family’s name… And he deserted (stopped showing up, that is) from his cushy National Guard post during Viet Nam after the flight physicals started including drug tests… And every business he ever owned cratered right into the ground…ditto the Texas state budget… And a group of truly evil polluters from the petrochemical industry recruited him to run and financed the effort… And that he was selected into office by clear vote shenanigans in Florida, on a 5-4 vote of a partisan Republican majority on the Supreme Court, in a decision that will go down with Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson as among the court’s worst ever… And that despite having no mandate, he persists in ramming through a hyperpartisan extreme right-wing agenda, weakening pollution laws, financing tax giveaways to the rich, cutting veterans’ benefits and education assistance, walking away from already agreed upon treaties and appointing judges who will force desperate women back to the back alley butchers… And that his attorney general says those who dare question the Bush Junta are traitors (well, he said “give aid and comfort to terrorists,” but close enough)… And that if you are deemed an “enemy combatant,” with that decision left solely up to the authorities, you can be arrested without warrant, detained without lawyer or trial, held incommunicado indefinitely, and executed on the sole order of the president… And that we’ve gone from having a president who was lionized overseas, got standing ovations in foreign parliaments, who brought peace to Northern Ireland and was “this” close to achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians, to having a president whose arrogant, bellicose speeches have him almost universally despised, to the point where he dares not travel outside the U.S. for fear of historic, massive protests, except for quick photo-op trips to U.S. military bases… And that the economy is completely in the dumpster… And that he’s so inept he lost a PR battle with Saddam Insane… And that despite claims of being “born again,” and that the Iraq war was a last resort, Time magazine reported that he stuck his head into a meeting not long after Sept. 11 and shouted, “F*ck Saddam, we’re taking him out,” which doesn’t sound like someone born again OR considering war only as a last resort… And that a wave of ignorant nativism topping the Alien and Sedition Acts of the early 1800s, the Red Scare of the 1920s and the McCarthyism of the 1950s is now sweeping the country, with people being beaten and having their homes vandalized and losing jobs and being arrested simply for asking questions about invading another country that has not attacked us, with all this applauded by the crowd in Washington… Well, no, other than that, I have no problem with Little George at all.

Nope. I guess I don't have any problem with him either, once you leave all that aside.

Dean Meetup Report

I went to the Portland Dean Meetup tonight and it was a great success. We must have had over 100 people there and easily overflowed the venue we were in. Some people probably left because they couldn't get in the door. I wonder if we violated any fire codes? The most significant news of the evening was the announcement of the formation of the official Dean organization in Oregon. It is a committee of four members, two of whom were at the meetup and one of whom is former governor Barbara Roberts. She got up and spoke for a few minutes. She said she has known Dean for years when they both served as governors and that she thinks he is the "real deal". She also said that there are other former Democratic governors who will soon be coming out with endorsements for Dean. She mentioned Colorado and Washington.

We have always been at war with Eurasia

I was struck by something this afternoon. Consider the primary military, economic, and diplomatic coalitions that are beginning to form in the new Bush world order: 1) America, Great Britain and Australia 2) The European Union and Russia 3) China Does anyone besides me find it disquieting how familiar these spheres of influence are? (hint: see the title of this post)

April Fools Day Pro War Rally

No preemptive cringing

James K. Galbraith blasts those on the left who say, now that the war has started, that it would be better for its opponents to convert their efforts into support for the rebuilding of Iraq once the war is over.

The dilemma is now acute. Retreat is unthinkable. George W. Bush's neoconservatives (standing safely in the back) will figuratively execute any who quail. The level of violence will therefore be raised. Meanwhile, the prime stocks of precision munitions have been drawn down, and speculation about the future use of cluster bombs and napalm and other vile weapons is being heard. And so the political battle -- the battle for hearts and minds -- will be lost. If history is a guide, you cannot subdue a large and hostile city except by destroying it completely. Short of massacre, we will not inherit a pacified Iraq. For this reason, the project of reconstruction is impossible. No one should imagine that the civilians sent in to do this work can be made secure. To support "the groundwork" for this effort is to support a holocaust, quite soon, against Iraqi civilians and also against the troops on both sides. That is what victory means. You can watch the beginnings (if you have satellite television) even now, as injured children fill up the hospitals of Baghdad. The moral strategy would be to avoid the holocaust. To achieve that from the present disastrous position, the United States would have to accept a cease-fire, which would lead to the withdrawal of coalition forces under safe conduct. There would be no military dishonor in such a step. It would, however, entail the humiliation of the entire Bush administration, indeed its well-deserved political collapse. Too bad the moral strategy is not a practical one. The practical alternative? It is to oppose, to speak up and to write against the war, to expose and illuminate the frightful choices we confront. Let us remind our leaders at every turn of their recklessness and miscalculation. The American public may, if it chooses, reject the liberal position and support the hawks. But let us give them a choice. It is quite sure anyway that no one, in a situation as grave as this, will line up behind a platform of preemptive cringing.

Amen Mr. Galbraith. I am sick and tired of Democrats who spend their time fretting about how the Republicans will respond. Real leaders anticipate the moves of their opponents, yes. But they do not let the fear of those moves dictate their actions. For instance, Howard Dean could have cringed at the prospect of a smear campaign based on his signing civil union legislation into law. Instead he has decided to boast about it and openly dare his opponents to make an issue of it. People admire that kind of guts even if they aren't particularly sold on the issue involved. I am reminded of a story Harlan Ellison told about being hired to write a column for some magazine. The announcement of the deal was apparently followed by a burst of cancellations by readers who said that they didn't want to pay for a magazine with the writings of a commie-pinko like Ellison. Ellison asked the editor of the magazine if he was concerned about this and the editor said no, because for every cancellation they received because of his columns they received 3-4 new subscriptions for precisely the same reason. Democrats have to stop thinking in terms of the votes they might lose and instead think in terms of the votes they can win. There is a huge pool of dissatisfied voters out there. The candidate who can tap into that pool will have nothing to fear from the votes they might lose because they adopt certain positions. If you want to win the muddled middle in this country, the people who consistently list themselves as undecided, you don't do it by waiting for them to tell you what they want. You will wait forever because they do not know what they want. They are waiting for someone to tell them what they want. They will follow whoever does so in a forceful and convincing fashion(*). It is not smears that cause Democrats to lose elections. It is the way they react to them. It's tough to appear forceful when you spend all your time worrying about how the opposition will react.
(*) Dubya has this rule down cold. It is probably the primary reason he is able to have any electoral success. Lincoln may have been right when he said you can't fool all of the people all of the time. But Dubya understands that you don't have to if you can just fool enough of the people enough of the time.

More Democratic hand-wringing

There's an interesting conversation going over at the Daily KOS about the request by McAuliffe that Dems should ease up on personal attacks against other Dems. This is obviously in response to the mileage Howard Dean has been getting out of criticizing his fellow Democrats for rolling over for Bush. I'm of two minds about this: I think the biggest problem for the Dems is that they are unwilling to be vocal in their criticism and they wilt in the face of said criticism. As such, blanket prohibitions against said criticism will do nothing but leave Democratic candidates weak and unprepared for the coming battle against the GOP. However, there is a tendency, in the heat of the battle, to get to personal in ones criticism of your political opponents and that personal animus can come back to haunt you in later times. As such, I think it is a good idea not to personally attack another candidate, but I don't think it is a good idea to say that Dems should never attack, by name, those whose position is weakening the party. As such, Dean's criticism of the Democrats is to the point and much needed. I think we shouldn't spend a lot of time hand-wringing over these kind of questions (hand-wringing being the second biggest problem the Dems have had in recent years). Instead, try to keep to the simple rule that, for every time you criticize a Dem, remember to criticize a Republican at least 4-5 times (and, for Bush, make the ration more like 20:1).

Why I like Dean

I just received the following message from the Dean campaign. It demonstrates what, I think, is the primary reasons why Democrats should get behind Dean:

Hello. My name is David Salie. I'm Governor Dean's Deputy Director for Grassroots Fundraising, and I need your help. We're working on a day of nationwide events on April 26th, commemorating the third anniversary of Governor Dean's signing of Vermont's civil union legislation. We hope to organize one hundred house parties that day, each paying tribute to Governor Dean's political courage in risking his political career for doing what was right.

I have said repeatedly in the past that it is naive for the Democrats to think that they will ever find a candidate that will NOT be subject to an endless campaign of smears and innuendo. What we need is a candidate who isn't afraid to confront these smears head on instead of trying to avoid them. One of Dean's biggest potential vulnerabilities is his decision to sign Vermont's civil union law. There can be little doubt that the GOP will try to use this to hurt Dean in more socially conservative circles. Your typical Democratic candidate of the last few years would deal with this problem by either avoiding it entirely or, even worse, try to say that what he did isn't what he actually did. In the end, such a candidate comes off looking weak and cowardly. Dean, recognizing this potential problem, has chosen to preemptively respond to it by actively promoting it. The idea of holding a celebration for it is, in my opinion, brilliant. It is an open challenge by Dean to the GOP. "Bring it on" is the message he is sending. And that is the reason why I like Dean.

The Death Of The American Soul

Read the following Times UK article (courtesy truthout) and consider this: there are worse things that could happen to our soldiers than being killed in battle. One of the great horrors of war is that ordinary individuals quite often have to commit terrible acts just in order to survive, let alone complete the task to which they have been assigned. We can decry the slaughter of civilians, but I cannot honestly say that, if put in the same position, I would not do similar things. Just try to imagine it. You are deep in hostile territory. You are surrounded by people who hate you as much as they hate the regime that has oppressed them. None of your training has prepared you for this situation. Indeed, just days before you were being told by your commanders that you would be greeted as liberators. You know that enemy forces have attacked your fellow soldiers while disguised as civilians, even under the flag of surrender. Would you really be any better an example of man's love for his fellow man? This conflict is producing many more casualties then those who come home in flag draped coffins or leave parts of their body lying back on the battlefield. It is destroying the souls of individuals who have had to look into the vacant eyes of children that, seconds before, they had to gun down due to the fear that they might be carrying a bomb meant to blow them apart. They will spend the rest of their lives having to deal with that image. They will either become human wreckage or, even worse, turn hollow on the inside and view their fellow man as nothing more than "sick people" and themselves as the "chemotherapy" that will clean them out. Thanks a lot George.

Whose the fool?

I highly recommend that everyone read this post over at the Daily Kos and then read the comments that follow. It is a very interesting discussion of military tactics that made me think two things: 1) Rummy and company aren't the only ones to blame for the poor planning of this operation. The military brass may be pointing fingers at them but how many of them actually had any better understanding of what needed to be done? We shouldn't assume that, just because they are military men, that they are any better. 2) Saddam may not be able to achieve a military victory in this war, but he may be able to achieve a political victory. The example of the Tet offensive was brought up. The VietCong, by all military measures, lost badly in that offensive. But they won a political victory by demonstrating that they had the ability and the will to coordinate a large-scale, nation-wide attack against a far superior foe at a time when no one thought they could do it. The point was also brought up that those who think that Hussein is looking to go out in a blaze of glory are misunderestimating the man. He doesn't want to die gloriously. He actually wants to win and he thinks he can do it. Only the foolish would assume that he is a fool for thinking he can.

Which is the real party of ivory tower eggheads?

I'll be getting to my thoughts on Disneyland and the Two Americas soon enough, but I'd like to hilight something Digby has over on his blog:

This is yet another example of the radical Republican experimentation with every institution of the United States. Like the wild supply side experiment with radical tax cuts, the Federalist Society assault on the legal system, and the abrupt change to a doctrine of unilateralism and preventive war, it is the result of insular, second rate, ivory tower think tank intellectuals taking the reins of power and completely running amuck.

For the longest time the Republicans have succeeded in painting the Democratic party as the party of pinheaded intellectuals who never step outside their ivory towers and thus never understand what it is like to live in the real world. But, as Digby points out, it is the Republican party that is dominated, top-to-bottom, and side-to-side with ivory tower think tankers who have salivate for 20 years at the prospect of putting some of their grand theories to the test. Isn't it time for the Democrats to start hammering the Republicans for playing with American lives as part of some intellectual exercise?

The Prodigal Blogger Returns

Well, I'm back. Nothing to post at this moment as I have a crapload of stuff to catch up on. I do have some interesting thoughts based on my observations of the world sans the web. I have spent the last 6 days seeing what the world looks like to people who don't have access to the kind of information I have come to take for granted. It was depressing to say the least. More later when I am better rested.