FunctionalAmbivalent

The Worst Kind of Chicken

I have not one iota of doubt that closing the prison at Guantanamo and bringing the accused terrorists there to the United States for trial and imprisonment is the right thing to do. The value of the United States to the world depends upon us being a free country under the rule of law, strong and brave and better than the rest. Guantanamo is a monument to everything this country isn't, and shouldn't be.

I believe that the Republican Party of today generally disdains the power of our freedoms. I believe that most Republicans would sacrifice that which gives this country value. They defend torture and willingly give the Bush Administration a pass on all kinds of extralegal activities that are modern version of the prerogatives enjoyed by the King of England in colonial times. I believe that the underlying reason for Republican willingness to jettison our freedoms is physical fear.

The underlying Republican view is that we're a nation of chickens. Their political strategy is to do what they can to make us more afraid.

All of that said, physical fear is at least something I understand. I get how it can bend a person's thinking. And I get the trauma 9/11 visited on this country, and the horror of terrorist attack and murder. I don't respect those who advocate torture and Executive Branch lawlessness. I believe they're selling our country out, making it weaker and less worthwhile. But I understand their motivations on a human level.

Which brings me to Democrats and, in particular, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Yesterday, Harry Reid sold this country out, deciding that it would be better to maintain the open wound of Gitmo than to take a political risk in order to re-assert the greatness of the United States.

I understand physical fear and the way it can make people do things they would never otherwise do. I don't understand rich, powerful people with locked-in pensions and perpetual stature selling out their country for the sake of preserving their jobs. Not their lives: their jobs.

That's selling this country cheap.

Torture and lawlessness are not what this country is about, and the Republican tendency to justify both out of physical fear is a disgrace. What Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues are doing right now is disgrace squared. If Republicans are now habitually putting party above country, Reid and the craven Democrats who joined him have taken self-interest to a whole new level. They're putting themselves above both party and country, out of fear not for their lives, but for their careers.

Freedom, people like to say, isn't free. It takes courage and sacrifice. We ask our troops to sacrifice every day, and we pretend to honor that even as we, ourselves, refuse to take even small risks to preserve our nation. What Harry Reid has done is so small, so infinitesimal in spirit and patriotism that is comes close to constituting treason. Certainly, it's a violation of his oath of office. The first job of those in office in the United States is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Reid has failed utterly to do that, sacrificing the Constitution for the sake of his own stature. For that, he should be stripped of that stature, removed first as Majority Leader and, when his term is up, Senator.

More than that, he reminds us why we need to fully and publicly investigate the abuses of the post-9/11 period. It's not about condemnation of the Bush Administration. It's about forever excising the cancer of lawlessness that has infected our government, and that Reid wants to enable for the sake of heading off a 30 second attack ad in his next campaign. That cancer is not just the biggest threat to the survival of this country; it's also the biggest threat to this country's value to the world.

The Party of Small Government Reveals, Once Again, a Preferance For All-Powerful Government

Taking a break from insisting that Republican Presidents should have the power to imprison and torture people they don't like in order to gain political support for their policies, pissy Republicans have decided to use government to penalize corporations opposed to the Republican agenda.

Specifically, Republicans are going to offer amendments to climate change legislation designed to punish a small group of big corporations which is tying to find reasonable middle ground. The amendments penalize by name members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of corporations that "have come together to call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions."

If the legislation is passed, the amendments remove tax breaks given previously to those corporations by Congress. Corporations that do not endorse climate change legislation will retain their tax breaks.

Climbing Out of the Memory Hole: The Right's Dedication to the Truth

A few years ago, an Army enlisted man writing under the pseudonym Scott Thomas, wrote an article in The New Republic claiming that American troops in Iraq were cracking under the pressure of fighting a virtually invisible enemy. He was, of course, condemned by the right, primarily based on statements made by his sergeant, who swore that he had never seen anything like the chaos "Thomas" reported. "Thomas" was accused of dishonoring the military.

Yes, well: Yesterday, that very same Sergeant was convicted by an American military court of murder. The court concluded that he had handcuffed four Iraqi prisoners before shooting them in the backs of their heads. Two other, lower-ranking members of the unit were also convicted of murder.

The enlisted man who wrote the piece, whose real name is Scott Thomas Beauchamp, continues to serve honorably.

I look forward to the apologies of right wing politicians, bloggers and radio hosts who condemned Beauchamp as a liar and a traitor. Clearly, he was absolutely right about the pressure getting to otherwise good soldiers.

Remember When Republicans Thought It Unpatriotic To Criticize the Commander-In-Chief When Troops Were In Harm's Way?

Not so much, now that the Commander-In-Chief is a Democrat. At about the time Navy SEALs were parachuting into the Indian Ocean, Newt Gingrich was Twittering:

President obama is making a major mistake in not forcefully outlining the rules of civilization for dealing with pirates We look weak

the navy has plenty of resolve It is the white house that is confused

Newt Twittered, of course, with no knowledge of operational realities. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that operations of this sort are undertaken quietly, with spokesmen on camera making placating noises while hard resources are brought to bear on the point of conflict. Newt could have kept his mouth shut while the drama played out, protecting both his own reputation and showing the same solidarity with and support for the CINC he demands when the White House is in Republican hands. Instead, like just about everyone else on the right, he spent the whole weekend bitching about President Obama.

Republicans clearly assume we've all got really short memories. They act as if none of us can remember what happened over the last eight years. Every time a Democrat criticized President Bush, the Republicans accused "defeatocrats" of being on the side of the terrorists. And every time Democrats wanted to exert political control over military activities, Republicans howled that control should be left with commanders in the field.

So here they are with a real-time trail of complaints about the President while a military operation is taking place, and when the operation goes brilliantly they compound their humiliation with after-action bitching that the President was feckless because he left operational decisions to his commanders in the field rather than providing assertive leadership from the White House.

My question is: do Republicans think the road back to relevance is paved with obvious hypocrisy? Because, apparently, Newt does, and he's supposed to be one of the smart ones.

Whatever Could Be the Difference?

The same Republican Party that demanded an instant end to recounts in the close, contested 2000 Presidential election promises "World War III" if the Senate tries to seat the winner of the close, contested 2008 Minnesota Senate race.

Put Up or Shut Up

Every time I suggest increasing a tax or adding government spending, conservatives who comment regularly on this blog suggest that if I want something I should raise my own taxes and pay for it myself.

OK, conservatives, I've got a question for you based on the same logic: should those Republicans who voted against the economic stimulus package refuse to accept any of the money in their own Congressional districts?  Because it seems to me they should, as a matter of principle, refuse all that destructive help.

Small Corruption, But Corruption Nonetheless

A long time ago, on Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy did a thing where he dressed up as a white guy and discovered that white people don't have to pay for anything. He walked through his daily life, except that he was white instead of black, and discovered that life for whites was ridiculously easy. For example, he went into a bank to take out a loan and discovered that white people didn't have to fill out paperwork; they just take as much money as they want. It was a funny bit of satire, but I'm reminded of it by Senator Chris Dodd's apparent assumption that, as a Senator, he lives in a world a lot like that. Specifically, he lives in a world where everyone gets breaks on their home mortgages:

He says he knew he was on a V.I.P. list at Countrywide, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender and one of the early casualties of the financial collapse — and now the target of dozens of lawsuits over predatory lending. But he said he did not “seek or expect” preferential treatment, which has left everyone wondering what exactly the V.I.P. list was for.
...

According to company e-mails unearthed and reported by Portfolio.com, Countrywide waived fees and provided mortgages at discounted rates when Mr. Dodd refinanced his homes in the District of Columbia and Connecticut. The favorable treatment could save him thousands of dollars over the course of the loans.

Call it The Rostenkowski Trap, named for former Speaker of the House Dan Rostenkowski, who felt so entitled to special treatment that he no longer noticed that he didn't have to pay for his expensive steak dinners -- or just about anything else. It's the feeling of entitlement that seems to infect some people after long periods of holding unquestioned power. Falling into the Rostenkowski Trap is how Ted Stevens came to believe that the free stuff he was getting -- massage chairs, home remodeling -- didn't have any consequence. They were just things that appear wonderfully in his life, that have no effect on him one way or the other and that really aren't worth reporting on his financial disclosure forms. Would you report it if someone opened a door for you going into a restaurant? Of course not.

Chris Dodd was a powerful Senator with contacts in the banking industry, and that industry treated him well. They opened a lot of doors for him, sure, but not to buy influence. It was just the kind of thing that happens. What's the problem?

The arrogance of all this is that Stevens and Dodd and every other corrupt politician going back to the very beginning believe that living a friction-free existence has no effect at all on how they see the world. In their own minds, they're still just public servants, doing the people's business. They're convinced of their own purity, even as they preserve a status quo that works a whole lot better from where they're standing than it does for the rest of us.

No Hobgobblins For These Little Minds

Conservatives, previously outraged that the Mainstream Media didn't pick up the National Enquirer's story on John Edwards' affair, later defended the Mainstream Media for not picking up the National Enquirer's story on Sarah Palin's affair. Now they're back to being outraged, this time because the Mainstream Media haven't picked up the National Enquirer story about one of Barack Obama's childhood mentors, who is accused of being a child molester.

It just serves to show you how partisan and unreliable the American news media is today.

It sure does, Confederate Yankee. Those partisan bastards, using the same journalistic standards for everyone. Who do they think they are?

What Goes Around Comes Around, Sanctimony Edition

The Democrat who replaced Republican Mark Foley after Foley "befriended" several underage Congressional pages has agreed to pay his mistress $121,000 to keep her from suing him.

(Tim) Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, the staffers said. A Mahoney spokesperson would not answer questions about the alleged affair or the settlement, but said Allen resigned of her own accord and "has not received any special payment from campaign funds."

The affair apparently began while Mahoney was campaigning against Foley, citing the incumbent's immorality as reason to throw him out of office.

We Await Conservative Outrage That the Media Haven't Picked Up This Particular National Enquirer Story

Regular readers outraged that the mainstream media declined to re-report the National Enquirer's coverage of John Edwards' lovechild (read comments here) will no doubt be further outraged to know that the mainstream media are burying the identity of Sarah Palin's lover as reported in the previously highly credible supermarket tabloid.

Comments are open! Express your dismay at horrific media bias at will!