Shiny Tricks

Red, white, blue and black

2010-09-10T20:59:00.005-04:00

Rendition continues, as Obama flouts the law with impunity.

Much has been written about the denial of due process for the five plaintiffs who claim to have been victims of the extraordinary-rendition program. But equally disturbing is the message that this verdict sends to individual American citizens, like the former Jeppesen employee, who felt a call to conscience that made him speak out, even at the risk to his own future employment, because he believed that secret kidnapping and torture were crimes in a country founded on the idea that all people, not just Americans, have inalienable rights, including protection from cruel and inhumane punishment. That his allegations could receive a public hearing in the press, but not a legitimate hearing in the American system of justice—even under an Administration headed by a former professor of constitutional law—is a daunting reflection of the clout wielded by the national-security bureaucracy in Washington, in the age of the Long War.

This isn't the beginning, but this isn't the end.

Critical thinking on Memorial Day

2010-05-31T12:36:00.005-04:00

I think we can all agree that thanking military personnel is warranted, Memorial Day or not. But what we don't do enough is analyze what they (and their families) are asked to do. Civilians are asked to do next to nothing to support our wars in Iraq (4,404 American soldiers dead, approx.) and Afghanistan (1,076 dead) -- well, we feel the economic toll, and future generations will have to actually pay for them. But our all-volunteer military is asked to do more than their fair share. As of yesterday, we've spent $1 trillion in Iraq/Afghanistan. Are we putting them in harm's way for good reason?

If you're persuaded more by economic factors, Derrick Crowe flags some poignant statistics.

According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s (CEPR) Dean Baker:

"In standard economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs. …[S]tandard economic models…project that the increase in defense spending since 2000 will cost the economy close to two million jobs in the long run."

Baker’s point in his article was that groups that scream about potential "job loss" from government "interference" never put that "loss" in any context. Government spending does stimulate economic activity during a downturn. The question is, how stimulative is one type of spending versus another? So let’s make sure we’re playing fair and put this in some perspective in terms of job creation.

It turns out that, excluding tax cuts for consumption, war spending is the least stimulative type of government spending.

An October 2007 study by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) found that per $1 billion invested in the following fields, you create wildly different numbers of jobs:

Defense: 8,555 jobs
Construction for home weatherization/infrastructure: 12,804 jobs
Health care: 12,883 jobs
Education: 17,687 jobs
Mass transit: 19,795 jobs

So if you take $1 billion in taxpayer dollars and spend it on war versus on building energy efficient homes and other infrastructure, the opportunity cost for that spending is 4,249 potential jobs. Spending it on war versus mass transit costs you 11,240 potential jobs.

This is getting unreasonable, to say the least.

If that isn't enough, this Washington Post headline says a lot about the tenuous alliances we've made that aren't built to last, but to serve as a foreign policy Band-Aid: In Afghan region, U.S. spreads the cash to fight the Taliban. I'm not so naive as to believe this is the first time civilians in a war-torn country have been bought out, but then let's never kid ourselves that Democracy is on the march. Like it is for many of us, in Afghanistan, it's about who's got their economic interests in mind.

There are many factors pushing the war machine forward. Those forces can seem overwhelming. But the onus to end war is ultimately ours. We have to decide how we engage our country's often militaristic view of the world. Where is the drone leading us? What does indefinite detention of prisoners mean for our future? How are we actively inflaming the Muslim world in the name of security? What does national security mean in the 21st century?

The only way we can survive, and thrive, as a people is to think. What are our priorities? What would you do with $1 trillion?

Democratic Party: Still hacks

2010-05-30T20:08:00.004-04:00

My favorite letter to the editor in the June issue of Harper's contains an apt description of the seemingly hapless (we wish) Democratic Party as what it really is: a keeper of establishment power and the status quo of America's plutocracy.

Kevin Baker uses unnecessarily baroque interpretations of the motives of “liberal” political actors. In my experience, based on attending three Democratic Party meetings a week for more than ten years, the role of the Democratic Party in American politics is to offer token resistance to the corporations and the rich and then to roll over. The sports analogy is not to beanbag or Little League but rather to TV wrasslin’ or the 1919 World Series. The people at the top of the Democratic Party are furthering their class interests by weakly making the case for liberal reform and then throwing the game.

This paradigm of American politics was best articulated by Harper’s Magazine’s own Walter Karp in Indispensable Enemies. Karp divided the political world into two kinds of people: “hacks” (self-interested careerists) and morally driven “reformers.” The hacks of both parties collude to keep the reformers out.

In the Sixties and earlier eras, the reformers forced concessions from the hacks. These reforms were then taken back under such hacks as Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and, sorry to say, Obama. Obama ran as a reformer, of course, but has governed as a hack. If he were a real reformer, we would have single-payer health care.

Bo Richardson
Bellingham, Wash.

That letter was in response to Kevin Baker's The vanishing of the liberal: How the left learned to be helpless. The essay becomes a history lesson on the ground liberals have ceded since the New Deal by not defending the government's role in the country's affairs. It is an indictment on the lack of party leadership in advancing core Democratic principles. At least stated principles.

My favorite passage of Baker's essay is aimed square at the Technocrat-in-chief Obama and his party of corporatist lackies.

Obama is an adroit politician and, like the last adroit Democratic president, he may be able to secure another term in the White House. Perhaps he will even be able to keep a Democratic majority in Congress, though this now seems unlikelier by the day. But to treat this as a triumph of activism is to say that a prisoner retains free will because he is able to stay in his cell. Obama, the congressional Democrats, and most of our politicians at every level now maneuver within political confines defined by financial and military interests they cannot conceive of challenging. Perversely, our ruling elite today is one of unparalleled diversity, and includes unprecedented numbers of women, minorities, and individuals who have worked their way up to power on brains and determination alone, usually without having inherited connections or wealth. It is a meritocracy much like the one long envisioned by many liberal reformers—and it has decided to capitulate, reap its considerable rewards, and draw the ladder up after it.

Who will challenge this shining fortress upon a hill? The right-wing pseudo-Populists who have devoured the Republican Party may win some victories in the short run. But the Tea Party and its fellow travelers have already become a jointly owned subsidiary of News Corp. and the likes of Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks lobby. (To understand just how fraudulent the movement is, one need only look at the $549-a-seat price tag for tickets to its first convention, and the $100,000 speaker’s fee paid to Sarah Palin. So much for box socials and sing-alongs.) Right-wing Populism is anyway inherently contradictory, a demand that the state recede to a size that will leave its citizens utterly defenseless against the gigantic forces at loose in the world today. No one is going to abolish the Federal Reserve, or the income tax, or Social Security and Medicare; if they did, small businesses and working people would be trampled beneath the corporate entities bent on their exploitation. The counter-Populism of the right is the prisoner’s last, despairing option, to move from learned helplessness to suicide.

Coming to power when he did, with the political skills and the majorities he possesses, Barack Obama squandered an almost unprecedented opportunity. But it is increasingly clear that he never intended to challenge the power structure he had so skillfully penetrated. With the recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations are, once more, people, American democracy has snapped shut again—the great, forced opening of the past 130 years has ended. There is no longer any meaningful reformist impulse left in our politics. The idea of modern American liberalism has vanished among our elite, and simply voting for one man or supporting one of the two major parties will not restore it. The work will have to be done from the ground up, and it will have to be done by us.

The ruling class has failed us time and time again. And to quote a famous politician's now-empty campaign slogan, "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Yes Mr. Obama, ironically, we are.

Gitmo task force review: What we can learn (or what we already know)

2010-05-30T13:11:00.008-04:00

The Obama administration has finally graced us with the Guantanamo Review Task Force report, a comprehensive review of all detainees held at the facility. Those reviews examined detainees' "capture information, interview reports, record searches by the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency, and Guantanamo Bay files on behavior, disciplinary infractions and mental health."

So what can be gleaned from this review? Most of this stuff isn't a surprise, but let's go over it for fun. Yes, sick, sick fun. I'll use Peter Finn's article in Saturday's Washington Post.

1. The basics: A lot of these prisoners are low-level foot soldiers and/or were captured under dubious circumstances, most likely to fill a quota or settle a score. Plus, the Obama administration didn't release this report four months ago when it was ready because it was the ethical thing to do ... er, because of politics.

The final report by the Guantanamo Review Task Force recommends that 126 of the detainees be transferred either to their homes or to a third country; that 36 be prosecuted in either federal court or a military commission; and that 48 be held indefinitely under the laws of war. A group of 30 Yemenis was approved for release if security conditions in their home country improve.

The report was completed in January but sent to select committees on Capitol Hill just this week. The administration sat on the report in the wake of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day because there was little public or congressional appetite for further discussion of its plan to close the military detention center.

2. Congress is full cowards playing politics with Gitmo as well.

It remains unclear whether the administration can gain enough support on Capitol Hill to move forward with its plan to buy a state prison in Illinois to replace Guantanamo, where 181 detainees remain. Key House and Senate committees introduced language this month into defense bills that would bar funding for any such facility in the United States.

3. We still don't know what the hell is going on. In fact, we're making all this up as we go.

Before the review, there was no single repository of information for each detainee. The task force determined that there "were more than a thousand pieces of potentially relevant physical evidence (including electronic media) seized during raids in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that had not yet been systematically catalogued."

4. Peter Finn, like most mainstream media journalists, continues to frame objections to indefinite detention without trial as something disconcerting for only "human rights activists." Those kooky kids. "Key parts of Obama's constituency"? I think it should be a concern for all of us, but I guess that isn't Finn's fault. He only copies what the review says, gets some anonymous officials to quip and adds in these lazy constructs of what Gitmo means to this country and the rest of the world.

The decision to hold 48 detainees without trial remains the most controversial part of the review process for key parts of Obama's constituency, including human rights activists. The task force said prosecution was not feasible for some detainees because the focus at the time of their capture was the "gathering of intelligence," not evidence. But these detainees still posed "a high level of threat."

5. This one goes in the "No kidding?" file. You've mean we've radicalized these scores of low-level or completely innocent Muslims we've kept imprisoned for years?

The report says those recommended for indefinite detention had significant roles in al-Qaeda or the Taliban and advanced training or expertise. It notes that "some detainees designated for detention have, while at Guantanamo, expressly stated or otherwise exhibited an intent to reengage in extremist activity upon release."

6. And, predictably, the administration postures on Gitmo and transparency and the rule of law ad nauseam. "Hey, as long as we stand up to House Republicans, we look pretty good." That's a low bar.

In a letter this month, seven Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee asked James L. Jones, the president's national security adviser, to recommend to Obama "an immediate prohibition on the transfer of any detainee out of Guantanamo Bay, and a halt to any action related to the closure of the facility."

Jones replied to the letter this week, saying that "Guantanamo has compromised our standing in the world, undermined our core values, and diminished our moral authority." He said that the Pentagon spends $150 million a year for detention operations at Guantanamo and that costs at a possible facility in Thomson, Ill., would be $70 million to $80 million.

I'm sure there's more to dissect, but it's not worth it to go on.

R.I.P. Dennis Hopper: A symbol of a generation

2010-05-29T15:37:00.004-04:00

The New York Times said in a profile of Hopper last month:

DENNIS HOPPER — actor, filmmaker, photographer, art collector, world-class burnout, first-rate survivor — never blew it. Unlike the villains and freaks he has played over the decades — the psycho with the mommy complex in “Blue Velvet,” the mad bomber with the grudge in “Speed” — he has made it through the good, the bad and some spectacularly terrible times. He rode out the golden age of Hollywood by roaring into a new movie era with “Easy Rider.” He hung out with James Dean, played Elizabeth Taylor’s son, acted for Quentin Tarantino. He has been rich and infamous, lost and found, the next big thing, the last man standing.

Dennis Hopper, the ultimate misfit, has died of cancer at age 74. Is there anyone that stayed in the public eye longer that embodies the best spirit and the worst excesses of the second half of the 20th century more than Hopper? From James Dean to 'Easy Rider' to his reclusive, written-off days to the drug problems to the constant redemption and reinvention, he seemed to set the tempo for a generation of Americans he wasn't even a part of, the Baby Boomers.

Or maybe, since he was born in 1936, he is the perfect symbol of the Lost Generation of Americans, too young for service in WWII, too old to be a Boomer, the generation that looked to James Dean's 'Rebel Without a Cause' as a rallying cry for the youth of post-war America. Outside the showers of glory history bestows on "The Greatest Generation," and preceding the ultimately insufferable Boomers' sense of entitlement and ego (yes, I'm being general), the Lost Generation had to move the country along in between very opposite towers of attitude and self-righteousness. They fought the rigidity of post-war suburban groupthink and Cold War paranoia. They laid the template for '60s-era rebellion that invariably turned commercial and commodified. It's like they fell in between the cracks of American history's golden boys, but did just as much as either The Greatest Generation or The Boomers ever did, if not more, to advance our culture and make sense of an era -- beginning in 1945 and ending whenever you'd like -- America may never emulate.

Where is the Dennis Hopper of today? Who is it? Who embodies America in 2010?

Time Life's Nazi-propaganda lampoon: Advertising at its most exploitive, fearmongering best

2010-05-29T13:40:00.010-04:00

I don't know if dark Nazi humor was their intention, but the creators of the ad for Time Life's "The Nazi's [sic]: A Warning from History" were either trying to lampoon and/or vamp Third Reich-style propaganda or they know the animalistic perversions of Americans (WWII buffs or not) all too well.

I caught the ad on Current TV (Al Gore's station, ironically). The beginning is a bit disturbing, but so blatant, it's hard not to laugh. I'm not trying to diminish the atrocities of the Nazis, but this is quite the tone. As images of smiling Germans, set to the soft voices of singing children, appear on the screen, the baritone voiceover booms:

They laughed, sang, played ...

Then in an instant, that voice goes demonic, and gunshots ring out.

... they murdered millions! It was history's most horrible nightmare. This is what evil looks like up close.

The voiceover now bellows as some relatively graphic footage of hangings, firing squads and syncopated saluting Germans plays. It claims to be the first documentary set "from inside the Reich." They apparently unearthed "unnerving" German archive footage. $59.95! Call now and get $10 off! Call this minute, no shipping and handling! (Zoom footage to feature the whites of the Germans' eyes) "Watch as everyday people turn into killers overnight!" The BBC says, "It's bursting with new facts."

"If you believe we can learn from the past, this is one collection you must own!" fires the voiceover. I wonder what the aim is there. I hope we have learned from that era, but are they alluding to a present danger? I may be looking into this too much, but who is the target audience? Older Americans, I'd say. History buffs, yes, but this inflammatory style of ad strikes at a paranoid and delusional mindset that very much exists. Far too many people toss around the Hitler label, and I think this ad isn't afraid to ride that conspiratorial fear.

They're out there. This is no surprise.

I can't embed, but here's the link for the ad. (Anytime I can plug SHOPTV: Canada, I do so.)

There's even a German spoof of a Time Life documentary on Nazi leaders. I wish I could read German.

Time Life Hitler - MyVideo

The day your love will shine, we'll try to have a good time.

2010-05-16T23:59:00.009-04:00

The latest Black Moth Super Rainbow album sounds like a robot coming to terms with having human emotions. It's pretty great. But it was after making that assessment (the music sounding like a computer that's realizing both assurance and weariness) that I read this in the liner notes the promo CD came with.

The music agreeably dwells in contradiction; the songs contained herein have a feel both earnestly nostalgic, and hauntingly futuristic. Should the robots working in our factories, vacuuming our floors, and operating our gaming consoles choose to rise up and revolt, Eating Us could, perhaps, be used to serve as the first indication that our beloved machines had begun to understand the subtle complexities of human emotion.

Now that's creepy. I'd say I'm in complete agreement.

I know they're from Pittsburgh, a dying relic of the post-WWII American industrial machine (though I understand "'Burgh's back"). Think of what the decaying heft of the Rust Belt says about capabilities and limitations of humans. These people have dealt with this reality for far longer than the rest of the country. That's exactly the sentiment that Devo speaks to, being from the rubber town of Akron, Ohio. Devo's commentary on the human race was more devolutionary focused, as in humans were to blame for their declining standards. It wasn't the machine's fault. (That said, they did delve into the technological domination of our culture.) For these bands and this region, the future came and left them with struggle and humiliation, not hope and promise.

Does it ever blow your mind that one day soon, machines will rule our lives while allowing humans to assert they are the ones in control? Has that already happened?

The brilliance (and sadness) of The Office

2010-05-11T20:24:00.006-04:00

I just caught The Office's "Scranton Rap" from a few seasons ago on TV. Classic. While this rap is The Office at its best, the episode (in which employees, including Jim, of Dunder-Mifflin's Stamford branch come to work in Scranton) exhibits the repressed-memory sadness of the ever desperate Michael Scott. As buffoonish as he is, there's a deep, clinical case smoldering.

The Office - Lazy Scranton | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

The view from Venice, Fla.

2010-05-10T23:46:00.003-04:00

365: The beach in Venice, Fla. Beautiful weather there over the weekend. The pier in the distance was connected to Sharkey's, the beachside megabar of Venice.

At the game

2010-05-01T12:03:00.001-04:00

365: Boston vs. Baltimore. Pediatric Brain Tumor Awareness: Today's blatantly obvious 'good cause.'

'Casino Jack' in DC

2010-04-29T22:39:00.007-04:00

365: I know this picture sucks, but it was a dark theater and I didn't want to use the flash from two rows back. From left, WaPo's Jonathan Capehart, 'Casino Jack' director Alex Gibney, former congressman -- the only one that was indicted for dealings with Jack Abramoff -- Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and former staffer for both Ney and Abramoff Neil Volz at E St. Theater.

It was the first public showing in DC of 'Casino Jack', the new documentary on the story of uber-lobbyist Abramoff's rise and fall. We saw the director's cut, so this version was bit exhaustive and very detailed. That was fine with me. It was a bit hacky and cheesy at times in its use of footage of 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' to punctuate some kind of loss of innocence Abramoff supposedly symbolizes (Washington was corrupted and corrosive long before, and long after, that movie, so let's stop pretending and telling ourselves lies). Though that doesn't take away from the on-key editing and expansive research into Abramoff's (and associates') deceit and decadence.

Big week at Gitmo

2010-04-27T22:56:00.006-04:00

The first military commissions trial under Barack Obama is set to begin tomorrow at Guantanamo Bay. The case of Canadian Omar Khadr, the alleged murderer of an American solider by grenade in Afghanistan eight years ago, will showcase how truly different Obama's changes to these tribunals are compared to those during George W. Bush's presidency.

Spencer Ackerman with what's at issue:

Khadr, a teenager when initially detained, has been held for nearly half his life at a facility that the Obama administration has pledged to close. He will be tried in a legal venue that Obama rejected as a Senator and embraced, in reformed fashion, as president. What happens this week at Guantanamo will determine whether Obama’s pledge that the new, revised military commissions can deliver internationally-recognized justice is meaningful: the pre-trial hearing in Khadr’s case will provide the first in-depth examination of whether Khadr’s treatment in U.S. custody amounts to torture; will determine whether prosecutors can use evidence against him acquired under abusive, coercive circumstances that civilian courts would never allow; and whether additional statements made by Khadr in subsequent and less-coercive circumstances are fair game or inextricable from his overall abuse.

The 15-year-old was in Afghanistan with his father, a supposed al Qaeda financier, when he we detained for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed an American. In the process, Khadr was shot twice. Evidence suggests that he was buried under rubble at the time of the American soldier's death.

Many have questioned why the Obama administration would pick this case, one of a child soldier who has been tortured, to be the first commissions exercise under Obama.

Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald (a Gitmo reporter extraordinaire) quotes former war court defense lawyer David Frakt today:

"They're starting off their very first prosecution of the Obama administration with a child soldier, a Westerner no less, and going into excruciating detail for two weeks of torture and mistreatment that he suffered,'' Frakt said. ``It's kind of the dream scenario for opponents of military commissions.''

Khadr claims he was at times beaten, left shackled so long in interrogation he urinated on himself and was subjected to solitary confinement and sleep deprivation -- claims that other detainees have also made through the years.

For a legal rundown of what's wrong in this case, read Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First:

Equally fundamental is that the military commissions were created to try war crimes. But even if Khadr were guilty of the acts charged - murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, and aiding the enemy - those aren't really war crimes. At least, they weren't war crimes until Congress declared them to be in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- four years after Khadr allegedly committed them. So to try Khadr for war crimes now is a violation of the Ex Post Facto clause of the U.S. Constitution, Khadr's lawyers point out. (Khadr could, of course, be tried in a civilian court for the crimes of murder and conspiracy.)

Khadr's case, then, underscores many of the fundamental problems with the military commission system - that it has no rules, little experience, almost no precedent and barely any law to guide it.

So why did the Obama administration decide to make the case of Omar Khadr its first trial in a military commission?

If the administration is hoping to showcase the strength of its military and the president's tough stance on terrorism, this probably wasn't the best way to do it.

How this case is handled will have deep ramifications going forward with the many detainee trials in queue now. And it will interesting to see how America and the media react to another remembrance of the scores of evidence of torture inflicted upon this teenager, guilty or not, and other detainees.

ADAPT protest for patients' rights

2010-04-27T19:25:00.001-04:00

365: Protesters block off the road just off Conn. Ave., in front of the Hilton. ADAPT was advocating passage of the Community Choice Act, which would give more rights to disabled patients in choosing where and how they're cared for.

See more of my protest photos.

My Lai on PBS

2010-04-26T22:20:00.004-04:00

I watched the PBS series American Experience: My Lai. Wow. I've had quite the pair of films today.

The New York Times wrote of the Barak Goodman documentary:

The film employs the usual archival images and talking heads, as well as audio recordings from the court martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., who was convicted of ordering the killings. But Mr. Goodman has gone well beyond that, persuading soldiers from Charlie Company, some of whom had never spoken publicly about the events of March 16, 1968, to sit for interviews.

They appear to be more interested in seeking understanding than in expressing remorse. “The people of that village were Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers,” says Kenneth Hodges, a squad leader. “Maybe some see it differently. That’s the way I see it.” Often, though, their words and their eyes seem to be telling different stories.

The first half of My Lai is deeply haunting.

M.I.A.'s "Born Free"

2010-04-26T20:32:00.007-04:00

M.I.A.'s amazing video "Born Free" has been pulled from YouTube for its either too graphic or too "controversial" material. M.I.A.'s website then directed viewers to Vimeo. The violent Romain Gavras-directed work is nine razor-sharp minutes long. The narrative quite sinisterly weaves America's War on Terror/Gitmo and immigration policy and suspicion of the "other." It's allegory. And it's powerful.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Will the peasant mentality reign?

2010-04-25T23:53:00.004-04:00

Matt Taibbi has a particularly piercing column in The Guardian today on the ramifications of the government's treatment of Goldman Sachs and the corrosive, backwards ideas inspired by Ayn Rand's brand of selfishness.

Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God?

People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred toward "moochers" and "parasites" – the Tea Party movement, which is mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being between "water-carriers" and "water-drinkers". And regulation of any kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.

This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of civilisation – which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without limits.

It's time to reject the "vampire squid."

The Fox News empire

2010-04-24T17:50:00.006-04:00

It's sad when it's left to comedians to discern fact from fiction amid the money-hungry, ethically-devoid wasteland that is the mainstream media (especially cable news) in America. The New York Times documents The Daily Show's hounding of Fox News, the propagandist noise machine for the Right masquerading as a news channel.

In many of the segments, Mr. Stewart questions Fox’s journalistic practices. He noted that Fox had hired former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be a political analyst in a January segment he called “News of the Weird.” But he wasn’t laughing when he asserted that Fox is “functioning as her de-facto rapid response media arm, and they’re paying her for the privilege of doing it.”

In February he noted that Fox News had stopped showing President Obama’s widely praised meeting with Republican leaders while CNN and MSNBC had carried it start to finish. Mimicking a Fox anchor, Mr. Stewart said, “We’re gonna cut away because” — humorous pause — “this is against the narrative that we present.”

Fox is alternate-reality news and a living, breathing example of the merging of a party with a news outlet. What does it say when they are the number-one rated news channel in America?

Devo Live 1980

2010-04-24T16:40:00.004-04:00

In 2005, Devo released a CD/DVD of the M-80 Concert they did in 1980 at the Phoenix Theatre, in Petaluma.

The beginning of the DVD begins with Star Wars-like language scrolling off into the abyss, top to bottom. The message is a political, social statement of poignancy and conviction. And one of keen humor and satirical heft.

August 17, 1980. Planet Earth, the United States of America.

It was a dark time. The American President, Ronald Reagan, a former actor in motion picture entertainment, presided over the land. His oil-rich federation and fundamentalist Christian supporters sought to return the population to past times and practices that defied logic and would heap sorrow upon the masses.

But on this night in 1980 a revolutionary band of self-proclaimed "spudboys" who made strange new sounds and sang strange new words would make their presence known in a city by the water. The five young men traveled thousands of miles from an industrial wasteland known as Akron, Ohio, their collective place of birth. They had struggled against all odds to survive in a culture driven by fear and prevail in a ruthless business powered by sharks. They called themselves Devo, for they believed that de-evolution, not evolution, was the guiding force of humankind's future.

On this night in 1980, Devo had no idea that history would prove their cautionary vision to be so frighteningly correct. Now, 25 years later, the reign of President Reagan seems in retrospect like a ray of sunshine compared to the present day rule of Emperor "W" and his fellow fundamentalist enemies around the world.

De-evolution is real.

Like a sickle.

Bassist Gerry Casale, one of the founding members of the band's concept of de-evolutionary performance artists, wrote on the back cover:

This lone artifact offers indisputable evidence that in 1980 Devo had reached a turning point. We were no longer just art monsters, we were mainstream performers too.

Certainly a jab at the record industry's attitude toward Devo. This is a band that relied on being able to document the present's absurdity and predict the future's ominous fate. This quote touches on a sort of validity Casale is taking credit for in the year 2005. In Devo's latest resurgence in past year or two, I've been amused by the number of times the band members, especially Casale, remind everyone of what they said and how they were fucking right. But they always take that credit with a bemused smirk, as if they aren't surprised by any of the many troubling aspects of current day America. Thankfully, they've returned to continue mocking society's de-evolutionary behavior.

The Bedwetter

2010-04-22T21:38:00.002-04:00

365: Sarah Silverman at the 18th and L Border's, talking about her new book, The Bedwetter.

Adventures in hubris

2010-04-22T21:25:00.004-04:00

Dick Cheney has endorsed Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate race over Florida governor Charlie Crist, now deemed an insufficient conservative in today's Republican witch-hunt climate.

Now read Cheney's statement in support of Rubio. Think about what he's saying. This man, who irrevocably altered America in ways too numerous to name at this point in the day, has the unbridled, runaway ego to say the following.

“Our country is at a crossroads facing threats from abroad and attempts from within to restructure the very foundation of our freedoms. America requires leaders to face down these challenges who are confident in who they are and what they stand for. Leaders who know that public service is about something bigger than climbing the political ladder and amassing greater political power…

“We can trust Marco to stand up to the Obama agenda that threatens our freedom, and promote clear conservative alternatives…Charlie Crist has shown time and again that he cannot be trusted in Washington to take on the Obama agenda because on issue after issue he actually supports that agenda. Lately it seems Charlie Crist cannot be trusted even to remain a Republican. I strongly urge him to either stay in the Republican Primary or drop out of the race.”

“Our country is at a crossroads facing threats from abroad and attempts from within to restructure the very foundation of our freedoms." Fear, paranoia, denial, self-loathing, it's par for the course for Dick.

"Public service is about something bigger than ... amassing greater political power." Laughable. This is the man that drove an unprecedented level of executive power.

And he says don't trust those that aren't one of chosen. Sounds like McCarthyism. What vicious dirtbag.

Who's naming the streets in Ashburn, Va.?

2010-04-20T22:55:00.002-04:00

365: Could it be ... murder?

The battle for Kandahar

2010-04-20T09:57:00.002-04:00

Get ready for a tough, bloody summer in Kandahar.

NYT:

The Taliban gunned down the deputy mayor of Kandahar, perhaps the city’s most effective and admired public official, late on Monday, demonstrating their ability to kill almost anyone in a region where security continues to worsen ahead of a planned summer offensive.

And in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, a NATO convoy shot to death four unarmed civilians in a vehicle, including a police officer and 12-year-old student, according to local Afghan officials. But without offering proof, NATO described the dead as two insurgents and their “associates” — a disagreement that could prompt another dispute with the Afghan government over civilian casualties.

Kandahar was the power center of the Taliban before the United States-led invasion in 2001, and attempts to secure the surrounding province from Taliban guerrillas and institute new governance programs this summer could be crucial to the fate of the eight-and-a-half-year occupation. With only weeks to go before the offensive, the Taliban have been stepping up violence in the city with a series of assassinations and attacks on American and Western contractors, political officials and religious leaders.

Kucinich, one of the few liberals to speak up on assassinations of US citizens

2010-04-19T23:13:00.006-04:00

Jeremy Scahill reports on Dennis Kucinich's view of the approved search to assassinate American-Yemeni citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.

Kucinich told The Nation he has sent several letters to the Obama administration raising questions about the potential unconstitutionality of the policy, as well as possible violations of international law, but has received no response. "With all the smart people that are in that administration, they've got to know the risks that they're taking here with violations of law," he says.

[...]

He added: "The assassination policies vitiate the presumption of innocence and the government then becomes the investigator, policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner all in one. That raises the greatest questions with respect to our constitution and our democratic way of life."

Kucinich says the case of al-Awlaki is an attempt to make "a short-cut around the Constitution," saying, "Short-cuts often belie the deep and underlying questions around which nations rise and fall. We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy."

Scahill says that his attempts to reach Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, two usually tough liberals that have re-election campaigns to think about in 2010, went unanswered. Amid this silence of the "progressives" in Congress, I give Kucinich credit for saying something, anything substantive in way of a rebuke of the president's actions. But it's really a shame that it's come to this. Where is the Democratic leadership? They are getting rolled by Obama and they don't mind at all. They've got cover to get reelected if Obama is still semi-popular. Why should they expend their energy on pushing him from the left? If America likes him, that's better for our preservation, they think.

But back to the thoughts on Awlaki, Kucinich said, "We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy." He referenced the intelligentsia that must know what kind of Pandora's Box they're opening. It's not just those big, bad Bush-Cheney deadenders anymore. It's also the sellouts (though that term could be disputed) in the Obama White House. They have dutifully continued the lawlessness of their predecessors.

Our little Iraq is all grown up and torturing on its own

2010-04-19T22:21:00.003-04:00

Freedom is on the march.

LA Times:

Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.

The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.

[...]

Commanders initially resisted efforts to inspect the prison but relented and allowed visits by two teams of inspectors, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim. Inspectors said they found that the 431 prisoners had been subjected to appalling conditions and quoted prisoners as saying that one of them, a former colonel in President Saddam Hussein's army, had died in January as a result of torture.

"More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies," said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. "They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods."

[...]

Maliki vowed to shut down the prison and ordered the arrest of the officers working there after Salim presented him with a report this month. Since then, 75 detainees have been freed and an additional 275 transferred to regular jails, Iraqi officials said. Maliki said in an interview that he had been unaware of the abuses. He said the prisoners had been sent to Baghdad because of concerns about corruption in Mosul.

"The prime minister cannot be responsible for all the behavior of his soldiers and staff," said Salim, praising Maliki's willingness to root out abuses. Salim, a Chaldean Christian, ran for parliament in last month's elections on Maliki's Shiite-dominated list.

Maliki defended his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; his supporters say he has had no choice because of Iraq's precarious security situation. Maliki told The Times that he was committed to stamping out torture -- which he blamed on his enemies.

"Our reforms continue, and we have the Human Rights Ministry to monitor this," he said. "We will hold accountable anybody who was proven involved in such acts."

Reading the whole story, I had to laugh at the eerie symmetry in which the torture, denial and cover-up mirror America's own treatment of Iraqis (at Abu Ghraib) and other detainees. Too bad the U.S. has no moral authority to legitimately condemn these actions.

This is your legacy Dick Cheney.

Drones and assassinations: Our legacy in the war on terror

2010-04-14T17:53:00.004-04:00

Richard Wright makes some important points on Predator drone strikes in Pakistan -- void of the Pakistani government's full support or authorization -- and the order to assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen now in Yemen implicated in inciting the Fort Hood shooter and the Underwear bomber.

If Harold Koh — the state department lawyer assigned the job of justifying Obama’s strategy — carries the day, America will be telling the world that it’s O.K. to lob missiles into countries that haven’t attacked you, as long as you think a terrorist may live there. Do we really want to send that message to, for example, Russia and China, both of which have terrorism problems? Or India or Pakistan?

And are we sure we want to say that, actually, due process of law isn’t really guaranteed all American citizens so long as there’s a war on terrorism — which, remember, is a war that may continue for eternity?

(For more background, Koh gave a speech recently defending many of the national security policies the Obama administration adopted from the Bushies. Adam Serwer gave a detailed breakdown of Koh's points on drones and assassinations.)

Sandy Levinson asks, What if it were Bush?

It is widely known that Obama has ordered more drone strikes in his year in office than George W. Bush did in his entire administration. One can only wonder what the response of the left would be if it were Bush (and, say, John Yoo) engaging in (and defending) the actions that seem central to the Obama Administration's policy in Pakistan (and Yemen and....). The most ominous part of Wright's column is an argument that the policy is very likely to be counterproductive, for a number of reasons he goes into. So there may be a "negative trifecta," i.e., a policy that raises serious moral and legal questions and is counterproductive to boot.

But more to the point, Is this what we want America to be? How can we realistically disallow other powerful countries from conducting similar activities -- especially in the case of drones -- without completely losing all credibility (if we haven't lost enough already)?

And I'm not really sure why I'm even asking because I know why: Where are all the Bush haters that complained about these very same procedures? There are MORE drone strikes mowing down civilians and vague, unverified "suspects" now and Bush never targeted an American citizen for DEATH. Where are the liberals, progressives, civil libertarians and others on the Left now?

Dawn Johnsen's bow out: Inevitable

2010-04-11T23:36:00.005-04:00

Glenn Greenwald laments the death of Dawn Johnsen's nomination to be head of the Office of Legal Counsel. As for reasons to the breakdown with Johnsen, Greenwald points out the contradictions of Obama's past and present positions on executive power.

I don't know the real story behind what happened here -- I had an email exchange with Johnsen this afternoon but she was only willing to provide me her official, pro forma, wholly uninformative statement -- but here's what I do know: virtually everything that Dawn Johnsen said about executive power, secrecy, the rule of law and accountability for past crimes made her an excellent fit for what Candidate Obama said he would do, but an awful fit for what President Obama has done.

[...]

What Johnsen insists must not be done reads like a manual of what Barack Obama ended up doing and continues to do -- from supporting retroactive immunity to terminate FISA litigations to endless assertions of "state secrecy" in order to block courts from adjudicating Bush crimes to suppressing torture photos on the ground that "opennees will empower terrorists" to the overarching Obama dictate that we "simply move on." Could she have described any more perfectly what Obama would end up doing when she wrote, in March, 2008, what the next President "must not do"?

The legal opinions of Dawn Johnsen and Barack Obama diverged a loooooong time ago.

Nuclear overlords: You are the key to a more appealing tomorrow for all of us.

2010-04-11T21:49:00.002-04:00

365: DC's finest gather to "talk shop" outside the Convention Center, the lock-downed site of tomorrow's Nuclear Security Summit.

And speaking of nuclear paranoia, take the Devo song study.

The Great Karl Rove-Chelsea Handler Rivalry

2010-04-10T18:42:00.004-04:00

Everyone's favorite talking pile of mashed potatoes Karl Rove made it into today's New York Times profile of comedienne Chelsea Handler:

Signing copies of her book for about 300 fans who had waited around after her first show in Seattle, she muses on the fact that “Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang” had come out the same week as Karl Rove’s memoir. And that it was her R-rated book — topics include third-grade masturbation and black Cabbage Patch Kids — and not one from the former Bush adviser that hit No. 1.

“I picture Karl Rove sitting there in his underwear, staring at that list,” Ms. Handler says. “I’m sure he was thinking, ‘Who the hell is Chelsea Handler?’ ”

But Karl Rove aside, I didn't know much about Handler -- other than that she had written a book or two and had a show on E!, or some such -- until I read some recent reviews of her show in Slate and Salon. The Slate piece (unflatteringly titled The drunken-slattern shtick of Chelsea Handler) described her as thus:

Here's the vibe: Imagine Handler hungoverish at the 10-items-or-less counter at Safeway, swinging her basket of goods—a home pregnancy test, a Boston cream pie, a handle of designer booze—up to the conveyor belt. She snatches a glossy tabloid from the rack for a greedy eyeful of hot-pink messes. Sniping aloud at the tackiness within with vulgarity in kind, she rolls her eyes so hard that she gags as she slaps enough magazines on the conveyor belt so that now she's buying 12 items. She swipes her platinum card with a contemptuous gesture.

[...]

Those who would yawn at her act as a played-out "trangressive" role-playing might turn to the second page of Handler's current best-seller, Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, with its compound sentence on the author's preadolescent addiction to her intimate anatomy: "I wasn't prepared for what kind of ride this little magic muffin was going to take me on, but I reminded myself that we never choose who we fall in love with, and I had no choice when my little hot pocket in a pita took over my life for the good part of the third and fourth grades." While any healthy man will squirm in contemplating this image, the more discerning of them will acknowledge the craft in the way the sentence pivots from puerile snack-time metaphor-making to a lilting bittersweet statement and back again.

Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams was a little more assured of Handler's shortcomings in her critique, titled The unfunny business of Chelsea Handler:

I speak on behalf of slutty, Belvedere-imbibing women from New Jersey when I say: I want to like Handler. But every time I hear how outraaageous she is, I wonder what I'm missing. This is a woman who delicately refers to the female anatomy as a "Pikachu" and defecation as "shadoobie," so excuse me if I'm not seeing the transgressiveness. On her talk show, "Chelsea Lately," she never seems like a loose cannon, ready to do something crazy at any moment. Instead, she's as stiff and rote as any other late-night host. She just gets bleeped more often. It also doesn't help her badass rep that she spent four years dating Ted Harbert, who, in addition to being filthy rich and 20 years her senior, is also the president and CEO of Comcast -- which owns "Chelsea Lately." The heart wants what it wants and all that, but therein lies the paradox that is Chelsea Handler: She's built a career on being the crazy chick with a taste for vodka and hookups, but what could be more conventional than a pretty girl dating the boss?

[...]

The sad truth is that, outside of her "I love to drink! Look at my ass!" comfort zone, Handler has remarkably little to say. But, hey, if college taught us anything, it's that a girl can go far on "I love to drink! Look at my ass!" Like, say, the New York Times bestseller list. Hey, Chelsea Handler is pretty and she seems nice enough and, wow, she's daring enough to opine that Jon Gosselin is "disgusting." She'll be around forever and bury us all. In that sense, I suppose, Handler is a groundbreaker. Like Dane Cook or Jeff Dunham of any number of high-profile, low-wit stars, she's proven that a woman in comedy can be just as lame as any man.

I have not seen her outside of a few clips on ads for her show. So it's hard for me to judge. But it sounds like Handler's act, like Rove's, is probably not as novel and everlasting as it seems to be at first glance.

Shorter New York Times

2010-04-10T16:08:00.002-04:00

Here's the NYT's headline and blurb today on Republicans, the SCOTUS nomination fight and the midterm election:

G.O.P. Weighs Political Price of Court Fight

By PETER BAKER and CARL HULSE 30 minutes ago
The retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens presents a test for Republicans as they weigh how much they want to wage anideological battle before midterm elections.

Or in other words: How batshit crazy do they wanna get?

The Lost City of Seattle

2010-04-10T03:11:00.004-04:00

I finally took the time to upload my Seattle photos. Here's a slideshow of the entire 100+ shots.

Some highlights:

The world needs Lil' Dead Pope

2010-04-09T20:03:00.002-04:00

In honor of the latest news of the Pope's abandonment of innocence in his career as a fierce protector of rapists, molesters and pedophiles, it's time to revisit a Wonder Showzen's Beat Kids classic, Lil' Dead Pope (The link will have to suffice. There was no embed option.).

The Newt Gingrich Comedy Hour

2010-04-09T14:59:00.002-04:00

Live! From his alternate reality! It's Neewwwwwwwwwt Ginnnnnnngriiiiiiiich!

Defund the Department of Health and Human Services! Zing! Soak me in your delusions, Newt! Douse us with your crazy!

Saturday Night Live should just play unedited clips of Newt rather than actually do their own pathetic skits.

Waiting for Mohammed al-Madadi

2010-04-08T22:59:00.002-04:00

365: Cameras lined up outside of the Qatar embassy building, presumably waiting for word on Mohammed al-Madadi.

Military commissions: Making it up as we go

2010-04-08T12:01:00.003-04:00

Daphne Eviatar delves into the charade and sham that is the military commissions system at Gitmo as the tribunals begin again with Noor Muhammed, a detainee that has wallowed in legal limbo at Guantanamo since 2002.

The military bureaucratic conundrum seemed to leave everyone in the courtroom – and in the observers’ gallery, which was walled off by bullet-and-sound-proof glass -- scratching their heads. (Observers at this courtroom, which was built specially to try the 9/11 suspects, only get to hear the proceedings via an audio feed that transmits the sound after a several-minute time-delay.) Like many questions that arise in these military commission hearings, the answer to this one could not be found anywhere in the rules or the military commission precedent.

That’s partly because the current military commissions, created by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 – have no rules. The military hasn’t issued them yet. The now-outdated rules that governed the previous commission, created by a 2006 law, don’t address this situation either. And there is almost no military commission precedent to speak of. After all, in the eight years since they were created, the military commissions have tried only three cases. Of those, only two detainees even put up a defense. Both have since been released from prison.

Throughout yesterday’s hearing, if there was one thing that the prosecution, defense and judge could agree on, it was that there simply is no law to guide many of the situations that come up in the military commission cases of the Guantánamo detainees.

That there is any possibility that these commissions will continue, much less whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in one of these awful excuses for American justice, is a sad commentary on our post-9/11 climate of fear, paranoia and lack of confidence in our own justice system.

Military commissions are back by unpopular demand

2010-04-07T14:04:00.006-04:00

You wanted indecision, you got it! The Obama administration is going forward with military commissions (and its stellar record of convictions ... that was sarcasm) today, reports the Miami Herald.

Still operating under Bush-era policies that President Barack Obama last year called "a mess," the Pentagon will resume military commission hearings for accused terrorists Wednesday in a top-secret compound originally designed for the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

War court critics denounced the decision to go ahead with hearings this week, saying that without new rules the Obama administration has yet to complete the commissions are operating with uncertain procedures.

"It's really like a lame-duck commission," bristled Mike Berrigan, deputy chief defense counsel.

First up on the war court's agenda is a pretrial hearing in the case of Noor Uthman Mohammed, a Sudanese man who was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and brought here soon after for interrogation as a suspected al-Qaida operative.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder approved Noor's military trial in November on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism for allegedly helping to run the Khalden terror training camp in Afghanistan.

At that same time, Holder approved civilian trials for the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - and this week's hearings also are a reminder that the Justice Department remains undecided on how to proceed with the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four accused co-conspirators.

After New York officials objected to holding the 9/11 trial in lower Manhattan, the White House announced that it would reconsider the decision. It remains unclear where and in what forum Mohammed and the other alleged plotters will face charges.

That indecision will be on display as the court convenes Noor's case in the maximum security, $12 million Expeditionary Legal Compound that the Bush administration built for the accused 9/11 conspirators.

USA! USA! USA!

Update: Though the defendant has spent 8 years in U.S. custody, the judge said today it will take up to another YEAR to sift through his evidence. Sorry kid.

Update II: Daphne Eviatar highlights the case of the detainee (Noor Muhammad) as a prime example of a colossal government fuckup.

The King has decreed: Assassinate the "guilty" peasant

2010-04-07T11:38:00.004-04:00

And it is written: The king, our wise and fearless leader, has decreed ye a terrorist upon secret evidence only the king and his cohorts may view. The king, he of compassion and the Nobel Peace Prize, orders the extra-judicial execution of ye, an insubordinate subject, the mongrel the state knows as Anwar al-Awlaki.

NYT:

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

Now read the brazen comments in the Washington Post made by an (anonymous) official on the assurance that assassinating an American under the guise of his alleged involvement in "terrorism" is justifiable and legal.

"He's recently become an operational figure for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," said a second U.S. official. "He's working actively to kill Americans, so it's both lawful and sensible to try to stop him." The official stressed that there are "careful procedures our government follows in these kinds of cases, but U.S. citizenship hardly gives you blanket protection overseas to plot the murder of your fellow citizens."

So how about the two incidents the U.S. points to as proof of Awlaki's involvement in attempting to kill his fellow Americans? They would be the Fort Hood shooting (Nidal Hasan) and the underwear bomber (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab). WaPo:

Aulaqi corresponded by e-mail with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Tex., last year. Aulaqi is not believed to have helped plan the attack, although he praised Hasan in an online posting for carrying it out.

Concern grew about the cleric's role after he was linked to the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day by detonating an explosive device he had smuggled in his underwear. Aulaqi acknowledged teaching and corresponding with the Nigerian but denied ordering the attack.

That doesn't sound like solid proof of anything beyond incitement. But apparently our constitutional law professor-in-chief knows what we shouldn't mess our pretty little heads with.

Even the Bush administration's torture troll John Yoo didn't agree with these executive powers.

Spencer Ackerman contends:

There’s no doubt al-Awlaki is exploiting his citizenship, but there’s also a reason why the guarantees of citizenship can even be exploited, and to take those away in this case, based on secret evidence and asserted claims leads us down a very dark path.

Dark path indeed. Obama has continually emphasized a break from Bush-era excessive executive wartime powers. He promised to close Gitmo, he ended torture techniques and ordered closing of black site prisons. Admittedly, it was a low bar. But those differences the Obama administration claim to embrace are much less substantial when a record of Obama and Bush policy is examined.

Eli Lake:

But these differences in style mask a sameness in substance that should worry civil libertarians. When it comes to the legal framework for confronting terrorism, President Obama is acting in no meaningful sense any different than President Bush after 2006, when the Supreme Court overturned the view that the president’s war time powers were effectively unlimited. As the Obama administration itself is quick to point out, the Bush administration also tried terrorists apprehended on U.S. soil in criminal courts, most notably “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid. More important, President Obama has embraced and at times defended the same expansive view of a global war against Al Qaeda as President Bush.

The U.S. still reserves the right to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without charge, try them via military tribunal, keep them imprisoned even if they are acquitted, and kill them in foreign countries with which America is not formally at war (including Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan). When Obama closed the secret CIA prisons known as “black sites,” he specifically allowed for temporary detention facilities where a suspect could be taken before being sent to a foreign or domestic prison, a practice known as “rendition.” And even where the Obama White House has made a show of how it has broken with the Bush administration, such as outlawing enhanced interrogation techniques, it has done so through executive order, which can be reversed at any time by the sitting president.

Our unending war on terror continues, and our reckless leaders have the power to do whatever they want, including the order to kill an American without explaining or proving why. That's our America in 2010.

All hail the death of journalism!

2010-04-07T10:36:00.003-04:00

CNN vs. Al Jazeera coverage on Monday

Tiger Woods and iPads vs. Wikileak's video of American forces indiscriminate firing in Iraq. It speaks for itself.

How treating Bagram as the new Gitmo could backfire

2010-04-06T12:02:00.006-04:00

Dawinder Sidhu on the prospects for habeas rights at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan:

Reports are now emerging that the White House is considering making Bagram Air Base, the main U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan, the functional replacement for Guantánamo.

Understandably, this has provoked significant outcry from civil liberties advocates, who charge that any such move would be a conscious effort to evade the rule of law. But it might actually be a blessing in disguise, because if the administration does pursue this course it would set the stage for a long-overdue court ruling that could very well vest Bagram’s prisoners with the right to challenge their detention.

At issue is the precarious reach of the writ of habeas corpus -- the time-honored legal right to petition a court to ensure that the executive has sufficient cause to detain an individual. In 2008, the Supreme Court held in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo detainees are entitled to habeas. As the Boumediene case resolved only whether habeas applies to detainees at Guantánamo -- and not other international post-9/11 American facilities -- it remains unclear whether foreign detainees at Bagram can invoke the habeas writ.

Indeed, this very question is at the heart of al Maqaleh v. Obama -- an ongoing legal battle between several current Bagram detainees and the Obama administration. Because these Bagram detainees have not yet been accorded the habeas right, there is concern that the administration’s proposal would place all prospective foreign terrorism suspects beyond the rule of law, without fundamental habeas protections.

In reality, though, this could actually open the door to the al Maqaleh court ultimately holding -- against the government -- that habeas does extend to foreign detainees in Bagram. In other words, in resolving an important policy question, the administration could seriously weaken its legal case.

Sidhu goes on to explain how the U.S. couldn't just pass off "official" oversight of Bagram to the Afghan government, all the while ultimately controlling operations there.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that the government may not "game" the system -- that the habeas writ "cannot be contracted away" and that the administration can’t decide for itself "when and where [the Constitution’s] terms apply." For this reason, when the government posited that habeas proceedings cannot take place in Bagram because it is an "active theater of war," the district court responded by pointing out that it is the government that was responsible for bringing the detainees, captured outside of Afghanistan, to Bagram.

From nearly the beginning of Obama's term, the administration has argued against affording detainees in legal black holes like Bagram any rights to trials. Indefinite detention has been the priority from the start in a continuation of one of the most egregious Bush-era disparagements of basic human rights. To think that this scenario would be a surprise to them would be pretty naive. I'm sure they have a plan to combat habeas corpus rights at Bagram no matter what.

The Orwellian logic of our government pertaining to U.S. detainee and foreign policy in the midst of "democracy promoting" ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan consistently amazes. Indefinite detention = justice, brute force = democracy, reckless Predator drone strikes = a kinder, safer insurgent eradication, war = peace, the examples are endless.

But Sidhu's explanation gives some hope. Unfortunately, when your only speck of hope is the government (maybe) losing the right to imprison suspects indefinitely without a trial, the climb back to respectability and the rule of law is long and steep.

Never mind killing pregnant Afghans, Tiger's back!

2010-04-05T10:35:00.007-04:00

The International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), led by U.S. General Stanley A. McChrystal, has admitted its own guilt in the deaths of five Afghan civilian (two were pregnant) during a night raid in Gardez in February.

That's a tragedy on its face. But NATO led a cover-up operation of this incident following a Times of London report on the inconsistencies that existed between NATO's explanation of the raid and the claims of survivors and witnesses.

A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.

The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman’s home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.

A Times investigation suggests that Nato’s claims are either wilfully false or, at best, misleading. More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan gunmen. The identity and status of the soldiers is unknown.

This story appeared in the Times on March 13. ISAF proceeded to obfuscate further, going as far as to call out the reporter, Jerome Starkey, by name in response.

KABUL, Afghanistan (March 13) - The allegation made by Times UK reporter Jerome Starkey that NATO "covered up" an incident that was conducted outside Gardez in Paktia province is categorically false.

Additionally, Mr. Starkey incorrectly quoted Rear Adm. Greg Smith of ISAF when he did not include the word "armed" in the following sentence: "If you have got an [armed] individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back."

All the while, keep in mind that McChyrstal has implemented policy (announced BEFORE Gardez) limiting night raids in Afghanistan -- ignoring Hamid Karzai's call for an outright band -- to curb civilian casualties.

Then, ISAF released this late Easter Sunday:

KABUL, Afghanistan (Apr. 4) – A thorough joint investigation into the events that occurred in the Gardez district of Paktiya Province Feb. 12, has determined that international forces were responsible for the deaths of three women who were in the same compound where two men were killed by the joint Afghan-international patrol searching for a Taliban insurgent.

The two men, who were later determined not to be insurgents, were shot and killed by the joint patrol after they showed what appeared to be hostile intent by being armed. While investigators could not conclusively determine how or when the women died, due to lack of forensic evidence, they concluded that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men.

So what is the physical proof of the coverup? There have to be bullet holes, right? The New York Times:

A NATO official also said Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. On Monday, however, a senior NATO official denied that any tampering had occurred.

[...]

The admission was an abrupt about-face. In a statement soon after the raid, NATO had claimed that its raiding party had stumbled upon the “bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room in the house. Military officials had also said later that the bodies showed signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife, and that the women appeared to have been killed several hours before the raid.

And in what could be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.

In an interview, a NATO official said the Afghan-led investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that the inquiry had found signs of evidence tampering. A briefing was given by investigators to General McChrystal and other military officials in late March.

“There was evidence of tampering at the scene, walls being washed, bullets dug out of holes in the wall,” the NATO official said, adding that investigators “couldn’t find bullets from the wounds in the body.”

The investigators, the official said, “alluded to the fact that bullets were missing but did not discuss anything specific to that. Nothing pointed conclusively to the fact that our guys were the ones who tampered with the scene.”

Digging bullets out of the victims? Denying medical treatment to buy time for cover? Of course, the investigation is (supposedly) ongoing, but the implications are quite dire here.

But, true to form for the likes of cable news, it's too bad this isn't a major story this morning. CNN and Fox are all over a Tiger Woods press conference (SEX!), scheduled today for 2 p.m. One would think this atrocity and cover-up would be front and center for any news outlet. Not so. That's a commentary on the sad state of mainstream news outlets. I credit sites like Rethink Afghanistan (not to mention Jerome Starkey, who broke this story, and the NY Times for ... at least having it) for keeping focus on this unfolding exposition. But Rethink Afghanistan is no cable news conglomerate. I sincerely hope this gets attention down the road. Without coverage, such egregious behavior in our name goes without accountability. It's time the media stand up to the Pentagon's PR machine.

Update: Glenn Greenwald expands on the American media's failure in this case, specifically that of CNN and the New York Times, as opposed to international reporting that relied on actually legwork and not official Pentagon sources.

Escape hatch/deep thought for Easter weekend

2010-04-02T17:39:00.000-04:00

You get in a bind this Easter weekend, trapped in a corner with dear Aunt Spanish Inquisition, try this discussion topic on her: The holiday versions of ourselves are much less substantial than who we really are.

Year review on DADT just coverage for a repeal?

2010-04-02T17:13:00.003-04:00

Nancy Youssef ponders how the yearlong review of 'Don't ask don't tell' squares with a service that feels the policy change is a lock. MIght the review supposed to serve the purpose of buying time for Congress to craft a repeal?

On Thursday, the New York Times ran a piece quoting John McHugh, the secretary of the Army, as saying that he no longer implements Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He said he had decided to ignore the law in light of the Obama administration’s call to repeal the law. Then the firestorm began. How does the military apply the law? And what about the other services? In response, the secretary issued a lengthy clarification that I have included below. But really, the whole issue raises bigger questions. The military is essentially trying to bypass a reluctant Congress and make changes to the law Congress itself repeals the law. Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced more stringent requirements to kick someone out of the military under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, all while there is a year-long study of the issue under way. All of this has led to a flurry of confusion. And for me, it raises questions about how effective a year-long review can really be. If service members feel the change in inevitable, will the review lead to an honest assessment of how the military can repeal the law or is the change in the law already under way? If so, the review may become a means to buy time while Congress considers a repeal.

That seems unlikely, but the review is still a curious exercise. Who's being placated by this year study? I'm interested to see how this "study" is conducted.

Long live the military-industrial complex

2010-03-30T15:31:00.005-04:00

Writing for Salon, Michael Lind examines the connections between America's continued Cold War militarism and its crippling trade deficits.

During and after the Korean War, the U.S. rebuilt its military and stationed troops along "tripwires" from Central Europe to East Asia. The U.S. encouraged the formation of the European Common Market (now the European Union) in part to provide the West Germans with markets. In Asia, Mao Zedong's victory in China cut off Japan's China market, so the U.S. offered the American market to Japanese exporters, which initially were not considered a threat to American businesses.

Thus began the Grand Bargain at the heart of U.S. Cold War strategy toward West Germany and Japan, the "markets-for-bases" swap. In return for giving up an independent foreign policy to their protector, the United States, the West Germans and Japanese would be granted access to American markets (and, in the case of the Germans, access to Western European markets).

[...]

For half a century America's economic establishment, turning a blind eye to Asia's crude and Germany's subtle mercantilism, pretended that American protectionism was the greatest threat to the world economy. It is gradually dawning even on former free-trade fundamentalists that you cannot have a liberal global trading system in which three of the four largest industrial capitalist countries -- China, Japan and Germany -- pursue policies that permit them to enjoy perpetual trade surpluses, which require perpetual trade deficits by the U.S. and other countries.

Meanwhile, the security half of America's global strategy is headed for a crash as well. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has mindlessly sought to fill every power vacuum from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf to Central Asia, while spending far less on the military than it did in the Cold War. The U.S. has gone into debt to finance the Iraq and Afghan wars. You don't have to be a grand strategist to figure out that extending territorial commitments without commensurately expanding funding and troop levels is a formula for strategic and perhaps national bankruptcy.

By declaring that the new deficit commission would not consider any cuts in military spending, only in entitlement spending, President Obama reflected the preferences of America's policy elite. Its members would gladly cut Social Security and Medicare in order to pay for bases and "nation-building" abroad. In the same way, for half a century, America's foreign-policy elite tolerated the targeted deindustrialization of America by Asian mercantilist states, as long as those countries did not challenge America's global military hegemony.

At some point, one would think the U.S. would realize that perpetual war was counterproductive. Since mass death, preserving human rights and the Geneva Conventions, maintaining international relations and upholding basic level of compassion don't seem to be deterrents, maybe basic economics could be the tool to curb the Pentagon's spending.

Unfortunately, the Cold War mentality persists, and Barack Obama, who was supposed to usher in a new generation of leadership, refuses to change course. Maybe it isn't "politically convenient" to stop the war machine right now, so we'll just have to wait for leaders with the spine to stand up to the Booz Allens and Boeings and Northrop Grummans (as well as their enablers) of the world. In the meantime, I can't wait for the 'Invade Iran in 2012' posters to spring up. Now that sounds politically convenient.

Shepard Fairey's HOPE turns to HYPE

2010-03-30T14:30:00.011-04:00

Did anyone notice the album cover of the latest release by Jello Biafra's new band Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine? The album, The Audacity of Hype, came out last fall, but I didn't see the cover until I heard the band would be at the Black Cat tonight. I guess it's noteworthy in that it was designed by Obama-HOPE poster artist Shepard Fairey. And, clearly, this isn't exactly quite as reverent of Mr. Obama.

For all the attention that the HOPE poster, and Fairey, received during the '08 campaign, one would think this new art that blatantly jabs at the disappointing Obama presidency (in terms of his emulation and intensification of Bush-era national security policy), coupled with Biafra's acerbic lyrics and sheer reputation, would receive at least some notoriety outside of old Dead Kennedys fans. I guess not.

Nice try, Eric Cantor

2010-03-26T11:22:00.007-04:00

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor didn't waste much time jumping on the bullet that came through his campaign office's window in Richmond, Va., this week. Cantor held a press conference yesterday to denounce the violence. After saying voter/civilian aggression isn't a partisan issue, he accused Democrats of blaming Republicans for some deplorable actions (shouting slurs at Democrats, threats of violence, among others) by those opposing health-care reform. Democrats are only out to exploit these incidents for political gain, he said, even though he was also "directly threatened" via the bullet in Richmond.

"Any suggestion that a leader in this body would incite threats or acts against other members is akin to saying that I would endanger myself, my wife or my children," Cantor said. "It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain."

Then last night, this:

Richmond police say the bullet that hit a window of Republican Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor's office had been randomly fired skyward.

Amid reports of threats and vandalism against Democrats who voted Sunday for sweeping health care reforms, Cantor said at a Washington news conference Thursday that a bullet was fired into his Richmond office.

In a news release, Richmond police said that the bullet had been fired into the air early Tuesday. It hit the front window of a building that houses Cantor's campaign office as it fell to back earth at a sharp angle.

The round landed on the floor of the office a foot inside a broken window pane. No one was in the building, and police say an investigation has yielded no suspects.

Plus, the Richmond campaign office isn't even in Cantor's district, nor is it marked as part of his operation.

While it's true that some will resort to violence or intimidation no matter what their party or ideological leaders say, it's hard to move beyond the conclusion that this is what happens when a party capitulates to some of the most extreme wings of its faction. Republicans constantly cry, "Communism!" and "Totalitarianism!" and some take it too far. You preach extreme rhetoric about health care to an already unsettled group from the '08 campaign (Exhibit A), and what happens?

So, true to the GOP pattern of the last year-plus, don't hold your breath waiting for a Cantor retraction.

Case of CIA tapes looks to be headed for inconclusive end

2010-03-25T11:28:00.005-04:00

The case of destroyed CIA tapes of alleged gross abuse of detainees held by the U.S. is nearing its close, according to The Washington Post.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John H. Durham, who is leading the investigation, recently bestowed immunity from prosecution on a CIA lawyer who reviewed the tapes years before they were destroyed to determine whether they diverged from written records about the interrogations, two sources familiar with the case said. That could signal that the case is reaching its final stages. Durham has been spotted at Justice Department headquarters in Washington over the past few weeks, in another signal that his work is intensifying.

The agency lawyer, John McPherson, could appear before a grand jury later this month or in April, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation continues. CIA lawyers have been essential to understanding the episode because they offered advice to agency personnel about handling the tapes, and whether they should have been included when agency records were turned over in other court cases. McPherson is not thought to be under criminal jeopardy but had previously hesitated to testify, the sources said.

Emptywheel's bmaz doesn't see much coming from this entire exercise:

If the reporting is accurate, there are several things of interest here. First off, there is little, if any, accountability in the offing. False statements against a secondary official giving closed door testimony is not going to take us rule of law adherents where we want to go. And if this official is indeed covert, the odds of charges really being pursued are not very good; not to mention that any prosecution, even if it were pursued, would be fastidiously kept narrow and constrained by CIPA procedures. I find very little hope for anything useful here.

One curious passage in the story relates to the defense agency officials are claiming for scrubbing the evidence: security (of course....).

Durham and a special team have gathered and pored over sensitive documents to determine whether destruction of the tapes constituted a crime. Agency officials say the motive was innocent: After the emergence of widely reviled images of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, CIA veterans feared that the disclosure could compromise their security. Investigators, however, have been probing whether the tapes were destroyed in anticipation of a congressional or federal investigation, which could violate obstruction of justice laws.

So if (or when) nothing is done to hold those accountable for these tapes' disappearance, is security going to be the reason? And what can't be done in the name of security now? For instance, this is the age of a litany of Bush/Obama state secrets claims, the effort to conceal detainee photos (now a Democratic team effort led by Joe Lieberman, wiretapping, torture, the list goes on. What's the line here?

The U.S. may not have a threshold for responsibility, but President Obama believes Indonesia does. Obama's accountability-free mantra is "look forward, not backward" when confronted by America's post-9/11 detainee/war policies, but not when it comes to Indonesia's human rights abuses. Per Glenn Greenwald:

In 2008, Indonesia empowered a national commission to investigate human rights abuses committed by its own government under the U.S.-backed Suharto regime "in an attempt to finally bring the perpetrators to justice," and Obama was asked in this interview: "Is your administration satisfied with the resolution of the past human rights abuses in Indonesia?" He replied:

We have to acknowledge that those past human rights abuses existed. We can't go forward without looking backwards . . . .

(Emphasis mine)

That's convenient. What is good for me is not for thee.

In Pakistan, one in three drone kills are civilians

2010-03-05T23:03:00.006-05:00

A new study (pdf) by the New America Foundation finds some harrowing statistics regarding drone use in Pakistan. According to the report, one in three deaths from Obama's drone strikes is a civilian fatality. Not a good average.

Rethink Afghanistan compiled some of the highlights:

Our study shows that the 114 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan from 2004 to the present have killed between 830 and 1,210 individuals, of whom around 550 to 850 were described as militants in reliable press accounts, about two-thirds of the total on average. Thus, the true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32 percent.

…[A]lthough the drone strikes have disrupted militant operations, their unpopularity with the Pakistani public and their value as a recruiting tool for extremist groups may have ultimately increased the appeal of the Taliban and al Qaeda, undermining the Pakistani state. This is more disturbing than almost anything that could happen in Afghanistan, given that Pakistan has dozens of nuclear weapons and about six times the population.

It's worth repeating: "Their value as a recruiting tool for extremist groups may have ultimately increased the appeal of the Taliban and al Qaeda, undermining the Pakistani state."

I don't see how this is a valuable tool in curbing extremism or sympathy for terror. For every one suspect killed, how much "extremism" is created? Somebody explain the upside, please, because I don't get it.

Military officials defend trials while Dems still MIA

2010-03-05T14:49:00.009-05:00

In the absence of any kind of spine or will to defend criminal trials for detainees at Gitmo and elsewhere from the Democratic Party, military officials, among others -- not including the similarly lame, "objective" mainstream media -- have spoken up against the growing call for military commissions.

From the Post's story today on "advisers" (Rahm?) to the president saying commissions are the likely result for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others:

Marine Col. Jeffrey Colwell, acting chief defense counsel at the Defense Department's Office of Military Commissions, said it would be a "sad day for the rule of law" if Obama decides not to proceed with a federal trial. "I thought the decision where to put people on trial -- whether federal court or military commissions -- was based on what was right, not what is politically advantageous," Colwell said.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Harry Soyster, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency:

“My concern is what it looks like to our enemy. And they certainly should be delighted in what appears to be great confusion, great ambiguity and inability to address the issue, so they should feel they are making progress if in fact our initial stand is reversed. from my perspective, the president [initially] chose chose the harder right over the easier wrong when he made the stand, supported his attorney general…and he should hold firm to that.”

Time and time again, we ask: Where are the Democrats? Who is speaking up against Lindsey Graham (apparently Rahm Emanuel's puppet master, and the new authority in regard to trying suspects), McCain, Lieberman and the rest of the advocates for denying due process? Just like health care, just like Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab, just like the Patriot Act, congressional Democrats lack either the will or the basic desire to do anything about deliberate misinformation and disregard for the Constitution from the Right (and many other Democrats). I don't doubt that there are many Democrats that support civilian trials over tribunals, but I don't see anyone rushing to push against the administration.

This ultimately comes down to Barack Obama, though. And if Obama changes his mind on a criminal trial for KSM and others, it would be a monumental blow for the rule of law in America. I don't think that's hyperbole. Glenn Greenwald sums up the ramifications for Obama if he flips:

If, in the face of "GOP demands" that Mohamed be denied a civilian trial, he again reverses himself -- this time on the highest-profile civil liberties decision of his administration -- he will unmistakably reveal himself, even to his most enamored admirers, as someone so utterly devoid not only of principle but also of resolve: you just blow on him a little and he falls down and shatters into little pieces.

Even just as a political matter, is there any better way to ensure that Americans will view him as weak than by abandoning one key decision after the next as a result of the slightest pressure? What kind of person could possibly admire a "leader" who does this?

Update, 4:30: Via Greg Sargent, looks like Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) has come out in support of criminal trials.

“We have a great track record of successfully trying and convicting terrorists in civilian courts. The military commission system is largely untested, and these cases could easily get bogged down in years of legal challenges. The best way to bring these terrorists to justice swiftly is through our civilian courts.”

So, there's one Democrat -- and the most likely to do so at that since Feingold is probably the most committed civil libertarian in the Senate.

Continued waste in war contracting

2010-03-05T13:04:00.004-05:00

Now that both political parties and the establishment media have had a 'coming to Jesus' moment in the past year regarding the federal debt and waste amid government spending, it's always a wonder to me why more people outside of Sen. Claire McCaskill and a handful of others don't make a bigger example of the sieve that is war contracting.

Christine Spolar, of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, writes this week:

An estimated 56,000 more contractors—almost double the 30,000 additional troops to be deployed this year—are expected to be working in Afghanistan by the end of 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service. The number of contractors could top 160,000, exceeding the ranks of U.S. troops fighting the Taliban.

But that’s just an estimate. A key official in the inspector general’s office established to oversee Afghan reconstruction spending said that simply “defining the universe” of contractor spending has been difficult.

“It is a frustration,” said John Brummet, chief auditor in the Office of the Special Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan. “Everyone assumes the information is there but it just is not. You’d think the [U.S. command in Kabul] could say they have 200 contractors there but…it’s just not there.”

Spending on Afghan reconstruction represents about 20 percent of the total cost of the war, which reached $230 billion by the end of 2009. About half of the reconstruction spending goes toward training Afghan security forces.

Attempts to oversee the billions of dollars flowing to the contractors have been complicated by congressional inattention, severe gaps in manpower and ineffective training for the military officers and bureaucrats shipped off to Afghanistan to monitor reconstruction work, according to agency audits and interviews with auditors.

[...]

The electronic record-keeping systems of the three biggest spenders on reconstruction—Defense, State and USAID—are incompatible, according to the inspectors general for Afghanistan and Iraq. So coordinating spending by the agencies remains beyond the capacity of the inspector general’s office and the government’s chief accountant, the Government Accountability Office.

(Emphasis mine)

Like so many other issues beyond contracting, the lessons of Iraq are lost on those running our war in Afghanistan:

On Capitol Hill, the oversight of contract spending in Afghanistan—like the war itself—was long treated as secondary to the challenges in Iraq. Only in 2008 did Congress establish a special inspector general’s office to audit Afghan nation-building.

That inspector general’s office for reconstruction has been working with far fewer staff members than the equivalent office for contract spending in Iraq, run by Stuart W. Bowen. At work since the first year of the Iraq war, Bowen has produced 164 inspections, 160 audits and one book. In his last report, Bowen found that coordination still was lacking in the war zone and recommended a single federal office to oversee reconstruction contracting.

Bowen goes into more detail on lesson transference in an accompanying video to the piece:

Granted, the amount of money pissed away here isn't exactly a sum that would solve many of the government fiscal quandaries. But if players in Washington, especially Republicans like Jim Bunning, are going to whine about profligate spending, I would think setting up a coherent system for contracts might be a priority. Unless, of course, we're all following the familiar paradigm in which questioning of war funding and the like is the last thing anyone cares about since one must be a champion of supporting wars to be considered thoughtful or serious in Washington.

Space monkey torture rack

2010-02-27T23:28:00.003-05:00

365: Stress positions at Reagan National Airport - What do you know about the moon?!

Let's get over the 'Miracle on Ice'

2010-02-24T22:54:00.006-05:00

I caught some of the hour-long (or so) special NBC ran Sunday about the "Miracle on Ice" hockey game from the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., and I commented to a guy sitting next to me how lame and pathetic it was that we keep rehashing that moment, 30 years later. Well, I should've guessed this would happen in a bar with TVs everywhere, but the guy looked at me like I was Stalin himself, apparently offended on some level. That was the end of that "conversation."

I get it, American amateurs vs. the big, bad Russian pros. It's straight out of a Disney movie (in fact, it was made into a Disney-like, cheeseball, feel-good gagfest of a film). Let's move on. I mean, Al Michaels, who made the famous, "Do you believe in miracles!?" call at the end of the game, was clearly beside himself with anticipation the whole interview with three of the players -- who have clearly made a living off that game -- to tell how he graced America with such a memorable, touching phrase. Ugh.

So I completely agree with Matt Taibbi here.

Seriously, can we get over ourselves about the Miracle on Ice? It was great and all, but you hear about it every five minutes in this country. I lived in Russia for 10 years and didn’t even once hear about a bunch of Soviets with hideous mustaches whipping the asses of David Robinson, Danny Manning and Mitch Richmond in basketball in Seoul in ‘88. I heard a lot about the 1972 thing, but that was only in the context of Russians being so amused by how much we whined about getting jobbed by the refs.

I mean really, whatever happened to acting like you’ve been there before? I’m trying to imagine what the citizen of someplace like Liechtenstein or Reunion Island thinks when he sees Americans keeping a 30-year boner over the image of themselves as longshot underdogs who beat the odds.

Like so many things in America, I think our incessant gloating and paranoid fragility (see: Gitmo) come down to insecurity, coupled with unhealthy nostalgia and misplaced identity. But we're not underdogs. We're America. Get over it.

Washington Monument on a gray day

2010-02-24T19:36:00.001-05:00

365: Not sure why flags are at half mast.

'Fresh' Devo at the Olympics

2010-02-24T19:07:00.006-05:00

Devo made an appearance at one of the Olympics' nightly Victory Ceremony events, communicating directly to the spud boys and girls that the destruction of Earth will not come from nuclear bombs, but the devolved human mind.

Lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh was interviewed by Billboard and was asked, why the Olympics? A focus group, of course. And they're too old to compete, Mothersbaugh says.

So, on Monday night, they played a new song, "Fresh":

It sounds like Freedom of Choice-era Devo, but there's certainly nothing wrong with that. For their new release this spring, the band, in their true faux-corporate, communal-minded way, is asking fans to participate in a "color study" to help determine the band's new branding color.

And a word from Devo, Inc's "COO" Greg Scholl:

A real/fake branding campaign based on the acceptance of devolution. Perfect Devo.

Rise above

2010-02-23T22:09:00.004-05:00

A favorite quote of mine comes from Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary:

Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles -- a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other -- that kept me going.

And I, like most of the others, can identify with a lot of the sentiment here. Malcontent ... what a great word. The last sentence, though, communicates the push/pull that permeates so much of life, I would say. Idealism vs. dread. I believe that tension Thompson writes of is to be at battle against yourself, against the world, against an obstacle, against success, against fate, against life. Realize it or not, that conflict is only human. And to err is human. But to be human is also to rise above.

George W. Bush's required reading

2010-02-21T23:23:00.001-05:00

For Women Veterans, Battles Go On at Home

Post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD was the reason Peacock was sent home from Iraq .She had spent her time in Baghdad driving in unarmored trucks and fearing roadside bombs.

"You don't ever know is today going to be the day," Peacock said. "A lot of us wrote letters home like, 'If I die give this to my mom.'"

Her downward spiral accelerated when she returned from Iraq She became addicted to prescription drugs. Her husband left her, making her homeless. She found it hard to readjust to life back in St Louis.

"War does something to you where it just twists everything," Peacock said. "I don't look the same, I don't act the same, I don't have the same mannerisms."

"Almost half the women who we see today that are homeless are under 35," said Peter Dougherty, director of the homeless program at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The VA says on any given night there are an estimated 6,500 homeless female vets. That's double the number a decade ago.

Angela Peacock now rents a house and has new support: GI Joe - a companion dog provided by the VA to help her cope with the PTSD when she's in public places.

"I have my days that are hard to get out of bed, and if fireworks or something goes off I'm just like done for the day," Peacock said. "But it's much better than it was. Much better."

Freedom is on the march.

Yoo and Bybee: Innocent until proven sane

2010-02-21T23:14:00.005-05:00

Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis concludes that torture memo conspirators John Yoo and Jay Bybee may have been grossly incompetent and viciously off base, but what they authorized was not *technically* illegal.

Jack Balkin (read the whole spot-on indictment of this decision):

Margolis concludes that Yoo and Bybee exercised poor judgment and made bad legal arguments. But lawyers often make arguments that are bad or even laughably bad, and this by itself does not violate the very low standard set by rules of professional responsibility. These rules are set up by jurisdictions to weed out the worst offenders, leaving the rest of the legal profession to make entirely stupid, disingenuous and asinine arguments that normal people with functioning moral consciences would not make. That is to say, rules of professional misconduct are aimed at weeding out sociopaths and people driven to theft and egregious incompetence by serious drug and alcohol abuse problems; they do not guarantee that lawyers will do right by their clients, or, in this case, by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America. In effect, by setting the standard of conduct so low, rules of professional conduct effectively work to protect all those lawyers out there whose moral standing is just a hair's breadth above your average mass murderer. This is how the American legal profession simultaneously polices and takes care of its own.

Scathing.

And Dick Cheney will go on bragging about being a war criminal.

Every raw material at hand

2010-02-21T01:28:00.000-05:00

365: Mission of Burma, Black Cat in DC

Lamberth to Congress: Do something on indefinite detentions

2010-02-18T20:44:00.004-05:00

Unfortunately, this interview with Chief U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth by Washington Post criminal justice reporter Del Wilber didn't get much attention (Well, it was buried in Metro section crime blog, so...). But it's remarkable in the sense that a judge in the center of Guantanamo detainee cases seems highly frustrated about the definitive parameters of these detainees' situations, indefinite detentions in particular.

I understand Lamberth is of the outspoken sort, for judiciary official. But this interview is fascinating in that he seems to be almost pleading with the legislative and executive branches to act, and do it immediately.

Some highlights:

Q: Why are judges calling on Congress to take action?

Lamberth: Congress should have enacted some statutory guidance that would have been useful to us. For example -- what is the definition of enemy combatant, which we have had some difficulty with? And what types of evidence does Congress think would be appropriate for us to consider? Those are among the things that would be helpful.

But unless Congress were to enact something this spring, I think it’s too late anyway. We are on track to complete these cases and are moving ahead. ... The longer we have gone through this, we have seen how difficult the questions are that are being presented and how reasonable people can differ in response to the questions. I still would welcome action from Congress, but I don’t anticipate that.

This is not an ideal world, but to have so little guidance. … As a district judge, we are used to applying settled law. Congress enacts a statute, the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court issues an opinion. But here, nothing is settled. We are creating law as we go. It’s not something district judges are accustomed to doing.

A much better way to create law is for Congress to pass something and for the executive to participate in that legislation. That is what I’ve been trying to say.

At this stage, Congress hasn't seen fit to do that. I understand that in the prior administration, it did not want congressional action -- it wanted to do it all by executive power. I do not know why this administration has not been able to create a legislative proposal.

[...]

Q: The other day, you mentioned that you struggled with ordering a detainee held, potentially for life, under the “preponderance of evidence” standard. The judges established that standard, which means the government wins if the evidence tips just slightly in its favor, for the habeas cases. What did you mean by that?

Lamberth: When you know the petitioner is going to be held for the duration of hostilities and hostilities are not likely to end in my lifetime, if not in his own lifetime, we know there is a consequence of our decision that is quite dramatic in terms of an individual’s life.

In criminal trials, we have a standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, which means proof to a moral certainty. I have no difficulty, where I have a jury to find a person found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to a moral certainty, with sentencing that person to life in prison without parole, if that is what statutes and guidelines call for.

When you’re doing this on a preponderance of evidence, that is a different decision for me to decide if a person should be held, perhaps for life.

He also goes into coerced confessions and a severe lack of communication from the Justice Department to judges. Read the entire interview.

Caution when wet

2010-02-16T20:17:00.001-05:00

365: Near Pennsylvania SE

Washington stenography is alive and well

2010-02-16T16:32:00.004-05:00

Building on that steaming pile of Beltway nonsense David Broder laid in the Washington Post last week on Sarah Palin's supposed brilliance, George Packer assesses the state of political journalism in Washington.

Anyone covering Washington, not excluding me, will sooner or later turn to a phrase like “refocus its image” or “a perception that the President has come to look” or “a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message,” because they come so easily, and because they make it unnecessary to say anything substantial, which means thinking hard and perhaps suffering the consequences. Still, as an exercise in accountability, political journalists should ask themselves from time to time: Would I write this about a war, or a depression?

Further up in the piece, he imagines what a typical American journalist would write about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's recent inauguration speech:

“Speaking at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai showed himself to be at the top of his game. He skillfully co-opted his Pashtun base while making a powerful appeal to the technocrats who have lately been disappointed in him, and at the same time he reassured the Afghan public that his patience with civilian casualties is wearing thin. A palace insider, who asked for anonymity in order to be able to speak candidly, said, ‘If Karzai can continue to signal the West that he is concerned about corruption without alienating his warlord allies, he will likely be able to defuse the perception of a weak leader and regain his image as a unifying figure who can play the role of both modernizer and nationalist.’ Still, the palace insider acknowledged, tensions remain within Mr. Karzai’s own inner circle. At one point during the swearing-in ceremony, observers noted that Mohammad Hanif Atmar, his interior minister, seemed to ignore the greeting of Amrullah Saleh, the intelligence chief. The two have been rumored to be at odds ever since last year’s controversial election. A palace spokesman, speaking on background, denied that the incident had any significance. ‘The sun was in Hanif’s eyes—that’s it,’ the spokesman said.”

Write down the quotes, type them up, run 'em through spell check and be home for dinner.

Evan Bayh pretends he's above the partisan fray, Part 984

2010-02-15T20:14:00.010-05:00

Sen. Evan Bayh announced his retirement earlier today. The golden boy of the Democratic establishment years ago has had enough of the Senate's gridlock, he said. Either Bayh has a poor sense of irony, or he's just flat dishonest about his motives.

His reasoning for retiring (the excessive partisanship of Washington) was laughable given his pride in the filibuster when it came to health reform. It was that pesky debt commission that finally broke his little back he says:

“Two weeks ago, the Senate voted down a bipartisan commission to deal with one of the greatest threats facing our nation: our exploding deficits and debt. The measure would have passed, but seven members who had endorsed the idea instead voted ‘no’ for short-term political reasons,” he said. “Just last week, a major piece of legislation to create jobs — the public’s top priority — fell apart amid complaints from both the left and right. All of this and much more has led me to believe that there are better ways to serve my fellow citizens, my beloved state and our nation than continued service in Congress.”

So he quit.

I'm also reading some conflicting views on what party he screwed over worse, the Democrats or Republicans, by his timing. He certainly leaves Democrats in general in a bind to say the least.

But maybe it's bad news for both parties. I wouldn't put it past Bayh. I guess he's "bipartisan" with his political sabotage.

Jane Hamsher says it's Indiana progressives since there won't be a primary:

Why would Evan Bayh file to run for the Senate, and then pull out 24 hours before the deadline for signatures to be filed?

Well, because the Indiana Democratic Party gets to choose Bayh’s replacement on the ticket. And that means unless you can pull a candidate out and line up 500 signatures in each district to be filed by noon tomorrow, you’re a write-in.

How does the sound of Senator Hill or Senator Ellsworth sound?

Well, Rahm was in town doing a fundraiser for Hill recently. This has, no doubt, been in the works for a while.

Rahm! Should've known.

Jed Lewis says it's the GOP:

Unlike Democrats, Republicans already have candidates vying for their party's nomination, including former Rep. John Hostetler and Senator-turned-lobbyist Dan Coats. Because the signature deadline is tomorrow, that pretty much sets the GOP field. Unless both Hostetler and Coats were to withdraw, Republicans won't be in a position to choose a nominee as will Democrats. The implication of that: Bayh's timing appears to make it nearly impossible for candidates like Rep. Mike Pence (who says he will not run despite Bayh's retirement) or Gov. Mitch Daniels to get on the ballot.

So while Bayh was a sure thing versus Coats and Hostetler, given his retirement, Bayh's timing here may actually give Democrats the best chance at holding onto the seat.

Good riddance. His sole reason for being in the Senate was to plaster a shit-eating grin on his face when people perceived him as a sensible centrist.

The suspect case against Omar Khadr

2010-02-10T20:07:00.004-05:00

WaPo's Peter Finn sketches out the case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian Gitmo detainee picked up in Afghanistan when he was 12 for allegedly throwing a grenade at American soldiers. His military tribunal is set to begin soon. It will likely be the first such military commission trial under the Obama administration. His age at the time of the incident has been the focus of controversy, as well as the sketchy evidence behind the case, and whether he could've even been capable of throwing the grenade at the time.

The final portion of the piece focuses on that suspect evidence, as well as the unlawful legal system set in place by the Obama administration:

Defense lawyers said Holder's assignment of the Khadr case to the military illustrates the Obama administration's acceptance of a two-tier system of justice in which flawed evidence that would be disallowed in federal court can be admitted in a tribunal.

The government defends its decision.

"The forum decision in the Khadr case was made after a careful assessment of all the factors identified" in a protocol developed by the Justice and Defense departments, said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. "Although we cannot discuss how all the protocol factors were applied to the Khadr case or other specific cases, we note that this case involves a grenade attack on U.S. soldiers in a war zone, that the defendant was apprehended in a war zone in the context of active hostilities, and that the case was initially investigated and evidence gathered by military personnel."

Flowers, Khadr's attorney, said government lawyers indicated at a meeting in early November that they would introduce statements in a military commission that they would not use if the case went to federal court. A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to discuss any meeting with the defense.

Khadr's attorneys said the government's case is riddled with problems.

They said that their client was tortured in military custody and that all statements, even if given later and seemingly voluntarily to FBI agents, are contaminated by the alleged earlier abuse, which, they said, included threats of rape, stress positions and the use of snarling dogs.

Flowers also challenged the government's contention that Khadr threw the grenade that killed Speer. "The evidence," he said, "is extremely problematic."

But soldiers involved in the firefight that led to Speer's death and Khadr's capture have no such doubts. Morris, the blinded Special Forces soldier, who lives in Utah, said Khadr should remain in U.S. custody.

"Mr. Khadr is where he needs to be, and he needs to stay there for a long time," Morris said.

As far as Holder's concerned, this New Yorker piece masterfully outlines the KSM controversy and the political point-scoring done by Republicans on the issue of terrorism in the Obama era. But with the Khadr case in mind, the administration's two-tiered legal system is especially a tough pill to swallow when Holder says stuff like this:

“The quest for justice, despite what your contemporaries might think, that’s toughness. The ability to subject yourself to the kind of criticism I’m getting now, for something I think is right? That’s tough.” He paused, and added, “This is something that can get a rise out of me, the notion that somehow Eric Holder and Barack Obama, this Administration, is not tough. We have the welfare of the American people in our minds all the time. We’ll fight our enemies, and we’ll do that which is necessary, and we won’t turn our backs on the values and traditions that have made this country great. That is what is tough.”

More on COIN pushback

2010-02-10T19:24:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, I wrote of an open disagreement with Gen. Stanley McChrystal's COIN strategy in Afghanistan by a high-ranking Marine reported in the Washington Post yesterday.

Andrew Exum noticed as well, positing that the Marine culture must be taken into account when a strategy such as McChrystal's, which is based on protecting rather than aggression, is employed.

I've heard Col. Amland is a thoughtful officer, but I wonder if he's thoughtful enough to recognize that a) his decades-long education as a Marine officer might have prejudiced him toward a preference for violent offensive operations and b) many counterinsurgents through the years have been in exactly the same spot where Col. Amland finds himself today -- and have pursued violent offensive operations, like battalion sweep-and-clears, that have brought no lasting security. But as the author of the Post article notes, "hunkering down to the slow work of improving governance" is a lot less sexy than killing bad guys. But you have to do both, and if given the option of choosing between the two, the operational and strategic culture of the U.S. Marine Corps will lead its officers to do the former at the expense of the latter.

I think we sometimes focus too much on trying to understand the culture of the enemy without first recognizing our own cultural quirks, norms and biases. The individual services within the U.S. military are especially effective at conditioning their officers to believe that the service's preferred theory of victory is the one most appropriate for a conflict. As a remedy for this, I wish Marines would be more conscious of their "Marineness" -- and all the assumptions, biases and norms (most of them good) that entails. (The same goes, of course, for Air Force officers, Army infantry officers, Naval aviators, Army armor officers, Army Special Forces officers, submariners, etc., etc., etc.)

The Who sells out?

2010-02-10T18:49:00.008-05:00

Hendrik Hertzberg would like to go back to a 1969 interview he did with The Who and ask them what they would think of their colossal sell out, not to mention embarrassing performance, at the Super Bowl over forty years later.

If I could go back in time and conduct that interview again, I would ask this question:

“Pete, do you remember Super Bowl III? Took place like ten months ago? Joe Namath? The New York Jets? No? Never heard of it?

“Well, it’s the big championship of American football, like the F.A. Cup in England. There’s nothing more American than the Super Bowl—it’s huge, it’s vulgar, it’s all about kicking ass and hating hippies. Now, what if I were to tell you that forty-one years from now—forty-one years from now, in the year twenty-ten—the Super Bowl would be live on TV all over the world, and the special halftime entertainment, viewed by hundreds of millions of people, would be… The Who.

“How would you account for that?”

The conversation would go on from there.

And Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein (on her excellent blog Monitor Mix) wonders if it was even appropriate for a legendary band to continue as is when half the group, arguably the pillars of the band's sound, are long dead.

As far as I'm concerned, the soul of The Who is long gone. Yes, Townshend wrote most of the songs, but it was the rhythm section -- Keith Moon and John Entwistle -- who tore into his song's structures, making them gallop and hiccup and veer far and unexpectedly from the original destination. With only two members remaining, The Who is no more.

I suppose there can't be a formula for whether a band should continue after the death of an original member, so perhaps it's just a feeling. Countless bands ventured forth after the untimely deaths of one of their own. From The Rolling Stones to Lynyrd Skynyrd, from The Beach Boys to The B-52's to Metallica. For most bands, losing a lead singer seems to be the one deal-breaker (The Doors, Joy Division, Nirvana), though some bands work up a tribute show that features a variety of singers -- such as Queen -- which works, and is less crass than a full-time replacement.

I can understand some of these bands from the '60s and '70s not wanting to let a band member's drug overdose and obvious path to self-destruction stand in the way of future creativity and success. As they say, the show must go on. And maybe it was a relief to play with healthier, saner people. But two band members gone? More? Watching The Who play Sunday, I was pretty sure that even it no longer had the answer to its most pointed question: Who are you? And when you don't know that, then maybe it is time to finally let go.

Let's face it: We're still in the throes (albeit the last throes) of Baby Boomers' domination of, well, the world, much less corporate puppet shows like the Super Bowl. At this point, I'm not even sure if it's worth mocking thththththat generation since they do such a good job of doing it to themselves.

I feel The Who should be mentioned with the Rolling Stones and Beatles as some of the great rock influences to come from that period. But at no point have their lyrics "I hope I die before I get old" carry so much irony.

Stuck bus

2010-02-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

365: North Carolina and 11th St. NE

Open criticism of COIN strategy on the ground in Kandahar

2010-02-09T21:13:00.005-05:00

There's an interesting section of the Washington Post's story today on the Fifth Stryker Brigade Combat Team responsible for securing the population around Kandahar. Seems consternation over Gen. Stanley McChrystal's new counterinsurgency plan in the disparate southern villages of Afghanistan is not taboo to speak of by a high-ranking commander.

Not everyone is sold on Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's "protect the population" mantra. Some military officials think an expansionary push by the Marines into Taliban territory in neighboring Helmand province is more effective than hunkering down to the slow work of improving governance.

"I'm not a big fan of the population-centric approach. We can't sit still. We have to pursue and chase these guys," said Col. George Amland, deputy commander of the Marine expeditionary brigade in Helmand province. "I haven't seen any evidence it's working. The only thing that's working is chasing them."

Interesting to note as 30,000 soldiers will soon be sent to enact McChrystal's strategy.

Persecuted Wall street overlords throw temper tantrum

2010-02-08T21:49:00.004-05:00

There's some serious arrogance that oozes from this New York Times piece on those poor persecuted Wall St. bankers suffering at the hands of the big bad Democrats (who've proposed such lukewarm regulations after Wall St. terrorized the American/global economy that this entire exercise is beyond laughable).

Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda.

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash.

“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.

“I understand the public outcry,” he continued. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.”

Glenn Greenwald sums it up:

... that Wall Street is dissatisfied with the Democrats and the Obama administration reveals how extreme are their expectations of control of the Government. The second-highest-ranking Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, recently conceded of the Democratic-controlled Congress: "frankly, bankers own the place." It's impossible to find a more loyal and attentive servant to bankers than Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. As the NYT article this morning details, Wall Street executives and their lobbyists have virtually unfettered access to the administration and to the President himself. You would think they'd be satisfied with the state of affairs in Washington. Yet so extreme are their perceived entitlements of control that even mere symbolic and rhetorical disobedience from the politicians they own -- he said some mean things about us -- creates a sense of righteous grievance: our government employees do not behave this way toward us and will be punished if it continues.

And, of course, the GOP is waiting to benefit off of this. The end of the story:

The Democratic campaign committees declined to comment on Wall Street money. But their Republican rivals are actively courting it.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”

“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said.

Shocking. I can't wait to see the outrage when the tea partiers hear this....

And any excuse to post this video is appreciated. Big John Cornyn is here to save the day! Biiiiiiiiig Jooooooohn.

Accessorize with the Predator drone!

2010-02-07T21:21:00.001-05:00

Hey kids, get your Predator drone gifts and apparel here.

Clark Griswold is not walking through that door

2010-02-07T20:42:00.002-05:00

Is it just me, or did Chevy Chase age pretty quickly?

He and Beverly D'Angelo appeared in an ad during the Super Bowl for something called Homeaway.com, which appears to be a site that offers properties to rent to vacationers or out-of-towners on a short-term basis, obviously. Though I've seen him a time or two on Community (NBC Thursday night), so I've seen him recently and, yes of course, I noticed he's gotten older and gained a solid amount of weight. But it wasn't until this ad, where he's really stretching to rekindle that Vacation Clark Griswold magic, but comes off silly and contrived. I don't know if he doesn't care, or is just not a good actor anymore or what. It's almost as if he's reluctantly doing this all for money. Maybe that's unfair though. I still enjoy him and wish him the best, but there's a certain quality to it all.

And Beverly D'Angelo, who didn't speak in the ad I believe, looks almost exactly the same as 10 or 15 years ago thanks heavy plastic surgery, it seems. So she is definitely there for the money. "Just come in and look concerned and vaguely humorous as your well-intentioned, but incompetent husband gets taken for a ride at a hotel. That'll do."

As for Homeaway.com, is this the kind of economy to be pushing a service hooking up vacationers to rented property? Maybe I don't what the hell I'm talking about, but it seems to be a service aimed at the affluent.

In case you were wondering...

2010-02-03T21:33:00.003-05:00

Al Franken's still got it. The new senator, member of 4 unions, with National Labor Relations Board nominee (long held by McCain) Craig Becker:

Franken: This is an unusual hearing. I’m new the Senate, but it’s unique. Only other board hearing was for a chair. This was at the insistence of one member who held your nomination. Did that member submit any questions to you?

Becker: No.

Franken: Really. He, or she didn’t submit any questions over all those months. Huh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Harkin: Are your dues paid, Senator Franken?

Franken: Uh, for three unions.

You know you're in Washington when...

2010-02-02T22:09:00.002-05:00

365: If Nancy Reagan were our lawn she'd should "Just say no to poo!" G St. and 12th NE

Obama administration still insists they care about civil liberties

2010-02-02T18:29:00.006-05:00

Stay with me.

The Washington Times' Eli Lake today:

President Obama is coming under pressure from Democrats and civil liberties groups for failing to fill positions on an oversight panel formed in 2004 to make sure the government does not spy improperly on U.S. citizens.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, or PCLOB, was recommended initially by the bipartisan September 11 commission as an institutional voice for privacy inside the intelligence community. Its charter was to recommend ways to mitigate the effects of far-reaching surveillance technology that the federal government uses to track terrorists.

The panel was established in 2004 under President Bush as part of the executive office of the president. Its independence was unclear for several years. Congress responded by increasing the board's budget, expanding its powers and moving it outside the presidential executive office in 2007.

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has allowed the board to languish. He has not even spent the panel's allocation from the fiscal 2010 budget.

SOME lawmakers are pushing the administration to act. Then Lake gets a comment from the Obama team.

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, defended the administration's record in general but acknowledged the Democrats' criticisms and said the White House would soon act on them.

This president has made clear his commitment to civil liberties through the actions of his administration, and appreciates the congressional interest in this important issue. The White House has allocated funding for the PCLOB, and looks forward to appointing its leadership soon, he said.

(Emphasis mine)

That's beyond rich. Obama tried to peddle that line of thought in his State of the Union too.

Lake begins to chronicle proof that Rhodes is brimming with deception:

For example, the Obama administration pressed a British court last year to keep secret details of how terrorism suspect Binyam Mohammed was treated while in U.S. and Pakistani custody. The administration has also embraced in some cases the concept of indefinite detention for some terrorism suspects apprehended during the Bush presidency, and it has increased the practice of targeted killings in Pakistan and Yemen through unmanned aerial vehicles.

On the issue of surveillance, Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign voted for reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, a bill criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union for providing only minimal court oversight to expansive electronic intelligence-collection programs.

It goes on.

Outside of authorizing torture (and we have no proof torture isn't still going on since no one's allowed to observe overseas prisons), Obama is a direct heir of the Bush/Cheney legacy. The constitutional law professor and his own attorney general, in refusing to hold those guilty of what we'd call war crimes if another country did it, are beyond being accessories to the ugliness and are now the prime drivers of this illegal, shameful and immoral activity.

Something goes wrong again ... and again and again

2010-02-02T18:01:00.002-05:00

With the federal budget rollout, a jobs bill and action on financial regulation on the near-term docket in Congress, what's to happen with health care?

Both houses have passed a bill. Relatively minor differences could be worked out. What's the delay? Are the Democrats playing dead for now, only to (improbably) pick up HCR down the road, as Rahm Emanuel suggests?

Jonathan Chait details why such a strategy would be beyond disaster for Democrats:

Suppose there's no upside at all to passing health care reform. McArdle assumes, without explicating her reasons, that walking away from the issue is a way for Democrats to cut their losses. Why, though, would that be the case? Passing the bill may or may not make it more popular, letting it die is surely going to make it less popular. If the bill dies, then it's the subject of lengthy, painful postmortem coverage detailing its flaws and mistakes. It becomes the symbol of big government run amok, and the 60 Senate Democrats and 220 House Democrats who voted for it will suffer politically all the more. Moreover, the already-demoralized liberal base would become apoplectic with the Democratic Party. 1994 was bad, but passing a bill through both chambers then sitting by and letting it die is the kind of behavior that makes even the most pragmatic Democratic voter want to punish his own party.

In sum, I'm totally unpersuaded by the argument that Democrats will let health care die because it's in their interest to do so. It's not. It's a suicide pact, and pretty much every liberal I know -- the kinds of liberals who understand the need for compromise and running to the center -- will be there to hold the pillow over their face if they do it.

They've come this far, and forget them picking it up beyond a few months from now, when 2010 campaigning kicks into gear. Dropping everything at this point would be proof of a monumental retreat by a party that had the guns, Jan. 2009 AND now, to get this done. Abandoning this would only serve as a cudgel for Republicans to use against them. I think it would mean large GOP gains in 2010 and 2012, an albatross attached to any kind of agenda Obama would have left to enact in the next two years and a severe loss of respect and belief in Obama as a leader.

Pass it, you still have detractors, but at least you climbed the mountain and have the scars to prove it. Many with lingering consternation of what the bill means will come around when they see how moderate and pragmatic much of it is.

Stopping now, or delaying too long, is sheer lunacy.

Obama's version of 'upholding values'

2010-01-28T18:54:00.005-05:00

Last night, in his State of the Union address, President Obama did not mention Guantanamo Bay, nor indefinite detentions of detainees at Gitmo and other prisons despite a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing. You know, the basis for incarcerating a human being.

The closest he came was this passage:

Throughout our history, no issue has united this country more than our security. Sadly, some of the unity we felt after 9/11 has dissipated. We can argue all we want about who's to blame for this, but I'm not interested in relitigating the past. I know that all of us love this country. All of us are committed to its defense. So let's put aside the schoolyard taunts about who's tough. Let's reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values. Let's leave behind the fear and division, and do what it takes to defend our nation and forge a more hopeful future — for America and for the world.

"Let's reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values."

The gall it takes to utter this breathless phrase is pretty appalling when considering his government's policies.

Via Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, one of the most dogged reporters on the issue of Guantanamo Bay:

A yearlong review of evidence against men who are being held as terrorism suspects at Guantanamo has concluded that most of them should be released or transferred to third countries.

The review has angered human rights advocates, however, by concluding that "roughly" 50 of the detainees should be held indefinitely, even though there isn't enough valid evidence to prosecute them.

Only 35 of the men should face trial, either in civilian or military courts, the review concluded. That's far fewer than the 60 or 70 cases that the Pentagon's chief prosecutor has said his unit is preparing to try before military commissions.

The review, whose results have been divulged to a handful of reporters but not publicly announced, provides the first specific numbers for what the Obama administration thinks should be done with the detainees who are still at Guantanamo.

To posture as if he is attempting to uphold American values while endorsing indefinite detention, not to mention advocating the assassination of American citizens overseas, completely void of a trial or verifiable evidence, is insulting, dishonest, shameful and morally bankrupt.

Of course, this is the tip of the iceberg. Obama, quite predictably, refused to mention the legally-dubious program of unleashing Predator and Reaper drones throughout the world.

All this on the day after the death of the great freedom fighter Howard Zinn.

Zinn's last essay in The Nation touched on Obama:

I thought that in the area of constitutional rights he would be better than he has been. That's the greatest disappointment, because Obama went to Harvard Law School and is presumably dedicated to constitutional rights. But he becomes president, and he's not making any significant step away from Bush policies. Sure, he keeps talking about closing Guantánamo, but he still treats the prisoners there as "suspected terrorists." They have not been tried and have not been found guilty. So when Obama proposes taking people out of Guantánamo and putting them into other prisons, he's not advancing the cause of constitutional rights very far. And then he's gone into court arguing for preventive detention, and he's continued the policy of sending suspects to countries where they very well may be tortured.

I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president--unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.

Mr. President, the world is not your battlefield.

Save Yourself

2010-01-28T18:52:00.000-05:00

365: From an alley off of H St. NE

We're all Devo

2010-01-26T17:39:00.003-05:00

I've learned in recent weeks that Devo is working -- or finishing -- a new album, their first in 20 years. The band's lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh shared his thoughts with Paste:

Mothersbaugh says the album has no title yet, and while he has toyed with the idea of leaving it untitled, he says, “We probably won’t opt for that.” He’s also avoiding being too specific about what kind of music the album will contain but says it started with an urge to go back to the group’s roots, and ended up becoming a modern re-imagining of those roots. “I had this strong desire to make 12 songs that sounded totally interchangeable with our first or second album,” Mothersbaugh says. “But then, after we started writing things, and that’s the first place that they went to, we were kind of like, ‘Well, let’s think this out more,’ and they became more modern. We decided if we were really true to Devo, and Devo just started today, we wouldn’t be doing music that was historical.”

For a band that has always been more concerned with the future than the past, this approach makes a certain kind of sense. Even so, Mothersbaugh feels the new record might shake up some longtime fans. “I’m sure we’re going to have our fair share of Devo fans that are shocked by the record,” he says. “But, we’re also hoping that we’re going to connect with people that wouldn’t already be the choir. It’s an experiment for us.”

I'll agree with him that if they were to be true to the warped Devo vision, they wouldn't recreate their first albums, which were classics. I hope they deconstruct modern times, not rehash the late 1970s and ignore the present moment. The point is that Devo's music is just as relevant now as it was 30 years ago. With our democracy facing down one nihilistic political party (and a feckless party in power), renewed corporate influence in politics, two wars and the ungodly-named menaces known as Predator and Reaper drones, I think it's safe to say we have not evolved.

Long live devolution.

Stop

2010-01-24T18:27:00.004-05:00

365: Stop in the West Village

When comedians are our best defense

2010-01-22T13:20:00.004-05:00

Why is it up to comedians to point out how much of a sham our media and political institutions are?

Stephen Colbert dissects the Right's oxymoronic tactic of simultaneously calling Obama an ineffectual milquetoast president and a great evil that is dismantling America, whatever that means.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Two-Faced

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Economy

And Jon Stewart points out that a president trying to appeal to Americans by treating them like adults is, well, a losing battle.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Political Shift in D.C.

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Stewart's critique of an unhinged Keith Olbermann is another relevant one to watch.

American politics is now operated through carefully-constructed PR campaigns. The government runs like a corporation. Admit no fault. Engage in reckless behavior, deny, obfuscate, move on. Our mainstream media is perfectly comfortable with this charade. In fact, it's encouraged. Our modern media apparatus has taught Americans to want theatre. Complex problems that beg for rational solutions are not sexy. They don't "play well" on cable news. Therefore in a time like the present, when this country has a lot to fix, our media and political cultures can't handle. The media won't demand accountability, so politicians are allowed to ... dither, as they say. Fiddle while Rome burns. It's a big game to our media and political classes: Who's up, who's down, and how to I stay in office? It takes comedians to point that out now.

Denigrated, disregarded and demoralized

2010-01-20T21:19:00.003-05:00

In a particularly acerbic post (for him), Ezra Klein nails the state of the modern Democratic Party and its connection with base voters.

The loss in Massachusetts was a terrible disappointment to Democrats. But it can be explained away. Martha Coakley was a terrible candidate. Scott Brown ran an excellent campaign. These things happen.

But the reaction congressional Democrats have had to Coakley's loss has been much more shattering. It has been a betrayal.

The fundamental pact between a political party and its supporters is that the two groups believe the same thing and pledge to work on it together. And the Democratic base feels that it has held to its side of the bargain. It elected a Democratic majority and a Democratic president. It swallowed tough compromises on the issues it cared about most. It swallowed concessions to politicians it didn't like and industry groups it loathed. But it persisted. Because these things are important. That's why those voters believe in them. That's why they're Democrats.

But the party looks ready to abandon them because Brown won a special election in Massachusetts -- even though Democrats can pass the bill after Brown is seated. What that says is crucial: Whereas the base thought it was making these hard compromises and getting up early to knock on doors because these issues are important, the party thought all that was happening because, well, it's hard to say. It was electorally convenient? People need something to do? Ted Kennedy wanted it done?

There's no Democratic leadership. They campaigned on things like health care. They spent months debating it, which ultimately became the glaring problem ... it took too long and now they're feeling the heat of that drawn-out charade. And by the way, both chambers already voted for health care!

Now they're going to pull back on health care because of Scott Brown? They still have a vast majority. The filibuster is not the end all be all of the Senate. Can you imagine George Bush-era Republicans backing down like the Democrats are, and have all year? Not that I'm endorsing Bush-era bullying, but a large electoral mandate is just that. All you need is 51 votes my friends. Democrats are so afraid of being labeled liberals that they have consistently given in to a Republican party full of conniving demagogues that are only worried about securing power rather than the monumental problems our nation faces -- ones they have a sizable claim to.

This all wouldn't be a huge deal if Democrats had any balls or coherent sense of leadership. But, alas, they are ineffectual, two-faced, sad-sack losers. One party is too stupid to lead. But the other is too gutless. I'm not sure which is more disheartening.

Safety first

2010-01-18T20:11:00.002-05:00

365: Ladder on E. Capitol Ave.

Get a load of these guys

2010-01-16T22:14:00.007-05:00

Is it funny to anyone else that Bush came back to Washington after months of silence to say this?

"I know a lot of people want to send blankets and water," Bush said while making his first visit to the White House since his presidency ended. "Just send your cash."

Thanks for coming by George. Can't you tell a lot about these three by their looks in this photo? Their expressions seem to match their personas. Clinton is concerned and compassionate (whether honest or politicking), Obama as the ultra-serious, deliberate cautionary and Bush the ... dim bulb. Or are those the stereotypes of them that have been drilled in my head?

(AP Photo)

United States Tax Court

2010-01-16T22:00:00.001-05:00

Had to include this one.

See more at my Flickr page.

Capitol Hill

2010-01-16T21:45:00.002-05:00

365: On Capitol Hill, DC.

The torture Right's tunnel vision on interrogation tactics

2010-01-15T13:19:00.006-05:00

In light of word that Riduan Isamuddin aka Hambali -- the man accused of plotting the 2002 bombing in Bali that killed 200+ -- will be tried in Washington, D.C., former Bush speechwriter and torture enthusiast Marc Thiessen spews some predictable bile.

Thiessen's post from National Review's The Corner:

Hambali is being called the mastermind of the Bali bombings. That may be an accurate description, but it understates his importance. He was in fact the leader of a Southeast Asian terrorist network that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed turned to after 9/11 to carry out the “Second Wave” — a plot to hijack a plane and fly it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles. (KSM knew we would be on the lookout for Arab men, so he asked Hambali to recruit a cell of Southeast Asian operatives to infiltrate the United States. I tell the full story of the takedown of the Hambali network in Courting Disaster.)

Hambali and the key members of his terror network were captured only because of information gained from KSM after he underwent enhanced interrogation techniques. (Indeed, it seems that virtually everyone the Obama administration wants to put on trial in civilian court was captured as a result of the CIA interrogation program that Obama shut down.) After 9/11, we were unaware of the Hambali network or its plans — until CIA detainees were captured and questioned. Those detainees told us what we needed to know to take the network down.

The torture Right refuses to acknowledge the actual chronology of KSM's capture and the disintegration of the Library Tower plot. Adam Serwer at TAPPED again explains:

... the most prominent example in the supposed "wave of suicide hijackings" supposedly disrupted by waterboarding KSM, the attack on the Library Tower in L.A., had been canceled before KSM was captured. Bush had bragged about disrupting the L.A. Towers plot in 2002, but KSM hadn't been captured in 2003.

Under interrogation by the CIA at a black site, Hambali revealed plans for a "wave" of attacks on U.S. subways and businesses and a planned attack using anthrax -- except as Jane Mayer reported in The Dark Side, those plots had already been disrupted by December 2001, and the scientist developing the anthrax was already in U.S. custody.

As for whether the information KSM gave led to Hambali's capture, some of it may have. It's politically convenient for the the GOP to draw a direct line between KSM being waterboarded and Hambali being captured, but that presupposes that the U.S. had no assistance from overseas partners. In the imaginary world of 24, all you have to do is torture a suspect to get information. But in reality, piecing together intelligence information is a complicated process, and it's highly unlikely that KSM provided the only information that led to Hambali's capture. The Bush administration's prior misleading characterizations of how useful information gleaned through torture was don't exactly inspire confidence.

In a separate post, Serwer documents the only part of America that's losing its head over the attempted attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the GOP, while Obama's response seems to have helped his approval ratings, according to a Pew poll.

Torture has become a crucial plank to one political party's platform, as U.S. Senate candidate (and the current darling of the Right) Scott Brown underscored with his own endorsement of "enhanced interrogation techniques." This is the legacy of the Bush-Cheney years.

The MSM could give a damn

2010-01-13T21:22:00.004-05:00

Once again, the job of keeping the government in check regarding nasty things like the legality of Predator drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan is left to diligent groups like the ACLU while our vacuous press masturbates to the latest gossip shitbrick book about the '08 campaign.

The ACLU, via Spencer Ackerman:

“The American public has a right to know whether the drone program is consistent with international law, and that all efforts are made to minimize the loss of innocent lives,” said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project. “The Obama administration has reportedly expanded the drone program, but it has not explained publicly what the legal basis for the program is, what limitations it recognizes on the use of drones outside active theaters of war and what the civilian casualty toll has been thus far. We’re hopeful that the request we’ve filed today will encourage the Obama administration to disclose information about the basis, scope and implementation of the program.”

As the ACLU inquires on what is possibly the most immediate concern within our modern warfare complex, the mainstream media prefers the low-hanging fruit fed to them by fellow anonymous-source obsessed, politics-as-celebrity hacks.

We owe you nothing, you have no control

2010-01-13T18:52:00.005-05:00

In the age of the modern president endorsing indefinite detention, whether based on perceived dangers to America, or country of origin or plain arrogance, a Supreme Court case like U.S. v. Comstock gives legitimate pause for concern.

The case is challenging the federal government's plea to allow the further incarceration of federal prisoners even after they've served their time in jail. In this case, the defendants are all sex offenders deemed "too dangerous" to be set free. While it's hard to sympathize with sex offenders that are judged unfit for freedom (by whom?), my worry is where this can lead.

The Washington Post:

A majority of Supreme Court justices seemed inclined Tuesday to accept that the federal government has the power to indefinitely hold prisoners who are deemed sexually dangerous, even if they have completed their sentences.

[...]

But (Solicitor General Elena) Kagan told the court that it is simply an extension of the federal government's recognized power "to run a responsible criminal justice system." She said that if the federal government cannot find a state willing to take responsibility for a sexually dangerous prisoner about to be released, federal officials have to step in.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seemed to agree. "You are talking about endangering the health and safety of people," Ginsburg said. "The government has some responsibility."

Surprisingly, it was arch-conservative justice Antonin Scalia that most vigorously opposed the government's argument, though his qualms likely rested in protecting states' rights. Regardless:

Kagan's chief antagonist was Justice Antonin Scalia, who said, "There is no constitutional power on the part of the federal government to protect society from sexual predators." He rejected Kagan's argument that the federal government had a responsibility because the states were not taking on the task.

"This is a recipe for the federal government taking over everything," Scalia said. "The states won't do it, therefore we have to do it. It has to be done and therefore the federal government steps in and does it."

And this paragraph on the argument made by Kagan that a valid precedent is prisoners with communicable diseases seems alarming to me.

Others -- Justices Stephen G. Breyer and John Paul Stevens, notably -- seemed responsive to Kagan's analogy that the federal government would be within its rights to detain a soon-to-be-released prisoner who had a dangerous communicable disease.

If this is given a pass as constitutionally viable, what category of prisoner is next? What path are we choosing, if we haven't already made our decision?

8 years of Gitmo

2010-01-11T17:32:00.001-05:00

365: Demonstrator marches from the White House through downtown DC.

NYT: Break out the weak Democrat meme

2010-01-10T22:11:00.003-05:00

I'm guessing Helene Cooper gets paid by the article. This is a pathetic piece. That's all I'll say. Some selected spots:

The Label Factor: Is Obama a Wimp or a Warrior?

Like every Democratic president since John F. Kennedy, President Obama is battling the perception that he’s a wimp on national security.

[...]

And labels count, as a poll taken last August by the Pew Center for the People and the Press illustrates: When voters were asked which party could do a better job of dealing with terrorism, they expressed more confidence in Republicans than in Democrats, as they had consistently since 2002. The 2009 margin was 38 percent to 32 percent. But when asked which party could do a better job of making wise decisions about foreign policy, 44 percent chose the Democrats, 31 percent the Republicans.

[...]

But labels can stick, as Mr. Carter himself found out so well, and as the Republicans also know from their experience parrying the opposite stereotype — of cowboy-style recklessness, first under Ronald Reagan and later under George W. Bush (whose own father, oddly, was said to have suffered from a “wimp factor”).

[...]

Then there’s terrorism. Mr. Obama will also have to demonstrate some tangible action there, the experts say, to dispel the notion put forward by the Republicans that his plans to shut down the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, makes Americans less safe. The Christmas Day attempted plane attack over Detroit failed in many ways, but it succeeded in doing one thing: reintroducing the issue of terrorism into the American psyche. Now, Mr. Obama is under pressure to show that he considers fighting terrorism to be a priority.

The problem though, is that many of the steps he can take against terrorism — like intelligence co-operation, drone strikes and covert actions — are, by their very nature, often invisible. “He needs visible victories there, like hits on Al Qaeda leaders, so no one is able to put together a narrative that says he’s weak,” said David J. Rothkopf, a Clinton administration official and author of “Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power.”

Society's cleaners

2010-01-09T10:35:00.002-05:00

365: I keep meaning to take a picture of this. I love it. This is a cleaning place just to the side of the Safeway parking lot near the Potomac Metro.

Broder mails another one in, hopes Obama gets serious

2010-01-08T10:09:00.005-05:00

There's no better source to find what the modern, conventional, Beltway groupthink of the day is than to read David Broder's columns in The Washington Post. Whether it's laziness, a warped worldview, stubbornness, all of the above, I don't know. But Broder's column today is pretty typical of the collective thought bouncing around Washington regarding Obama's reaction of and attitude toward the FAILED attempt to bring down an airliner on Christmas. It seems Broder simply used his columnist-version of Mad Libs to mail in another one.

Worn-out Beltway trope #1: Our modern president, aka Daddy, must protect us at all times, lest he be caught off guard, which, in Broder's mind, would be all his fault and an indicator that he isn't "serious" or worthy of official Washington's respect.

Was Christmas Day 2009 the same kind of wake-up call for Barack Obama that Sept. 11, 2001, had been for George W. Bush?

The near-miss by a passenger plotting to blow up an American airliner as it flew into Detroit seems to have shocked this president as much as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did the last.

Both presidents had had plenty of warnings in the form of threats and even incidents. But both were caught off guard: Bush reading to a classroom of youngsters; Obama on a family vacation in Hawaii.

It's as if the president -- to Broder, our supreme, benevolent, all-knowing commander -- must be locked away in a top secret War Room at all hours of the day personally monitoring the constant stream of incoming intelligence, domestic and international.

Beltway trope #2: Sound the war drum!

For now, we are conducting a proxy war in Yemen, but that may change. Al-Qaeda's local enablers must learn that there is a price to be paid when Uncle Sam is attacked from their bases.

Jesus. Hasn't this crotch-grabbing machismo gotten us into enough deep shit already? Is Broder completely unaware, or has he even ever contemplated the possibility, that this militant attitude is a prime, if not the preeminent, inflammatory recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, not to mention the attitudinal nexus of all that is wrong about America's view of itself and the rest of the world?

Beltway trope #3: Obama has tried to do too much and should now focus on terror -- as if he wasn't already in directing a five-front war -- as his "new priority."

--and--

Beltway trope #4: The naive, or "benign" as Broder calls it, leadership style of the president will only change when Barack Obama (and by proxy, Democrats) becomes "serious" and comfortable being a war president.

For Obama to establish a new priority would obviously be much more difficult than it appeared to be for Bush. And this new priority would be a much less comfortable fit for Obama than leading a war on terrorism was for Bush.

Nonetheless, events have their own logic. The Christmas plot appears to have shaken Obama like nothing else that happened in his first year. When he allowed the White House to quote his warning to his Cabinet colleagues that another "screw-up" like that could not be tolerated, he seemed to signal that his benign leadership style had reached its limits.

Many have been looking for a similar shift of tone in his dealings with the dictators in Iran and North Korea and even in his tolerance for the politics-as-usual maneuverings of many Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.

It's as if the DC media establishmentarians like Broder, boosted by the ratings trolls within the cable news industrial complex, refuse to do or allow any critical thought of the ramifications of America's policies in the Middle East and beyond, as well as the effects of what they write or say.

My issue here isn't that he's criticizing Obama, but rather, the criticism is lame, predictable and largely void of any value. Unfortunately, this is all too common from the DC media stars.

After eight years of incompetent, chest-beating leadership from the Bush administration that brought an endless stream embarrassment, failure, death and global chaos, Broder seemingly wants more. And the tragic irony is that Obama's policies aren't all that much different than Bush's. But the Broders of the world have no interest in critical thought. Arrogance and narrow-mindedness are not only valued but also rewarded. It's the Washington way.

Big eye, big guy watching me

2010-01-06T20:02:00.003-05:00

365: The surveillance state.

Glenn Greenwald examines how our modern surveillance state has too much to process, therefore leading to the intel failures exemplified by the Abdulmutallab attempt on Christmas Day:

The problem is never that the U.S. Government lacks sufficient power to engage in surveillance, interceptions, intelligence-gathering and the like. Long before 9/11 -- from the Cold War -- we have vested extraordinarily broad surveillance powers in the U.S. Government to the point that we have turned ourselves into a National Security and Surveillance State. Terrorist attacks do not happen because there are too many restrictions on the government's ability to eavesdrop and intercept communications, or because there are too many safeguards and checks. If anything, the opposite is true: the excesses of the Surveillance State -- and the steady abolition of oversights and limits -- have made detection of plots far less likely. Despite that, we have an insatiable appetite -- especially when we're frightened anew -- to vest more and more unrestricted spying and other powers in our Government, which -- like all governments -- is more than happy to accept them.

More collected information doesn't mean more safety. It just means more convolution for our intelligence gathering officials to sort through. The Patriot Act again and again proves to be the poster child for egregious U.S. government policy on a variety of fronts.

The downward-spiral effect of America's terror policies

2010-01-05T20:36:00.004-05:00

In the aftermath of President Obama's statement today on the "potentially disastrous" failure to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding an airliner in an apparent bombing plot, Spencer Ackerman points out a distinction that should be highlighted when discussing what has been called a breakdown in connecting the dots by the intelligence community. Obama said the intel was available, but he then repeated the line about professionals within the intelligence apparatus missing the connections.

Ackerman:

But it’s not true that there was sufficient information “that would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list.” As a U.S. intelligence official told me last week, there is a standard for moving someone from a person-of-interest list run by the National Counterterrorism Center to the FBI-maintained Terrorist Screening Database. That standard is “specific derogatory information leading to reasonable suspicion.” And that FBI-maintained database still has another procedural and evidentiary step to go through before placing someone on the no-fly list.

In essence, if Obama wants to change the standards of how one lands on a no-fly list, he should do it. But to blame officials for not "connecting dots" isn't really accurate. As the official told Ackerman, there are certain standards to follow; simple suspicion has to take that extra step. Ackerman once more:

Obama can say that common sense dictates that Abdulmutallab ought to have been on the no-fly list. But that’s reasoning backward from the conclusion. It’s appropriate after a failure occurs. But it’s not appropriate as an explanation for how that failure occurred. The standard for placing someone on the no-fly list is simply not met by the aggregated intelligence that Obama cited (and he didn’t unveil any new information).

For the president to hawk this as a connecting-the-dots failure seems to be either disingenuous political theatre to put on a show for our feeble minds, or just a misunderstanding of the issue.

Speaking of political theatrics, the administration announced that several Yemenis kept at Guantanamo Bay for years, then found innocent of any crimes, must stay incarcerated due to the "deteriorating security situation" in Yemen, all so Americans can know that their Daddy president is protecting them from the evil terrorists.

Reuters:

President Barack Obama bowed to political pressure from Democratic and Republican lawmakers not to send any more prisoners to Yemen as a result of revelations that a would-be bomber on a Detroit-bound plane had received al Qaeda training in Yemen.

"It was always our intent to transfer detainees to other countries only under conditions that provide assurances that our security is being protected," Obama said.

"Given the unsettled situation, I've spoken to the attorney general (Eric Holder) and we've agreed that we will not be transferring additional detainees back to Yemen at this time," Obama said.

As Andy Worthington has pointed out in his dogged coverage of Guantanamo Bay, this rationale is bad policy at best (in that it only threatens to radicalize more than it protects anyone's safety) and against the rule of law at worst.

“only at Guantánamo can fear trump justice to such an alarming degree” that, “if [the officials’] rationale for not releasing any of the Yemenis from Guantánamo was extended to the US prison system, it would mean that no prisoner would ever be released at the end of their sentence, because prison ‘might have radicalized’ them, and also, of course, that it would lead to no prisoner ever being released from Guantánamo.”

Our monarchical structure says we can indefinitely detain anyone we deem a threat. From Bush to Obama, this is set American policy. Can anyone claim with a straight face that any president in the near future will reverse these policies based on A) today's support torture by (at least) one political party and an alarming number of Americans who have been instilled with fear at every turn, B) our spineless, constantly-posturing political class and C) an irresponsible, for-profit mainstream media that will exploit TERROR! and FEAR! and DANGER! to cull ratings.

So at this point, we're left with what could be called Terrorball, the unwinnable game of fear and paranoia brought to you by Washington's ruling and chattering classes.

Our national government and almost all of the establishment media have decided to play a similar game, which could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts until there are no longer any terrorists, and;
(2) If terrorists manage to ever kill or injure or seriously frighten any Americans, they win.

Read the entire post at Lawyers, Guns and Money. He shares statistics detailing the number of deaths in America unrelated to terrorism, but caused but things we have accepted as normal, as in starvation, homicide and lack of health care.

Ladies and gentlemen, your America in 2010.

War spending comically dwarfs airport security spending

2010-01-04T19:43:00.001-05:00

The title says it all:

US Spends Ten Times More On Afghanistan Than Airport Security

The numbers indeed are sobering. In fiscal year 2009, the Transportation Security Administration was allocated $7.99 billion, $5.74 billion of which was earmarked for aviation security (Page 154). Only $128 million of that total was geared towards "enhancements at passenger checkpoints to improve the detection of prohibited items, especially weapons and explosives" which is roughly $100 million less than the tax break granted to Alaska fishermen in the stimulus package passed early this Congress.

Contrast those numbers with the dollars being poured into the two wars. A report released in September by the Congressional Research Service estimated that $94.8 billion was spent in Iraq in FY09. Another $55.2 billion is going to Afghanistan (more than ten times the amount spent on aviation security) with the number rising to $72.9 billion in 2010. That total, does not include the expected $30 billion that will be required to pay for additional troops.

You're next Yemen.

Matthews recognized Politico's charade

2010-01-04T19:08:00.006-05:00

As much as Chris Matthews is a useless gasbag, he can occasionally stick it to someone -- or Politico in this case.

Matthews was with Politico's Jonathan Martin, who, to be fair didn't have any of these Cheney "exclusives" they come up with that give Cheney an open, uncontested platform to say whatever he wants. I think it's mostly Mike Allen who is the scorned former VP's stenographer. But still, pretty funny.

MATTHEWS: I mean, he’s got his own news conduit.

MARTIN: You know, we aggressively report on both sides.

MATTHEWS: It’s not reporting. He feeds you this stuff. … I do like Politico. He’s feeding you guys this crap. [...]

What’s he call up and say? “I got a hot one for you, Jon. Can you take — what’s your email address?” Is that what he does?

It's official Politico. Everyone gets the schtick. Get clicks, news value and integrity be damned.

Nothing seems to kill me, no matter how hard I try

2010-01-04T18:40:00.005-05:00

Spencer Ackerman chronicles the follies of the current climate around releasing Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Congress and, more importantly, the administration seems content on keeping them locked up no matter what their status of guilt.

Critics of President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility are saying that the Yemen connections of would-be plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab ought to prevent the administration from repatriating dozens of Yemeni detainees currently held at Guantanamo. “It would be irresponsible to take any of the Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo and send them back to Yemen,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) said on ABC News’ “ThisWeek” on Sunday.

[...]

The Yemeni official declined to comment on the impact a lack of repatriation would have on the two nations’ relations. Nor would the official comment on the congressional calls to keep the Yemeni citizens at Guantanamo. But the official said, “The detainees that have been sent to Yemen were detainees that have been cleared by U.S. courts, and therefore are presumed innocent, or at least nothing stands against them.” (Few, if any, Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo have received a hearing before a civilian U.S. court.)

You know what you create when you keep a newly freed (and ultimately cleared and innocent) man incarcerated for "security concerns" of America? A man that screams BLOW UP THE OUTSIDE WORLD!!!!!!!

How much longer can we make the decisions we seem to be making with Yemen here? What is the end of this constantly moving focus on al-Qaeda throughout the world? How much longer can we chase these nihilists throughout the world while simultaneously serving as the prime recruiter of angered Muslim young men full of hatred for America? We are maiming their innocent citizens through inexact drone strikes. It's increasingly difficult -- as if it was ever easy -- to verify who exactly was hit in these strikes. It seems the U.S. will characterize anyone near affiliation with anyone in al-Qaeda as associated with the group, in a malicious, indoctrinated way. Tribal leaders claim a multitude of citizenry, especially children, as the victims of these strikes. Reality is blurry. But the plain truth is that innocents are being murdered by these strikes, and the effect on those with and without ties to al-Qaeda is immeasurable.

Think before thy speak

2010-01-04T18:24:00.002-05:00

I love the way Limbaugh posed for his adoring fans amid his own possibly troublesome heart conditions over the holidays in the progressive Hawaii health care system.

The SEIU's site:

Whether he realized it or not, Limbaugh was praising the care he received from union nurses in one of the country's most progressive health care systems. On behalf of the labor movement and health reform advocates everywhere, THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT, Rush!

Overeating and Oxycontin never helped either Rush.

Welcome 2010

2010-01-02T17:54:00.000-05:00

365: The fallout begins.

The value of justice

2010-01-02T17:43:00.003-05:00

It pays to read until the end of a story. In today's WaPo story on Iraqi reaction to the decision by a U.S. judge to dismiss the charges against the Blackwater guards that opened fire on innocent Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007, this pearl comes as the finale:

Firas Fadhil Abbas, whose brother Osama was killed at Nisoor Square, said that "if someone kills a dog in America, they do not escape punishment. I don't understand this trial."

The value of an Iraqi life is in question, and Abbas nails it. He's right, so where's the outrage? I understand that the judge probably had to make this decision based on the abuse of protocol by members of the Bush-era federal government. That said, I sincerely hope an investigation is done by the DOJ to figure out why these protected statements from the accused guards were allowed to be seen/used by prosecutors. How did they not know what was allowable in this case? It seems inexcusable that they did not know, so what was thought process here? Was it intentional? Just careless? I doubt it.

Abbas says the execution of a dog would go punished in America. He's right. What happens when 17 innocent Iraqis are murdered? Where's the justice? What happens next? I'm sure we haven't heard the end of this case, but, really, how likely are these guards going to face a real trial at this point?

Sound of Silver, talk to me

2010-01-02T17:25:00.003-05:00

I'm a little late on this, as it's Jan. 2, 2010, but my pick for best album (and most profound) is LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver, 2007. Note: That is before I think hard and revert back to the prophetic Kid A from 2000.

My favorite track on Sound of Silver is North American Scum. The title says a lot, but the song is equal parts antagonistic, apologetic and (oddly) appreciative of the ugliness the world sees in North Americans.

This album, I believe, encompasses so much of the melancholy and desperation (in the form of "dance-punk" music) of the post-9/11 world, when two wars raged and next to no one could keep up with the massive transformations happening around the world. If Kid A was Radiohead's prediction for the times, Sound of Silver was the representative of the fallout.

Creedocide

2009-12-30T20:58:00.001-05:00

Getting rid of mice the spiritual way.

Important Things with Demetri Martin

Power - Creedocide

www.comedycentral.com

Joke of the Day

Stand-Up Comedy

Free Online Games

Chickenhawks: President must over-dramatically scold and condemn from home (not Hawaii) to be serious on terror

2009-12-30T18:39:00.005-05:00

Glenn Greenwald says Obama's calm is what he likes about him. This is in response to media drumbeaters straight from the mainstream media and/or neocon butcher shops attacking Obama for his so-called lack of a hysterical, over-dramatic return to "defend" us from terrorism and say "bring it on" in from the White House (or heroic as this fearful wing of the Right characterize it) after the failed attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. I like that aspect of Obama too. Sometimes his glib aloofness is both a gift and a curse, but in this case, it serves him well.

Greenwald on the struggle to spin Obama's treatment of Flight 253 and our addiction to terror melodramas:

That's because Obama reacted as though this is exactly what it actually is: a lame, failed attempt to kill people by a fractured band of criminals. It's not the Cuban Missile Crisis or the attack on Pearl Harbor, as disappointing and unfulfilling as it is to accept that. It merits analysis, investigation and possibly policy changes by the responsible government agencies -- not a bright-red-alert, bell-ringing, siren-sounding government-wide emergency that venerates Al Qaeda into a threat so profound that the President can't even be away from Washington lest they get us all. As always, Al Qaeda's greatest allies are the ones in the U.S. who tremble with the most fear at the very mention of their name and who quite obviously crave a return of that stimulating, all-consuming, elevating 9/12 glory.

We are so afraid. Why? It's as if we possess only a hairline-sensitive ability -- or disability -- to not lose our minds when an event like Flight 253 happens. The sole interest for cable networks and the rest of the mainstream media is to whip up lame tripes about his bonafides, safe, safe, are you safe, what's Obama doing? Why is he "soft" on terror, which is ridiculously ironic since he's near a 5-front war on Musliim countries right now, with Iran looming in the background. That old right-wing state of fury and vengeance is really drilled into Americans' heads. I fear some did not learn lessons of the Iraq War run-up.