I have a big day going on and will link to McJoan and Greg Sargent for commentary on Obama and the FISA bill rather than write commentary myself. We’re all disappointed.
Republicans, of course, have an entirely different view on FISA, because they want an America in which security is paramount. I bet I know where they’ve been looking for inspiration.
Sorry I’ve been scarce. I had to focus on the other site for a while.
Glenn Greenwald is the go-to guy on matters of telecom immunity and wiretapping. I’ve got no explanation for the House Dems’ behavior other than they must all be corrupt up to their eyeballs.
Yesterday the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report saying that the President, Dick the Dick and other top Bush Administration officials knowingly and willfully promoted the invasion of Iraq “with public statements that weren’t supported by intelligence or that concealed differences among intelligence agencies,” writes Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy Newspapers.
The release of this report was delayed by committee infighting, and they let it loose yesterday when the whole world was focused on the Obama Nomination and the Clinton Petulance.
The real kicker — and again, this is Stuff You Already Knew — is that there is suspicion that the famous Iraqi Exiles like Ahmad Chalabi really were working for the Iranians all along and fed bad intelligence to Defense Department Doofus Doug Feith and others to goad the U.S. into taking out Saddam Hussein for the benefit of Iran. Better our tax dollars than theirs, eh?
This is news? you ask. Well, no, it’s pretty much what most of us suspected all along.
John Walcott writes for McClatchy Newspapers:
Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have “been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
You’ll love this:
A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials’ activities after only a month, and the Defense Department’s top brass never followed up on the investigators’ recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
It’s almost like … they knew they were being used by Iran but didn’t want anyone else to know about it.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.
Isn’t that, like, treason or something?
Anyway, I want to go back to Conservative National Defense Strategy, which (as I’ve said before) boils down to chest thumping and tree-peeing.
Have you ever noticed that in right-wing parlance, a “serious” foreign policy is one that requires invading someone? In rightie world, if a policy doesn’t involve missiles and bombs and stuff, it’s not “serious.” I’d like to float the idea that a “serious” foreign policy is one crafted by mature and intelligent people with thorough knowledge of whatever it is they are making policy about.
Instead, for the past going on eight years we’ve had –
You still see the TeeVee pundits intone that Republicans are “better” at national defense and foreign policy than Democrats, although for the life of me I can’t tell what criteria they are using to judge “better.” I think it’s way past time this little “better at national defense” meme was revisited.
The “Dems are soft on defense” bluff is one the Right has been pulling since the late 1940s. But it’s a bluff. If you look hard at U.S. foreign policy from the end of World War II to 2000, and compare effectiveness of Democratic and Republican administrations, seems to me it’s pretty much a wash. Presidents of both parties have had their successes and failures.
If John McCain wants to run on the innate superiority of Republicans in national defense matters, I say bring it on.
Yesterday the House broke for a week’s recess without renewing the terrorist surveillance authority — the so-called “Protect America Act” — in spite of President Bush’s warnings that failure to renew the act would leave America vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
What can one even say about this quote, included in Carl Hulse’s NYT article on the Democrats’ refusal yesterday to pass the Senate’s FISA bill before expiration of the Protect America Act:
“I think there is probably joy throughout the terrorist cells throughout the world that the United States Congress did not do its duty today,” said Representative Ted Poe, Republican of Texas.
This is the kind of pure, unadulterated idiocy — childish, cartoonish and creepy — that Democrats for years have been allowing to bully them into submission, govern our country, and dismantle our Constitution. Outside of Andy McCarthy, Mark Steyn and their roving band of paranoid right-wing bloggers who can’t sleep at night because they think (and hope) that there are dark, primitive “jihadi” super-villains hiding under their beds — along with the Very Serious pundit class which proves their Seriousness by placing blind faith in the fear-mongering pronouncements and demands of our military and intelligence officials for more unchecked power — nobody cares about adolescent Terrorist game-playing like this any longer. In the real world, it doesn’t work, and it hasn’t worked for some time.
Hindrocket the Power Tool dutifully trots out the standard spin:
Not Serious
About national security, that is. Over the last 36 hours, Congressional Democrats have again demonstrated a casual, even frivolous attitude toward their Constitutional duty to assist in keeping Americans safe from attack.
As Jesus’ General says, expiration of the PAA puts our National Security services in a terrible bind. “It forces our them to partially comply with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.” I feel vulnerable already.
Also this week the Senate passed a bill that would ban torture. Dan Froomkin wrote yesterday:
Who are we as a nation? Are we who we used to be? Did one terrorist attack really change all that? Can it be changed back?
Those, at heart, are the questions raised by the Senate’s passage yesterday of a bill that would ban harsh interrogation tactics used by the CIA — a bill already passed by the House, and a bill President Bush has vowed to veto.
The debate is not just about waterboarding. It’s about whether other tactics — such as prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, mock executions, the use of attack dogs, the withholding of food, water and medical care and the application of electric shocks — should be part of our official interrogation toolkit.
Whether you call them torture or not, they are undeniably cruel. They are undeniable assaults on human dignity.
They are all prohibited by the Army Field Manual, which covers all military interrogations. They are all off limits to the FBI. Now Congress wants the CIA to adhere to the same restrictions.
But Bush says no.
The propagation of our values has long been a hallmark of American foreign policy. Chief among those values has been respect for human dignity. But the message we’ve been sending lately is altogether different. How can we tell other countries to respect human dignity when we have made it optional for our own government? When our official policy is that the ends justify the means?
Um, when the Wingnuts took over? Just a guess.
Via Matthew Yglesias — Alexander Bolton writes for The Hill –
When Bush proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among terrorists there is no doubt,” Clinton sprang to her feet in applause but Obama remained firmly seated. The president’s line divided most of the Democratic audience, with nearly half standing to applaud and the other half sitting in stony silence.
In one instance Clinton appeared to gauge Obama’s response before showing her own.
When Bush warned the Iranian government that “America will confront those who threaten our troops, we will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf” Obama jumped up to applaud. Clinton leaned across Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), seated to her left, to look in Obama’s direction before slowly standing.
The Illinois senator strongly criticized the former first lady last year when she supported a resolution calling for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to be designated a terrorist organization. Obama supporters and other Democrats charged the vote would give Bush political cover to begin military operations against Iran.
There also appeared to be some division among Democrats Monday over whether to continue to pump money into the Iraq war effort. When Bush said he would “ask Congress to meet its responsibilities to these brave men and women by fully funding our troops,” Obama and Clinton remained seated while Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) stood up behind them to applaud.
Make of this what you will.
I don’t want to listen to the creep, mind you, especially since I have yet to recover completely from the flu. But since this is the last State of the Union speech he’s going to give I thought it might have some comic moments.
FYI, if you’re watching on C-SPAN, stay tuned after the speech ends to listen for Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla. She should be giving her comments about 10:30.
Show Time
9:00. The Cabinet is shuffling in. Tweety is gushing about how much everybody loves Condi Rice. He thinks she’ll be a veep candidate. Please.
9:05. Apparently some people actually want to be seen with the Creep on national television. No shame.
9:07. Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama are sitting together.
9:09. OK, here we go.
He’s calling for bipartisanship. This is like Heidi Fleiss calling for chastity. He admits there is short-term concern about the economy. Now he’s talking about the worthless stimulus package and saying that the Senate had better pass it as is and not tweak it.
9:13. Tax relief. Tax relief. He told a joke on people who say they don’t mind their taxes rising. The Dems sit on their hands. Make the tax relief permanent, he says. Standing ovation from Republicans, stone silence from Dems.
He promises to veto any bill that raises taxes.
He says that the government should spend tax dollars wisely. Iraq, anyone? Balance the budget? What a joke.
9:16. Earmarks. Where did I read today that Bush’s earmark policy is a scam? Here it is.
9:19. Health care reform by “expanding consumer choice.”
I have proposed ending the bias in the tax code against those who do not get their health insurance through their employer. This one reform would put private coverage within reach for millions, and I call on the Congress to pass it this year.
What bias? I deduct all of the cost of my health insurance from my taxes.
9:20. He’s claiming that No Child Left Behind has been a success. Amazing.
9:22. Oh, I like this. He wants to give Pell grants to primary and secondary students to go to private schools. The debts they graduate from college with aren’t high enough.
If we fail to pass this agreement, we will embolden the purveyors of false populism in our hemisphere.
Look in a mirror, chimpy.
Trade brings better jobs, better choices, and better prices. Yet for some Americans, trade can mean losing a job, and the Federal Government has a responsibility to help. I ask the Congress to reauthorize and reform trade adjustment assistance, so we can help these displaced workers learn new skills and find new jobs.
Education for jobs that don’t exist.
9:26. Now he’s talking about the environment. What I said above about Heidi Fleiss calling for chastity.
I saw a couple of Democrats clapping. Somebody take their names.
So I ask the Congress to double Federal support for critical basic research in the physical sciences and ensure America remains the most dynamic nation on earth.
But don’t raise taxes to pay for it.
9:29. Embryonic stems cells. Keep ‘em frozen.
9:30.
On matters of justice, we must trust in the wisdom of our Founders and empower judges who understand that the Constitution means what it says.
Heidi Fleiss, etc.
9:31. Volunteers for America! Cause the Gubmint won’t help you!
Tonight the armies of compassion continue the march to a new day in the Gulf Coast. America honors the strength and resilience of the people of this region. We reaffirm our pledge to help them build stronger and better than before. And tonight I am pleased to announce that in April we will host this year’s North American Summit of Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the great city of New Orleans.
No shame.
Now he’s going to call on Congress to save Social Security and Medicare. Republicans applaud. Two Dem programs the Republicans want to destroy.
Secure the border. Guest workers. Tepid applause.
9:35.
Our foreign policy is based on a clear premise: We trust that people, when given the chance, will choose a future of freedom and peace.
And we’ve seen to it they don’t get that chance.
In the last 7 years, we have witnessed stirring moments in the history of liberty. We have seen citizens in Georgia and Ukraine stand up for their right to free and fair elections.
Well, send the Republican Party over there. That’ll stop those free and fair elections.
Since September 11, we have taken the fight to these terrorists and extremists. We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure, and we will deliver justice to the enemies of America.
Running out of time, dude.
9:38. We’re spreading the hope of freedom, he says. He’s adding 3,200 Marines to our forces in Afghanistan. A bit late; people have been asking for this for years.
He’s talking about Iraq. And, y’know, there’s nothing on television at all tonight. There’s a Law and Order rerun on TNT, but that’s about it.
There’s wrestling on USA. A guy in blue trunks just jumped all the way over a guy in brown trunks.
9:44. Chimpy is saying al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq. Except the al Qaeda in Iraq is not the same al Qaeda that hit us on 9/11. He always fails to mention that.
9:46. Nancy Pelosi looks as if she’s struggling to stay awake.
9:47. 20,000 troops are coming home, he says. Biggest applause of the night.
9:49. Commercials on USA. I wanted to see what the wrestlers were doing.
9:50. He says he’s not going to rest. He must have lost his pet pillow.
9:51. He’s calling for a Palestinian state by the end of this year. Like nobody ever thought of that before.
9:52. He’s past the halfway point in the speech, but unless he starts reading real fast he’s not going to be done by 10:00.
9:54. I’ll say one thing; he’s only mentioned 9/11 about three times, I believe.
9:56. Back to USA. A big guy in red trunks with “Samoa” written across his belly is about to take on two other guys. This could be fun.
9:58. Bush has five more paragraphs to get through.
10:00. Animal Precinct! New York City! 8 million People! 5 million Pets! (Animal Planet)
10:02. He’s on the last paragraph. It’s almost over.
He’s done. Keith Olbermann is saying the SOTU was all about Bush’s unfinished business; oldies but moldies. This thing’s going to be torn apart.
I guess I missed the part in which he called on Iran to stop its nuclear program. I thought we’d been through that already.
Well, I may comment further, or not. As I said, I’m still recovering from the flu and find I get tired very quickly. I need an Alleve.
At the Washington Post, if it’s “bipartisan” it must be righteous.
Baker and Weisman’s article reveals a House of Representatives oozing with self-congratulation.
President Bush hailed “the kind of cooperation that some predicted was not possible here in Washington.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) used the words “bipartisan” and “bipartisanship” 10 times in a brief appearance. “Many Americans believe that Washington is broken,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “But I think this agreement, and I hope that this agreement, will show the American people that we can fix it.”
Paul Krugman has another opinion.
Specifically, the Democrats appear to have buckled in the face of the Bush administration’s ideological rigidity, dropping demands for provisions that would have helped those most in need. And those happen to be the same provisions that might actually have made the stimulus plan effective.
So what else is new?
Aside from business tax breaks — which are an unhappy story for another column — the plan gives each worker making less than $75,000 a $300 check, plus additional amounts to people who make enough to pay substantial sums in income tax. This ensures that the bulk of the money would go to people who are doing O.K. financially — which misses the whole point.
The goal of a stimulus plan should be to support overall spending, so as to avert or limit the depth of a recession. If the money the government lays out doesn’t get spent — if it just gets added to people’s bank accounts or used to pay off debts — the plan will have failed. …
…Yes, they extracted some concessions, increasing rebates for people with low income while reducing giveaways to the affluent. But basically they allowed themselves to be bullied into doing things the Bush administration’s way.
In his blog, Krugman explains why this is a problem.
Update: See also David Sirota, “The Stimulus Swindle“; Michael Mandel, “How Real Was the Prosperity?“
The indispensable Dave Neiwert has a post up about Ron Paul’s legislative record. Those who have the mistaken impression that Paul is not so right wing because of his stand on Iraq should read this post and be corrected.
Update: See also “White Supremacists Rallying Around Ron Paul’s Presidential Campaign.” No surprise. States’ rights, you know.
Update: Patrick Nielsen Hayden writes,
If you think “the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view,” that “the notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers,” that “the collectivist Left hates religion,” and that “the secularists [are waging] an ongoing war against religion…Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war,” gosh do I have a Presidential candidate for you! His name is Ron Paul.
Folks, the man’s a five-alarm whackjob. He only looks good to some because he’s running in a field of six-alarm whackjobs.
David Stout writes for the New York Times:
The Senate voted overwhelmingly today for a popular $23 billion water projects measure affecting locales across the country, thereby handing President Bush his first defeat in a veto showdown with Congress.
The vote was 79 to 14, far more than the two-thirds needed to override the veto that President Bush cast last Friday. On Tuesday, the House voted by 361 to 54 in favor of the bill, also well over the two-thirds barrier to nullify the veto.
Enactment of the water projects measure had been widely expected, despite the veto, given the importance of the bill to individual districts and, of course, the lawmakers that represent them. The measure embraces huge endeavors like restoration of the Florida Everglades and relief to hurricane-stricken communities along the Gulf Coast and smaller ones like sewage-treatment plants and dams important to smaller constituencies.
Well, at least it shows they can override something.
Ready for a “my eyes glaze over” moment? Just see this pro-torture op ed by Alan Dershowitz. In fact, just look at the headline: “Democrats and Waterboarding: The party will lose the presidential race if it defines itself as soft on terror.”
Please. The Right has been screaming that “Democrats will lose the trust of the American people if they define themselves as soft on [CHOOSE ONE: Communism, spies in the State Department, the nuclear threat, defense, crime, Islamofascism] since before I was born, which wasn’t exactly last week. Most of the time the allegation of “softness” is pure hysteria and has little to do with any actual softness. About half the time righties are whistling in the dark about what voters will do.
Over the years I’ve observed that voter opinion on security issues goes in cycles. For a time voters want to be “tough,” followed by another time in which they are tired of being tough and paying for bloated military budgets. I suspect we’re coming to the end of a “tough” cycle.
Cernig of Newshoggers has a fine takedown of Dershowitz, so I don’t have to write one. (See also Sadly, No.) I only want to add that favoring strong and effective antiterrorism measures and favoring waterboarding are not the same thing. They are no more the same thing as “effectively countering the spread of Communism” and “nuking China ” were the same thing 50 years ago.
IMO Dershowitz belongs with some of the other “savant idiots” mentioned in this essay by Daniel Davies.
Being extremely intelligent is rather like fucking sheep - once you’ve got a reputation for either, it’s extremely difficult to get rid of it. If someone was, at some long gone time in the past, a boy genius or an academic superstar, then they’re “incredibly smart” for life, no matter how many stupid things they actually say or do.
The cases on my mind at the moment are Enoch Powell and Larry Summers, but I daresay I could dig up a dozen more if I spent the time. Both of them amazingly intelligent, “scary smart”, capable of quoting reams of Ancient Greek at you while simultaneously calculating the complex conjugate of a plate of spaghetti, backwards. On the other hand, could someone tell me one single example of a clever thing either of them did or said? Not so easy.
In fact, both of these famously intelligent men are not famous for intelligent things they did or said, or even for possessing a modicum of ordinary common sense. They’re famous for actually stupid things that they did and said. In fact, as far as I can tell, the career trajectories of nearly everyone commonly regarded as a “genius” seem to be marked by one boneheaded blunder after another.
Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to get up in front of a “Women in Science” conference and tell them that the reason you don’t employ many women as science professors is that they aren’t good enough? Incredibly intelligent, apparently, that’s how stupid. How stupid do you have to be to not only start talking about “the River Tiber foaming with blood”, but then subsequently to claim that you didn’t realise that it would be controversial? Apparently, only the cleverest man in the House of Commons has what it takes to be as dumb as that.
What this suggests to me is that we greatly overvalue book-larnin’ these days. Lots of otherwise sensible commentators will regularly admit that a “genius” politician was not very good at politics, or a “genius” academic administrator was a terrible manager, but then continue as if they regarded mere incompetence at one’s chosen career to be of secondary importance, compared to the far greater value of being a genius.
In fact, I’d put most of our public “intelligentsia” in the same pot.
Yesterday’s state and local elections showed us that many “hot button” issues dear to the Right had little impact on voters. For example, Amy Gardner writes at the Washington Post “In the Ballot Booths, No Fixation on Immigration.”
Voters across Virginia chose candidates in state and local elections yesterday not out of anger over illegal immigration but based on party affiliation, a preference for moderation and strong views on such key issues as residential growth and traffic congestion.
With a few notable exceptions, the trend benefited Democrats and not those who campaigned the loudest for tough sanctions against illegal immigrants.
At The Hill, Jonathan Kaplan writes “GOP turns impeachment resolution against Dems.”
House Republicans on Tuesday nearly forced Democratic leaders to vote on a resolution to impeach Vice President Cheney.
Anti-war presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced a privileged resolution, used to circumvent the committee process, to get his impeachment measure to the House floor.
The vote to kill Kucinch’s privileged resolution began as a largely party-line affair, but halfway through the vote, Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) persuaded Republican leaders to get rank-and-file GOP lawmakers to change their votes to force the debate.
At one point, the vote to table the motion stood at 246-165. Once Republicans began switching their votes, momentum swung the other way. When the vote stood at 205-206, some Democrats began switching their votes.
The vote to kill Kucinich’s resolution finally failed 162-251, giving Republicans the opportunity to watch Democrats debate whether to impeach Cheney — a debate in which many liberal Democrats were more than willing to engage.
House Republicans clearly enjoyed watching Democratic leaders squirm during the series of votes, which lasted more than one hour.
I would have enjoyed watching Democratic leaders squirm also, and I’m sorry I missed it. But if the Republicans think that impeachment is a loser issue for Dems, they need to get out more. As Kagro X says, “Republicans believe everything is good for Republicans.” Well, wait ’til next year …
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