Want to remove all slime from the election this fall and limit debate strictly to the issues? Rick Hertzberg knows how:

The solution is obvious. Obama should ask McCain to be his running mate. McCain should ask Obama to be his. And both should say yes.

A campaign pitting an Obama-McCain ticket against a McCain-Obama ticket would absolutely guarantee a general-election campaign that would be about The Issues and nothing but The Issues…

Confused by all the blabber last night from Tim and Keith and Chris and Pat? Want to find out what actually happened in Indiana and North Carolina? Go here for your reality pill from Jay Cost, Doctor of Politics. Excerpt:

As you can see, North Carolina performed roughly as we might expect, falling in between Virginia and Tennessee. Nevertheless, it is surprising that the results were closer to the Virginia end (i.e. Obama +29) than the Tennessee end (i.e. Clinton +13). What might explain the difference?

Unlike Indiana, it doesn’t come from Clinton’s core voting group. She did extremely well among white voters in North Carolina. Obviously, she didn’t do as well with them as she did in Tennessee. However, she still trounced Obama among white men and white women, regardless of their religious affiliation.

Clinton’s problem was with the African American vote, which came in at about 33%. Her trouble in North Carolina, as well as the South in general, is that white voters are more likely to be Republican than in decades past. This has given Obama a demographic edge in the region — one that has actually grown in the past few months. Note that African Americans in North Carolina went for Obama more strongly than they did in either Tennessee or Virginia. In fact, we can see a general trend in the African American vote toward Obama — not just in these states, but nationwide. It has not been much commented upon — most likely because African Americans have been supporting Obama more strongly than any other group. Nevertheless, as time has gone on, the African American vote has clustered around Obama much more tightly.

This piece of mine ran several days ago in Salon. com. To see it in its original home, go here. One of the commenters, Blueturtle, made a point that hadn’t occurred to me, but seems aesthetically solid:

Beyond the Left's often correct belief that wearing the flag is facile posturing, there is a larger, deeper problem with the lapel pin.

Isn't it the great unspoken truth that the American flag is simply ugly? Bold, primary colors parceled out in too small stripes and indeterminant stars. It has always paled in comparison to the understated tricolor of France, the composite crosses of the Union Jack, or the beautiful exoticism of any number of developing nations' standards.

The stars and bars speaks for a nation that never could really figure out what it stood for. In response, states' rights and muddled federalism left us with a compromise guidon of cobbled together symbols.

Obama knows that will clash with any outfit that is not made for preschoolers in their bold jumpers.

Is a man fit to be commander-in-chief if he won't even fly the flag from his buttonhole?

Does that man, Barack Obama, think he's "too good — too patriotic! — to wear a flag pin on his chest?" Because that's what William Kristol believes.

Grow up, the Chicago Sun-Times advises: "Oh for Pete's sake, Senator Obama, pin the darnn American flag to your chest. Otherwise, the poor dope will "catch a world of hurt for ... polarizing comments [that] make him sound like a hardened leftist."

Has Obama's failure to wear a flag pin really done "more damage to his White House hopes than a bomb bursting in air?" The New York Daily News thinks so.

Or is it just possible that Barack Obama knows more about getting to be president than all of these pundits laid end to end, as they probably should be? Is it possible that an empty buttonhole might actually help a candidate of either party, now that the nation's number one flag-wearer is circling the bowl with the lowest presidential approval ratings ever recorded?

Let's go beyond the Beltway and take a look. Out there on the campaign trail, who's actually been wearing lapel flags in this race and who hasn't -- and how's that been working out for you guys anyway?

On April 26 of last year in Orangeburg, South Carolina, the Democrats held the first debate in the campaign that never ends. First thing that morning the candidates were all in a hurry to throw on their clothes, grabbing any old thing that came to hand. Yeah, right.

It was the most important day of their political lives to date, and they agonized over each tiny sartorial decision. Windsor knot or four-in-hand? Blue or red?

Here's where everybody came out on lapel flags. The photo coverage of the debate shows that only Joe Biden decided to wear one. The other seven -- Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Chris Dodd — went without.

Of course you'd expect that from a bunch of surrender monkeys, wouldn't you? So let's turn to the Republicans, tough-talking patriots to a man. Their first debate came a week later in Simi Valley, California. And sure enough, Tommy Thompson, Tom Tancredo and Rudy Giuliani, nonveterans all, were careful to pin on their flags.

Wait a minute, though. Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Duncan Hunter, and Mike Huckabee all left their little flags back home on the bureau. And so did John McCain. Hmm.

By May 15, at the Columbia, South Carolina Republican debate, Tancredo had stopped wearing his flag. By June, Democratic candidate Joe Biden had deflagged as well.

The only candidate of either party who chose to add a flag in the course of the campaign was Bill Richardson, who flagged up toward the end of the summer. With Biden's flag gone by then, Richardson had become the only Democratic candidate to wear a flag in the debates.

On the Republican side Tommy Thompson continued to wear his flag till the bitter end, which came in August when he placed sixth in the Iowa straw polls. The empty Thompson slot was filled the following month by Fred. The lobbyist/actor picked up Tommy's banner, so to speak, and was still wearing it in January when he, too, dropped out.

Rudy Giuliani, who probably wears a flag to bed, dropped out a week later after racking up a pathetic 15 percent of the vote in the Florida Republican primary.

Do we see a subtle pattern emerging here? Every presidential candidate of both parties who ever wore a lapel flag during the debates, even as briefly as Biden, bought himself a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

And every major party candidate who remains viable today — John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — has seldom if ever been spotted with a flag in his or her lapel.

Don't think the press hasn't been noticing, either. To this day there has been a steady drumbeat of silence in the media over the flagless-ness of Huckabee's, Clinton's and McCain's lapels.

Nor would Obama's disrespect have made news if only he had thought to point the finger at everyone else still in the race when a TV reporter posed his trivia question back in October. But instead he gave an honest if incomplete answer.

Obama said he had worn a pin after 9/11 but stopped once he began to notice, and here I paraphrase wildly but no doubt accurately, that most of the people still wearing lapel flags were assholes.

On the evidence of the campaign so far, Obama wasn't the only one who noticed.

Clinton, Huckabee and McCain, we may say with confidence, would wear anything or even nothing at all if they thought it would help them win the nomination. Then why, when it came to miniature flags, did the three join Obama in opting for nothing?

Dosed with Pentothal, each would most likely come up with a variant of the answer Obama had hinted at: that lapel flags no longer signify simple patriotism, but something that you don't want sticking to your fingers these days..

For these past six years and more, men with those bright little flags apparently riveted to their lapels have fed the voters a daily diet of fear, secrecy, lies, and a cruel war with neither point nor end.

No sensible politician would want to march under this tiny, metallic banner. Just look at all the fallen stars who did.

Waiting for Dorothy offers us a glimpse into the mind of the Invisible Hand. (Sorry no pictures this time, you’ll have to go take a look for yourself.)

One of the enjoyable aspects of the current election campaign is watching the antics of the wingnuts as they’re forced to choose between John McCain and a firing squad.

Over the past month a new Axis of Evil has emerged — not one based in Damascus, Tehran or Pyongyang — but instead in Cedar Rapids, Charleston, South Carolina, Derry, New Hampshire and Boca Raton, Florida. It is the liberal and “independent” voters in these 4 states that have nearly completed a deed that makes Kim Jong Il envious — the near crippling of the American Electoral System.

These four states have combined their native liberal populism with an imported liberal electorate and have forced the GOP to accept a nominee so distasteful that in more than one poll — the numbers of voters choosing not to vote and those choosing to vote third party actually exceed those who will hold their nose and vote for Maverick, War Hero, Amnesty Supporter, John McCain.

I admit, I’ve always known that South Carolina and Florida were secret hotbeds of liberalism. But I was hoping no one would notice.

I’m not interested in sending any more traffic to the wackos at Human Events Online, but if you really must read the article Steve Thomma, who’s been filing some excellent stuff for McClatchy, links to it.

You don’t have to love Robert Novak to respect his political smarts. Here he is on the fall election and on the South Carolina Democratic debate Monday night:

While both the Republican and Democratic presidential races are undecided going into the massive array of February 5 primaries (which amounts to nearly a national primary), a Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain contest in November looms as the most likely prospect.

That is the match-up that offers the highest likelihood of Republican success despite the continued sniping at McCain by certain right-wing activists…

Clinton and Obama both took good digs at one another, but the heightened negativity is in itself a boon to Clinton. By going negative, Hillary does not hurt her image, but Obama hurts his.

Clinton is already the knife-fighting candidate, and that is part of her appeal. Obama is supposed to represent a new era, hope, and a change in tone. However well-placed his jabs at Clinton, they tarnish his chief virtue. Also, voters still react negatively to attacks on a woman.

This evening, through another in a series of “no duh!” moments, I realized that the Democratic Presidential candidates are arguing over two separate types of discord.

The first began subtly but unmistakably creeping toward center stage after the Iowa caucuses, when Clinton supporters found themselves in a real race and began to say things to the press that caused them to be reassigned to duties out of the public eye. I do not imply that the Clinton machine is the only flinger of mud; but I do assert that, with regard to mud and the flinging of it, the Clintons’ assembly far outguns the combined strength of its Democratic opponents. They have the organization, the campaign experience, the government-related connections, and some knowledge of what it’s like to be in the public eye constantly. Plus memories of just how low politics can really go.

Many Americans find this disgusting. The Democrats haven’t yet begun accusing each other of experimenting on unborn kids. No sirree; Democratic barbs are less direct, more substantial, credible across a larger range of educational backgrounds. You know, things like aggravating racial divides with inept remarks about the sainted Dr. King. Or occasionally slipping in inadvertent drug references:

“To me, as an African American, I am frankly insulted the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues — when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood; I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in his book — when they have been involved,” he said.

Leaving aside the structural deficiencies of that sentence — what, in fact, is the Obama campaign supposed to have implied about the Clintons? — this seems to me a coach-class insult hurled by an operative of moderate skills and fiery temperament. The motivation such people bring to the table only partially compensates for the disarray their manic activity can generate.

In this case, the incident is unlikely to have lasting significance. Mr. BET, Bob Johnson — the only black American billionaire other than Oprah — has apologized for his remark, and the Obama campaign has accepted the apology. But there’ve been a number of these not-too-subtle low blows since Iowa; and my guess is that if Obama wins South Carolina, especially if he wins handily, he can expect a fuller taste of Rovian tactics from the crowd around his main competitor.

I further guess that absent something both real and serious — unlikely but not beyond imagining — throwing dirt at Obama will only make him stronger. This is precisely the kind of politics Obama is making his name in opposition to. Taking mudballs and holding his position, fuzzy though it be, he appears to stand tall, a man who can rise above the fray, climb the mountain, and bring back the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason.

Many Obama voters no doubt agree with his policies. Many more agree with what they believe his policies are, basing their beliefs on how they feel about him personally. And it’s undeniable that he’s a tremendously charismatic figure, the best set-piece speaker I’ve ever heard, and the sort of person we wish the American system tended to produce, though in fact he’s more of a fortunate anomaly.

Mike Huckabee benefits similarly by coming across as a likable person. Anyone who can hold his own with Colbert twice has proved himself quick-witted and comfortable in his own skin; he gives you the feeling that he’d be a good decision-maker in the sense that he’d make decisions based on what he really thought, felt, and believed was going on. Of course he’s totally bonkers in several areas with respect to what actually is going on, but that’s a separate issue.

But many Obamaniacs, it appears to me, support him because they think he’ll make politics friendlier, less critical and demanding and more harmonious. More like television and less like in-laws. It’s a beautiful dream and a worthwhile goal, though a reader of history might be forgiven for considering it something of a long-term prospect.

I’m all for aiming the society at the flag of coöperation. But at this point in the evolution and training of human consciousness; at this stage in the development of the nation-state; at this historical tipping point between a modern feudalism and a renewed commitment to the path of democracy, with all its surprises, Americans are neither psychologically prepared nor sufficiently informed to participate in creating global harmony. As Bertrand Russell put it, our ethic compels competition, but our situation requires coöperation. We’d better get our minds right or we’ll be spending more than one night in The Box.

To do that, we have to work on making society more just; and to do that we have to confront the powers in our own country. We cannot expect to achive measurable success toward our goals by compromising with those who are gorging themselves at the public trough. Unfortunately the very act of exploitation creates a zero-sum game, where Player One loses to the exact extent Player Two gains.

The corporations that are the current bane of democracy in America, particularly the weapons, insurance, and drug companies, can logically expect a reduction in profits as a result of increasing public control over public things. If the US stopped bombing other countries, spent half the money we send to Iraq on nationwide infrastructure and Japanese-level trains and the other half on developing new energy sources and saving the environment, and developed some sort of universal health-care plan like all the other so-called industrialized countries, we could free ourselves from the necessity to invade other countries for profit or resources. We could once again bid to lead the world in technologies of the future (and the future-tech niche tends to have unusually high profit margins). We could regain some of our international moral stature.

But this would damage the corporate profit sheets beyond the power of spin, reducing the value of stock options held by literally hundreds of board members across the country. They are likely to oppose any such plan, and to have significant resources available to invest in agreeable candidates and initiatives.

The battle to decide whether the early 21st-century United States will be a corporate or a popular state is underway. To the extent that popular sovereignty succeeds (or a populist monomaniac arises), powerful interests will suffer a decline in superlativeness. They will resist the individual depredations with every available tactic. It’s worth spending a hundred million in advertising and campaign contributions to preserve thirty billion a year in profits, eh what?

Like the vast majority of Americans, I would like to see the vicious, low-down, lying, dirty politics of the last few decades evolve into a mutual realization of mutual dependency. But that’s not on the horizon. Rove, and the Republican oppo research tanks now recycling classic baby-vivisection stories, will soon be aimed at the Democratic nominee, and no victory in November, no matter how convincing, will silence them. If the next President wants to return some control over the government to the people, that project will meet resistance, not only from the Republicans now hypocritically filibustering everything, but also from the Republican wing of the Democratic party, the DLC. Such a project is bound to fail without the exhibition of significant public interest. Therein, of course, lies the danger.

But I’m afraid there’s no escaping it: this is a fight we either take on or cower from. We cannot rise above it. We can succeed, but if we run, hide, or ignore it, we lose.

Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics has an interesting take on the generally overlooked Democratic portion of the Michigan primary:

As for the Democratic side — the big story is Hillary Clinton losing the African American vote to “uncommitted.” The exit poll pegged African Americans going against Clinton, 68% to 30%. It appears that opposition by African Americans induced a split in Wayne County (where Detroit is), 50% to Hillary, 45% to uncommitted. People in the media are going to connect these results to the racial kerfuffle of the last few days — and they are partially right to do so. But I think there is more to it than this.

Since his Iowa victory, Obama’s numbers among African American voters have been trending upward. Tonight’s results are another indication that African Americans are breaking his way. The Clinton campaign should be worried about this. It appears as if Obama might be able to take an important part of the traditional Democratic coalition. He is thus moving beyond the relatively narrow appeal of previous “insurgent” Democratic candidates like Bill Bradley and Gary Hart. This is bad news for Clinton.

Why has politics in America become so trivial, so superficial and lacking in real substance? And why do we persist in such a harmful habit when the world’s problems so desperately require our attention?

Naturally such complex phenomena have multiple causes. Americans have been conditioned by ads and television to have the attention spans and memories of children. Kids are so much easier to sell stuff to than adults, who remember what happened last time they bought something from that corporation. All in all, nobody’s been as heavily propagandized as Americans. As far as I know there isn’t much data about how such propaganda affects society over time; but it’s hard to imagine any positives, while situations where the negative effects are obvious happen all the time.

In this downward spiral of public discussion in the good ole USA, I want to nominate two inter-related items as contributing causes. First there’s the psychologically uncomfortable point that many, perhaps most, of our difficulties are direct results of our own decisions, often made long ago and never questioned, and policies, many followed well past their natural lifespans.

Certainly global warming is a problem that demands immediate focus around the globe. Ideology often being a cover for self-interest, there are some who remain unconvinced; but finding a skeptic with no financial interest in fossil fuels is difficult. Could there be a clearer demonstration of Bertrand Russell’s maxim that our ethic values competition, but our situation requires coöperation?

The war in Iraq is even more obviously of our own creation. In this light, Clinton’s vote for the war was clearly based on politics. But Obama’s careful avoidance of any criticism of the party nominees over the issue, which Bill Clinton seems to be bending a bit, was also political. The way I heard the story, Bob Shrum was telling potential Democratic Presidential candidates at the time of the vote (e.g., Kerry, Edwards, Clinton) that the White House would not be occupied by someone who voted against the war. (Why they listened, given his record in Presidential elections, remains a bit of a mystery.)

If Obama had been in the Senate at the time, he would have received the same advice from Shrum. Like the other Senators, he would have been subjected to a huge and dishonest administration campaign, replete with intelligence-community briefers, announcing a real threat. Many Senators who were skeptical encountered what they considered dispositive evidence. Given Obama’s party loyalty, and his actual voting record in the Senate on matters foreign and domestic, I’m not convinced that with his kindergarten ambition in sight he would have ignored Shrum’s advice. He believes in the system, which is why he doesn’t scare white folks.

My point, though, is not about individual candidates. We get the candidates our system tends to produce. That doesn’t mean we deserve them; it means we haven’t done what’s needed to upgrade our system to one that produces better discussions, candidates, and outcomes. But we find it hard to confront sacred cows, to get past dearly held illusions about the world and our place in it, and thus we’re reluctant to confront the present evidence of past neglect.

One of the problems we Americans try to not to look at is the vast increase in economic inequality. This is not confined to the Bush/Cheney years, of course, but they certainly goosed things along, and the gaps have reached historic proportions. In the past, such conditions have usually been followed by serious economic and political upheaval. What Chomsky called the attempt to roll back the twentieth century is in full swing, with Democrats joining Republicans against the unions, the unemployed, and others who need help and wish they had the old bleeding-heart liberals back.

These days it’s cool to stand up for the civil rights of minorities if the minority individuals in question are Americans who have not yet been accused of any terrorism-related acts, contributions, or secret thoughts. But standing up for social policies that might give them a fair shot in life by providing them with reasonable economic opportunities indicates the onset of the degenerative delusion of class warfare. Nonsense! We’re all in this together, war profiteers, oilmen, drug and insurance execs, reporters, NASCAR dads, and soccer moms. (Won’t somebody please think of the children?)

We’re designing the near future along the lines of our hallowed one-person, one-car tradition, in defiance of the widespread belief that we must act soon on climate change, or prepare to leave the planet. We can’t wean ourselves off the black stuff because the oil companies manipulate us so effectively, raising prices when we’re driving a lot and reducing them just before elections, crying for tax breaks and posting record profits. Private enterprise, the jewel of Western civilization!

We can’t even consider a plan to regain our national edge in technological innovation: collectivism, ugh! We’ve already lost most of our manufacturing base, and are now engaged in an attempt to disprove Paul Kennedy’s thesis (in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) that military might depends on industrial might. We offer sacrifices to the Gods of the Market, but as yet they’re unappeased.

Such strategies we’ve long expected from the every-rich-man-for-himself Republicans. But time was when Democrats would do more than speechify on the opposite side of the question, they would act to change reality. They would create government programs, many of which would fail utterly, but not all; they would modify existing laws and methods, and at least attempt to address the problems at hand. The resistance Bush found to privatizing Social Security indicates a general realization that some government programs have worked, and belong among the tools we use to mitigate the worst effects of capitalism.

Government, in a nutshell, is certainly not the answer, but it’s not the main problem either. In theory we own it, and could get off our asses and go fix it once this show’s over and we’ve finished our beers.

What we don’t even potentially control has vastly greater implications for each of our lives. Insurance corporations have a death grip on our health-care debate; oil companies drive our foreign policy; the biggest chunk of our economy is based on war; the second biggest is finance, much of it dealing in companies and commodities with no connection to the US other than the money made and spent by the American financiers.

We’re no longer the industrial powerhouse whose entry into the conflict ended the Second World War. And indications are plentiful that our financial house of power is morphing into a house of cards.

Observers of world politics and economics are fascinated with China for good reason. Probably not fortuitously, we’re lucky to have James Fallows blogging in situ, providing us with pictures of the air (and the cats) in Beijing to go with — I don’t say “match” — the official descriptions. (And some nostalgia-inducing small-plane shots as well.)

Fallows is in my top category of writers, because he attacks important, difficult, and complex subjects, explains them clearly, and leaves you with frameworks that help you understand information that arrives later. Even on those occasions when I don’t happen to agree with his stance on an issue, my viewpoint is widened and clarified by what he’s written, and I feel more capable of addressing the issue rationally, and of understanding what I feel about it. He helps me think better.

I particularly recommend his latest article, abnormally available free from The Atlantic, in which his concerns intersect with another of my favorites, William Greider. Those interested in the effects China Rising might be expected to exert, plus any confused xenophobes reading BA who want to know what’s coming in the US economy, might find it enlightening.

Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus — $1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day — that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China. Like so many imbalances in economics, this one can’ t go on indefinitely, and therefore won’t. But the way it ends — suddenly versus gradually, for predictable reasons versus during a panic — will make an enormous difference to the U.S. and Chinese economies over the next few years, to say nothing of bystanders in Europe and elsewhere.

Any economist will say that Americans have been living better than they should — which is by definition the case when a nation’s total consumption is greater than its total production, as America’s now is. Economists will also point out that, despite the glitter of China’s big cities and the rise of its billionaire class, China’s people have been living far worse than they could. That’s what it means when a nation consumes only half of what it produces, as China does.

In six paragraphs he follows your dollar from CVS, where you purchased an Oral-B toothbrush, through the banks and governments of the US and China, and back into the US economy.

This is the bargain China has made — rather, the one its leaders have imposed on its people. They’ll keep creating new factory jobs, and thus reduce China’s own social tensions and create opportunities for its rural poor. The Chinese will live better year by year, though not as well as they could. And they’ll be protected from the risk of potentially catastrophic hyperinflation, which might undo what the nation’s decades of growth have built. In exchange, the government will hold much of the nation’s wealth in paper assets in the United States, thereby preventing a run on the dollar, shoring up relations between China and America, and sluicing enough cash back into Americans’ hands to let the spending go on.

…what the Clinton administration was really like, here’s David Morris of Alternet to remind us of such Leaden Oldies as welfare “reform,” NAFTA. the gutting of New Deal controls on Wall Street greed, a green light for telecommunications monopolies, deregulation that permitted Enron’s thefts, and the ruinous (to us, not the power companies) deregulation of Big Electric.

For eight years, Bill Clinton was a Profile in Cowardice.

Read Gloria Steinem’s op-ed in today’s New York Times, excerpted below.

That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

I’ve known all that forever, of course. But it only hit me just now that black men born into slavery had been voting for 50 years before my mother was allowed to. Which makes me just another sublimely unconscious sexist pig, no doubt. Maybe that’s why I find this next bit from Ms. Steinem spectacularly wrong — not the whole excerpt, just the highlighted part.

I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule.

I have no more idea than Gloria Steinem what may be inside Senator Clinton’s head and heart, but only two things can explain her stubborn support of Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Either she supported Bush’s idiocy because she agreed with him and still does, or she pretended to support him because of a fatal miscalculation that to do otherwise would keep her out of the White House.

The first would make her a fool, which she plainly is not. The second can only have grown out of a desperately felt need to, yes, prove her masculinity. If she loses the nomination, it will be to the man who has most successfully proven his femininity.

I haven’t bothered to track down this Bush quote on the White House site, but I trust the Doonesbury site, from which it came:

“It’s what I do during my presidency. I go around spreading good will and talking about the importance of spreading freedom and peace.”

If Nixon had said something like this, we could be vaguely comforted by the knowledge that at least he knew what a load of crap he was handing out, and was sniggering in the darkness of his soul at the suckers who were dumb enough to believe it.

But this White House is an irony free zone, and Bush, God help us, is one of those suckers.

Taken at the mass peace demonstration in Washington on March 20, 2003, four days before the idiot attacked Baghdad.

Is there any government in the world more despicable than that of Cuba? I mean, what kind of scumbag government would provide everyone with medical care and guarantee them food? You can’t really sink much below that.

Jean Ziegler, who has been the United Nations’ independent investigator on “the right to food” since 2000, spent 11 days in Cuba on a fact-finding mission, meeting with top officials and chatting up farmers, state managers and ordinary Cubans waiting in line for food allotted by ration cards.

“We haven’t seen even one malnourished person” — a rare feat in much of poverty-stricken Latin America, Ziegler said Tuesday. “The right to being fed is the priority, without a doubt.”

Cuba is one of 32 countries that include the “right to food” in their constitutions, and fewer still — including Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy — meet pledges to provide food to all their citizens, he said.

If only the US were as rich as Brazil and Cuba, we wouldn’t have hungry people…

You really can’t make this stuff up. The wingnuts, normally the soul of insulation from reality, have awakened and are becoming conscious of just how completely screwed they are. Hopefully one day they’ll realize how many innocent deaths they’ve caused and do the honorable thing. (I’m not holding my breath. If they want to, I encourage that undertaking.)

Meanwhile, they’re impossible to satirize, even for The Onion. Sean Hannity apparently believes that Halloween is a liberal holiday not because of the pagan origins, about which he’s doubtless ignorant anyway, or because of the associations with The Dark Side, to which he long ago sold out, but because of the symbolism of the handout, an obvious pinko attempt to convince kids to expect help from a young age. How scummy can you get?

But really, they’re desperate at this point to salvage some scrap of power, the only truth they appreciate. I met a guy at a bar in Belmont tonight who seriously maintained that we’re better off fighting them in Iraq than in Belmont. Naturally it turns out he believes in torture, just on GP, plus it might actually produce actionable intelligence. He also claimed that the Iraqis won’t be angry at us for killing a million of their former fellow citizens because they understand that we’re good, and acting from good motives. Flattening Fallujah was just something we had to do, and they get it. Those who lived, at least.

What is about American life that produces this level of fear and hate? Is it television, or Christianity, or football, or beer? Maybe it’s the educational system being starved so we can build more prisons? Or just having to argue with, and share a bar with, people who believe they can get information from Fox? Probably there’s just not enough sex happening, with which I can identify.

Thankfully it seems that those American citizens who want to torture as long as they know they won’t suffer any consequences are hitting their high notes because they realize they’re on the way out. They’ve been discovered, the world understands how childish and foolish they are, and has moved on.

Still, we see those kids showing up at the door and wonder, will they be able to fight off the terrorists, and torture anyone who looks different, if we give them candy now? A student in one of my chess classes this week wore a t-shirt saying "No questions, just put the candy in the bag". The only country to go from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilization along the way…

Why is it that San Francisco, by any measure among the most progressive constituencies in the country, continues to elect do-nothings like Pelosi, right-wingers like Feinstein, and embarrassments like Lantos?

Dutch lawmakers who visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison this week said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat.

The lawmakers said that Tom Lantos, chairman of the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that “Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.”

[…]

“You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany,” Lantos said, according to the Dutch lawmakers.

“The comments killed the debate,” said Harry van Bommel, a member of the Socialist Party. “It was insulting and counterproductive.”

Not to mention typical.

Is there any thread that ties these atypical San Franciscans? Anything they can agree on, other than a rejection of San Francisco values?

Hopefully we’re talking darkness before the dawn, rather than darkness before the fall.

For decades, progressive activists have been hocking their agenda as though at a fire sale. The Bush years have been so disastrous they have forgotten that many of the things they are campaigning against now — Nafta, the gay marriage amendment, greater economic inequality, the ban on photographing soldiers’ coffins coming home — were introduced under Bill Clinton. Their fears that things could get worse overrides any confidence that they could improve. So they settle for candidates who will make things get worse at a slower pace and on a less dramatic scale. Sometimes, as in 2004, these low expectations make sense. But as an overriding strategy it is a recipe for perennial disappointment and disaffection.

Realistically, Democrats who think they’ll end the war by voting for Clinton are in the same position as evangelicals who thought Bush cared about abortion and school prayer.

John McKay, the former US attorney for western Washington who was fired along with eight colleagues, thinks the upcoming report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General will recommend criminal prosecution of Alberto Gonzalez. Apparently Gonzalez does too: he’s hired a high-profile defense attorney and is refusing to answer questions from the Inspector General.

Speaking to a Federal Bar Association meeting, McKay said:

“There was a conspiracy to politicize the Justice Department, and they did not get away with it.”

We can hope. But it’s not yet clear that they failed to get away with it. Even if the IG report recommends criminal prosecution, what’s the chance it’ll happen? The Republicans will call it a political witch hunt and claim racism if their stooge is prosecuted (perhaps I should omit “will”). There was no underlying crime — no one was fired for unjust cause — or at least you can’t prove there was one, absent honest testimony from the former Attorney General; therefore his lying under oath in a Congressional hearing about his performance of his legal duties isn’t a problem. Hey, it’s not like he had sex, OMG!

The problem the leisure class has with the present administration is that its corruption is so overt that it’s roused the population. People are learning that they can act in groups, and that if they do so it sometimes makes a difference.

Immediately after his firing, McKay said he thought about “going quietly,” but then he began comparing notes with the seven other U.S. attorneys dumped at the same time in a historically unprecedented move by the White House.

“They led each one of us to believe we were the only one told to resign,” he said. “None of us particularly sought the spotlight.”

This is obviously not the kind of lesson the American oligarchy wants taught. It’s much happier with the message of American Idol: voting is meaningless fun, something that makes us feel involved but without responsibility, or lets us feel superior to those who aren’t hip to the news. From this viewpoint, Bush/Cheney has been a disaster.

In need of a new Soporifier in Chief, the leisure class is turning to Clinton. For example, she’s getting large contributions from the two industries that are at the base of our problems.

The US arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its traditional allies in the Republican party. Mrs Clinton has also emerged as Wall Street’s favourite. Investment bankers have opened their wallets in unprecedented numbers for the New York senator over the past three months and, in the process, dumped their earlier favourite, Barack Obama.

Mrs Clinton’s wooing of the defence industry is all the more remarkable given the frosty relations between Bill Clinton and the military during his presidency. An analysis of campaign contributions shows senior defence industry employees are pouring money into her war chest in the belief that their generosity will be repaid many times over with future defence contracts.

Isn’t it clear that if we elect Clinton we can look forward to more war? I’d be willing to place a decent-sized wager against her having the troops out of Iraq by the end of her first term. That’s what she’s been saying she’ll do, but she’s also given about a dozen reasons that she might be forced to change plan. Her lifelong Republican bent, a political need to prove toughness, and financial ties to arms manufacturers and mercenaries all bode ill.

In Building Red America Tom Edsall shows how the demographics of the Democratic party have changed over the last few decades. Much of the middle class, which used to be largely Democratic, switched parties to vote for the Great Teleprompter Reader, and remained enthralled by the television-level PR, sets, and camera angles of Michael Deaver and his ilk.

But now they’re turning away from the Republican war, looking for another round of political comfort food. Weren’t the Clinton times good? Yes, if you like economic bubbles, but Clinton had nothing to do with that other than staying out of the way. Wouldn’t we have another round of Clintonism with Hillary, without having to worry about sex with interns? Yes, and if you love your country you’ll do what’s in your power to prevent that. If the DLC folks once again force the Democratic party to do what harms it, they will have succeeded in destroying the party that once represented working people. And these days, that means nearly everyone.

Clinton and Giuliani? Like kryptonite to Superman, or sex to a Republican.

Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They’re nothing but hideous space reptiles. [unmasks them]

[audience gasps in terror]

Kodos: It’s true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It’s a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.

[murmurs]

Man1: He’s right, this is a two-party system.

Man2: Well, I believe I’ll vote for a third-party candidate.

Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.

[Kang and Kodos laugh out loud]
[Ross Perot smashes his “Perot 96” hat]

Is the Speaker of the House really serious about genocide, or is she simply involved in a standard Washington power play?

Suppose we assume that a million and a half Armenians died between 1915 and 1923 in a systematic and deliberate campaign; personally I know of no reason to doubt that, but I’m not a historian of the Ottoman Empire.

Now suppose the House of Representatives, 92 years later, decides to label that systematic and deliberate campaign “genocide”.

What, exactly, is the difference between a systematic and deliberate campaign by Ottomans that killed a million and a half Armenians, and a systematic and deliberate campaign by Americans that killed a million-plus Iraqis?

Is it that last half-million deaths? Or the religion of the killers? Can the wingnuts come up with some defense based on intent, or will they, as usual, escape the dilemma by denying the facts?

And what’s the difference between wingnuts denying facts, and House Speakers choosing to spend time on century-old genocides to distract attention from an equal number of deaths the Speaker’s party funded? I mean, they’re different, but do they differ in levels of culpability?

[ Update: I don’t really understand what evidence TeddySanFran considers in thinking that Pelosi is trying to stop the war in Iraq with a semantic resolution about Armenians. The argument seems a bit far-fetched. I wish it were true, but I see no reason to think so. ]

[ Update 2: It has been pointed to me that a semantic non-wingnut argument holds up against my original statement. If we define genocide as the attacker trying to exterminate a group of people, then intent, and ratio of killed to spared, are critical. By those measures, American involvement in Iraq has not been genocidal.

My original point, poorly stated, was this: what is the moral difference between killing a million and a half people in an attempt to eliminate Armenians, and killing a million-plus people in an attempt to run off with the resources they live on top of? Is it less moral if one intends to kill a million people than if one does so unintentionally? In other words, what is the moral difference between the Ottoman actions the House condemns and the war in Iraq it funds? ]

Strange and evil days, beloveds. People one admired seem to be wimping out on impeachment, illegal surveillance, funding an imperial war, and handing everything available to the corporations, then promising more.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers was one bright spot during the Dark Ages from 2000 to 2006; now he’s ragging on us for opposing the RESTORE bill.

To those who say that the bill is too weak on civil liberties, I say that if you trust an independent court and have faith in congressional oversight, those liberties will not be jeopardized. That is the premise our democracy was founded on, and that is exactly what this bill does.

I agree, our republic was founded on that premise. But how does that apply to our situation today?

The Cheney administration has packed the courts with relatively young right-wing authoritarians; they’re anything but independent. Congressional oversight hit its lowest point in our history during the first six years of the current administration; unfortunately it has improved only a little since then. Congress’s actions don’t seem to be such as would deserve my faith.

It is possible, I suppose, that this is a gambit by the Democratic leadership. Here’s what I’d like to think.

Suppose the White House were to relate the Adventures of the Telecoms in Surveillance Land, which I believe is what the Democrats demanded in return for a two-year extension of the hateful and unconstitutional law that’s expiring. If that information came out, it would probably show that most of our phone calls and emails have been surveilled since (at least) 9/11. People like Charlie Savage, Dana Priest, Warren Strobel, and Jonathan Landay would quickly find links to other disquieting data, and demands for actual Congressional oversight would surge. Thus, I argue that the chance of the administration telling Congress the story of the telecoms approaches zero.

The original bill was a Constitutional abomination, which the Democrats passed — let’s not forget it was the Democrats who decided to make that bill the law of the land — as they huddled in fear of the Imperial President and his 30% approval ratings. The right thing to do is clearly and unambiguously to let it lapse and spend the money and effort on something useful.

If there are any Democrats who feel that way, but are unsure about the public reaction if they say it overtly, they might find it convenient to support a bill they know the White House will find unacceptable. In such a case the bill would probably die in the Senate, where McConnell’s crew would make sure the President wasn’t forced to veto it. The Democrats would be able to say they’d offered the President what he wanted and he turned it down.

The strategy might work. But I’m pretty sure it’s not the Democrats’ actual strategy, because it would take some courage and some foresight, the ability to withstand a rhetorical onslaught from a bunch of incompetent warmongers.

And the only thing the Democrats complain about is the incompetent part.

The race for the Democratic Presidential nomination is a pretty depressing sight right now. It appears that Senator Clinton has it in the bag; but history cautions against early wagers, even in normal circumstances, which these are not.

I see Rove attacking Clinton on his way out the door, and Bush anointing her the nominee and quietly advising her to leave some wiggle room on Iraq. And I think, they really seem to want to run against Hillary.

Yeah, it’s true that they’re incompetent, ideological, moronic, thieving war criminals. But how’d they get where they are today? I’m neither talking about nor omitting the blatant cheating in the 2000 and 2004 elections. How did they get with Diebold range to begin with? The only great skill the Bush administration exhibited was in politics, in particular the divisive Rovian sort.

Of course Rove was disastrously wrong in his predictions about the 2006 election, but his official position required him to make sunny statements. It’s impossible, for me at least, to tell whether he was really wrong, or just saying what he knew he had to say. I tend to suspect he was wrong, but I don’t think that’s been proven.

At this point in the previous cycle, Rove was attacking Kerry. As Matthew Dowd, a political strategist formerly in the Bush camp, said:

Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters’ minds. So we started attacking John Kerry a lot in the end of January because we were very worried about John Edwards.

I don’t think Rove was afraid of Edwards because he thought the trial lawyers could beat the insurance companies and oil companies on a level playing field (much less an actual election). I agree with the purists who claim we should support Kucinich because his proposals are the most progressive of the available candidates. I except Gravel here; I’m proud to call him a fellow citizen, and I’m happy he’s at the debates to call bullshit on the spectacle; we need more of that. He reminds us of our civic duties. But Kucinich has clearer and more detailed proposals, and indeed a more detailed understanding, than Gravel. In Rome the proper office for Gravel would have been Censor, a former Consul essentially in emeritus status, still called upon to resolve thorny civic disputes, and beyond veto, or at least some vetos, if I remember correctly.

The problem I have with Kucinich is that I don’t think he can sell the US on his policies in the 2008 election. I love him, I think he did great things as mayor of Cleveland, I re-registered as a Democrat to vote for him in the primaries last time around. I was very disappointed with what seemed to me to be his capitulation to being a nobody at the convention; but in exchange he does seem to have been granted a seat at the table, the ability occasionally to be asked a question in the debates, and to sit beside Al Sharpton as a commentator after the convention. It’s not nothing, and I give him full marks for determination, principle, and ability to accomplish something over the long term when most people would have given up. I would happily vote for him if I didn’t think anyone with a realistic chance was acceptable. Which in most years would be my position, but not this year. (Notice I made it all the way through the paragraph on Kucinich without mentioning his wife.)

So far, Edwards is taking enough of my positions that I can vote for someone who’s got a ghost of a chance of selling the country on progressive ideas. He’s good but not perfect on Iraq. His health care proposal won’t pass as is, but I love the touch of having the insurance companies compete with single payer in the marketplace, and let the most efficient approach win. A lot of people have a visceral distaste for him I only partly understand but encounter often enough to know it’s real. And he’s raised lots of money, but that’s lots less than Hillary and Barack. All of which makes him an outside shot in the race for the nomination. And even that probably depends on making a good showing in Iowa.

But he’s been a driving force in the conversation that takes place at the beginning of the process, which determines in large part what the themes of the full campaign will be. He was, for instance, the first major candidate to come out with a health plan, and to my mind his is still the best; it’s the only truly universal one. In fact most of what I like (that I know of) about the plans of Clinton and Obama seems to have been lifted from Edwards’s. Edwards has said that in the negotiations over how to set up universal health care, the insurance and drug companies should not have a seat at the table. And that statement got lots of media coverage — in some alternate universe where the mega-corporations don’t control our news.

Personally I have two worries about Clinton. First, I don’t really trust her, given her Republican past and the Republican policies of her husband. She’s peeling away a progressive here and there, in a sort of Rovian style, probably folks who have calculated that she’ll win and they may as well get on her good side early. But she’s still a Goldwater Girl at heart.

Second, I think the Democrats can only fail to win the White House if they nominate Clinton. I’m not saying she can’t win, only that she could lose when Edwards or Obama wouldn’t. Rove et.al. seem to be salivating over a campaign against her, so they’ll be well prepared. And my guess is that they wouldn’t have to make as much stuff up as they did against McCain. Take Norman Hsu, for example: not just pushing the envelope of the fund-raising laws, but psychologically unstable. Or Mark Penn, whose firm’s connection to Blackwater the Clinton campaign is busy spinning, but whose union-busting past is unspinnable. The Clinton campaign’s people seem about as likely to deliver to progressives as Bush’s were to evangelicals.

Sure, she kicked ass in her Senate campaign in a relatively wealthy, relatively liberal state, spending something like $35 million against token opposition. Some Democrats apparently complain that some of that money could have been passed to candidates in close races, but there it is. All along her best strategy has been to seem inevitable. Which might be effective in the primary. Come next fall, the Clinton haters are not likely to be intimidated; for one thing, what Altemeyer calls the high RWAs, right-wing authoritarian personalities, are less reality-based, and don’t calculate inevitability the same way as the rest of us. Many of them are quite used to believing three impossible things before breakfast.

Then there’s the polarizing effect of the name Clinton.

If Giuliani convinces Republicans that only he can defeat Clinton, the right wing may overlook his less-than-conservative views on such issues as abortion and gun control, experts say.

“The specter of Hillary Clinton is enough to have Republicans overlook things,” said [Marist College pollster Lee] Miringoff. “That buys him some leeway in their estimates.”

President George W. Bush added fuel to the fire recently when he predicted Clinton would win her party’s presidential nomination but lose the November 2008 election.

“She’s got a national presence, and this is becoming a national primary,” Bush said.

Then there’s the possibility of the Clinton backlash hurting down-ticket Democrats. And the non-trivial possibility that Rove has some valuable oppo on her, or her husband, that will remind people of the sleaze factor the rose-colored glasses of hindsight have endowed us with.

And the fact that if she wins the nomination the Democratic wing of the Democratic party will have lost, or caved, causing some to vote with their feet.

The war machine grinds on. This primary is, so far, an object lesson in how it operates at the mundane level; but we can still change the outcome…

I don’t think Rove is afraid of Edwards because he fears a groundswell of opinion like mine. Not in this universe, at least. I think it’s because he sees Edwards as the potential opponent who’s most capable of selling the progressive policies that Rove’s people fear more than anything, a sort of New New Deal. They failed to keep FDR out, and once he got in he became an American demi-god. Hopefully we’ll never have another one. But the progressive movement has seen peaks and valleys before; it seems to me a good time for a resurgence.

The current primary season stars the Republican party as the gift that keeps on giving. Center stage right now, of course, is Larry Craig announcing that, yes, he promised to resign, but hey, he lied. He had to, to preserve his honor and fight the scurrilous charges leveled at him, if I might so put it.

I particularly enjoyed this bit from Paul Kane’s Washington Post article:

“The defendant chose to not appear [in court] and to enter his plea by mail just so he could avoid any such [publicity], of record, inquiry into his conduct,” Porter wrote, underlining the last portion of his sentence for emphasis. “He kept many of the facts out of the record in so doing. He cannot now complain that he should not have been allowed to take advantage of an approved method to enter a misdemeanor plea.”

Is the judge implying that the many facts kept out of the record would be embarrassing to the Senator, that he’s doing Craig a favor by not letting him re-open the case? Most likely it’s simply the obvious legal argument that you can’t turn down an option on purpose to keep facts out of the record, then complain later that you didn’t get the option.

In a lot of ways you have to feel sorry for Larry Craig. He’s obviously repressed parts so deeply he can’t even admit to himself that they’re there. He prefers to prolong the public humiliation rather than look inside himself.

If you’ve been reading John Dean’s articles about the sociological studies of authoritarian personalities, you might recall that the main studier is Bob Altemeyer. Turns out he and a recently deceased friend did a study of atheists, apparently the first of its kind, and produced a book called, appropriately, Atheists. I’ve got it out of the library and will probably be blogging about it more soon. There’s a lot of interesting material, and the writing is lively and fun.

You know how when you’re reading a book about how people think or act, you notice certain behaviors that normally fade into the background? What I’m learning from this book, and from the background he’s giving about his work with right-wing authoritarian personalities, is like that. These folks have developed survey methods to measure attitudes: dogmatism, religious ethnocentrism, zealotry, and so on, and compared their samples along many different axes. They have data on whether subjects were raised in a religion, at what age atheists began to question their faith if they grew up in one, and so on.

The reason I bring this up now is that Larry Craig has several attitudes and contradictions that remind me of the people who scored high on the fundamentalism scale. They tend to have more inner doubts about their beliefs. If you offer them a chance to learn something disturbing about themselves, they often run. (Atheists tend to respond with something like, “Show me the evidence.”) They tend to believe in majority rights when they find themselves in the majority, and they’re all about protecting minority rights when they’re in that group. They favor education about Christianity in public schools; but if they were in an Islamic country they would object to Islam being taught in the schools. It’s not really inconsistent if you start from the premise of knowing the ultimate truth.

So Senator Craig will continue to work both sides of the law, remaining in the Senate because the Republicans have no legal way to get rid of him other than the ethics investigation, and the Democrats are overjoyed each time they see him in the chamber.

The White House loves it because it gets the SCHIP debacle off the front page, which itself was preferable to the Iraq debacle.

Clinton loves it because it gives her a chance to pretend she’s a liberal. Obama’s in his element, declaiming in his beautiful voice and offering the bold idea of tolerance. Which has worked great so far. As far as I can tell, Edwards hasn’t been forced to take any sort of stance, wide or narrow, with respect to the Craig phenomenon.

Unfortunately the main benefactors of the Republican sit-com are the spineless, calculating Democrats, who can’t pick up a chance to demonstrate true patriotism when it’s dropped in front of them. They seem to think that the do-nothing strategy of 2006 will stand them in good stead in 2008. (Maybe we need a progressive version of the threat by the evangelicals to vote third-party if the Republicans nominate Giuliani.)

All this self-regard and self-promotion, this focus on profit and efficiency as values rather than tools, cannot but lead where it has led in the past, to decline and fall.

Meanwhile, the Republicans continue to entertain. Ron Paul raised nearly as much John McCain, which indicates that some Republicans, or at least some people with access to the net, are not Bob Altemeyer’s authoritarian personalities. Democrats continue to rank Clinton as the most liberal of the big three and Edwards as the most conservative, in other words to have it exactly backwards. Some people think Clinton benefits most from this, others believe it’s Edwards. Romney doesn’t care that Giuliani raised $11 million to his $10 million; he just lobs $8 million of his own into the pot.

What a group!

In a recent post, Josh Marshall mentions discussions with his readers about reactions to the President of Iran’s request to visit Ground Zero.

Apparently most readers felt that we shouldn’t allow him the propaganda victory. Josh asks if he’s alone in supporting the idea that we should ignore him, that we’re bigger than that. “Why should we care what he says?” is Josh’s view, and I think there’s a lot to that.

In fact, I’d go beyond that to say that we should escort him there, and give him access to the press. Make sure he gets a good view of our gaping national wound.

If we were strong and proud and sure of ourselves, that’s what we’d do. In fact, we’re a nation scared stiff, not unlike our Congressional representatives, strutting and puffing ourselves up but secretly afraid that we’re about to lose it all. We’ve got an incurious faith-based windshield cowboy at our head, our general’s an ass-kissing little chickenshit, and most of the rest of us watch the soap opera on TV, seemingly unaffected except that our economy is ruined as our liberties disappear and our representatives cower.

Ironically, here’s where the argument against letting Ahmadinejad make a propaganda point holds up best. If we allow him to see our national wound, for which some of us seem to bear him ill will, what’s to keep him from pointing to one of Iran’s most grievous wounds, the destruction of the elected government of Mossadeq and its replacement with the brutal Shah and his secret police? And where did Savak learn its “interrogation” techniques?

A case can be made that the United States has wounded Iran more than Iran has wounded us. And we don’t want to think about that. That’s the propaganda victory that would hurt, because it would break the spell of American exceptionalism, which we’ve tried so hard to re-weave after the revelations of Abu Ghraib.

We used to be brave because we were sure we were good. Lots of times we weren’t, but we were sure we were anyway. Now we know we’re not, and we’re frightened.

As Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan was perhaps despicable but certainly not stupid: “I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while”.

He retired only a year ago, but is already trying to revise the history. To explain away blunders that are now a financial crisis facing his successor. To rearrange the facts in exculpatory ways. To deny his right-wing ideological bias and his raw partisanship in behalf of the Bush Republicans.

The man is shrewd. He can see the conservative era he celebrated and helped to impose upon the American economy is in utter ruin. He is trying to get some distance from it before the blood splashes all over his reputation.

Old arguments are perhaps not as attractive as old wine, but they don’t have an “Enjoy by” date either; and unlike a new bottle for the wine, a new context may do no violence to the idea. Sometimes, indeed, ideas can enter the foundation of a theoretical structure and cause ripples of change.

So indulge me if you please as I re-remake my argument.

Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose a society like ours in every particular but one: they’re so disillusioned they want to change things, and they begin voting for the candidates, laws, and propositions they think are the best on the ballot.

Take a moment before you say, That’s what I always do.

Many of us, myself included, employ voting strategies. We pick the main opponent of the person we detest the most, or the most likely to win of those we can stomach. This is precisely the thought experiment: suppose we dumped those strategies, and voted for what we really want, given the limited choices on the ballot, for three straight elections. For convenience, I designate those elections with numbers: 2008, 2010, and 2012.

First let me define my terms. Suppose you completely agree with Mike Gravel’s analysis of the Democratic establishment; fine, vote for him. Pick the choice that’s closest to yours. If you think John McCain has the soberest plan for victory, vote for him. If you detest triangulation, don’t vote for anyone who does it. If you respect anyone who’d spend $400 on a haircut, vote for them; if you think that’s equivalent to warmongering, vote against them.

In this hypothetical society, no one votes based on a calculation about winning or losing. We’re not talking about Nebraskans rooting for the Lakers because the Lakers are likely to win. We’re talking about doing what our innermost selves tell us is right. The only legitimate criticism of a vote would be insincerity.

Imagine the possible results.

Maybe there’s a movement, with a website where people pledge to vote their conscience, organized like those for people pledging not to do so. Froomkin raises the issue, Broder disses it, the Times ignores it, Olbermann approves, O’Reilly’s frantic.

In other words, there’s no effect. The talking heads do so, and the deciders do so. Moderate Democrats win the election we’ve designated “2008”, and by “2009” the US still hasn’t figured out how to get out of Iraq.

In the America we know, that’s the end of it; the experiment has failed, politics is a one-armed bandit. We go back to football or beer or Xanax.

But in our hypothetical society, they want change. In fact they want Jefferson’s generational revolution, but they’ve decided to try the non-violent path before deciding whether they’re miserable enough to erect barricades in the streets of Paris, Kentucky.

When the vote tallies come in, the head-scratching starts. An unprecented level of protest votes! Eight percent of Paris, Kentucky, votes Green? Peace and Freedom beats the Democrats in San Francisco for second place? Five percent of the country voting for what TV ridicules? What’s this?

Fox Noise makes a living on the meaninglessness of the vote. MSNBC combines the honesty of Microsoft with the environmentalism of General Electric and gives both sides: the vote was meaningless, but the voters in question made a costly mistake.

A section of the blogosphere trumpets the size of the vote as a measure of discontent, but the Times reminds us how unreliable bloggers are. Why, look at what this one said…

By the run-up to the election we’re calling “2010”, candidates on the political fringe are courting the Disillusioned, and Time is using initial uppercase for the word. Despite some warnings from the punditry, no real playa takes them seriously.

In the election, those who voted their true beliefs the first time do so again, and are joined by a number of others: some driven over the edge by the unresponsive system; some first-time voters who get the vision of their vote actually pissing someone off; some who decide that this is really a viable strategy for change. Perhaps the total increases by half, or maybe goes as high as twice the “2008” election, say eight to ten percent.

In the weeks immediately following the election, a number of media executives decide to spend more time with their families. Politicians try not to look like they’re scrambling to retool their messages and organizations. Congress finds that Iraq can really do just fine without our presence. Tax cuts for the rich aren’t even proposed; education and health care are front and center.

Proposals for proportional representation and better voting methods like Condorcet are tabled countrywide, and pass in all college towns and a few heartland places.

Like the year we’re living through, “2011” would see a lot of Presidential politicking. But in the hypothetical society, Presidential candidates have changed. Unable to assume the majority will be silent, they’re confronting a new job: trying to reconcile the conflicting interests in our society, rather than representing the satisfied against the disillusioned.

Democrats bring up FDR a lot; Republicans mention Kennedy, and talk about their empathy for LBJ. Two Democratic candidates for President promise to name Dennis Kucinich the first Secretary of the Peace Department. Union leaders play important roles in planning domestic policy. Average hourly wages begin to keep pace with the increase in productivity of American workers, nearly matching the increase in profit margins of the companies they work for.

When, in the “2012” election, the Disillusioned persist, whoever’s elected will face enormous pressure to find accommodations with them. With fifteen percent of the votes, they’ll have non-symbolic presences in real campaigns and government offices.

Sounds delusional, eh what? I admit that asking Americans with their famously short attention spans to consider a five-year plan is an unlikely proposition. Probably, too, we’d have to choose a period that didn’t have the Communist overtones. But would it work?

Of course it would, and of course it wouldn’t.

World hunger would not be a thing of the past. Wars would still break out. Given the havoc our corporations and our intelligence agencies — increasingly difficult to distinguish — have wrought around the world, blowback might once again bring violence to our shores.

But if the world saw us choosing democracy over empire, we’d regain some of the esteem our military adventurism over the past half-century has lost us. We’d have real friends and allies again.

At home, we probably wouldn’t break the two-party monopoly, but we’d sure become the object of its toadying, the use of which could allieviate many social ills.

As an experienced government bureaucrat is said to have instructed a new one, you can’t use tact with a Congressman. A Congressman is a hog. You must take a stick and hit him over the snout.

Anyone for pick-up-sticks? How about a bumper sticker, “I’m Disillusioned and I Vote!”?

Iraq is certainly not Vietnam.

Gen. Petraeus is nowhere near as crazy as Gen. Westmoreland was, for example. Nor is Ambassador Crocker a Henry Cabot Lodge.

Men always, but not always with good reason, praise bygone days and criticize the present, and so partial are they to the past that they not only admire past ages the knowledge of which has come down to them in written records, but also, when they grow old, what they remember having seen in their youth. And, when this view is wrong, as it usually is, there are, I am convinced, various causes to which the mistake may be due.

The first of them is, I think, this. The whole truth about olden times is not grasped, since what redounds to their discredit is often passed over in silence, whereas what is likely to make them appear glorious is pompously recounted in all its details. For so obsequious are most writers to the fortune of conquerors that, in order to make their victories seem glorious, they not only exaggerate their own valorous deeds, but also magnify the exploits of the enemy, so that anyone born afterwards either in the conquering or in the conquered province may find cause to marvel at such men and such times, and is bound, in short, to admire them and to feel affection for them.

Before God made Stephen Colbert, she made Niccolo Machiavelli. Old Nick knew his shtick.

In the present, as Josh Marshall said today, "Opposition to the Iraq War is a profoundly mainstream position." Which it certainly was not for the vast majority of the war in Vietnam. That war went on for a long time, with lots of proclamations of progress and hopeful signs and light at the end of the tunnel. And it was very much an act of leaving the comfort of the culture and moving in counter-cultural directions to admit to being against the war. Kind of a gateway drug in itself.

For many years it was nearly an admission of mental incompetence to join an actual protest. Academics like Chomsky were among the few adults who could afford to be involved. It’s not that people were afraid to be against the war, or that they could ignore it like we can today. They were used to believing that the country was involved in an existential struggle with the Dark Lord in Moscow. They were enjoying the benefits of being the only industrial power left standing after the Second World War, owed money by everyone, with the homeland nearly untouched and far fewer casualties than the other major participants. And they worked for companies that were doing well because the economy was humming along because there was a war because it seemed necessary. (Or maybe it’s the other way around.) Plus there was that matter of Communist plants in the government, convincing folks they should be careful. It’s good that so many TV shows from that time exist in the original black-and-white so we can see what it was like to live that way.

Pressure for change in the Vietnam policy built very slowly. Pressure to change the Bush policy against Iraq existed before he began to execute it. But in both cases, the American establishment closed ranks around the policy and held off all attempts to stop the war. A good deal of this is certainly political calculation, and some is spinelessness.

There’s also a role for Chomksy’s formulation: you can’t reach a position of power in the government unless you believe that the United States is unique in history in acting purely from altruistic motives. As with many Chomsky statements, it’s a challenge, often initially difficult to credit. But it’s stated very precisely by someone who knows something about language, and he means what he says. I’ve gone through lists of political leaders in my head, trying to find exceptions to Chomsky’s rule. There are very few, and I have doubts about them.

We’re good, so we can’t be acting from bad motives. We wouldn’t be planning, building, and occupying permanent bases in Iraq, because that would mean we invaded to steal the oil. Certainly we plan to turn those immense bases over to the Iraqis, just as soon as we can get them ready to accept the transfer. Right now, though, wouldn’t be prudent. Plus, they don’t have any aircraft that require 14,000-foot runways.

This kind of thinking is a natural defense system in many cases. A decent person cannot but feel sympathy when disaster befalls others. When that disaster results from a human source, we’re angry with whoever caused the distress. If that turns out to be us, we’ve got a problem. So we look away if we can. If not, we invent a reason to decide that it’s all for the best in this best of all possible worlds. We rationalize, somehow. Even if it leaves us believing something as patently silly as O’Reilly’s stuff, it allows our brains to get past that uncomfortable feeling of being undecided.

It’s not really that we’re pro-empire. We just consistently make pro-imperial decisions at critical junctures. It’s an honest mistake in a certain sense: that most of the people who contribute to those decisions really believe in American exceptionalism. Even looking back, they can only figure that mistakes are continually being made in the implementation of foreign policy decisions. It couldn’t really be the pattern it appears to be, that foreign policy decisions are consistently imperial. Better stop looking now.

All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

If, like me, you don’t carry one of those little pocket versions of the Constitution, that is the entire first paragraph of Article I, Section 7. After the one-sentence Preamble (“We the People…”), the first six sections of the first article define Congress and tell how it’s constituted, how they’re elected, when and where they meet, and how they decide who’s seated and who’s expelled.

Thus the very first statement in the Constitution assigning any responsibility of any sort to any person or group is the quoted sentence. This appears to indicate that the Democrats in the House could end the war if they chose. The reasons they choose for not taking this path vary, but underlying them all is an unspoken belief in American empire. Ideology is, indeed, often a cover for self-interest.

The Democratic party leadership, so called, seems to me to be selling us two false premises, and we need to call them on both.

First, they keep saying that there’s nothing they can do to stop the war because of the thin margin in the Senate. Assuming that they’ve read the Constitution, or at least been advised by lawyers who have, they know this isn’t true. The House could end funding for anything but withdrawal, and within a couple months the administration would be forced to respond to the lack of money. But the Democrats, as usual, react fearfully, aware, as Paul Krugman recently said, that the Republicans will attack their patriotism no matter they do, and taking precisly the wrong lesson from that.

Second, they continue to claim that there are no good choices in the current situation, for example as George Packer presents it. This, it seems to me, is also false. In fact, the plan detailed by George McGovern and William Roe Polk last year in Harper’s was quite viable. Naturally a year-old plan might need a bit of updating, but the thrust was the important thing. The reason it didn’t get more of a hearing was that it didn’t validate the military-industrial model. Instead, it considered that the war was a mistake (except for the part about dumping a dictator), and that we should attempt to compensate Iraq for the damage. It envisioned the Iraqis doing the reconstruction, paid for largely with American dollars, with a total cost estimated at $17.5 billion, about what we spend on two months’ worth of occupation. Corruption, waste, danger, would all sap the buying power of our contribution, sure; but money would enter the Iraqi enconomy in a lot of ways, they could set up their country as they choose, and they’d learn from the experience of community involvement, which Saddam always prohibited.

What these two falsehoods share at base, I think, is either debilitating fear or complicity in imperial design. We’ve generally assumed the former, but as time passes it becomes harder to maintain that position. It’s harder to believe that we’ve made a long string of mistakes than that we’ve done what we intended but haven’t been honest about stating that.

George Packer has another thoughtful and well-written article about Iraq. His discussion of the remaining options draws this comment from Josh Marshall:

If our options before ranged from bad to worse, they now range from worse to horrible.

Packer, of course, was originally a war supporter, and as far as I know has never repudiated that position. Thus he seems to me to be continually engaged in explaining his reasoning, to put it euphemistically.

To his credit he does not shy away from the responsibility of the US for the disaster we’ve created.

The inability of Iraq’s communities to reconcile doesn’t absolve the United States of responsibility. Instead, it raises a new set of moral and strategic questions that are, in their way, more painful than at any other phase of the war. Facing these questions requires American leaders to do what they have not yet done — to look beyond the next three or six months, to the next two or three years. When America prepares, inevitably, to leave, what can we do to limit the damage that will follow our departure, not just for Iraq’s sake but for our own?

In this article, in fact, he attempts to turn that responsibility in favor of his argument, which I take to be that a continued presence will be necessary for at least five years. But he doesn’t explicitly state that or any other position as his own, so I may be projecting.

He’s naturally quite willing to allocate blame to the Bush administration’s faith-based foreign policy, quoting one former official as saying “What happens if, at the eleventh hour, we’re witnessing one of the most remarkable feats in American history on the part of a general? … If that’s the case, why do you want to give up now?” Suppose some magical situation came along, then assume it’s currently true and act on that.

But Packer seems to me to be in the thrall of illusions that are just as destructive in the long term. His views are vastly more sophisticated, and they attempt to shoulder the obvious responsibility of the US to help the country we destroyed. Though it’s impossible to know for sure he thinks from the article, it’s telling that in his discussion of the proposal of Senators Reed and Levin (begin withdrawing troops within four months, leaving only a “limited presence”) he notes the agreement of Senators Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Warner, but the only person he quotes is Lamar Alexander: “You have the President being inflexible and the Democrats playing politics”. Certainly that’s a fair statement of an argument made by the moderate Republicans and the wimpy liberals, but why is that the only position worthy of a quote from a Senator?

The point I most agree with in the article is that Americans need to start thinking ahead, considering the results of our policies and actions. Fat chance, but an excellent recommendation. Our television-and-fast-food society is all about immediate gratification, an infantile approach but one we’re hooked on. We don’t want to think about the effects on others of our own actions, or indeed the effects on ourselves in the future. Packer’s article, above all, attempts to take on this task and contribute to this discussion. We need more people doing that, especially those like him who write well and think deeply.

Discussing our options is an unpleasant business, because they’re all bad. As far as I know, no one anywhere on the spectrum denies this. To me it seems that one’s view of what we should do arises in large part from what one thinks about the role of the United States in the world.

For example, Packer quotes Colin Kahl, a professor of security studies at Georgetown: “If Bush keeps the pedal on the surge until the end of his Presidency, we will rocket off the cliff, and it guarantees that the next President will get elected on a pledge to get us out of Iraq now.” The context seems to indicate that Packer and Kahl agree this would be a bad move.

One way in which Iraq and Vietnam — two wars doomed to be endlessly compared — are not the same is in the implications of America’s departure. Contrary to Bush’s recent claim, the American exit from Vietnam didn’t lead to the Cambodian genocide (U.S. actions during the war did), and, for all the bloodiness of the aftermath in Vietnam, it was not a strategic disaster. America’s prestige was damaged, but the dominoes did not fall, and the civil wars in Southeast Asia did not affect the larger history of the Cold War. But Iraq, sitting in the geographical heart of the Middle East, on top of all that oil and radicalism, is unlikely to become marginal. In 1966, Senator George Aiken gave Lyndon Johnson some memorable advice about what to do in Vietnam: Declare victory and get out. In contemplating a change in American policy on Iraq, one former Bush Administration official turned the advice around: “Declare defeat and stay in.”

In a nutshell, I take that to be Packer’s position. He talks about the necessity of engaging the rest of the world in the stabilization of Iraq, postulates that the world would be willing to help if we acknowleded our failure while remaining engaged, and reiterates the argument that a bloody civil war will be the result of a rapid American withdrawal.

The spectacle, televised around the world, would deepen the feeling that America is indifferent to human, especially Muslim, life. It would brand the U.S. as untrustworthy to potential allies and feckless to potential enemies. And it would destroy what’s left of American prestige. Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary College of the University of London, who also served on the strategic-assessment team, told me, “What has defeated America in Iraq, apart from the failure of the state and its own incompetence, are a bunch of radicals with nothing more sophisticated than reëngineered artillery shells and rocket-propelled grenades. That is a loss of cataclysmic proportions.”

My view is that the historical record strongly supports these contentions:

1. The US is indifferent to human life unless it happens to be American, white, and middle-class or above.
2. The US is untrustworthy as a potential ally.
3. Another defeat of the American military by technologically unsophisticated radicals will merely reinforce the accurate perception that nationalist insurgencies nearly always win.

Packer does a great service by attempting to focus our attention on the implications of our actions.

David Kilcullen, an Australian counter-insurgency adviser who served on Petraeus’s staff in the first half of the year, said, “The real question is not withdrawal dates or troop numbers. The real question is: What do we want Iraq to look like once we don’t have a hundred and sixty thousand troops there? And is what we want achievable?”

My question is, why is it up to us to decide what Iraq should look like — isn’t that what got us into this situation to begin with?

I would argue that, once we follow Packer’s lead, transcend our short-term thinking, and assume our adult responsibilities, the central question is our role in the world. The assumption underlying the various positions that converge on maintaining an American military presence in Iraq for five to ten years is, I think, that it’s our responsibility to decide what the world should look like, to offer everyone a chance to be like us. A empire of soft power, backed up by the largest military in history.

In short, a kinder, gentler empire. The liberal interventionists seem to me to be as entranced by American military might as the neo-cons, and to entertain illusions that are less blithe but equally incorrect.

At the other of the question are those who maintain that the US cannot and should not attempt to determine the shape of the world, that we should stop trying to dominate and start leading by example. That means no bombing anywhere, unless we’re attacked first and we can prove who did it. That means no invasions. That means not selling arms to the worst actors in the world, indeed not basing our economy on arms sales; not supporting countries that engage in ethnic separation of populations, by arms or by fence; not refusing to talk to anyone who wants a dialog; not threatening people with force. We can change the world for the better by helping people around the world, by offering assistance rather than requiring coöperation. As long as we act through our military, while China negotiates contracts in Africa and Asia, and Cuba sends doctors to the poorest, we will appear to be what we are: a military empire, in it for ourselves, unable to provide even for our own because we’re so busy making money on war.

Well, as Billie said, God bless the child that’s got his own.

It’s not news that

• The total income Americans list on tax returns failed to grow from year to year only once in the post-World War II period. Until 2001, when it declined four years straight. In 2005, the latest year for which data was published, the total went up slightly but was still lower than in 2001; the average actually declined because there were more taxpayers.
• Less than a quarter of one percent of taxpayers — those reporting a million dollars or more — got almost 47% of the total income gains in 2005 compared to 2001.
• The same folks got 62% of the benefits of the Bush tax cuts on capital gains and dividends.
• Of the 134 million taxpayers, 11,433, reporting $10 million or more each, got tax breaks of nearly $1.9 million each, for a total of $21.7 billion. The 90% reporting under $100,000 in income averaged $318 in tax savings on their investments.

So who does the White House blame it on? Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

That’s right, Clinton:

The White House said the fact that average incomes were smaller five years after the Internet bubble burst “should not surprise anyone.”

And 9/11:

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, attributed the drop in average incomes to “the significant wrenching hits that our economy took in 2001 and 2002, so no one should be surprised that what a bubble economy created in the late 1990s and 2000, where economic data were skewed, would take some time to recover.”

Mr. Fratto said the fact that nearly all of the growth in incomes was among those in the upper reaches of the income ladder and that the majority of investment tax breaks went to those making more than $1 million “is not a very interesting story.”

[…]

He said the more significant issue was the reduction in taxes for middle-class Americans that Mr. Bush won from Congress.

You gotta admire their consistency if nothing else.

Happily, the Times injected a small note of sanity in the midst of all this.

The fact that average incomes remained lower in 2005 than five years earlier helps explain why so many Americans report feeling economic stress despite overall growth in the economy. Many Americans are also paying a larger share of their health care costs and have had their retirement benefits reduced, adding to their out-of-pocket costs.

I’m tempted to make a snide comment but I think I’ll refrain.

You no doubt heard the reports, mostly but not entirely snarky, about Cindy Sheehan’s arrest in the office of John Conyers. I admire her commitment, but it seems to me that her view of the problem is the reverse of reality.

I certainly believe that the current situation calls for, indeed requires, that both the President and the Vice President be impeached. No one can honestly question whether they have committed impeachable offenses. The question is what to do about it, and in this regard the leading Democrats in Congress are proving to be as spineless a majority as they were a minority.

But Conyers is not the problem. It seems clear that he favors impeachment, but to overcome opposition from the Speaker, he needs an overwhelming number of colleagues to back him. Which, in my view, makes Nancy Pelosi the problem. Her office would be a better place to get arrested to make a political point.

As Nader says, what we need is not a third party, but a second one. The Democrats, following the Clinton pattern, talk progressive but act DLC. They need the progressive votes (usually, though in 2008 not so much), but they’re mostly corporatist. The wide-spread recognition of that fact might explain some of the high fives that Edwards got for his two best lines in the recent debate:

Do you believe that compromise, triangulation will bring about big change? I don’t. I think the people who are powerful in Washington — big insurance companies, big drug companies, big oil companies — they are not going to negotiate. They are not going to give away their power! The only way that they are going to give away their power is if we take it away from them!

and

We can’t trade our insiders for their insiders.

Which of course is why the media hates him: they’re insiders whose employers are owned by the big corporations that currently exercise the real power. It’ll be interesting to see if any changes come from the video his campaign released, showing clips of important stuff happening in the world while playing the song “Hair”. Will they get it? (Will they be allowed to?)

In the end, I think Ruth Conniff is on the money with her observations at The Progressive. She mentions Russ Feingold’s proposal to censure Bush and Cheney, the classic wimpy-liberal response to the difference between reality and what the wingnuts demand. This is why the right wing is powerful and the left wing gormless: the right fights and the left compromises.

Conniff talked with John Nichols of The Nation about Feingold’s comment at Kos: “The history books will show we were vocal in condemning the President’s abuses of power.” (That won’t keep the next President from doing the same things, though; do we care?)

While Democrats give voice to public discontent with the Bush administration, the leadership is still operating on the theory that as Bush and the Republicans head off the cliff, the best course of action is to get out of the way. Politically, Nichols concedes, they might be right: “They should just stand up and say if we abdicate our constitutional responsibilities and don’t do our job, we’ll reap the benefits. It will allow us to do good things. They might be right. Standing by and letting a crash occur might benefit you. That’s a credible case.”

Immoral, but credible. That’s the real problem the Democratic leadership faces: they know their strategy is immoral, so they can no more afford to state it than Bush can be honest about imperialism and oil.

Witness the recent Democratic meme that impeachment would keep them from getting useful work done.

“The idea that taking up impeachment will keep us from acting on health care, gay rights, etc., is ahistoric,” Nichols says. “The fact of the matter is that during the impeachment of Nixon back in the 70s, the reason Congress was so effective and got so much done was that Nixon was scared and, in a calculated move, started cooperating with Congress to avoid impeachment. So the right thing to do is move immediately — see what you can get out of Bush.”

For that theory to win the day, the pressure on Congress from voters has to continue to grow.

That means us. Have you contacted your Representative?

California has well over 35 million people. And who’s more connected than we are?

I just went to Senator Diane Feinstein’s web site and entered a comment from a constitutent. The site says “The total number of e-mails sent to Senator Feinstein through this web page”, before the one I sent, was 114,864.

Where the hell is everybody? Californians: Senator Feinstein is on the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Patrick “Go Fuck Yourself” Leahy, currently attempting to extract information from Sara Taylor, Harriet Meirs, and the White House over the US attorney firings. Got anything to say to her?

Here’s what I said.

I believe the Senate should hold Ms. Sara Taylor, Ms. Harriet Meirs, and the President in contempt of Congress absent full testimony in the matter of the firing of the US attorneys.

My understanding is that Ms. Taylor and Ms. Meirs no longer work for the White House, and are therefore not under its direction. If the President is claiming that his executive privilege allows him to prevent former aides from testifying about possible illegal actions, I don’t believe such a claim would hold up even in today’s Supreme Court.

If the Congress does not act to restrain this President, he will cause even more harm to the country.

But the greatest harm, an irreparable one, would occur if the Congress fails to enact legal punishment for this administration’s illegal actions.

This President and, most especially, this Vice President have acted as if they are above the law. Congress must show them that they are not, most vigorously, or future Presidents will be completely unaccountable, and the Republic will fade away, like Rome’s did.

It’s not enough to pass resolutions that call President Bush a bad guy. He’s a war criminal; he should be in the dock in The Hague along with his Vice President. In addition, he’s a domestic criminal: he’s violated our civil rights with abandon, and he’s made us less secure, breaking all kinds of laws in the process, and ignoring many more through signing statements.

There are so many reasons to impeach both the President and the Vice President that it appears to me to be the Constitutional responsibility of this Congress to proceed along that path.

Sincerely,
Chuck Dupree

There’s a lot of buzz about the editorial in the New York Times today calling for what loyal Bushies would term precipitate withdrawal.

Indeed, there are some striking statements from this organ of pre-war lies.

At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

The editorial lists some of the harms the US has suffered as a result of what it calls “this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war”, and accuses the President and Vice President of using demagoguery and fear as weapons against American public opinion. It ends with a call to action.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

Executive summary: we thought it would be a cakewalk securing Iraq’s oil, but it wasn’t. So our advice is to cut bait; just don’t let it hurt Israel.

But the Times is ready to give up on the occupation, not the oil.

The bottom line: the Pentagon needs enough force to stage effective raids and airstrikes against terrorist forces in Iraq, but not enough to resume large-scale combat.

This seems to me patently silly, totally PR, and the colors aren’t even particularly happenin’.

How can one tell whether a given number of ground troops and a fleet of bombers, fighters, and support craft constitute a force whose size is sufficient for effective raiding but not for large-scale combat? Is there a UN agency that does such surveys, or is it an NGO? Sounds like rhetorical cover is being sought.

Plus, there’s an argument to be made that the force we now have in Iraq is not a large-scale combat force; we didn’t expect to see large-scale combat except for a brief period during the invasion. If that argument held up, the Times would presumably be happy simply to remove US troops to bases in Kuwait and the budding Kurdistan. Bringing them home, and getting the hell out of Iraq, does not seem to be the primary goal.

Most importantly, why does our military need to “stage … raids and airstrikes against terrorist forces in Iraq” if we’re no longer bogged down there militarily? Are we claiming that we have vital interests in Iraq?

Which is really the point. Whether true believer (Bush, Wolfowitz) or shameless profiteer (Ch