Just a quick break from my Lunacon doodlings to note an excellent post “The 5 Words Bush Wants Americans to Repeat” from a blog called Frameshop. Apparently, Frameshop focuses on how people frame the debate in political circles. This particular post parses the President’s performance (ahh, alliteration!) for the key concepts he wants to use to shift the debate, such as “resignation” versus “firing”. It’s a nice, concise, clear read.
Category: politics
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Health of the Republic down, 4% to 25%
The Health of the Republic bar has dropped another 4% in recent weeks. This is largely due to the unfolding three scandals at the Department of Justice:
- The blatantly-political firing of eight US prosecutors
- The new revelations about presidential interference in the internal DOJ audit of the warrantless wiretapping program
- The rampant abuse of National Security Letters by FBI agents
More below the fold.
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Review: Echelon
Echelon
a novel
by Josh ConviserInstaRating: 2 out of 5
This book\’s title caught my interest because I keep up with surveillance tech and its social implications, and ECHELON — the alleged US NSA electronic sifting program — is the monster of all surveillance programs. Although I knew this was a spy thriller, I thought there was a chance that it would delve deeply into some of the issues revolving around the invasive new technologies coming online. Alas, it didn’t pan out that way.
More below the fold — warning: Spoilers to come.
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Health of the Republic down, 1% to 29%
The Health of the Republic bar has shifted downward another percentage point. This follows the promulgation of a presidential decree that gives the White House a greater say over the issuance of policy guidelines by agencies. Previously most such documents were crafted by civil servants but now, they must pass through a politically-appointed gatekeeper (a so-called regulatory policy office) before they can be issued. The clear intent is for Bush to “regain control” over rogue agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, which for some reason seems determined to ignore presidential philosophy and, you know, do its legally-mandated job.
Not surprisingly, the new policy — demanding an aggregate estimate of costs and the determination of a “market failure” before any new regulation is promoted — was hailed by financial backers of the Bush administration, primarily businesses who find it irksome that regulatory agencies actually regulate.
This is only a 1% drop because — believe it or not — this administration has done such other egregious damage to American freedoms, that this Kremlinesque gathering-in of economic control, in comparison, ranks as a relatively minor matter. How we lived in diminished times!
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The true America-haters
I’ve been meaning to write this for a long time, but it turns out that Cenk Uygur got there first and said it well: The people in power, who wrap themselves in the flag, don’t really love America. They don’t even understand America — and so, not understanding it, they hate it. They hate it virulently and passionately, with all their might and will. They wish it would go away, revert to an ordinary nation. They identify America with the patch of land it happens to occupy, but they don’t grasp the true identity of America as a beacon of human dignity and freedom. Freedom offends them, unless it’s carefully circumscribed so that only the “right people” have a say.
Here’s where he hits it dead-center:
I mean that they philosophically never bought into the concept behind the country. America isn’t a bunch of rocks that happen to be on a certain longitude and latitude. America isn’t a bunch of people who happen to live in certain states between 1776 and 2007. America is a noble and grand idea. And it is that idea the Dick Cheneys of the world work hard to tear down every day. It is that idea that they do not trust, do not believe in and that they commit ideological treason against.
I know that, in the next two years, there will sadly be reason to revisit and resay these fundamental truths. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one out there seeing and saying them.
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Where’s Our Rosie?
For no particular good reason, I was trawling on the Net about Rosie the Riveter, an icon from World War II. If you don’t know about Rosie, you really should check out the Wikipedia article. Another good page on Rosie can be found at the eponymous website. I’ve always liked Rosie because she represented not only American can-do spirit but — perhaps without anyone realizing it at the time — she pointed to a time when the United States would more fully live up to the ideals it claimed to be fighting for. I am always fascinated with what I call the “Gorbachev paradox”, when cynical leaders conscript high-sounding and idealistic words to cloak their pragmatic and sometimes nefarious deeds… and then get hoist up on those same words, forced to live up to them by people who’ve had the gall to actually believe the noble sentiments.
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Cross-comment: Does the Left “Hate” America?
Through the Daou Report, I wandered (against my better judgment) over to Dr. Sanity to read the post “Go Wide Mr. President“. Then I read the comments and I was shocked to see something I actually agreed with, posted by someone named GnuCarSmell replying to someone named Garry:
You have it exactly right. It is literally impossible for the jihadists to defeat America in Iraq (or anywhere else) and they know it. It is possible, however, for us to surrender. An American defeat can only be self-inflicted.
Totally. We can only lose in the struggle against terrorism if we surrender… if we surrender our history, if we surrender our decency, if we surrender our fundamental rights and our habits of freedom. We can lose only if we parlay a losing war of choice (launched under false pretenses) into an epic struggle of us against everyone. We can lose only if we give up our history of tolerance and tradition of fair play.
If Iraq is “the central front in the war on terror”, it is only because President Bush made it so. And if we are losing, it is only because he and his cronies completely flubbed the war they chose. The left doesn’t “hate America”. We hate seeing America made over into less than it should be, we hate seeing American soldiers squandering their lives on a war we didn’t have to fight and which our “leaders” chose to fight poorly. We hate seeing the future of our country, in a genuinely dangerous century, being decided by ideologues with willful blinders on, people who can’t “go wide” because they can’t see the imbraglio they caused without reason or justification.
Hate America? If we hated America, we’d be cheering on the Rabid Right as it paves our way to destruction…
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Health of the Republic down 3.3%, to 30%
After hearing that the President of the United States has asserted his untrammeled power to read even physical mail, without warrant or other legal constraint, I have decided to move the Health of the Republic bar to 30%. It’s only a 3% shift because in the end this is only slightly more outrageous than the earlier warrantless wiretapping to which the President has already admitted. Also, today, the Democrats return to the majority and, perhaps, oversight returns to Washington.
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Congress, the Koran, and Oaths
So for about a month there’s been a tempest-in-a-teapot “raging” over the decision by newly elected Democratic Representative Keith Ellison to use a Koran in his private swearing-in ceremony. Some loudmouths, including Rep. Virgil Goode, have decried this and insisted that Mr. Ellison use the same traditional book as all previous representatives, to wit, the good old Christian Bible. Never mind that Mr. Ellison is a practicing Muslim. Never mind that there are as many “one true Bibles” as there are sects of Christianity. Never mind that no representative swears on a Bible — they take the public oath in, well, public and without swearing on any book. (Mr. Ellison plans to use the Koran at the also-traditional, private photogenic ceremony.)
But according to The Washington Post, Mr. Ellison’s gone one further: He’s requested (and been granted) that the Library of Congress loan him a special Koran — one owned by Thomas Jefferson. How’s that for polishing the symbolism? On issues of faith and politics there are few sources more hallowed than Jefferson. Take that, Virgil Goode!
This does raise an important question, almost unthinkable a few short years ago: What if the Democrats are finally learning how to play the symbolism game on par with the Republicans? What if the Democrats stop automatically yielding the photogenic spotlight and the symbolic high ground? What if — Heaven astound us — the Democrats have learned to deal with matters of faith in public? Can you even imagine an America where the religious right has lost its default supremacy, where the symbolism tactics cancel out and people are forced to start talking about, you know, the issues again?
That could well be the best gift Mr. Ellison could give his country.
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Saddan is Dead: Can We Go Home Now?
Today, Iraqui President and dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging after a conviction for atrocities committed in his name. Before going any further, let me clarify something so willfully obscured by some commentators on the right: Saddam Hussein was a Very Bad Man. He did terrible things and — while I am myself still uncertain of the ethics of state executions — he did receive a trial and was executed according to the laws of his nation. Opposition to this administration’s policies is not equivalent to admiring Hussein.
All of which is prologue to the following: Now that George W. Bush has seen the conclusion of the twisted pyscho-drama that has occupied his presidency, will he now be able to cope, mentally, with the fact that the United States must move expeditiously to withdraw from Iraq?
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