Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

George W. Bush’s Last Day in Office!

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The legacy of President George W. Bush:

George Walker Bush. 43rd president of the United States. First ever with a criminal record. Our third story tonight, his presidency: eight years in eight minutes.

Early in 2001 the U.S. fingered Al Qaeda for the bombing of the USS Cole. Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke had a plan to take down Al Qaeda. Instead, by February the NSC had already discussed invading Iraq, and had a plan for post-Saddam Iraq. By March 5 Bush had a map ready for Iraqi oil exploration and a list of companies. Al Qaeda? Rice told Clarke not to give Bush a lot of long memos — “not a big reader.”

August 6, 2001, a CIA analyst briefs Bush on vacation: “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” Bush takes no action, tells the briefer, quote, “All right, you’ve covered your ass now.” Next month Clarke requests using new predator drones to kill Bin Laden, the Pentagon and CIA say no.

September 11th: Bush remains seated for several minutes to avoid scaring school children by getting up and leaving. He then flies around the country and promises quote a full scale investigation to find “those folks who did it.”

Rumsfeld says Afghanistan “does not have enough targets, we’ve got to do Iraq.” When the CIA traps Bin Laden at Tora Bora it asks for 800 rangers to cut off his escape, Bush outsources the job to Pakistanis sympathetic to the Taliban. Bin Laden gets away.

In February General Tommy Franks tells a visiting Senator Bush is moving equipment out of Afghanistan so he can invade Iraq. One of the men who prepped Rice for her testimony that Bush did not ignore pre 9-11 warnings later explains, quote, “We cherry picked things to make it look like the president had been actually concerned about Al Qaeda…they didn’t give a bleep about Al Qaeda.”

July, and Britain’s intel chief says Bush is fixing intelligence and facts around the policy to take out Saddam January ’03. Bush and Blair agree to invade in March. Mr. Bush, still telling us he has not decided, telling Blair they should paint an airplane in UN colors, fly it over Iraq, and provoke a response, a pretext for invasion.

The man who said it would take several hundred thousand troops: fired. The man who said it would cost more than a hundred billion: fired. The man who revealed Bush’s yellowcake lie: smeared, his wife’s covert status exposed. The White House liars who did it and covered it up: not fired, one convicted — Bush commutes his sentence.

Then in Iraq, “stuff happens:” Iraq’s army, disbanded. The government de-Baathified. 200,000 weapons, billions of dollars just
lost, foreign mercenaries immunized from justice. Political hacks run the Green Zone. Religious cleansing forcing one out of six Iraqis from their homes. Abu Ghraib, the insurgency, Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Other stuff does not happen: WMD, post-war planning, body armor, vehicular armor.

The payoff? Oil, and billions for Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies, while Mr. Bush denies VA healthcare to 450,000 veterans, tries to raise their healthcare fees, blocks the new G.I. Bill, and increases his own power with the USA PATRIOT Act, with the Military Commissions Act, public orders exempting himself from a thousand laws, and secretly from the Presidential Records Act, The Geneva Conventions, FISA, sparking a mass rebellion at the Justice Department.

Secret star chambers for terrorism suspects, overturned by Hamdan v Rumsfeld. Denying habeas corpus, overturned by Boumediene v Bush. 200 renditionings, sleep deprivation, abuse.

Rumsfeld warned in 2002 that he was torturing, that it would jeopardize convictions. Out of 550 at Gitmo, hundreds ultimately go free with no charges. Dozens are tortured, eight fatally — three are convicted. On U.S. soil twelve hundred immigrants rounded up without due process, without bail, without court dates, without a single charge of terrorism.

It wasn’t just Mr. Bush no longer subject to the rule of law. He slashed regulations on everyone from banks to mining companies. Appointed 98 lobbyists to oversee their own industries, weakening emission standards for mercury and 650 different toxic chemicals. Regulators shared drugs, and their beds, with industry reps. The Crandall Canyon mine owner told inspectors to “back up” because his buddy, Republican Mitch McConnell, was sleeping with their boss. McConnell’s wife is Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. Her agency overruled engineer concerns about Crandall Canyon, and was found negligent after nine miners died in the collapse there.

Mr. Bush’s “hands off” as Enron blacks out California, doubling electric bills. After months of rejecting price caps Mr. Bush bows to pressure, the blackouts end.

Mr. Bush further deregulates commodity futures, midwifing the birth of unregulated oil markets which, just like Enron, jack up prices to an all time high until Congress and both presidential candidates call for regulations, and the prices fall.

Deregulating financial services and lax enforcement of remaining rules created a housing bubble, creating the mortgage crisis, creating then a credit crisis, devastating industries that rely on credit, from student loans to car dealers. Firms that had survived the Great Depression could not survive Bush. Those that did got seven hundred billion dollars. No strings, no transparency, no idea whether it worked. Unlike the auto bailout, which cut workers’ salaries. A GOP memo called it “a chance to punish unions.”

But Bush failed even when his party and his patrons did not stand to profit. Investigators blamed management cost cutting communication for missed warnings about Columbia. Bush administration convicts include sex offenders at Homeland Security, convicted liars, every kind of thief in the calendar, and if you count things that were not prosecuted, the vice president of the United States actually shot a man in the face — the man apologized.

Mr. Bush faked the truth with paid propaganda in Iraq on his education policy, tried to silence the truth about global warming, rocket fuel in our water, industry influence on energy policy. Politicized the truth of science at NASA, the EPA, the National Cancer Institute, Fish and Wildlife, and the FDA

His lies, exposed by whistleblowers from the cabinet down. “Complete B.S.,” the treasury secretary said of Mr. Bush on his tax cuts. Rice’s mushroom cloud, Powell’s mobile labs, Iraq and 9-11, Jack Abramoff, Jessica Lynch. Pat Tillman. Pat Tillman again. Pat Tillman, again. The air at Ground Zero, most responders still suffering respiratory problems. Global warming, carbon emissions, a Clear Skies initiative lowering air quality standards, the Healthy Forests initiative increasing logging, faith based initiatives, the cost of medicare reform, fired US attorneys, politically synchronized terror alerts. The surge causing insurgents to switch sides, that abortion causes breast cancer, that his first recession began under Clinton, that he did not wiretap without warrants, that we do not torture. That American citizen John Walker Lindh’s rights were not violated, that he refused the right to counsel.

“Heckuva job, Brownie!” Some survivors still in trailers, New Orleans still at just two-thirds its usual population.

The lie that no one could have predicted the economic crisis, except the economists who did. No one could have predicted 9-11, except one ass-covering CIA analyst, or thirty. No one could have predicted the levee breach, except — literally — Mr. Bill, in a PSA that aired on TV a year before Katrina.

Bush actually admitted that he lied about not firing Rumsfeld because he “did not want to tell the truth.” Look it up.

All of it, all of it and more leaving us with ten trillion in debt to pay for 31% more in discretionary spending, the Iraq War, a 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut. Median income down two thousand dollars. Three-quarters of all income gains under Bush going to the richest one percent. Unemployment up from 4.2 to 7.2 percent. The Dow, down from ten thousand five hundred eighty seven to eighty two hundred seventy seven. Six million now more in poverty. Seven million more now without health care.

Buying toxic goods from China. Deadly cribs. Outsourcing security to Dubai, still unsecure in our ports and at our nuclear plants. More dependent on foreign oil. Out of the international criminal court. Off the anti ballistic missle treaty.

Military readiness and standards down, with two unfinished wars, a nuclear North Korea, disengaged from the Palestinian problem, destabilizing eastern European diplomacy with anti missile plans and unable to keep Russia out of Georgia.

2000 miles of Appalachian streams destroyed by rubble from mountaintop mining. At his last G-8 summit, he actually bid farewell to other world leaders saying, quote, “goodbye from the world’s greatest polluter.”

Consistently undermining historic American reverence for the institutions that empower us. Education, now “academic elites,” and the law, “activist judges,” capping jury awards.

And Bin Laden? Living today unmolested in a Pakistani safe haven created by a truce endorsed and defended by George W. Bush.

And among all the gifts he gave to Bin Laden, the most awful, the most damaging not just to America, but to the American ideal, was to further Bin Laden’s goal by making us act out of fear rather than fortitude.

Leaving us with precious little to cling to tonight, save the one thing that might yet suffice:

Hope.

Tomorrow’s inauguration can’t come soon enough.

(via windycitymike, transcript from Daily Kos)

Traditional Marriage

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If we are to let the Bible define what “traditional marriage” should look like, then our marriage laws should be amended as such:

  1. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

  2. Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

  3. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

  4. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

  5. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

  6. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

  7. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

(this particular incarnation by gladkov, via Daily Kos)

Secrets of the 2008 Campaign eBook

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Over the course of the week, Newsweek has published a fascinating seven-part series called Secrets of the 2008 Campaign, an “in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, consisting of exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting from the McCain and Obama camps assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of their findings appear until after Election Day.”

Since I wanted to read the whole thing, but have also been experimenting with reading eBooks on my iPod Touch, I figured this was as good a time as any to play with seeing what it would take to create an eBook. As it turns out, it’s not terribly difficult at all, at least as far as the .epub format goes. After some time with this tutorial and a little bit of minor troubleshooting, I had it all set up.

If you have an eBook reader that supports .epub files and would like to take a peek, here it is. It’s been working fine for me in both the desktop and iPhone versions of Stanza, but I can’t at this point vouch for any other eBook reader.

Obviously, seeing as how the only thing keeping me from breaking copyright criminally (rather than simply flagrantly, which is were I stand now) is that I’m not charging for this, so should Newsweek decide to give me the smackdown, this will be disappearing faster than Sarah Palin leaving the stage after McCain’s concession speech.

Still, it was a fun exercise in figuring out eBooks.

Principles in Campaigning

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To me, this demanded more than just a short grab buried in the midst of a bunch of other links: When Your Best Speech is Your Concession, What’s Wrong?

John McCain’s concession speech was by far his best of the campaign. He was, convincing, generous, and passionate. It brought to mind Hillary Clinton’s concession speech last summer, which was also widely heralded as her best.

What is it with these politicians that [they] can only give a good speech after they have lost?

[…]

One could hardly miss the fact that in order to be gracious in defeat, McCain had to contradict much of his own campaign. Clinton’s concession speech left her in the same dilemma: in order to be gracious in defeat, she had to contradict much of what she had said over the preceding months.

If Obama had lost either the nomination or the general election, he could have given a gracious concession speech without contradicting anything he had said during the campaign. One might counter by arguing that it is easy to be principled when you are the front runner. But Barack Obama entered this race not as a frontrunner but a long shot. In fact, much of Obama’s extraordinary rise to prominence was rooted in his self-evident commitment to politics that are principled in this sense. A sizable chunk of the American electorate responded to that in a powerful way.

This would be a good measure with which to distinguish “principled” politics from “unprincipled”: a principled politician can concede graciously [without] having to take back his or her campaign.

[…]

This is the issue the media swings at but misses with all the talk of “negative campaigning” and “attack ads.” Principled and unprincipled attacks get lumped together in a absurd measure of “going negative” that suggests a good candidate never criticizes his or her opponent. Instead of “negative campaigning” we need to talk about unprincipled politicians.

Obama’s Victory Speech

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Obama’s victory speech, transcript courtesy of TPM:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

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Vote!

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Vote Obama '08 This is it — voting day!

Hopefully, you’re one of the many people who’ve taken advantage of the option to vote early in one form or another. If not, then please take the time out of your day today to go by your local polling place and cast your vote.

Don’t let the news scare you away, either. If the race follows the polls — and keep in mind, that’s still a big “if” — then the big networks could be calling the election long before many people on the West coast have a chance to vote. Don’t let that stop you! Anyone who remembers the last two presidential races (especially 2000) knows how eager the networks are to declare a winner, long before most votes are cast, and with plenty of time for things to change. Besides, there’s a lot more than just the presidential race at stake here, there are tons of Senate, House, and local seats and measures that you can have input on.

Know your voting rights! Hopefully this won’t be an issue for you, but better to be prepared. Don’t let goons from the other side (whichever side that may be) keep you from voting. If you do have problems, know what to do:

If you see something weird or discomfiting or arguably illegal going on at your polling place tomorrow. don’t post about it here. Or, at least, don’t post first.

You’ve got two choices tomorrow as to where to phone in your information, and I’m going to advocate doing both. First off, there’s Obama Voter Protection:

Call 1-877-US-4-OBAMA (1-877-874-6226) and let them know what problems you’re seeing. If you can’t get through, use this online form and/or call your local campaign HQ.

Alternately, or in addition, I strongly encourage you to call Election Protection, a nonpartisan organization:

We all love being able to break news here about what we’re seeing, but what matters most tomorrow is giving that information to people who can do something about it . And then … wait, what are you doing at a computer in the first place on Election Day? Get out there. Do More Than Vote.

Lawyers like me will be at polling places all over the country tomorrow to protect every citizen’s right to vote in an atmosphere free of intimidation, coercion and deception. But we can’t do anything if we don’t know what the problem is. So don’t post it here — call it in.

It’s time for a change, people. Make this one count.

Where’s Your Ballot?

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C’mon, all you locals. Washington makes this whole voting thing really easy to do. So how come so many of you haven’t sent in your ballot yet?

With a week to go until Election Day, less than a fourth of the state’s voters have returned their ballots.

Ballots were sent out Oct. 17, and must be postmarked by Tuesday.

Thirty-seven of the state’s 39 counties are voting entirely by mail. King and Pierce Counties still have poll sites, though a majority of voters in those counties already vote by mail.

Grab your ballot, fill in the little bubbles, and send it in. This isn’t a time to set it aside to “take care of it later,” only to find it buried in a stack of bills on Nov. 5th.

Some helpful suggestions when filling it out (however, I’d be fine…almost…with an opposing vote, as long as it meant that you voted):

  • President: Barack Obama (A no-brainer.)
  • WA Governor: Christine Gregoire (Another no-brainer. Dino Rossi is scary, and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near government.)
  • Superintendent of Public Instruction: Randy Dorn (On the advice of Prairie — an educator — and everyone she knows involved in education, Terry Bergeron needs to go.)
  • I-1000: Tough call. (I wanted to vote yes on this one, and I personally would want to have this option available should I ever need it. However, I’m not convinced that the wording is written well, and worry about insurance companies pushing physician-assisted suicide over treatment. I ended up voting no, but I wouldn’t hold voting either way against anyone.)
  • I-985: No (Tim Eyman’s a dork, and I’ve never been convinced any of his ideas had merit.)
  • I-1029: No (Sounds good on the face, but introduces unnecessary red tape, and would throw the existing system of long-term care into disarray.)
  • Proposition 1: Yes (Transportation is good.)

McCain Concedes

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When I saw this bit of news earlier today…

John McCain’s election night watch party might be missing John McCain. Instead of appearing before a throng of supporters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix on the evening of Nov. 4, the Republican presidential nominee plans to deliver postelection remarks to a small group of reporters and guests on the hotel’s lawn.

Aides said Thursday that the arrangement was due to space limitations and that McCain might drop by the election watch party at some other point.

…I had the same thought that Daily Kos does here: he’s throwing in the towel. Since my vote went to Obama, I can’t say that I’m disappointed…but how must his campaign staffers, who still have twelve days to go before the election, feel about this?

McCain knows he’s going down, we get that. But there are supporters of his that are still busting their ass, and he’s basically telling them that he doesn’t give a flying fuck. It’s a breathtaking insult to his staff, to his volunteers, to his party, and even to America. It doesn’t matter if the bulk of his audience will be watching him on the television, he owes his people (and even the nation), one last rally.

So this is how the cowardly McCain wishes to go out — not with a bang, but with a whimper.