At EffU, I’ve posted a response to Congressman Brian Baird’s Seattle Times editorial on Iraq.
Open Thread
Some fun baseball trivia. I noticed that on Friday, former Mariner Jamie Moyer will be pitching for the Phillies against Greg Maddux of the Padres. I wondered if it was the first time two pitchers over 40 years old faced off. It wasn’t. This page had my answer:
The oldest matchup featured California Angels SP Don Sutton and Cleveland Indians SP Phil Niekro, June 8, 1987. Their combined age was 90 years, 135 days.
Also, Moyer faced over-40 David Wells in an earlier Phillies-Padres matchup from July.
Open Thread
If business meetings were like comment threads (audio is NSFW).
Genocide
Thoughts from a wingnut (via Kos and Digby):
When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.
This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.
The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.
This is not some random crazy wingnut, as Kos mentions, “this is from the conservative group Family Security Matters, whose board includes mainstream conservatives Barbara Comstock, Monica Crowley, Frank Gaffney, Laura Ingraham and James Woolsey.” The particular author’s name is Philip Atkinson.
Here’s more:
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
The folks at FSM have been trying to scrub this (and evidently some other articles that are just as insane) from their site. Steve Clemons wrote about this group last summer.
Open Thread
Just a reminder that the best show on television, Real Time with Bill Maher, starts up again this Friday.
Update: Speaking of Bill Maher, here is Part 1 of his HBO special called The Decider:
The rest of the special can be found here — Darryl
Changing the Debate
As Will mentioned below, Hempfest is this weekend. I’m sure most of you have noticed how much importance I place on the issue of drug policy, and as you’d expect, I’ll be spending much of the weekend down in Myrtle Edwards Park in the hemposium tent listening to speakers. I’m often told that by trying very openly and aggressively to bring about an end to drug prohibition, I’m fighting what will always be a losing battle. I very strongly disagree with that. At some point, it will simply become fiscally impossible for this country to sustain its massive prison system and its constantly growing international anti-drug expenditures and we will be forced to move in the other direction. I think it’s vital that we start to envision what the correct regulatory mechanisms should look like when that time comes.
It’s somewhat disheartening to remember that we could only end alcohol prohibition after the Great Depression actually hit and pragmatic public policy was the only way forward. Hopefully, the battle can be won before we hit some kind of financial armageddon. What makes me optimistic is that the numbers of those speaking up about the damage being done by the drug war is growing – and coming from more and more unexpected places. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is an organization, founded in 2002, of current and former law enforcement officials that now has over 5000 members, including former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper. The King County Bar Association commissioned a Drug Policy Project, led by now-State Representative Roger Goodman, that produced a well-researched report calling for an end to drug prohibition and a transition to having government regulate and control currently illegal drugs, instead of simply handing their distribution to criminal gangs who bring violence to our cities to protect their profits. Countries like Switzerland, Portugal, Australia, Canada, Holland, and even Russia, have taken steps to decriminalize drug use.
Recently, the UK drug law reform organization Transform released an impressive document for drug law reformers called Tools for the Debate. It’s like a play book for anyone who wants to be successful in breaking down the rhetoric and the propaganda that has kept this massively unsuccessful public policy afloat for so long. One of the major stumbling blocks to getting the message out is described here in the report:
In this political arena a virulent disease known as ‘Green Room Syndrome’ is epidemic, where strongly held beliefs on reform disappear as soon as the record button is pressed for broadcast. This is something we have experienced again and again: fellow-debaters who privately admit to agreeing with us in the Green Room before a media interview, only to feign shock and outrage at our position once the cameras and microphones are on. There are many in politics and public life who understand intellectually that the prohibition of drugs is unsustainable, but who default in public to moral grandstanding and emotive appeals to the safety of their children.
(You can see a video of Bill O’Reilly getting caught in this hypocrisy by a 16-year-old high school student who starts reading from O’Reilly’s own book)
There’s more optimism today in this area than there’s been for as long as I’ve followed this issue. All of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls (and Ron Paul) support stopping the federal crackdown on medical marijuana in the states that have made it legal. California has been the epicenter of this battle for years. Having the federal government back off is likely to be the first step towards letting states come up with a more sensible policy dealing with both marijuana and more dangerous illegal drugs. And hell, it might even happen sooner:
August 6 — A coalition of California marijuana growers and dealers has offered Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger one billion dollars to solve the current state budget crisis. The group, calling itself Let Us Pay Taxes, makes the offer through its web site LetUsPayTaxes.com. The offer comes at a time when the California legislature is deadlocked on a new budget and California has stopped issuing checks for vitally needed social services. Legislators are currently arguing over which programs will be cut in order to balance the budget.
“It is ridiculous that California can’t pay its bills,” said spokesman Clifford Schaffer. “It is a tragedy that they will cut badly needed services and programs such as medical care for the elderly and prison drug treatment when the money to fund all these programs and more is there and available. Everyone who is currently waiting for a check from the state should be enraged at this foolishness.”
Regulation and taxation of marijuana could produce six billion dollars in additional tax revenue, according to economic studies linked from LetUsPayTaxes.com. In addition, it could save up to ten billion dollars in enforcement costs. “That is a conservative estimate,” said Schaffer. “By other estimates, the revenues could be five times that. The economists are with us all the way on this one. Marijuana prohibition is an economic disaster.”
There’s no shortage of negative stereotypes when it comes to those who flock to Myrtle Edwards Park every year. A generation of Americans has grown up dismissing the movement to reform our drug laws as a fringe cause led by a bunch of idealistic hippies. But when you get past the stoner stereotypes, the larger cause we’ve been fighting for isn’t just right, it’s becoming necessary to start addressing a number of glaring problems in our society today.
Acronym of the Day – GFE
It stands for “Google Fucking Exists,” and I think both David Postman and the folks in Senator Patty Murray’s office might want to familiarize themselves with it. Postman posted here about Senator Murray allegedly talking out of her posterior about a bridge that a school bus could not traverse without first letting the children off. Toby Nixon, who appears to be quite familiar with GFE, wrote in the comments:
Somebody needs to teach Sen. Murray’s staff how to search the web. It took me about 30 seconds to find a reference to this school bus story in U.S. Senate testimony from the president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers in September 2002 (he says it was in Washington County, Alabama, but doesn’t cite a source): CLICK HERE
I also found this reference to a similar situation in Guam: CLICK HERE
And that goes for Daphne Retter at TheHill as well.
UPDATE: This is not an open thread, so any comments not related to Patty Murray, Daphne Retter, David Postman, Washington County, Alabama, school buses, schoolchildren, rickety old bridges in the South, Guam, the American Society of Civil Engineers, Google, fucking, or how Toby Nixon is the coolest Republican in the state (next to Richard Pope, of course) will be deleted.
Open Thread
This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is posted.
Stripping the Modern Republican Party Down to its Core
Matthew Yglesias has a great post up about Rudy Giuliani and his truly alarming foreign policy strategy. Part of the modern illusion about the Republican Party is that it was a party of moral conservatives and free-market libertarians. But neither of those groups have had any real sway. The party has been run by people with very authoritarian views who only have passing commonality with the other two groups. Compared to the average church-going Republican in a place like Tennessee or Nebraska, Rudy Guiliani is extremely liberal. And compared to the average libertarian, Giuliani is a wannabe-dictator who has absolutely no love for the 2nd Amendment or any other civil liberty.
The success of Rudy Giuliani’s candidacy in the polls is revealing the long-hidden truth about what the “base” of the Republican Party really consists of – people who believe that the long-standing American values (moral strength and a focus on liberty) that made us the envy of the world are now a significant weakness as we deal with the rest of the world. The fakeness of the Republican Party’s moralizing and rhetoric about liberty has long been known to people paying close attention, but it’s now as obvious to the average observer as it could possibly be. And if Giuliani actually becomes the nominee, god help us if Americans can’t figure out how wrong he is when it comes to the role America needs to play in the world.
Freedom is about Authority
Following up on my post from yesterday, SeattleJew set up a Cafe Press page with some designs showing Giuliani and his terrifying 1994 quote about freedom. I think the text is too small, but otherwise, I love the idea. If anyone else wants to try their hand at a design using that quote, send the Cafe Press link to me or post it in the comments. If it looks good, I’ll post it up here on the front page.
This is an open thread…
What’s Lou Trying to Ban Today?
Dino Rossi’s idea man, Lou Guzzo, has already called for a gambling ban across the United States. But he’s far from done with his efforts to protect all of us from ourselves. He’s got another item in his list of things to banish from the globe:
1994 Continued
Speaking of what people were saying back in 1994, here’s a gem from Rudy Giuliani:
Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
If you weren’t clear about what the term Nanny State refers to, read that quote again. A Nanny State is what you get when you elect people who think like that. If Rudy were President, and Congress passed a bill that made cross-dressing illegal, I have trouble believing that Giuliani wouldn’t sign it.
On a completely unrelated topic, how much taxpayer money was wasted on this bullshit:
Several search-and-rescue groups collaborated today to rescue 10 sheriff’s deputies stranded in the Skamania County wilderness Saturday night.
Skamania County Sheriff’s deputies and Clark-Skamania Drug Task Force officers had removed more than 3,000 marijuana plants on the east side of Dog Mountain Saturday.
With some of them exhausted and dehydrated, the group decided to spend the night in the wilderness rather than hike out of the narrow gorge, said Skamania County Undersheriff Dave Cox. All but one of the 10 sheriff’s deputies had been rescued by early this afternoon.
Simpsons Open Thread
I ran a few local notables through the Simpsonizer.
Also, no one’s gotten the Birds Eye View Contest yet this week…
The Hydraulics on the Propaganda Catapult
In the past, it seemed that President Bush was much more careful about how he misled us into war than to tell blatant and easily debunked falsehoods:
US President George W. Bush charged Monday that Iran has openly declared that it seeks nuclear weapons — an inaccurate accusation at a time of sharp tensions between Washington and Tehran.
“It’s up to Iran to prove to the world that they’re a stabilizing force as opposed to a destabilizing force. After all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon,” he said during a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
But Iran has repeatedly said that its nuclear program, which is widely believed in the West to be cover for an effort to develop atomic weapons, is for civilian purposes.
Brian Beutler gives kudos to AFP for clearly calling bullshit on the President’s bullshit. In the previous go-around with the Bush Administration and their propaganda catapult in 2002 and 2003, this wasn’t happening. For example, take a look at this speech from October 7, 2002, which had 13 separate falsehoods (search for “October 7” to see the list), hardly any of which were ever critically reported in the media, even though most of them were already known to be false at the time. In software testing parlance, this is a bug, not a feature when it comes to how the media should function. Even worse, many people in the media today recognize this, even lament it, but have decided that it’s a Won’t Fix.
For example, Robin Wright of the Washington Post responded to ThinkProgress today for their criticisms of her column about the neocon mindset towards Iran. Wright claims that it’s not her intent to pass judgement on them, just to make us aware of what their viewpoint is. It’s true that when you have a difference of opinion, someone like Wright shouldn’t inject her personal bias into the story, but that’s not what the complaint is about. Wright wrote:
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute recently wrote that assuming that Iran wants stability in Iraq is “as naive as it is dangerous. . . . U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq are diametrically opposed, and will continue to be until one side wins and the other loses.” He depicted diplomacy with Iran as “a mirage, a tactical tool to divert U.S. policy attention away from the Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officials charged with implementing the Iranian leadership’s objectives.”
Rubin’s claim that U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq are “diametrically opposed” is not an opinion, it’s a falsehood. Many of our interests in Iraq are in line. That’s why we’ve been sitting down and talking to them about how to deal with the situation there. Wright’s inability to call this out is not a noble effort to be free from bias, it’s lazy journalism. There’s a very big difference between leaving your opinions at the door and failing to identify something that’s not true as being such. When high profile people who have great influence over our foreign policy are believing in fairy tales, that’s something you need to tell people.
Hamid Karzai’s visit to Washington this week revealed even further the stunning aversion to the truth among the Bush crowd when it comes to Iran. Karzai believes very strongly that Iran is a helpful ally. Bush was not convinced:
“They’re not a force for good,” Mr Bush said of Iran, with Mr Karzai at his side. “They’re a destabilising influence wherever they are. Now, the President will have to talk to you about Afghanistan. But I would be very cautious about whether or not the Iranian influence there in Afghanistan is a positive force.”
The source of Bush’s opinion in this matter comes from where his opinions always come from, his gut. Facts, logic, history, and the opinions of knowledgeable people are mere distractions from the greater “truth” that comes from simply believing whatever he wants to believe.
When it comes to Afghanistan, Iran does have an interest in stabilizing the country. The number of Afghan refugees living in Iran has been decreasing since the overthrow of the Taliban, but that trend has slowed as refugees who have returned home are starting to complain about the Taliban resurgence. In addition, the massive drug trade originating in Afghanistan flows through Iran on its way to Europe, creating a very serious problem with heroin addiction there. The Iranian government has a strong incentive to deal with both problems there (for much the same reason that the U.S. wants to deal with the problems of immigration and drugs at our southern border). Whether or not we like or dislike the things that Iran’s pandering goofball of a President says is not as important as what they do. When it comes to dealing with the both the Taliban and the drug traffickers, there’s little difference between what we want and what they want.
But that hasn’t stopped the onslaught of accusations from the Bush Administration that Iran is supporting the Taliban in order to fight a proxy war against us. With so little attention being paid to what’s happening in Afghanistan, the effort actually managed to gain some traction, even as some high-level officials were somewhat confused on the talking points at first. It was effective enough that TPM’s Spencer Ackerman thought that it would be surprising that the Afghan Ambassador didn’t agree.
As frustrating as it was to watch our national media completely fall flat on its face in 2002 and 2003, it’s even more frustrating to see how much it’s still happening today. The idea that Iran is the destabilizing force causing both Afghanistan and Iraq to turn into such a mess is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of those who can’t face up to the realities of their own miscalculations and blundering. The regime in Tehran may in fact have designs on nuclear weapons. It really wouldn’t surprise me. And much of the populace is certainly highly mistrustful of our intentions to the point of paranoia – even as they also take to western culture. But the most dangerous approach to Iran right now is to once again create our own fantasy world in order to justify our desire to disarm them. It would be nice if the people who get paid to keep us informed could let us know when that’s happening.
Drinking Liberally in Kent
Back when Nick Beaudrot and I were talking about trying to revive the stagnant Drinking Liberally chapter here in Seattle, we wondered “How hard can it be? This is Seattle.” It turned out it wasn’t terribly hard, and Nick has made it into one of the most successful chapters in the United States, with regular high-profile guests and a great crowd showing up at the Montlake every Tuesday.
Now it’s time for a challenge. As some of you know, I’m moving from very blue North Seattle to not-so-blue Kent this fall. I’m hoping to start a new chapter down there (probably every other week on a Wednesday or Thursday), but I need some help. The key to a successful chapter is a good location. If you have any suggestions for a bar that could potentially be a host, let me know. So far, the only serious contender I can think of is The Ram at Kent Station, but I’m still getting familiar with the area. And hopefully, when we find a place, I’d love to see those of you in the south end for a pint.
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