Get governing yourself, Mr. President

So, let me get this straight:

Bush makes a contrived case for war built around politicized intelligence, launches a premature invasion, completely botches the occupation and reconstruction, declares mission accomplished long before any mission has been accomplished, keeps changing the rationale for going to war as each rationale crumbles under the weight of evidence, stands hapless and helpless while the country he invaded descends into sectarian violence and civil war and while pressing problems throughout the rest of the world worsen, barely even acknowledges that any mistakes were ever made, shifts responsibility onto future presidents, spins fantasy upon fantasy as truth, loses the confidence of the American people, and now...

Now he tells the Iraqis to "get governing" themselves? Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall, over and over and over again.

Nothing against the Iraqis, and I know that at some point they'll have to assume the ultimate responsibility of self-governance all by themselves, but isn't it all rather rich of Bush to foist that responsibility on them now, given all that he's done to ruin any hope Iraq may have had of transitioning peacefully to democracy?

This is his war. The civil war now raging in Iraq and threatening the long-term prospects of Iraqi democracy, is a result of that war. It seems to me that the chain of responsibility is clear.

John McCain's rightward drift

He has that seemingly impenetrable reputation as a maverick, an independent. He has serious credibility on national security and the military. He has that compelling personal history. He was character-assassinated by Bush in 2000. He gets along with Jon Stewart.

All that is true, but what else lies beneath the popular facade? Senator John McCain, whatever else we may say of him, is an ideological conservative and unwaveringly loyal Republican. And it's about time that truth was more widely acknowledged.

For as ABC News reports, "the potential Republican presidential hopeful is taking steps to win over the conservatives who denied him the GOP's presidential nomination in 2000". Even Jerry Falwell seems to like him.

He's a conservative, and he always has been. But, looking ahead to '08 as the presumed early front-runner, he's now cuddling up to the far right. He knows he needs to win over the Republican base in order to get through the primaries. He knows that a maverick will never win the GOP nomination. He knows he has to play politics. That's predictable, but unfortunate.

Who is the real McCain? Perhaps the one who now seems so "conventional," to use E.J. Dionne's word, and "pathetic," to use Steve Benen's. I'm not sure I ever expected more from McCain -- I always knew he was far too conservative for my liking -- but I suppose I hoped that he wasn't just another typical Republican.

Now I know better.

Reaction to the news: Olmert, Taylor, and Livingstone

I don't have the time to comment properly on these stories right now, but they're all worth following. All links are to The Washington Post:

-- Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party (founded by Ariel Sharon) won the most Knesset seats in Tuesday's Israeli elections (28 of 120). Israel uses a List-PR (proportional representation) electoral system, with seats apportioned according to the popular vote. Olmert will now look to build a governing coalition, likely with Amir Peretz's Labour Party. (For more, see here.)

-- Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been arrested in Nigeria. He was trying to leave the country after President Olusegun Obasanjo agreed to hand him over to international authorities: "So ended, for now anyway, the political career of one of the most-wanted men in the world, a charismatic warlord-turned-president-turned-fugitive who finished the day in the custody of a U.N.-backed tribunal that has indicted him on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his long reign of terror across this fragile region." (For more, see here.)

-- On a lighter note, London Mayor Ken Livingstone called U.S. Ambassador Robert Holmes Tuttle "a chiselling little crook" and a "car salesman" on Monday. It's all about traffic congestion fees. (For more, see here.)

Sign of the Apocalypse #31: Britney's pro-life birth sculpture

This is Britney. Britney Spears. On a bearskin rug. Giving birth to Baby Federline. As sculpted by Daniel Edwards. According to the Post, this piece of "art" will soon be on display at Brooklyn's Capla Kesting Fine Art gallery. Next to "anti-abortion materials" as part of an exhibit called "Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston". Yes, that's right. This piece of "art" comes with a pro-life message, allegedly a non-political one. Birth = life. Or so says Mr. Edwards. But it obviously is political. Abortion is political. And what we have here is the image -- dare I say it, a quasi-pornographic image -- of Britney giving birth within the context of a pro-life, anti-abortion protest. Dress it up all you want. That's what it is.

Make of it what you will. There is something profoundly beautiful about the human form. And about a woman giving birth. Yet this piece of "art" seems rather tasteless, rather kitschy. And using it to express a political message makes it all the more ugly. Is it a Sign of the Apocalypse? Put all the elements together -- a pop star on the decline, a culture of trash, humorously vulgar "art" (why the bearskin?), and a contrived political message -- and I'm sure that it is.

Reforming Foreign Aid(s): A modest proposal

By Vivek Krishnamurthy

Most of us know something of the terrible toll that HIV/AIDS is exacting in much of the developing world, but few people are able to bring the magnitude of the suffering and the upheaval this modern-day plague is causing with the passion and conviction of Stephen Lewis, the current UN Special Representative for HIV/AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa. I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Lewis speak in New Haven yesterday, though the picture he paints is bleak: people struck down in the prime of their lives, orphan children left to fend for themselves, and the real possibility that certain southern African countries may simply be wiped off the map by the disease.

For a former diplomat, and a Canadian diplomat at that, Lewis is surprisingly blunt in denouncing the West's failure to do something to combat the AIDS crisis as "criminal negligence" that ought to be actionable before the International Criminal Court. We in the West have all the resources at our disposal to prevent tens of millions from dying premature deaths due to AIDS if we only made anti-retroviral drugs and basic medical care more widely available in the countries worst affected by the pandemic, and yet we choose not to do so. While Lewis's talk never really addressed why we are so torpid in our response to AIDS in Africa, his presentation did give me an idea on how we might want to go about changing things.

"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic," said Joseph Stalin once, and for most of us AIDS, poverty, and hunger in the developing world are merely that: statistics we barely comprehend, let alone feel empowered to change. When confronted by such astronomical numbers, we are so overwhelmed that we simply throw up our hands and turn our backs to the suffering behind those numbers. Meanwhile, the efforts of official government foreign aid programs to put a dent in those numbers usually gets hoisted on its own numerical petard, as an uncomprehending public questions spending billions on programs that seem to make no difference to the problem. In the meanwhile, donor fatigue sets in, political will gets lost, and no progress is made.

If the problem with foreign aid is that it's too abstract and impersonal for people to understand, surely the solution must be to make it concrete and personal, so that people can grasp the difference that their contributions mek. That's why my modest proposal for reforming foreign aid is to replace the scattershot approach of the big government aid agencies (like USAID and CIDA) with a new program of "twinning," whereby every developed country would be twinned with one, two, or three developing countries, and would bear the full responsibility for lifting its twins out of poverty. Instead of a single specialized agency being responsible for foreign aid and development, it would be the responsibility of the whole society to help its twins out of poverty.

Government departments would be twinned with their counterparts in the developing country, as would schools, hospitals, universities, service organizations, faith groups, and even sports teams. Each would provide direct assistance in its area of expertise to its analogues in the twinned country, and each might even be charged with making sure that together with its twin, certain development goals are reached within a certain time.

In forging such close and personal connections between every tier of the donor society, and the recipients of their assistance in the developing country, political support for foreign aid would rest on a much more solid basis. Instead of being presented with a barrage of numbers, people in the industrialized world would be relating to real human brings whom they will be responsible for helping in very real and tangible ways. Piercing the veil of anonymity that shrouds the current foreign aid system would lead to schoolchildren, bureaucrats, business people, and church-goers feeling a sense of responsibility for their twins overseas, which I think would be powerful in shaking people out of their current apathy. Moreover, allocating responsibility in this way enhances accountability for when promises are not kept, and goals are not met; for unlike in the current system, there will be no statistics behind which people (and governments) can hide when they fail to own up to their historic duties.

The challenge, of course, would be to convince a country to abandon the old approach in favour of this radical new way of delivering development assistance. This will not be an easy task, given the strong constituencies backing the current order, but one of the virtues of this approach is that it empowers ordinary people to take the lead in advancing development. If each of us were to get an institution to which we belong to select a counterpart in the developing world that could benefit from our expertise, we would have made a very good start to delivering aid in a better way.

(Cross-posted at the Dominion Wine and Cheese Society.)

White House change

By Creature

What is Bush so afraid of? This question comes to me while thinking about the departure of Bush's chief of staff, Andy Card, and Bush's safe, stay-within-his-bubble choice of Josh Bolten. The conventional wisdom being tossed around right now is that Bush listened to his critics by initiating, however grudgingly, the so-called White House shake-up yesterday. But if George was listening, it was only through one wax-filled ear. Bush picked Bolten, someone whom, as The Washington Post described it, "he knows and trusts implicitly." His choice of Bolten shows weakness. Real change takes courage. Real change would have been picking someone from outside his close-knit circle. Real change would have been firing Andy Card. Real change would have been firing Karl Rove. Real change would have been firing Donald Rumsfeld. My "real change" list is pretty long, so I'll stop there before my fingers tire.

So I'll ask the question again: What is Bush so afraid of? Could it be he is afraid of being seen as a presidential fraud if an outsider were to enter the Oval Office? And by presidential fraud, I mean a disengaged, incompetent leader who allowed the real power of the president to reside in the hands of his vice president. By presidential fraud, I mean a figurehead leader whose only purpose as the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is to make scripted appearances, shake a few hands, clear some brush, and look tough for the cameras.

The sad truth is that this is exactly what the president is afraid of. To thwart this Oz don't-look-behind-the-curtain act, he must keep his circle tight. He must keep his circle closed. For if he does not, he will be exposed for the fraud that he is.

Change more.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

The Democrats have a plan

By The (liberal)Girl Next Door

The Democrats have rolled out their plan for national security and it looks pretty good. And the best part is, it’s short. The brochure is comprised of ten pages, but that includes the title pages and both an English and Spanish version. The actual plan is only three pages long and it’s filled with easy-to-digest, specific solutions to security problems that have stumped the GOP. There are a few good swipes at the Republicans as well. Even the title, Real Security: The Democratic Plan to Protect America and Restore Our Leadership in the World, is a reminder of what Bush and the Republicans haven’t been able to do. (You can get more information and download the brochure here. -- MJWS)

There is no windbagging, no unnecessary words or complicated concepts, just clear-cut objectives and specific dates. Energy independence by 2020, securing loose nukes by 2010, screening of 100% of cargo containers, a promise to eliminate bin Laden, finishing the job in Afghanistan, and making significant progress in Iraq this year so that troop redeployment can begin. Reading this plan I get the sense that the Democrats are not as clueless as they’ve led us to believe, a pleasant surprise for sure.

The fearmongering seems to have been kept to a minimum as well. I was a little concerned that the Democrats would use the fear card in order to wrestle control away from Republicans this fall, but there is only one reference to the “danger” of outsourcing our port operations and they handled the bird flu pandemic hoopla in a reasonable fashion. Instead of scaring people about it and encouraging them to spend all of their money on stockpiles of food, water, and survival gear, the Democrats say they will invest in the public health infrastructure, train health workers, and make sure that first responders have all of the equipment they need for any disaster, natural or otherwise. All common sense stuff that doesn’t involve building a new bureaucracy or giving money to big pharmaceutical companies for useless antibiotics, the Bush plan up to this point.

I hope that this brochure makes it into the hands of voters across the country. It is a great first step and it takes the security issue away from Republicans. I’m hoping this is the test plan and that there will be more to come, a health care plan and perhaps an economic plan as well. As long as they keep it short and to the point, it’s hard to see how they won’t make gains in November. They are speaking directly to the concerns of the American people, they are promising to fix the critical gaps in security that Republicans have been unable to tackle, and they are doing so without nuance.

So far, so good. I hope they can keep it up.

(Cross-posted at The (liberal)Girl Next Door.)

Podcasted (again)

I was on Shaun O'Mac's excellent Subject2Discussion podcast again last night.

You can listen to it at your leisure here (on your computer or downloaded to your iPod). As always, I'm on about 30 minutes in and I'm on for 30 minutes. I thought it went really well. We discussed Iraq, Feingold, Card, immigration... well, all sorts of things. Check it out.

Who is the prime minister of Canada?

(I would like to welcome Daily Kos readers to The Reaction. I hope you enjoy your stay here. If you'd like to know more about us, click on the banner above to go the main page. -- MJWS)

See if you can spot the gross ignorance/indifference. This is from Scott McClellan's Tuesday press briefing:

Q: Can you talk a little bit more about Cancun and the other side of the talks, with Canada -- border, immigration? Are those high priorities?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, this will be -- you're talking about Canada? I mean, the President had a -- first of all, had a good discussion with Prime Minister Martin [sic] yesterday. That was a call that Prime Minister Martin [sic] initiated, really to thank the President on behalf of the people of Canada for the efforts of our coalition forces, our American forces, part of the coalition, to rescue the hostages last week, including one Canadian.

But I think that when you're looking at this trip, first of all, it was last year in Waco when the three leaders -- Prime Minister Martin, at the time, President Fox and President Bush -- announced a new initiative, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, among the three nations. And this is a way to build upon our efforts to really make sure that North America is more integrated and remains competitive in this global changing economy that we live in. So they're going to talk about concrete ways that we can move forward on the security and prosperity partnership. And the President looks forward to those discussions with the other two leaders.

In terms of Canada, this will be the President's first meeting with Prime Minister Harper since he took office -- he had met with him briefly previously when he was the opposition leader. And each of these relationships -- the relationship with Mexico, the relationship with Canada -- is a unique relationship. We've had good relations with both countries. And the President looks forward to visiting with Prime Minister Martin [sic] and strengthening our relations. So he very much looks forward to this trip.

**********

I wonder what McClellan's boss, President Clinton, thinks of this. Does he know the name of our prime minister? Our current prime minister? McClellan got it right once in four tries. One reference to Martin was right -- see the second paragraph.

But so much for Harper's Bush-friendly attempts to cozy up to the U.S. You'd think the president's press secretary and chief spokesman would know the name of our recently-elected Conservative prime minister, eh?

We Canadians never much appreciate the ignorance and indifference of our American friends, but ignorance and indifference inadvertently directed at Prime Minister Harper, of whom I am not a supporter (see here and here), leaves me quite amused.

(Thanks for the tip, Steve!)

The worst of Oscar best

Edward Copeland is running a fun poll at his film blog: What are the ten worst Best Picture winners of all time?

Go through the list of winners and pick your 10 least favourite. Or, to put it another way, the 10 you dislike the most -- in order, with 1 the worst and 10 the 10th worst. E-mail your list to Edward (his e-mail is in the post). Make sure you list 10, no less. And make sure you only list films you've actually seen. The poll closes in a few days. Edward will tally and post the results.

I've seen all of the winners except Crash.

My list (in reverse order): Ordinary People, Million Dollar Baby, Rebecca, Chicago, The Deer Hunter, Forrest Gump, Gigi, West Side Story, Titanic, and Braveheart.

Yes, Braveheart is the worst Best Picture winner of all time. Period. (With the exception of Rebecca, note that my list includes only musicals and winners since 1978).

While we're at it, here's my list of the best (without really thinking about it), from 10 to 1: Dances With Wolves, It Happened One Night, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Godfather Part II, All About Eve, Schindler's List, Chariots of Fire, The Godfather, Patton, Annie Hall.

That's right: Annie Hall. The best of the best.

Used and abused

By Creature

A few weeks back, in order to cut out the main-stream middle man, the White House agreed to release a bunch of pre-war Iraqi documents with the hope that the conservative blogosphere could find a link between Saddam and Osama. A link here-to-fore discredited. The fact that the 9/11 commission found no such collaborative link has not stopped the rabid right from declaring that Saddam and Osama were not only working together, but that they were lovers as well. Thankfully Peter Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know, takes apart the right's wild fantasies in an op-ed in today's NYT. This paragraph alone should shut the wing-nuts up:

And, strangely, another document, dated Aug. 17, 2002, from Iraq's intelligence service explains there is "information from a reliable source" that two Al Qaeda figures were in Iraq and that agents should "search the tourist sites (hotels, residential apartments and rented houses)" for them. If Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had a relationship, why was it necessary for Iraqi intelligence to be scouring the country looking for members of the terrorist organization? [Emphasis Added]

Right-wingers, please, get over it already. Your denial runs so deep. Your president lied to you. He "fixed" whatever facts he could find, around whatever intelligence he could find, and he sold you a bill a goods so steeped in lies that even Saddam is having a good laugh over it. So, let go, dear right-winger, admit you have been used. Admit that you have been abused. We won't forgive for playing the fool, and we certainly won't forget, but maybe we can understand.

Therapy more.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Rumsfeld's missed opportunity

Guest post by Sean Aqui of Midtopia

(Ed. note: Midtopia is "a vision of how the world would be if the moderate middle prevailed". Here's how Sean describes himself: "I'm politically moderate, though I'm more liberal on social issues and more conservative on fiscal issues. I'm practically libertarian about civil liberties. I support a strong military, but believe it should be used judiciously. We should ask our men and women in uniform to risk their lives only for the most defensible reasons." Midtopia is a new blog, founded just last month, but already I think it's one of the best "moderate" blogs in the blogosphere. I suppose I ought to mention that I don't always agree with Sean, even if liberals and moderates seem to be getting along quite well in Bush's America these days, but, whatever our disagreements, he writes thoughtfully and provocatively on a variety of issues, particularly the military and the economy (see, for example, his recent post on the estate tax here). I encourage you to check out Midtopia regularly. -- MJWS)

**********

One of the few things I respect Donald Rumsfeld for has been his attempt to reform the structure and bureaucracy of the military.

Killing the Crusader self-propelled artillery program, for example, was a smart move. It hurts doubly to say that, because I was a tanker (making the Crusader kin of a sort) and because much of the work would have been done in my home state of Minnesota. But the Crusader was a hulking Cold War relic, unsuited for the sort of lighter, nimbler, more flexible military that I agree we need to build.

That's why this essay from Armed Forces Journal caught my eye. It argues that whatever his intentions, Rumsfeld has (once again) messed up the execution, missing his big chance to make a difference in how the military operates.

Every four years the Pentagon does something called a Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which is supposed to outline what the military's situation and structure will be in the coming years. That, in turn, is supposed to guide assembly of the military budget. But it doesn't:

The QDR calls for greater mobility, but the budget terminates both of the Air Force’s airlift programs. The report says America is engaged in a "long war" against terrorism, but the budget cuts back the Army’s planned number of combat brigades. The report says the Pentagon needs to rely more on market forces in its business practices, but the budget proposes creation of a monopoly for producing the most popular military engine in the world.

That disconnect between rhetoric and reality is a bad start, but luckily we can write it off as irrelevant. That's because this QDR -- Rumsfeld's last opportunity to radically reshape the military -- doesn't really matter. It comes too late in the budget and political process. The Bush Administration's influence is on the wane as 2008 approaches, and if Rumsfeld wanted to make lasting changes he had to start last year. He didn't.

2001 was wasted on strategic reviews and staffing decisions. Then came 9/11, followed by Afghanistan, Iraq, and Abu Ghraib -- all distractions that meant no traction for the 2001 QDR. When Bush won a second term and it was time for another QDR, Rumsfeld hadn't accomplished anything "transformative":

As it turned out, much of 2005 was consumed by the review itself. The sixth year of Bush’s eight years in office has commenced, and time is running out for military transformation. Two years ago, it was common for policymakers to say that hard choices would need to be made in the 2006 defense budget. When that didn’t happen, it was predicted that truly momentous shifts would unfold in 2007. Now, people around Rumsfeld are predicting real change in the 2008 budget. However, 2008 is the president’s last year in office, so nobody on Rumsfeld’s team is likely to be around to enforce the priorities contained in that budget. In other words, the transformationists have missed the budgetary boat. It’s too late to radically rearrange the nation’s defense posture.

Translation: Rumsfeld was too slow, and now it's too late.

Even if Rumsfeld had moved more decisively and submitted an ambitious QDR that matched his rhetoric, plenty of other self-inflicted obstacles remained: his alienation of Congress, an inability to rein in military entitlements, a detached and indecisive leadership style, and a poor appreciation for the threats facing us.

But maybe all that doesn't matter either. Because it seems increasingly apparent that Rumsfeld made a rookie mistake: thinking that what helps in one type of military situation is effective in all military situations. His idea that technology will mean we need fewer soldiers is a classic example.

In force-on-force combat, technology offers *huge* multipliers. My Abrams tank could hit targets more than 2,000 meters away. We had great communications to coordinate our movements, and satellite technology allowed us to pinpoint and anticipate enemy movements and locations within a few meters.

A tank battle was like a live-action video game, moving the targeting reticle from target to target, firing, reloading, doing it again.

But the closer you get to your enemy, and the more you have to discriminate between friend and foe, the less technology helps. I can nuke a whole city from the continental U.S.; if I want to capture the city, I have to send in troops. If I want to minimize civilian casualties, I have to be very careful in my target selection and send in far more troops per target. And the closer you get, and the more wind or rain or dust there is, the less difference there is between the U.S. soldier and his ragtag opponent.

That's one reason the Army hates urban combat. The close quarters neutralize many of our advantages; it gets down to the infantry digging people out of holes, one hole at a time. It's bloody, nasty, exhausting work that has destroyed more than one elite military force.

The U.S. military is unparalleled in its ability to destroy an enemy armored brigade. But its effectiveness in pacification comes down to training, unit cohesion, discipline, leadership and numbers -- not technology. You don't build local support by dropping bombs from space; you do it by walking the streets every day, meeting people, shaking hands, establishing relationships. A U.S. soldier's technology is no help in that regard. They are no more effective at that -- and, due to language and cultural barriers, perhaps even *less* effective -- than Pakistanis or Bangladeshis.

Rumsfeld saw the Iraq war as a sort of proof of concept, a live-fire demonstration that a small, nimble force could take out Saddam. He was right to some extent, though one may quibble about how "light" our mechanized invasion force was or how serious a threat the Iraqi military posed. But he was also myopic; he failed to recognize that actually occupying a country requires a different sort of approach and a whole lot more troops.

Compounding the failure, the White House let him do as he saw fit. Living in an alternate reality may be comforting, but it makes for really bloody messes when such fantasies are used as the basis for real-world policies.

In a way, Rumsfeld sums up much of what I think history will say about the Bush Administration: soaring and determined rhetoric sprinkled with good and principled ideas, but based on an unrealistic view of the world and executed with almost stunning incompetence.

It's too bad, because the military needs what Rumsfeld promised to deliver. We can only hope that the next Secretary of Defense has the same priorities and better luck.

I leave you with the thoughts of Retired Gen. Paul Eaton, who supports the venture in Iraq and was in charge of training Iraqi forces in 2003 and 2004. He lays out a whole list of reasons why Rumsfeld should be fired:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not competent to lead America's armed forces. First, his failure to build coalitions with U.S. allies from what he dismissively called "old Europe" has imposed far greater demands and risks on American soldiers in Iraq than necessary. Second, he alienated his allies in the U.S. military, ignoring the advice of seasoned officers and denying subordinates any chance for input.

In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to America's mission in Iraq... Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his Cold Warrior's view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result the U.S. Army finds itself severely undermanned -- cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.

There may be little point to firing Rumsfeld at this late date, but it would be nice to see the administration finally hold someone accountable for doing a poor job -- especially on something as important as the U.S. military.

Military tribunals and the state of American democracy

Over at The Washington Note, Steve Clemons has a must-read post on America's secret military tribunals in anticipation of an upcoming Supreme Court case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (to be argued tomorrow, March 27). Roberts has properly recused himself, but Scalia has already declared his support for such tribunals, but he's "an enemy of democracy, of real and true democracy".

Ultimately, this is about the state of American democracy and about the political values that America promotes, intentionally or otherwise, around the world: "America needs to stop teaching thugs in the world the loopholes in democratic process and needs to get back to walking the walk of democracy."

Those thugs are watching. So is the rest of the world. Scalia and his ilk may not care, but the rest of us should.

It's time for America to be America again. Otherwise, what's the point?

(Also see Political Animal, Ann Althouse, and TalkLeft.)

Shame on Canada

I am generally quite proud of my country, and I will usually defend it against its critics, but our seal hunt leaves me disgusted and ashamed.

Whatever the excuses for it -- its supposed economic benefits, the alleged need to control the seal population -- there is simply no good reason for it. We're talking about the killing, the brutal killing, of 325,000 seals, most of them babies.

Shame on Canada for allowing this to take place year after year. And shame on Prime Minister Harper for defending the hunt with the ridiculously stupid statement that Canada is the "victim of a bit of an international propaganda campaign". The mass slaughter of seals is reality, not propagandistic fantasy. We need the leadership in Ottawa to end it for good.

(The BBC has more here, our own Globe and Mail here.)

Ukraine's post-revolutionary about-face

It wasn't so long ago that pro-West reformer Viktor Yushchenko was the toast of Kiev, at least among the democratic masses.

Well, how far the mighty have fallen! Last September, Yushchenko was brought low by internal divisions and allegations of corruption. And in this weekend's parliamentary elections, according to the BBC, "he has been beaten into third place by the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych and his former Orange Revolution ally Yulia Tymoshenko".

Defeat from within and without.

Yushchenko could still secure a parliamentary majority if he's able to form an alliance with Tymoshenko, who "has said that as part of any agreement she must be made the prime minister" and "a controversial gas deal Ukraine signed with Russia" must be cancelled. Yushchenko may not like either proposal, but he has "few options" left.

How fickle democracy can be.

Just another day in the life and death of Iraq

It's quite amazing, isn't it? We get caught up debating the meanings of "civil" and "war" and whether or not they belong together in terms of Iraq's sectarian violence, euphemistically speaking, and many on the right, all those head-up-the-ass conservatives who believe that all is for the best in the best of all possible preemptive invasions justified on the basis of politicized intelligence, trumped-up threats, and a manipulated culture of fear, all those who buy into the propaganda or who willingly spew it, believing it as they do so, yes, many on the right can't even distinguish fantasy from reality, either ignoring reality or filtering it through their hyperpartisan lenses.

It's going well, they tell us. The media have it wrong.

But then we have these three lovely stories from what we shall henceforth refer as A Day in the Life and Death of Iraq:

-- The New York Times:

• "American and Iraqi government forces clashed with Shiite militiamen in Baghdad tonight in the most serious confrontation in months, and Iraqi officials said the fighting left at least 17 Iraqis dead, including an 80-year-old imam";
• "Earlier this evening, the bodies of 30 beheaded men were found on a main highway near Baquba, providing more evidence that the death squads in Iraq are operating out of control... The discovery of the 30 beheaded bodies, as well as the corpses of 10 other men found in Baghdad added to the hundreds of bodies that have recently surfaced on Baghdad's streets"; and
• "Elsewhere today, a Kurdish writer was sentenced to a year and a half in jail for criticizing Kurdish leaders. The writer, Kamal Karim, had published articles on a Kurdish Web site accusing one of the most powerful men in Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, of corruption."

-- The Washington Post:

• "A doctor has admitted killing at least 35 Iraqi police officers and army soldiers by giving them lethal injections, reopening their wounds or engaging in other deadly acts while they were being treated at a hospital in the northern city of Kirkuk, according to Kurdish security sources and Kurdish television."

Yes, just another day in Iraq. There will be many more. Not that those with their heads up their asses will see any of it through the fog of fantasy.

Where "art" thou?

By Vivek Krishnamurthy

Good art is often provocative, but provocation does not always good art make. Take, for example. this report from Der Spiegel's English site about an art installation in the German town of Pulheim-Stommeln, which consists of a synagogue that has been hooked up to the tailpipes of six idling cars to make it into a gas chamber. Visitors can enter the empty synagogue / performance art piece by hiring a respirator from the Spanish artist behind this creative triumph, Santiago Sierra.

Predictably, the installation has created a furor in Germany, and, to his credit, Sierra has agreed to meet with Jewish and community leaders to discuss their concerns with his work, but my qualms are more with Sierra's lack of creativity than with the tastelessness of his work. He claims that the installation represents the "industrialized and institutionalized death from which the European peoples of the world have lived and continue to live," but does simply creating a working facsimile of the machinery of industrial death and parading people through it succeed in actually representing anything? In my mind, representation must be at one remove from the thing the artist is seeking to represent for it to be art. That is, the art must be evocative of that which the artist seeks to represent, rather than simply just being that thing. Paintings and songs are not happy or sad in and of themselves, but rather they represent those emotions by evoking them in us when we experience them.

As far as I'm concerned, Sierra has not succeeded in providing a single insight about the machinery of death with this work; he's merely reproduced it, which makes him about as creative as a forger or a photocopier. And whatever that is, it sure isn't art.

(Cross-posted at the Dominion Wine and Cheese Society.)

Vladimir Putin, plagiarist?

The Sunday Times is reporting that "[a] new study of an economics thesis written by Putin in the mid-1990s has revealed that large chunks of it were copied from an American text". More, he may not even have a real doctorate.

Oops. There goes his blogging gig at the Post. I guess he'll have to settle for democratically-elected Russian autocrat.

The desperate rebirth of Katherine Harris

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the ignominious perseverance of Katherine Harris. At the time, the widely disgraced 2000 Florida recount rigger, the one who made sure Bush would come out on top, was preparing to make a major announcement regarding her Senate campaign. Lagging well behind incumbent Bill Nelson in the polls, and with many state and national Republicans wanting nothing to do with her, there were rumours that she was set to pull out. But her major announcement amounted to telling Sean Hannity that she was going to spend $10 million of her own money on her campaign.

Good news, indeed. Nelson can go right ahead and crush her. What the hell were Republicans thinking?

But now her campaign has taken a decidedly bizarre turn. The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Harris's "campaign [is taking] an increasingly evangelical Christian bent". Her evangelical "spiritual adviser," Dale Burroughs, the founder of the Biblical Heritage Institute, is now her "closest confidante". Burroughs was once a "staffer with Campus Crusade for Christ". Now, via the Arlington Group, she's connected to such right-wing evangelical luminaries as James Dobson, Gary Bauer, and Jerry Falwell.

Some of this may be genuine, but Harris's political "rebirth," her attempt to sell herself as a largely religious candidate, also smacks of desperation, the last refuge of a true scoundrel: "Friends and advisers say Harris has been deeply religious all her life, but religion recently has become a central part of her campaign. Campaign staffers warily describe Harris as leading a 'Christian crusade.'" The writing is on the wall:

Her top campaign advisers, having failed to persuade Harris to drop her struggling campaign against Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson, are preparing to leave. Those include Ed Rollins, a highly regarded GOP strategist and her top campaign adviser; Adam Goodman, her longtime Tampa-based media consultant; and campaign manager Jamie Miller. Harris has been aggressively campaigning for support among religious conservatives, hitting large churches and headlining a 'Reclaiming America for Christ conference in Broward County last weekend. She told hundreds of attendees she was 'doing God's work' with her campaign.

Isn't it fun watching such a train wreck of a political career? Was she doing God's work when she soiled American democracy in 2000? Or how about when she took those illegal contributions?

I hope she stays in the race. She deserves a crushing defeat in November.

Celebrate immigration

From the L.A. Times: "A crowd estimated by police at more than 500,000 boisterously marched in Los Angeles on Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall along the U.S.'s southern border."

It should go without saying, but it is often forgotten: America is a nation of immigrants. It is true that many are in America illegally, but, as John F. Kennedy put it in a book with that very title, A Nation of Immigrants: "Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible." Most immigrants are in America because they want to be. Some have risked their lives to come to what they see as, in Lincoln's words, "the last, best hope of earth". They came to America because, to them, America represents hope and opportunity, because it offers hope and opportunity to those who simply have neither elsewhere. They now live in America and contribute to America. Indeed, they love America and want to stay.

To be sure, something needs to be done about "illegal" immigrants. I won't address the options here, but I will say this: Let America's policy towards these immigrants be generous, fair, and flexible. Do not punish them for having chosen to come to America. Offer them an opportunity to settle, legally, for good. If they work, if they pay their taxes, if they accept the American way of life and want to be a part of it, indeed, if they are already American, broadly speaking, be generous to them. They only want to live their lives in Lincoln's last, best hope, in a nation of immigrants that has historically welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses who have yearned for the chance to start anew.

These new Americans want to breathe free. Let them.

Iran close to uranium enrichment -- so what do we do now?

According to the L.A. Times, "Iran is moving faster than expected and is just days from making the first steps toward enriching uranium".

What does this mean? -- "If engineers encounter no major technical problems, Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years, much more quickly than the common estimate of five to 10 years."

Iran denies that it intends to build nuclear weapons, but its unwillingness to use Russian-enriched uranium (see here) suggests otherwise. The U.S. and the major European powers "believe Iran intends to build nuclear weapons".

Is a diplomatic solution possible? Perhaps, but is Iran even willing to give up control of its nuclear program, or at least over the enrichment of uranium? That seems unlikely, given its moves to date. Could Iran be bought off? Perhaps, but what would it take? North Korea wants aid, that much is clear, but does Iran? In addition, who would lead the diplomatic effort? Whatever consensus there is on the U.N. Security Council is fragile. "The European Union and the Americans want to exert vigorous pressure on Iran... The U.S. and EU are willing to use a U.N. procedure that gives Security Council resolutions the force of law, and to impose sanctions." But "Russia and China would be willing to allow Iran to retain a small cascade of centrifuges for research purposes."

Before there can be a diplomatic solution to this escalating crisis, there needs to be some sort of agreement between the U.S. and the E.U. on one side and Russia and China on the other. Without the latter, forget the former.

Regardless, how long would such diplomacy take? If Iran is already close to being able to enrich its own uranium, there isn't much time. And that -- if we're serious about stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear state -- brings us to the prospect of non-diplomatic measures. And that invariably means either sanctions or military action of some sort.

I'm less and less confident that diplomacy will work. Sanctions won't work if the major powers can't even get on the same page. So are we ready to consider military options, such as tactical strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities?

The U.S. is bogged down in Iraq, to be sure, but the Iranian threat simply cannot be ignored.

(Make sure to read the whole L.A. Times article. This is serious stuff.)

Protesting in Belarus

It's gone from balloting to protesting in Belarus, as opposition parties and supporters are taking to the streets this weekend -- the anniversary of the establishment of the Belarussian republic in 1918 -- to protest the results of last Sunday's presidential election.











The BBC has the story here, the Post here. My two posts on "Balloting in Belarus" are here and here.

The internal contradictions of Fairtrade?

By Vivek Krishnamurthy

If you have a half-hour to kill this weekend, I'd suggest tuning into the Food Programme on BBC Radio 4 (available as RealAudio) for a fascinating discussion of the international coffee market, and particularly of the growing embrace of the Fairtrade movement by big-hitters in the coffee business world such as Nestle and Starbucks.

I'm a big supporter of the Fairtrade campaign, and all the coffee (and much of the tea) I've bought in the last 18 months has been Fairtrade-certified. As the movement wins more and more converts, however, I'm wondering if Fairtrade may not suffer from the "internal contradictions" that arise from paying certain farmers above-market prices for their produce. The problem is that these high prices will encourage new entrants into coffee production, which will lead to a glut in supply that pushes global coffee prices down. Those who are already locked into Fairtrade supply contracts will do fine, but those who do not receive the benefit of Fairtrade prices will be made even worse off.

Converting every coffee buyer in the world to the Fairtrade philosophy doesn't necessarily solve the problem either, for you still have the inducement to entry provided by high coffee prices, leading to the same glut of coffee, and to strong incentives for those selling at the lower end of the market to defect out of the Fairtrade movement and reap the benefits of lower coffee prices.

The problem is not unlike that created by the price supports provided by the European Union to its farmers under its Common Agricultural Policy (at a cost of more than €43 billion a year). By offering farmers guaranteed prices for agricultural production that are far in excess of world commodity prices, the CAP encourages massive overproduction of basic agricultural products by the Europeans. The surpluses either accumulate in warehouses or are dumped onto world markets at fire-sale prices that further drive down the world price for agricultural commodities, leading to farm income crises throughout the developing world.

This bleak scenario is still a far way off in the coffee market, since less than one percent of world coffee production adheres to Fairtrade standards, but this possibility is something that the Fairtrade movement should begin to take seriously as the movement grows in popularity. In my opinion, a better way to proceed would be to use a mechanism other than price supports to achieve the Fairtrade movement's goals, such as direct income supports to farmers, or direct investments in health, education, and other social projects in coffee-growing areas around the world.

(Cross-posted at the Dominion Wine and Cheese Society.)

The sudden demise of Ben Domenech

It seems that everyone who's anyone in the blogosphere is talking about Ben Domenech -- check out Memeorandum. But -- the serious issue of plagiarism aside -- this is nothing more than a case of the blogosphere getting worked up over a non-issue and feeding upon itself to the point of supersaturated self-importance. If there's one lesson to be learned here, it's that bloggers, like regular journalists, love to talk about themselves.

Domenech's a minor conservative celebrity, that's it. He's a Republican activist, he co-founded RedState.org, and he's now an editor at Regnery, a right-wing publishing house. The Post hired him to write a blog, Red America. Some liked that, some didn't. (I didn't really care.) Accusations of plagiarism emerged -- see Salon. He defended himself, but even Michelle Malkin turned against him. And so he resigned -- from the Post, "effective immediately". The Post's Howard Kurtz has more here.

That's all. So can we stop talking about this now? It's enough already.

Madeleine Albright and "The Irony of Iran"

In an op-ed in the L.A. Times today, former Secretary of State Albright examines Bush's "worldview" and finds it lacking in complexity, nuance, and, well, reality:

THE BUSH administration's newly unveiled National Security Strategy might well be subtitled "The Irony of Iran." Three years after the invasion of Iraq and the invention of the phrase "axis of evil," the administration now highlights the threat posed by Iran — whose radical government has been vastly strengthened by the invasion of Iraq. This is more tragedy than strategy, and it reflects the Manichean approach this administration has taken to the world.

It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction. The administration's penchant for painting its perceived adversaries with the same sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences.

Read on. Her analysis is correct and her three "suggestions" are sound. But I would add this: It's already "too late" for George W. Bush.

Shift the debate and Republicans lose

By The (liberal)Girl Next Door

Republicans have used wedge issues to catapult themselves into power. All of those tax breaks, regulatory rollbacks, and corporate welfare programs that have been doled out to the elite and well-connected could never have occurred without the religious and social conservatives who went to the polls in support of Republican candidates. The problem for Republicans is, most of the social conservatives who helped put them in power are not amongst the connected elite, and while they may agree with Republican rhetoric about gay marriage and abortion, they are being hit just as hard as the rest of us in their pocketbooks. This is exactly what the Democrats need to take advantage of. It’s easy to vote your morality when you have a job, your kids are being educated, you have access to healthcare, and you can keep up with the mortgage payments. When that is no longer the case, social concerns have a way of taking a back seat.

According to a Pew Research Poll released Wednesday, opposition to gay marriage has dropped from 63% in February 2004 to 51% today, and those who said they opposed gay marriage “strongly” has dropped from 42% to 28%. That’s a pretty significant shift in the national attitude on this issue. It may be that the more people think about it the less they care, but it also may be that other issues have been moved to the front burner. Polls consistently show that the war in Iraq, healthcare, jobs, education, and the economy rank highest on the priority list of most Americans. This is good news for Democrats, considering that under total Republican control Iraq is a disaster, healthcare is less affordable and accessible, job creation has been slow or non-existent, public education is withering under No Child Left Behind, and the economy -- well, it may look good on paper, but for average working Americans statistics mean little when they’re working harder for less money since the Republicans took hold of the reigns of power.

Also in the Pew Research Poll were interesting numbers on abortion. While the majority of voters, 58%, oppose a South Dakota-style ban on abortion, most people aren’t paying much attention. Only 28% consider abortion a “critical issue,” and the group most likely to feel this way are white evangelical Protestants. Even amongst those who strongly oppose a ban on abortion, most consider the issue “one of many” or “not that important”. This tells me that Republicans HAVE to talk about abortion, while Democrats don’t: They can say they’re pro-choice and move on. The Democrats are much better off talking about the real issues and disengaging from the wedge-issue discussion all together, or at least only engage in the most dismissive manner possible: “Of course I believe in a woman’s right to choose, now let’s talk about jobs.”

Shifting the debate to what matters most to working people will be a winning strategy for the Democrats and a big loser for Republicans who rely on the crutch of social intolerance to get re-elected. Whether good or bad, most of the country doesn’t care much about abortion or gay marriage, although they do tend to fall more on the side of civil unions and a woman’s right to choose. That should tell the Democrats that they have taken the right position on both all along and that now they must focus on the issues that are concerning voters most: health care, family-wage jobs, birth to college education, retirement security, and making sure that all of those things are available to all of our citizens so that poverty is no longer our dirty little secret and dignity in life is secured for every American.

Let the Republicans ply their base with rhetoric. They’ll turn off the moderate voters all by themselves -- no need to join them in alienating the majority of the country. Better to stand back and give those moderates a place to go. And we don’t have to move to the right to attract middle America. They are already on their way over, driven in our direction by a Republican Party with only the fear and intolerance card left to play. It may have worked for them in the past, but it looks like it might finally be played out.

(Cross-posted at The (liberal)Girl Next Door.)

The truth about the reconstruction of Iraq

Here's an amusing photo of CPA chief L. Paul Bremer. Amusing -- if only the context weren't so bleak. Once again, I wonder what's going through his head. What's he thinking? Anything? Go on, play fill in the bubble.

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More to the point:

At Newsweek, Michael Hirsh (who provides us with yet another must-read) looks at the recent re-emergence of Andrew Natsios, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who is now a professor at Georgetown and, since just recently, a harsh critic of "the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq occupation": "In an interview with NEWSWEEK on Tuesday, he harshly criticized the Coalition Provisional Authority led by L. Paul Bremer III for botching the reconstruction effort and allowing ill-qualified or corrupt contractors to dominate it."

More and more, the truth is coming out. However fabricated the case for going to war may have been, and however much that debate still rages, the undeniable truth, it seems to me, is that the reconstruction of Iraq -- more broadly, the occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces and civilian authorities -- has been an abject failure. Natrios once seemed like little more than an apologist for the war, a purveyor of the sunny Wolfowitzian optimism that was quickly overcome by the realities on the ground. But now, better late than never, he's as good an authority there is on just what went wrong and why.

Hirsh: "Natsios’s criticisms mark another significant milestone in the great Republican crackup over Iraq—especially since they came on the same day that President Bush reiterated, at a news conference, that he would not ask any senior staff to resign in connection with the mess in Mesopotamia. The president’s refusal to consider replacing senior officials, especially Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has angered many Republicans, as well as Democrats, who say the administration needs to show a sense of accountability for its many mistakes in Iraq. At the very least, Natsios’s criticisms represent the latest effort by a Bush supporter to distance himself from America's new quagmire."

Will more supporters emerge from the political quagmire that this war has become? Other than his long-time pals and most ardently thoughtless apologists, will Bush have anyone left on his side now that the war, if you'll pardon the expression, is blowing up in his face, both over there and over here?

What will Bush's approval rating be -- what will his legacy be -- once the truth comes out in full?

The party of unlimited government

Guest post by Right Democrat

(Ed. note: This is the first of what I hope are many guest posts by some of our favourite bloggers, intelligent voices from different corners of the blogosphere. Right Democrat is a blog for "conservative and moderate Democrats" that focuses on "the concerns of working and middle class Americans". The author, who posts by that name, is a social conservative and economic populist. He believes that Democrats must "embrace mainstream values" and again "become the party of working families". I am neither socially conservative nor economically populist, but it is important to listen to and respect different viewpoints within our party, and I think it's important to present some of those viewpoints here at The Reaction. We are, after all, a big tent, and we must remain so. I hope you like this post and I encourage you to check out Right Democrat regularly. -- MJWS)

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Michael Hayes, a professor of political science at Colgate University, has another insightful column at Democrats.US. Dr. Hayes makes an excellent point that Democrats can and should be the party of government activism but all too often are seen instead as the party of "unlimited government." With a growing concentration of power in Washington which has taken place under Republican rule, a case can be made that the Republican Party has become "the party of unlimited government." The Bush Administration and the Republican Congressional leadership have certainly lost all credibility on financial matters and Democrats have the opportunity now to emerge as the party of fiscal responsibility. Still, there are lingering perceptions about Democrats and the role of government that need to be addressed if we are again to become the majority party.

Government plays a critical role in society; however, we need to keep in mind that its powers can be abused and that this important institution exists to serve the public. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi helped to perpetuate stereotypes about our party favoring "unlimited government" when she opposed efforts in Congress to discourage municipalities from using eminent domain to take private homes for economic development following last year's Supreme Court ruling which affirmed such practices. A more appropriate response to the court ruling came from fellow California Democrat Maxine Waters. Representative Waters joined in sponsoring legislation to ban federal Community Development Block Grant funds from any city that fails to prohibit such seizures of private homes for private development purposes. From the Los Angeles Times: "It's like undermining motherhood and apple pie," Waters was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle. "I mean, people's homes and their land -- it's very important, and it should be protected by government, not taken for somebody else's private use."

A knee jerk opposition by Democrats on matters such as experimenting with school vouchers, charter schools, and faith-based initiatives can leave the impression that we are more focused on catering to narrow constituencies than on meeting educational challenges or social services needs in a creative manner.

Democrats also must take the lead in reinventing government to make it more efficient and customer-oriented. For example, there is no reason that government agencies cannot be open more flexible hours to serve the public. One of the 12 points of the U.S. House Blue Dog Coalition is to instill greater accountability in federal agencies. The Blue Dog plan would require agencies to put their fiscal houses in order. According to the non-partisan Government Accounting Office, 16 of 23 major federal agencies cannot issue a simple audit of their books, and the federal government cannot account for $24.5 billion it spent in 2003. The Blue Dogs have proposed a budget freeze for any agency that cannot properly balance its books.

I can think of two Democratic leaders from the past who point the way to how Democrats can support activist and efficient government. The late Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, a traditional New Deal Democrat, often admonished his colleagues that "to be a liberal, one does not have to be a wastrel. We must, in fact, be thrifty if we are to be really humane." Democrats need to be leading efforts to make government work effectively to provide services and enforce regulations to protect workers and consumers. During his long Senate career, the late Senator William Proxmire was a strong believer in activist government and yet a zealous opponent of bureaucratic waste. Proxmire introduced the "Golden Fleece" awards, which exposed wasteful practices in government. Proxmire noted that "highlighting specific, single wasteful expenditures is more effective than simply complaining in a general way about government waste."

Given the lack of fiscal responsibility and abuse of power by the Republicans, Democrats have the opportunity to make the case that with proper leadership our government can be more responsive to public needs.

Balloting in Belarus (update)

This past Sunday, I reported on the tainted presidential election in Belarus -- see here. Leading opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich called the election "a complete farce" and demanded a re-vote.

Since then, protests have continued, in the streets. President Alexander Lukashenko, an old-style authoritarian, promised to crack down on protesters. And he has. Here's an update from the BBC: "Riot police in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, have broken up a five-day demonstration against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko. More than 100 troops poured into the central square and loaded protesters onto waiting trucks."

The protests have been small -- "about 150 demonstrators were in the square when it was cleared in less than 20 minutes" -- but "this has been an unprecedented protest for Belarus". And this isn't over. Milinkevich has said that "a huge demonstration" is being planned for this Saturday. Lukashenko will no doubt crack down on that one, too, but dissent is now out in the open and the reform movement seems to have confidence and determination.

This may or may not be the time for revolution -- I hope it is, but I wonder if Belarus is ready (Lukashenko is very much in control and his huge electoral win, corruption notwithstanding, suggests that his popular support is strong) -- but at least the possibility of revolution is now out there, personified by the courageous protesters in Minsk.

It is that spirit, the liberal spirit, that will ultimately lead Belarus out of the abyss of tyranny and into the promised land of democracy.

Karl Rove and the magicians of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

This photo of Karl Rove, with Senators Santorum and Allen in the foreground, accompanies a ridiculously superficial piece on possible White House personnel moves at The New York Times. The point, such as there is one: Things aren't going well in Bush's lamest of lame-duck presidencies. Bush has hinted there may soon be a high-level addition to his White House staff (names like Racicot, Evans, and Gillespie are out there). But will there be? And what would such an addition mean for Rove and Card?

Yadda. Yadda. Yadda.
Yadda. Yadda.
Yadda.

I tend to agree with our co-blogger Creature -- see his post on this at State of the Day.

But you know what's going on, don't you? This is how magicians work (and Rove is widely seen as the political magician par excellence). Their "magic" consists of being able to pull off a trick by diverting your attention to something that has nothing to do with the trick itself. Hence all this Beltway speculation of personnel moves. Do Americans really care? No. Only political junkies do. Only the most determined of White House watchers. And the White House, which faces nothing but bad news on a daily basis, must be quite happy that some of that media attention (and hence some of the public's attention) is being diverted away from all that bad news, much of it coming out of Iraq, not to mention the complete absence of a domestic agenda, Bush's ever-sinking approval ratings, and the sheer lame-duckness of this utter failure of a presidency.

Do you doubt that this is a strategy? Do you doubt that Bush wants us to talk about his staff instead of his incompetence, instead of the mess he's made? Then why would he even drop the bomb that he's thinking of adding someone? Whatever this White House's incompetence in terms of policy, it knows what it's doing in terms of communication. It knows how important the message is. It knows how easily our attention -- or, rather, the attention of our news media, the attention of Washington's chattering class -- can be manipulated.

Well, don't let them do it. If Bush adds a Racicot or a Gillespie, so what? It'll still be the presidency of George W. Bush. And that, my friends, has been nothing short of a disaster.

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On another note, here's a question for you: What do you think's going through Rove's mind here? (Go ahead, write your own bubble.) I'm actually hoping he's pondering how great an Allen-Santorum ticket would be in '08, jotting down all the pros and cons and already beginning to outline a campaign strategy. How great would that be? A presidential campaign of nothing but football metaphors and homophobia. I'm sure it's right up Rove's alley. And the base would love it.

Good times for the GOP.

(Also, look at their ties. Is green the new red? If so, could someone forward me the memo?)

John Boehner is a dangerous idiot

Jon Stewart played the clip during his interview segment with Senator Feingold last night. Keep in mind that John Boehner is the House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay's successor, not some mentally disconnected and politically disempowered freak show on the fringes of the Republican House caucus.

Boehner on Feingold (quoted here): "Sometimes you begin to wonder if he's more interested in the safety and security of the terrorists as opposed to the American people."

Yup, this is what it's come to, a direct application of the patriotism-terrorism card. If you're with us, you're a patriot; if you're against us, you're a terrorist. That's it. They can't defend their own policies and they can't rebut criticism of those policies on the merits. So they get dirty. And, in this case, they hurl the ultimate slur of post-9/11 America: Feingold is providing aid and comfort to terrorists at the expense of the security of the American people.

I'm sorry, but this is fucking ridiculous. I know that Republicans can be so predictable, and I'm hardly surprised by this latest effort to discredit Senator Feingold, but this is utterly reprehensible.

Utterly fucking reprehensible.

Feingold on Stewart

Excellent.

Check The Daily Show and Crooks and Liars for video if and when it becomes available.

Jon on Feingold's censure resolution: "This feels like some attempt at accountability." Sometimes no one says it better than Jon Stewart. He's exactly right.

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C&L has the latest anti-Feingold GOP ad here -- yes, he's being swift-boated.

And, tip o' the hat to C&L once again, see this brilliant post by Glenn Greenwald here. It's our Must-Read of the Day, and here's a key passage:

It may be the case that in 2003, there was a rational argument to make that political calculations militated against standing up to the President's law-breaking. The fantasies of Bush followers notwithstanding, it is not 2003 anymore. It is long past time for Democrats to stand up to and firmly oppose the most radical elements of this Administration. And there are few elements more radical than the President's deliberate decision to break the law.

Which is precisely what Jon Stewart was getting at.

Democrats? Anyone?

Basque separatists declare ceasefire

And now for some important international content from Spain. The BBC reports: "The Basque separatist group Eta has declared a permanent ceasefire. Eta is blamed for killing more than 800 people in its four-decade fight for independence for the Basque region of northern Spain and south-west France. In a statement released to Basque media, the group said its objective now was 'to promote a democratic process in the Basque country'."

You can find more on Eta here. You can find its ceasefire declaration here. You can find some Spanish and international reaction here.

And you can find an update, with reaction from Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, here. Zapatero is right: The road to peace will surely be "long and difficult". But at least there is now the prospect of a peaceful resolution to this situation.

Let's hope Eta is sincere. And let's hope the peace process begins in earnest.

The hypocrisy of religion-based Republican pork

Here's yet another entry in The Annals of Duh (maybe a new series at The Reaction?). Republicans are porking it up big-time with their supporters, throwing millions and millions and millions at the socially conservative (and largely religious) base. The Washington Post has the details:

For years, conservatives have complained about what they saw as the liberal tilt of federal grant money. Taxpayer funds went to abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood to promote birth control, and groups closely aligned with the AFL-CIO got Labor Department grants to run worker-training programs.

In the Bush administration, conservatives are discovering that turnabout is fair play: Millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have flowed to groups that support President Bush's agenda on abortion and other social issues.

Under the auspices of its religion-based initiatives and other federal programs, the administration has funneled at least $157 million in grants to organizations run by political and ideological allies, according to federal grant documents and interviews.

Does this surprise you? If so, have yourself checked for dementia. This is Big Government Republicanism we're talking about, and conservatives are more than happy to lap it up, to suck at the eternal teat of Washingtonian largesse. Oh, and it helps to be able to buy off your supporters. Keep 'em knee-deep in the gravy and you're sure to benefit at the ballot box.

Hoo-wah.

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Steve Benen calls it "[s]hameless," which it is. (Shame runs on short supply in them parts.) Ezra Klein calls the flow of cash in support of "the right wing's most reactionary agenda items" all "rather unsurprising," which it also is. Pam Spaulding predicts "[t]his gravy train won't end any time soon," which it won't.

See also Frederick Maryland on the selective compassion of "compassionate conservatism" and Pamela Leavey on "slush funds".

Immigration and citizenship: Hillary Clinton's stand against xenophobic nationalism

Much to her credit, Hillary Clinton has refused to sign on to the xenophobic nationalism of the Tancredo set. More, she'll fight against any such anti-immigrant, anti-immigration legislation in the Senate. From Newsday:

Clinton joined immigration advocates Wednesday to vow and block legislation seeking to criminalize undocumented immigrants... Clinton renewed her pledge to oppose a bill passed in December by the House that would make unlawful presence in the United States -- currently a civil offense -- a felony. The Senate is set to consider a version of that legislation...

Among other things, Clinton said she would support legislation that would strengthen U.S. borders, boost technology to secure the borders, and seek greater cross-border cooperation with Mexico and other neighboring countries. She also called for new enforcement laws, including penalties for employers who exploit illegal immigrants, as well as a system to allow the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States to earn their citizenship.

Immigration could turn out to be one of the bigger and most divisive campaign issues both this year and in '08. President Bush, who supports a guest-worker program, faces challenges from anti-immigration radicals within his own party. If there's one issue where I find myself in at least partial agreement with him, this is it, although it's not as if he has the political capital to withstand Congressional efforts to build Fortress America. For that, we'll need the full force of the Democratic Party and those Republican dissidents who refuse to play this nasty game.

Senator Clinton is surely looking ahead to '08, but let's not be so cynical. She's on the right side of this issue, and I applaud her efforts.