Well today was a better day. The Republicans decided to go back to having real rules on ethics and a real ethics committee. The Congress is ignoring the President and working on Social Security, Medicaid and other real reforms that might actually benefit people. The President is trying to shift attention from his effort to manufacture a crisis for Social Security to energy independence. I can't get mad at him on that subject; it's one of the few I agree with him on. I think we have to develop an increased use of Nuclear Energy and I'd like to see that include innovative efforts to get the costs down on solar power, etceteras... All things he didn't include much emphasis on in his energy plan -- but I'm glad to see him coming along.
While the President is pushing us to "Go Nuclear" the Congress might even avoid "going nuclear" with the effort to stop Democrats from blocking those Justice Nominees they don't like. I'm downright happy.
In my own life I'm working hard on new things. Finally marrying some of my personal interests in technology promotion with my latent love of medical innovation and science.
Viva life -- and the dogwoods are in bloom!
Chris
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501352.html
Pretty much as expected Lt. General Richard (Ricardo) S. Sanchez, who approved the methods, Maj General Geoffrey D. Miller, Maj. General Barbara Fast and Maj. General Walter Wojdakowski, all managed to get away without reprimmands or any kind of accounting. Moreover those from the CIA who were involved in Abu Gharaib have all walked away with inpunity, and the author of the infamous torture memos, Alberto Gonzales was promoted. Karpinski was punished for not being in the loop and Geoffrey Miller was promoted. Sanchez was rotated home.
The ACLU says:
However, they did just that. Not just one, but two investigations followed the lead of the initial one. No one other than Karpinski of Command Rank was punished. The cover up appears to have been a success. These people appear to have gotten away with murder -- literally.
But I won't let it die. The ACLU put out this Flash image. I think you should listen to it. They appeal to Alberto Gonzales, but considering his role in the genesis of these events, that is like appealing to the Fox to investigate who ate all the Chickens.
The nomination of John Bolton is in a little disarray. His record is tending to shock even other Republicans. Yesterday Voinovich put his nomination on hold while numerous other allegations of imperious behavior were investigated. The Washington Post and other Newspapers have been running a series on this nomination.
Nevertheless I believe the President should get his man. John Bolton is a team player. He follows the lead of his party and is a true believer in the doctrines of "Neo-Conservativism" / "Neo-Liberalism"; might makes right, security through strength, and to paraphrase; "it doesn't matter what the enemy is actually doing all that matters is that they might be doing something nefarious and they are nefarious -- so if the facts don't fit the allegations then fire the fact checker."
And if Bolton were all that the Republicans were offering us right now in the way of Petty tyrants I probably wouldn't worry so. But we also have the shennanigans in the Congress, where Republican Senators are running rough shod over Democrats on the time-honored tradition of the filibuster, while DeLay and company are running rough-shod over Congressional Ethics with it's three partisan rule changes and efforts to nix that committees Bi-Partisanship and power of investigation. Things are so bad that the good "Doc" Hastings who is in charge there even offered to investigate DeLay if only the Good Congressman from West Virginia -- Alan B. Mollohan -- who is opposing these unethical ethics rules would accept the rules. But of course if the Good Congressman were to actually do such a thing the Congressman from West Virginia notes he'd probably lose his job too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5124-2005Apr20.htmlThe Fight isn't about whether DeLay is a crook or not. If the Ethics Committee were still able to do it's job they'd be able to clear him if he is innocent without all the negative publicity of the current trial by Press he is undergoing. These rule changes need to be opposed because they are rules that make it almost impossible to investigate legitimate complaints if there is any kind of partisan disagreement on the Majority Party side -- that is why. A little partisanship and an ethics violation is ignored. A little stone-walling and a violation is automatically dismissed. This is what DeLay wanted because the previous ethics committee had reprimmanded him three times and was about to reprimmand him again. It's chair was a Republican.
The issue isn't about Tom DeLay except in it's Genesis. Tom DeLay fired the previous Republican on that committee because he dared to reprimand him for petty rules violations. And Tom DeLay is a bit more than a Petty Tyrant. He is a big time one. Anyone doubts that should remember how he managed to orchestrate mid cycle gerrymandering in Texas and tried to get the Democratic minority arrested there in the process. Hastart is now taking his lead in the Senate with efforts to force up or down votes on Judges that Democrats don't like.
If the shoe was on the other foot the voices would be even louder. Republicans made a lot of hay from Jim Wright. I remember from when the Repubs were the minority always acting sure that every Democrat was a crook needing to be impeached. And of course they used to battle liberal judges regularly at one time. Now they seem to want to just impeach them without trials (that was last week and I should have created a blog entry on it). It makes me long for the days when Jim Wright was Majority leader -- compared to the current bunch he was squeaky clean.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52506-2005Apr14.htmlAnd of course, the "Grand Ole Party" isn't going to come clean about their reasons for those rules changes unless they are pressured to. Instead they'll trumpet to the Red Press (no Blue Press allowed) how the Dems are being unfair to them:
'The only way I can be cleared is through the ethics committee, so they don't want one,' Mr. DeLay said yesterday in an interview with editors and reporters of The Washington Times in his office at the Capitol. He also offered a second reason why Democrats want the ethics committee to be hobbled.'
Both Houses and the Administration seem to have plenty of petty tyrants who, have been using their positions to punish their opponants of either party, "discipline" their own party, and use any means possible to get and keep power and advance their goals; cheat steal or lie included. If allowed to win on these seemingly "small" things they seem to be poised to go on to maybe graduate to even bigger and better petty tyrannies. One party state anyone?
I come from a "heartland" background. My father was in the Navy as a surface warfare officer and my Grand-father flew PBY "flying boats" until he disapeared off the Catalina Islands somewhere in 1938. My other Grandfather served in World War I and I have had ancestors or relatives serving in every war fought by this country on it's approximate 20 year max cycle. Until 1972 I assumed I was going to join the military and do at least a four year stint in the service and maybe do even more than that. But something evil happened between 1968 and 1972 that affected me deeply and that evil was what happened to my country during those years. I hit cognitive dissonance over that evil. The Watergate and Pentagon Papers scandals were the breaking point for me.
Part of me split in two. The rational part of me set aside my "heartland" faith in God, Jesus and Country and started looking for rational answers. I went from Republican and "Born Again style" Christian to an agnostic and then a Buddhist. I watched the civilian authorities drive a military crazy with insane micromanagement -- and a military authority that all the while it complained wasn't any more competant to fight that war than it's civilian masters. There is no way to fight an insane war sanely -- and if the US was on the side of human self expression and human rights it felt that it needed to forget that inconvenience for the duration.
Thus the Vietnam war was turned into a lesson on how not to deal with a war of national liberation or "communists." Catch 22 was the catchword. We were burning villages to save them. Giving candy to kids one moment and blowing them to smithereens a few minutes later. Our men were ordered to not shoot at people until they were fired on -- or ordered to fire at anything that moved. We sent draftees to fight while the professional soldiers were able to avoid Vietnam unless they volunteered for it and the reserves were a joke. We had a military who were to a man convinced they knew how to "win" the war -- and each of their plans turned out to be not much better than the stupidity with which the war was actually begun. Invading Cambodia, widening the war by attacking the NV capital, using Nukes. All were demonstrations that might have had tactical utility but would not have won that "war" -- which by the way wasn't even a war it was a "police action."
As someone who grew up reading about war, playing war games, shooting toy guns, hearing smart people talk about the subject and breathing "systems analysis" it was hell to see a country fight a war the way we fought Vietnam. All sides could speak their complaints and have a point. The left could honestly say that the only winners were the investors in arms and weaponry -- though the war represented a boom and bust cycle for them and really didn't do them that much economic good unless they knew when to cut their losses. The right could honestly say that the Civilian authorities hamstrung the military. The patriotic could honestly say that the anti-war crowd acted anti-American and violent. But none of them really were articulating what the "war" was. The warriors were happy to be busy fighting somebody and happy to have an excuse to fight their enemies at home. But a clear definition of what the "enemy" was or what the goal of all this fighting was excaped them. Hence the confusion which I also felt like the good bird I was.
The faithful part of me had my faith shaken to the quick by liars and the lies they told being exposed. Of course they told lies. They had no idea what the truth was. They had abstracts, but no clear idea of what those abstracts meant. Freedom, Democracy, Justice; all are things worth dying for. But how does one impose it on another country? To invade and attack a people means denying freedom, democracy and justice to the people being attacked. Such wars cannot be won by force. At the best such wars can be used to hold back the violence of others, but the real war is in the arena of ideas and in that war both sides of the debate had real points to be made. The Vietnam war and it's internal debates were American. We had a choice of chosing the wisdom of the collective -- democracy or the wisdom of the hierarchy -- autocracy. We chose democracy -- barely. Some wanted to kill democracy at home in the name of saving it. They failed. Nixon was taken down by cheap burglars working for his paranoid re-election campaign. The lies of the Pentagon were exposed by a former analyst there.
But I was a casualty of that battle. Not literally. I just was confused as hell. I guess having this hit at the impressionable ages of 13-17 had a lot to do with how I reacted. I eventually recovered my patriotism but my birth myths would never be the same. I still believe in them, but I'm no longer so naive as to trust that their priests are telling me the truth about what they are doing at every moment. Vietnam taught me skepticism but not cynicism -- Because for all the faults and errors the human beings who fought that war included a lot of exemplary individuals and efforts. The scum-bags sometimes got away with murder but the system survived them. Robert Macnamara, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and foolish children like Jane Fonda, all paid a price for their mistakes and moments of bad intentions. I thought the country learned from Vietnam. I thought democracy was saved.
But it didn't. Some in the professional military and "on the right" have developed new myths and have twisted the story into their own heroic underground narrative in which the 'baddies' are the leaders of the "liberal" part of the country-- the champions of justice, freedom democracy who opposed their efforts to impose justice, freedom and democracy on the battle-field. In those myths the US was betrayed by the Press and the Anti-War movement -- not Johnson and MacNamara, Nixon and Ho Chi Ming. They were unable to win because they were hampered by rule of law, a foolish Congress and belief in Human rights from "getting the Job Done."
For some of these people the Cold war was won by the CIA/Intelligence forces ignoring rule of law and using secrecy as a cover for "getting the Job Done" and ignoring Congress. For them the US is a country with a crises in it's culture and the culture needs to be rescued from the "social leftists" who would impose atheism or new wave religions, Homosexuality and perversion. Gone is the whistful feeling of the folk who used to say "I fought this war so those foolish young people could express their first amendment rights and burn that flag if that is what bothered them. That flag to me symbolizes freedom and that freedom includes the right to burn it." No we'll get a constitutional amendment banning flag burnings and it will probably win a 2/3 vote easily when it comes up. Because this reaction to change has been building up an anger that is getting unstopable.
And this anger is what has to be stopped. A certain friend talks about "meta waves" but the anger that comes out of his mouth is far more powerful than any positive feelings he claims. And I'm afraid that eventually an ambitious politician is going to use that anger as an excuse to cross the "rubicon" of obeying the Constitution eventually. They fear a "living constitution" and so I'm afraid they are going to try to kill it to save it -- and thus only break it and kill it. I pray we can avoid the kind of insecurity and internal strife that destroyed the Roman Republic. But the forces at work in our republic are the same ones that destroyed that Republic. The enemy of democracy is internal strife and internal strife comes when the consensus between rich and poor, powerful and their supporters is broken. And that happens when some get wealthy and others don't. The oligarchs who destroyed Rome blamed "bread and circuses" but it was their own actions that brought that end about. They failed to appreciate the middle class yeoman (plebian) farmers who had built Rome, and they were only too happy to turn them into surfs and slaves in their own country while bringing in Greek and other Slaves to take their place in the marketplace. This led to a class of people whose only employment was in the hierarchy of war. There was no other way to redistribute wealth. I'm afraid we might be heading that way now. And it led to authoritarianism and that in turn led to the death of democratic thinking. Democracy cannot survive the death of the ability to question or to think independently.
The alternative vision is one that was envisioned by people like Roosevelt and others, where progress can lift all boats. It's one where can do attitude can solve problems like our running out of oil or unemployment and health care issues with progressive solutions and where society is seen as a place where progress floats all boats and there is no need to intentionally leave people stranded at low tide or drowning when the tide comes back in. I chose the second vision. The vision of what America can and should be is something I hold onto with faith. And my vision of religion as something that should inform reality not distort it makes an alternative to this dark, authoritarian and deeply self-delusive vision that I've been chronicaling on this blog lately.
There are two visions at war with one another. I pray that the better vision wins. Otherwise how can people see?
Chris
The Rake is old and rusty.
The rain is falling all around.
The soil is full of clay and water.
I procrastinated and now,
I'm spreading humus on the ground.
with humility,
hoping the humus can bring my clay around.
Maybe I'd be better off using this clean clay,
to fashion a sculpture or make a new pot.
Certainly nothing has been growing in this clay on my ground.
Except for some fungus and green mold.
I've got leaves pressed into the clay.
It leaves perfect impressions in the gray.
I hopefully spread grass seed on the ground.
And hope the birds don't eat it all.
And I spread some dirt from Home Depot,
or was it Target?
To try to hide the seeds from the birds
long enough for some of them to sprout.
Hope is eternal. Grass can be too.
It spreads it's relations slowly.
Maybe in a few years I'll have that "perfect lawn"
you see at Golf Courses.
Isn't that life?
Trying to get things to sprout in difficult soil?
Chris
Thanks for the nice comments
Well I found a new day-job. That also means that my "night job" will have to change. New constraints on time and content, that sort of thing. Anyway more is on the way.
I'm still deeply worried about the direction my Country has been taking since 9/11 and I'll keep commenting on that until the CIA and the US Feds stop trying to justify preventive detentions, the ignoring of basic human rights and arbitrary definitions of who is an "enemy combattant" or a terrorist. Those things have no place in a country that is the "banner" of democracy.
Just saw the movie "In My Country." Though the movie is less than an "A" in my book, it rates about a b for accuracy of presentation. It could have portrayed Desmond Tutu as the kick ass Judge he proved to be and it was way too soft on the ANC's role in the violence of the repression years. It still portrayed the era fairly accurately and the brutality of human beings (mostly men) when given a blank check to fight some enemy.
The excuses are always the same; "Security", "They are terrorists","I did it to protect you". And they are always equally self-serving lies. Whether it's the French in Algeria, the Algerians in Algeria, the Israelis in Lebanon, the Syrians in Lebanon; the Greeks in their Civil War or the Rwandan's in theirs, the dynamic of repression and total warfare is the same. It's the logic of the beast.
Chris
And thanks for all the posts!