What’s really needed here is political courage

Britain’s Channel 4 will be running a documentary today about US airstrikes last August on Azizabad in Afghanistan, which killed 91 civilians. Evidently there were no actual Taliban there, but the raid was based on a false tip from someone involved in a feud between that village and another one. American forces also tortured one Azizabadhoovian to death. If any British readers see this program, please report anything else interesting back to the rest of us in comments.

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The Education Department will spend $350 million to develop national standards. And by national standards, they mean national tests. Because, according to EdSec Arne Duncan, “If we’re going to have world-class international standards, we need to have world-class evaluations behind them.” “50 states doing their own thing doesn’t make sense.” The Obama administration policy is pretty much the same as the Bush admin’s, from the insistence that setting high standards automatically improves education, down to the refusal to admit that improving education might require spending some money on actual teaching rather than test development. Said Duncan, “Resources are important, but resources are actually a small piece of this puzzle. What’s really needed here is political courage.” And... moxie!

Netanyahu speech: flags and national anthems for everyone!

We have a winner: Kim Jong-un is now officially the “Brilliant Comrade.”

Speaking of brilliant comrades, Binyamin Netanyahu gave his anticipated speech today. He accepted Obama’s challenge to accept a two-state solution. “In my vision, there are two free peoples living side by side each with each other, each with its own flag and national anthem.” However, the neutered Palestine he’s willing to accept would have no military, no control over its own airspace, no Hamas, and Israel would have a veto over its foreign relations (no treaties with Iran, for example). But it would have a, you know, national anthem. Sort of a 1.375-state solution, by my calculations. But aside from those piddling details, and a few others, “Let us begin peace negotiations immediately without prior conditions.”


Bibi started by asking an important question: “Friends, with the advantages of peace so clear, so obvious, we must ask ourselves why is peace still so far from us, even though our hands are extended for peace? Why has the conflict going on for over 60 years?” He had the answer: “the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish People to its own state in its historical homeland.” So, if you were wondering why there’s no peace in the Middle East, now you know.

Therefore, the first thing that Palestinians must do is acknowledge that they are at best second-class citizens in Israel. Oh, and they have to do so sincerely: “The fundamental condition for ending the conflict is the public, binding and sincere Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish People.”

He said Israel will build no new settlements, but they’ll continue to expand the existing ones to meet what Israel used to call natural growth and is now calling “normal life”: “there is a need to have people live normal lives and let mothers and fathers raise their children like everyone in the world.”

Some people might say that settlements are an obstacle to peace, but not Bibi: “A great many people are telling us that withdrawal is the key to peace with the Palestinians. But the fact is that all our withdrawals were met by huge waves of suicide bombers.”

Anyway, “Israel needs defensible borders”. Palestine doesn’t need defensible borders, since it won’t be allowed even slingshots with which to defend them anyway. Without a totally disarmed and defenseless Palestine, he said, “sooner or later, we will have another Hamastan.”


Also, Israel gets to keep Jerusalem, and won’t allow any Palestinians to return: “For it is clear to all that the demand to settle the Palestinian refugees inside of Israel, contradicts the continued existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish People.” And Palestine must “overcome Hamas.” One would scour the speech in vain for a hint of anything Netanyahu is willing to give up for the sake of peace.

The White House has called the speech an “important step forward.”

To be fair, geese are quite scary

It’s been quite a while since I’ve run personals from the London Review of Books (the complete WIIIAI collection of LRB personals is here.)

If forced to commit, I’d say I feared geese more than ducks. Man, 47. Fears geese more than ducks. Box no. 02/03

I wrote this advert specifically to rebuke my rivals, undermine my critics, and fill the hearts and minds of my true followers with the love they so richly deserve. Kevin, 46, Sunbury Cross. Box no. 03/05

I subvert all the expectations built up in this column like a goat in space subverts gravy. Space-goat-esque gravy-subverting pervert (M, 51). Box no. 05/04

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be a marine biologist, 56, and enjoy secretly juggling crabs when no-one else is in the laboratory. Man, 56, seeks crab-juggling fish nerd. Box no. 05/05

For all you ladies keeping a vigil for my return to this column after an absence of 2 years, God has answered your prayers by forcing the LRB, after much petitioning, to lift almost all of their unreasonable restrictions on the content of my adverts. I am a man. I am 46. Box no. 05/06

Celebrate National Nurses Week with me! Man, 82. Box no. 05/03

Don’t read too much into this.

Short ugly bald bloke (32, Cambridge) seeks Scandinavian Model (F) due to marginal grasp on reality. No timewasters or photos of Volvos. Must not try to feed me broccoli.

No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis

Ha’aretz has an interesting (but long) story about the Gaza blockade, designed, the Israelis say, to ensure “no prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.” Israeli bans the import of “luxury” items, but whether, say, a pumpkin constitutes a luxury changes “from week to week, and sometimes from day to day”, depending, not on Palestinian nutritional needs of course, but on which sectors of the Israeli agricultural industry need propping up. “[S]ince the start of the blockade no list of permitted and prohibited items has been relayed to the Palestinian side. The DCO spokesperson says there is no such list and that the Palestinians ‘know what they’re allowed to bring in.’”

Out of old matzoh and dreidels

A note found in Holocaust Museum shooter-up James von Brunn’s car said, among other things, “Obama was created by Jews.” So that makes him a Kosher, secret-Muslim golem?

Negotiations, the Gitmo way

More info on Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi (that’s all one person), the Guantanamo prisoner who the Pentagon says committed suicide but won’t say how (when a prisoner being forcibly fed abruptly dies, we need rather more information before we just accept a claim of suicide). Evidently he was asked by Gitmo’s commanders to represent the prisoners in talks with them. Only he never come back from the first of those talks: they sent him to the psychiatric wing, where he died five months later.

A quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that elected judges must recuse themselves from cases involving their substantial campaign donors. Duh. That duh being said, John Roberts, writing the dissent, had a point that the Court could have set a clearer standard than it did. (It would help if the states passed their own recusal rules, rather than having them be clarified through numerous lawsuits.)

However, Roberts argued that “sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.” The “disease” which he complacently suggests we just live with is judicial corruption. The lawsuits that will arise from this ruling, according to Roberts, “will do far more to erode public confidence in judicial impartiality than an isolated failure to recuse in a particular case.” This is the culture of secrecy; it is the language used by the Bush and, now, the Obama administrations to justify suppressing pictures of prisoner abuse. Roberts, like Obama, is unwilling to expose corruption because it would make the system look bad, and he thinks the exposure is the problem, not the corruption.

Scalia, also dissenting, wrote, “The court today continues its quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution.” Maybe it’s just me, but I’d actually like our courts to engage on a quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty

In Taiwan, a man has been sentenced to 5 months in prison for tearing the toupee off the head of Kuomintang MP Chiu Yi. A court spokesmodel explained: “The judge thought Chiu Yi had the freedom to wear what he wanted, and Chiu felt the wig made him look prettier. The judge thinks that to remove it intentionally was to take away that right.” The right to look prettier shall not be abridged.

Pretty

Totally true

Sarah Palin accidentally plagiarizes the wrong Gingrich speech, asks some woman with cancer for a divorce.

Just a pinch of state-sanctioned murder

The new Ohio death-penalty procedure, which was used Wednesday on one Daniel Wilson, requires that after the prisoner is sedated, the warden make sure he is actually unconscious before proceeding to the lethal-injection stage: “the warden is required to call out the name of the condemned man, shake and pinch his shoulder, and then administer a second dose of sedative if there is a response.” Such as, “Hey, what’s with the pinching?”

Obama’s Cairo speech: America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire

Speaking at Cairo University, home of the Fightin’ Spinxes, Barack Obama said that “no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust” but failed to say precisely how many speeches might be required. I’m guessing seven.

Why had he come to Cairo? “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.” Also, have you tried getting a decent kebab in D.C.? I’m not sure if all this talk about the relationship between the US and Islam treats Islam as a nation or the US as a religion.

AND WE’VE GIVEN THEM McDONALD’S AND BRITNEY SPEARS: “Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.”

FOR EXAMPLE, IT ISN’T A FLOOR WAX: “That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t.”

WHEREVER THERE’S A COP BEATIN’ UP A GUY: “And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

SOMETIMES, WE’RE JUST IMPERIALLY SELF-INTERESTED: “Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire.”


“SO LET THERE BE NO DOUBT” IS THE NEW “IN OTHER WORDS”: “So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America.” He didn’t say what part.

He insisted that Afghanistan was not a war of choice, but Iraq was, adding, “Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.” So as long as we’ve learned a valuable lesson, I’m sure Iraqis will agree it’s all been worth it. They’re the reminderers.

“LET US BE CLEAR” IS THE NEW “IN OTHER WORDS”: “But let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day.”

“MAKE NO MISTAKE” IS ALSO THE NEW “IN OTHER WORDS”: “Now, make no mistake: We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan.”

“Denying that fact [the Holocaust] is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.” Adding, “Okay, two Jews walked into a bar...”

“SO LET THERE BE NO DOUBT” IS THE NEW “IN OTHER WORDS”: “So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.”

WELL IF IT’S EASY, LET’S DO THAT THEN: “It’s easy to point fingers -- for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond.” So the Israelis are subject to ongoing constant hostility & attacks, while the only thing Palestinians have to complain about happened 60 years ago.

In the most bizarre passage, Obama used American history to prove that Palestinians must suffer quietly: “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed.” George Washington, War of Independence, ring a bell at all? “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.” Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, ring a bell at all? Really, did he just tell us that slaves shouldn’t have resisted slavery with violence?

He added that “It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children... That’s not how moral authority is claimed; that’s how it is surrendered.” Again, that’s just for Palestinians; we’ll still be using rockets and missiles and predator drones in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Oh, and I must have missed the part where he suggested that Israel also must “abandon violence.” Guess the speech was running a little long.


“Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build.” Well, maybe not now, since Israel is still banning the importation of building materials into Gaza.

YOU’RE SO VAIN, I’LL BET YOU THINK THIS ISLAMIC REPUBLIC’S ABOUT YOU: “For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country”.

He admitted the US’s involvement in the 1953 coup. Has a president done that before? “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians.” It’s Day 10,806 of the Iranian Hostage Crisis! (Finally, Wolfram Alpha has proven useful for something).

BZZZ. I’M SORRY, YOU HAVE FAILED THE ALLITERATION PORTION OF THE TEST: “I recognize it will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude, and resolve.”

He explained why it wasn’t unfair to sanction Iran for its alleged nuclear weapons program when “some countries” have nukes: “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. And that’s why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.” So that’s okay, then.

“LET ME BE CLEAR” IS THE NEW “IN OTHER WORDS”: “So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other.”

AS OPPOSED TO WHAT, THE METRIC SYSTEM? “Among some Muslims, there’s a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of somebody else’s faith.”

FOR HIS NEXT TRICK, HE WILL HEAL THE SUNNI/SHIA SPLIT: “And if we are being honest, fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.”

“LET ME BE CLEAR” IS THE NEW “IN OTHER WORDS”: “Now, let me be clear: Issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam.”

Three, maybe four times in the speech, he returned to the theme of rights for women. Well, one right in particular: “That’s why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it.” “it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit -- for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.” “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality.” Of course the right he has chosen to emphasize for Muslim women living in Western countries (it will be interesting to see if there is a reaction to this from France or, indeed, Turkey), is compulsory for women in certain parts of the Muslim world, enforced by violence. Obama did not even hint that there might be a right for women to choose not to wear the hijab.

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL: “I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice.”

WHICH WILL BE A PROBLEM FOR HAITI’S ZOMBIE-BASED ECONOMIC STRATEGY: “no development strategy can be based only upon what comes out of the ground”.

A sphinx, and some big statue thingy

We need to freedom

Monday, Uighur prisoners in Guantanamo held up signs, “We are the Uighurs. We are being oppressed in prison though we had been announced innocent,” “Where is the justice” and “We need to freedom,” in front of some journalists (who were then “hustled away,” in McClatchey’s words, without being allowed to speak to them).

Says the Navy chief in charge of guards, “As you can see, they are pretty much free men.”

Freedom....


ain’t it grand.

I tend not to use labels for folks

Obama was interviewed yesterday by the BBC about his upcoming world travels.

Obama refused to be drawn on whether Hosni Mubarak is an authoritarian ruler. “No, I tend not to use labels for folks.” Stop a moment and ponder the lameness of that evasion. “I think he has been a force for stability and good in the region...” If by stability, you mean a 30-year dictatorship. “...Obviously there have been criticisms of the manner in which politics operates in Egypt...” Well, not so much criticisms as screams of pain emanating from his dungeons.

Nor would he criticize Israel for refusing to stop settlement-building: “Well, it’s still early in the conversation. ... So, you know, one of the things that in the 24/7 news cycle is very difficult to encourage is patience, and diplomacy is always a matter of a long, hard slog.” Do tell us when it’s time to actually believe that they mean what they’re saying.

In an interview with NPR, he explained that the reason we’re still occupying Afghanistan is that “3,000 Americans were killed and you had a devastating attack on the American homeland; the organization that planned those attacks intends to carry out further attacks and we cannot stand by and allow that to happen.” He added, “We don’t have an interest in exploiting the resources of Afghanistan.” That’s too bad, because those poppy fields might help pay for the GM bailout.

NO HANGING OUT: “What we want is simply that people aren’t hanging out in Afghanistan who are plotting to bomb the United States. And I think that’s a fairly modest goal that other Muslim countries should be able to understand.”

Of musketeers and mouseketeers

John McCain refers to himself, Lindsey Graham and Holy Joe Lieberman as “the Three Musketeers.”

Speaking of silly titles, Kim Jong Il, the “Dear Leader” and son of Kim Il-sung, the “Great Leader,” has designated his 25-year-old (give or take)_son Kim Jong Un as his successor. Clearly, he needs an adjective of his very own. CONTEST: What sort of Leader is Kim Jong Un? (Since he was once caught trying to use a forged passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland, perhaps he should be called the Dear Mouseketeer)(Update: my mistake, that was Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son).


Oh, and if you want to submit a better name than the Three Musketeers for the team of McCain, Graham and Lieberman (the Axis of Evil?), feel free to do that too.

Is he allowed to say that about our lords and masters?

Middle East envoy George Mitchell more or less outright accuses the Israeli government of lying when it claims there was a secret understanding with the Bush admin over settlement “natural growth”: “The Israelis want us to commit to oral understandings we have never heard about, but at the same time they are not willing to commit to written agreements their government has signed, like the road map and commitment to the two-state solution.”

But... that’s how we resolve all our issues

Obama’s statement on the murder of Dr. Tiller: “However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.”

There are only three clinics in the entire country that perform medically necessary late-term abortions. Seems to me the “issue” has been pretty nearly “resolved” to the satisfaction of the anti-choicers, and heinous acts of violence played no small part in that resolution.

More shit you can see from space

Headline of the Day, from the Daily Telegraph: “Penguin Poo Visible from Space.” Say what you will about the Telegraph, but I can tell you, that is not only the best headline for that story (and I checked Google News; I had to, I’m a blogger), but only the Telegraph had an actual picture.

Religious nutjob

WWJD, indeed.

Ominous patterns

John Oliver in The Bugle on impoverished North Korea’s nuclear program: “it’s like putting the most expensive security system ever made on an empty house.”

Helpful Clarification of the Day, in a story in the Sunday Times (London) about the punishment in Saudi Arabia of a man convicted of killing an 11-year-old body and his father: “Crucifying a headless body in a public place is intended to set an example”.

Unnecessary Adjective of the Day, in a WaPo headline: “Darfuri Women Report Ominous Pattern of Rape.” I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that any pattern of rape is kind of ominous.

Actually, it’s even ominouser than the headline suggests, in that there’s actually more than one pattern of rape. It seems that half the rapes of women now in refugee camps in Chad were done, as might be expected, by the Janjaweed, but that half were purely opportunistic rapes by local Chadians. Aren’t people just lovely?

Assume the best

SCOTUSblog notes that the Obama admin has filed a brief before the Supreme Court arguing against allowing the 17 Chinese Uighurs to be released from Guantanamo into the United States. According to the government, they’re not really in custody any more, what they are experiencing at Gitmo is “harborage”: “They are no longer detained as enemy combatants, they are free to leave Guantanamo Bay to any country that is willing to accept them... [their] continued presence at Guantanamo Bay is not unlawful detention, but rather the consequence of their lawful exclusion from the United States”. So that’s okay, then.

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George Bush gave a speech in Michigan. Asked what he wants his legacy to be, he said, “Well, I hope it is this: The man showed up with a set of principles, and he was unwilling to compromise his soul for the sake of popularity.” Hey, George has finally figured out that he’s not popular!

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Yesterday, Obama had a press conference with Mahmoud Abbas.

I was hoping someone would ask Obama what he thought about the Israeli Knesset’s moves to make it illegal to advocate that Israel be anything but a “Jewish state.” They didn’t, but he did express himself on the importance of free speech in Palestine, that is, the importance of curtailing it: “And I also mentioned to President Abbas in a frank exchange that it was very important to continue to make progress in reducing the incitement and anti-Israel sentiments that are sometimes expressed in schools and mosques and in the public square, because all those things are impediments to peace.”

Asked how he’ll respond if Israel continues its settlement-building and refusal of the two-state solution, Obama announced that by god he had a plan: “We’ll, I think it’s important not to assume the worst, but to assume the best.”

Intrinsically evil

Former Pfc Steven Green, convicted for his part in the Mahmudiya Massacre, in which he and his buds killed an entire family in order to gang rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer al-Janabi, whose body they set on fire, escaped the death penalty, evidently because some on the jury thought his acts were attributable to “the stress of Green’s bloody combat tour, poor mental health treatment in Iraq and weak leadership in his unit.” I haven’t posted about this for a week, because I’m not entirely sure what to say about people who think that people react to “stress” with rape and mass murder.

Yesterday, at a victim impact hearing (!), Green said he was “truly sorry” and that he now realized that the Iraq war is “intrinsically evil, because killing is intrinsically evil.” See, it’s just like an after-school special, in which everyone comes to learn a valuable lesson.

Contest

An Astute Reader, who may not wish to be identified, or asked why he was reading a New Scientist article about female ejaculation, sent in this nominee for Name of the Day: Florian Wimpissinger, an Austrian urologist at Rudolfstiftung Hospital in Vienna.

The article mentions another expert on female ejaculation, after whom the phenomenon should definitely be named: sexologist Beverly Whipple.

Or should it?

poll by twiigs.com

Marginal benefits

When Souter announced his retirement, I said I wanted a justice with criminal trial experience (I should have specified on the defense side). Because I’m tired of decisions like today’s in Montejo v. Louisiana, in which 5 justices pretended that eroding a suspect’s right not to be questioned without their attorney present, after they have invoked their right to that attorney, won’t lead to many people being falsely convicted on the basis of coerced confessions (WaPo: “The government...” that’s the Obama administration, folks “...said that suspects who don’t wish to talk to police don’t have to and that officers must respect that decision.” Of course they must. Indeed, Scalia referred to not having many people being falsely convicted on the basis of coerced confessions as only a “marginal benefit” of the previous (Jackson) rule.

When Thurgood Marshall retired, one of his old clerks recounted to NPR a story Marshall had told his clerks from his old NAACP days, when he had arrived in some Southern town only to be told that his client had been lynched the night before. Somehow I don’t think he’d have been too impressed by the “marginal benefits” claim.

Ricci Rich

Evidently the right will be attacking Sotomayor on the Ricci case, in which the Second Circuit ruled that Christina Ricci should really be more selective in her choice of roles.

Though oddly, they can grow up to be the Hardy Boys

Sonia Sotomayor on why she became a lawyer: “I chose to be a lawyer, and ultimately a judge, because I find endless challenge in the complexities of the law.”

Barack Obama on why Sotomayor became a lawyer: “when she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eight, she was informed that people with diabetes can’t grow up to be police officers or private investigators like Nancy Drew.”

Get your stories straight, people.

Name of the Day

Rabbi Kook.

Contest: Name That Remaindered Book

Dick Cheney is trying to sell his memoirs. But what should it be called? “From Wyoming to an Undisclosed Location.” “The Last Throes.” “Wouldn’t You Like to Know What I Kept in My Man-Sized Safe?” “No, I Won’t Shut Up Already.” And of course, “Go Fuck Yourselves.”

Your suggestions?

Caption contest

Obama, at the US Naval Academy graduation in Annapolis, and friend.

Life is returning back to normal

George Bush also gave a speech yesterday, at a high school in New Mexico. While Obama and Cheney were speaking about national security, Bush talked about dog shit. Now that he’s just an ordinary guy, he has to walk his ordinary dog Barney around the ordinary streets of his ordinary Dallas neighborhood and pick up Barney’s ordinary poop. “And there I was, former President of the United States of America, with a plastic bag on my hand. Life is returning back to normal.”

Of course, George Bush being George Bush, he had the bag on the wrong hand.

Cheney’s national security speech: Half-measures keep you half-exposed

Then it was Cheney’s turn to speak at the American Enterprise Institute, where he’d been chomping at the bit (quite possibly literally) for Obama to finish (they were watching Obama’s speech, which started late). So Cheney was just a little snotty: “It’s pretty clear the president served in the Senate and not in the House of Representatives, because, of course, in the House, we have the five-minute rule.” Take that, President Big Mouth!

(I’m limiting my commentary – I have a headache. Can’t imagine why.)

The speech was all 9/11, victory dance, and vendetta.

After a brief mention of secret surveillance, which focused on the NYT reporting of it (“It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn’t serve the interests of our country or the safety of our people.”), the speech was almost entirely about interrogation, 45 minutes on the virtues of torture, which was “legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.”

He’s also not too thrilled with Obama for releasing those Justice Dept memos: “The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question.” No they weren’t. “Releasing the interrogation memos was flatly contrary to the national security interests of the United States.”

“Over on the left wing of the president’s party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they’re after would be heard before a so-called truth commission.” Which is so-called, the commission or the whole idea of truth?



“All the zeal that has been directed at the interrogations is utterly misplaced, and staying on that path will only lead our government further away from its duty to protect the American people.”

“You’ve heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists.”

“[I]t takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men.”

“we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.”

“I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about values.”

“And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe.” And if there’s one thing Dick Cheney hates, it’s recklessness cloaked in righteousness that makes the American people less safe.


“The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. They may take comfort in hearing disagreement from opposite ends of the spectrum. If liberals are unhappy about some decisions and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the president is on the path of sensible compromise. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half-exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States; you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States.”

He went on at some length about how the Obamaites are backing away from Bushian rhetoric, and that’s making us weak too: “Apparently using the term war where terrorists are concerned is starting to feel a bit dated.”... “there are no more ‘enemy combatants’”... “back in the days of that scary war on terror”... “In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we’ve captured as, quote, abducted.”

“Attorney General Holder and others have admitted that the United States will be compelled to accept terrorists here in the homeland, and it has even been suggested U.S. taxpayer dollars would be used to support them.” Suggested by morons, and I’m pretty sure Holder never said any such thing.

EVERY TIME A EUROPEAN APPLAUDS, AN ANGEL DIES: “The administration has found that it’s easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo”.

THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE JIHAD BUSINESS: “An estimated 14 percent of those released previously are believed to be back in the business of jihad.”

He lambasted the idea, which Obama had alluded to in his speech, that American torture is a recruitment tool for terrorists: “it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It’s another version of that same old refrain from the left, We brought it on ourselves.” So why do terrorists really hate us? You’ll never guess. They hate us for our freedom.


“Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values, but no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things.”

“And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.” I’m pretty sure no nation’s value include welcoming being targeted by a terror network.

Debating Cheney’s interrogation policies is, of course, a grave threat to national security: “And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don’t stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead, the terrorists see just what they were hoping for: our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.”

He claimed that “President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate” although “What value remains to that authority is debatable, given that the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against and which ones not to worry about.”

Obama national security speech: The American people are not absolutist

Today Obama and Cheney have dueling speeches on national security (I’ll examine Cheney’s in a post later today). (Some of the pictures of Obama in this post are actually of the wax figure of Obama which arrived at the Wax Museum in San Francisco today. See if you can spot which ones.)

Obama repeatedly stressed the need to stick with our fundamental values*

*unless it is absolutely convenient not to. So there was a lot of stirring rhetoric interspersed with less stirring caveats.

He said that the Bush admin (which he never named) made after 9/11 “a series of hasty decisions” and “all too often... made decisions based on fear rather than foresight.” Oh, I’m pretty sure those are the same decisions they’d have made with the benefit of more time and less soiled underpants.


“Now, I know some have argued that brutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. ... That’s why we must leave these methods where they belong, in the past.” Er, they didn’t really belong there either. It’s not like waterboarding was ever a good idea.

“Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo, likely, created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.” So it’s like a Ponzi scheme....?


He said some prisoners will be tried by US courts for violating US laws, some will be tried by military tribunals for violating the laws of war, some will be released per previous court rulings, some transferred to other countries and... “Now, finally, there remains the question of detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.” Oh good, the legal category, so well known to the Constitution, of people who “cannot be tried and cannot be released.” “Examples of that threat include people who’ve received extensive explosives training at Al Qaida training camps or commanded Taliban troops in battle or expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans.”

“Expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.”


He explained that he released the Bush Justice Dept memos because “the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known. The Bush administration had acknowledged its existence. And I had already banned those methods.” Anyone else have the distinct impression that he would have covered them up if “the existence of that approach to interrogation” had not been “already widely known”?

“There was and is no debate as to what is reflected in those photos is wrong.” Obama doesn’t watch a lot of Fox News.

“I ran for president promising transparency. And I meant what I said. And that’s why, whenever possible, my administration will make all information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable.” You know, whenever possible. Of course it’s always possible; he means whenever it’s not inconvenient. When it is inconvenient, he’ll let the American people make uninformed judgments and hold the government unaccountable. Like his retention of the power to detain people indefinitely, this comes down to the same “trust us, we’re the good guys” approach as the Cheneyites.

Speaking of Cheney, he gave a little shout-out to his rebuttal speaker: “Some Americans are angry. Others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, in some cases, debates that they have lost.”

He opposes a truth commission. “I have opposed the creation of such a commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability.” Of course, the purpose of the truth commission would be to investigate things that our existing democratic institutions failed to prevent happening, so, you know, good luck with that.


“Already, we’ve seen how that kind of effort only leads those in Washington to different sides to laying blame.” Er, so?

IN OLDEN DAYS A GLIMPSE OF STOCKING: “on the one side of the spectrum, there those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism and would almost never put national security over transparency. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words -- anything goes.”

“Now, both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right. The American people are not absolutist. They don’t elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems.” You know what the Constitution and Bill of Rights – which you’re literally standing right in front of – are, Barack? A rigid ideology.

An opportunity to have a colonoscopy

Sen. Inhofe on how great it is to be a prisoner in Guantanamo: “anyone, any detainee over 55 has an opportunity to have a colonoscopy.” Whether he wants it or not. Clearly, the Dems voted to keep Gitmo open as a sneaky move to bring in socialized medicine.

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The ad which asks the burning question, If my dad married a man, who would be my mom?



Think of the children.

Oh, half a woman in thong, we hardly knew ye

In Britain, the scandal over MPs’ expenses is taking scalps. Speaker Michael Martin, who I always thought rather bad at presiding over Parliament, is out, as is Douglas Hogg (Indy headline: “Hogg Stands Down to Spend More Time Cleaning His Moat”). Many more MPs will stand down at the next election or be de-selected by their local parties.

Chinese authorities have stopped some... entrepreneur’s plans to open a sex theme park called Love Land, and sent in workers to tear it down. CAPTION CONTEST:

Heh, he said bottom

Budget Director Peter Orszag says the economy has “bottomed out.” Or does he mean the economy is a “bottom”?

Obama and Netanyahu: unfortunately, Bibi seems to have misplaced his address book

Today, Obama met with Binyamin Netanyahu, and then had a press conference. Obama said Bibi “has both youth and wisdom,” which in terms of misperception is right up there with Bush looking into Putin’s soul.


While they may have disagreed about a two-state solution, there was no disagreement about Israel’s proper identity as an ethno-sectarian state. Obama: “It is in U.S. national security interests to assure that Israel’s security as an independent Jewish state is maintained.” Netanyahu: “I think that the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state”. For what other state does the US recognize a principle of racial/ethnic/religious dominance as legitimate?


Bibi said “we don’t want to govern the Palestinians.” Not that he wants anybody else to do it either; anarchic chaos is just fine with him. “We want them to govern themselves, absent a handful of powers that could endanger the state of Israel.” You know, just a handful of powers.

Obama gently twitted Netanyahu on settlements (the Bib-stir authorized a new West Bank settlement just before leaving for Washington, an entirely new one as opposed to “expansion” of an existing settlement), saying that settlements are “a difficult issue. I recognize that, but it’s an important one and it has to be addressed.” Which, as Eli points out, is not a demand that settlement-building stop immediately. What else needs to be “addressed”? “I think the humanitarian situation in Gaza has to be addressed.” I believe the linguists call that the future nebulous tense.

What is it with New York Times columnists?

I mean, Paul Krugman has been stealing all his best ideas from me for years.

But he had a banana

Eyewitness Statement of the Day: “If he had had a gun he would’ve shot me. But he had a banana.”

Nice little social safety net you got here, it’d be a shame if something was to happen to it

Schwarzenegger, trying to influence next Tuesday’s vote, suggests the budget cuts that will ensue if when his initiatives are voted down. For example, do we really need the third and seventh grades?

So Nancy Pelosi said that the CIA failed to tell her about waterboarding in secret briefings, the CIA says it did. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the secret briefings are for: so that both sides can claim whatever it’s convenient to claim about what took place in them. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Pretty clear

Nancy Pelosi says the CIA lied to her, explicitly denying that there had been any waterboarding. John Boehner thinks he can prove that she is lying by this simple but deadly logic: “When you look at the number of briefings that the Speaker was in and other Democrat members of the House and Senate, it’s pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were.” When you have eliminated the impossible – the CIA failing to tell the truth at multiple briefings – whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” is now Kindliscious

Do you own a Kindle? Me neither. But if you do, you can now pay $0.99 a month to subscribe to this free blog on Kindle. You’re welcome.

Not particularly sensational

So let me get this straight. Obama has decided to fight the court-ordered release of torture pictures which, he claims, are “not particularly sensational” and “would not add any additional benefit to our understanding,” but would, if published, “further inflame anti-American opinion and... put our troops in greater danger.” So the pictures are unsensational but inflammatory. Or maybe he means unsensational to jaded Americans but inflammatory for excitable foreigners.

I’d guess that the real reason here, besides a lot of whining from the military, is that some of the pictures are of abuse that occurred in Obama’s favorite war, Afghanistan, where information about detainee abuse at Bagram – indeed, any information about detainees in Bagram – has been kept relatively quiet – no Lynddie Englands with digital cameras.

He focused on the fact that these abuses of prisoners – which at one point in his statement today he referred to as “alleged abuse” – occurred in the past. But not everyone shares his belief that the United States was born anew on January 20th. He inherited this country’s past along with its government, and while he attempts to sound like an objective outsider making judgments about what is or is not sensational, what will or will not aid the public understanding, he fails to realize that what he sounds like, because it’s what he is, is the head of a government covering up for employees of the government. He is not a disinterested bystander. Bush and Rumsfeld’s cover-up is now Obama’s cover-up.

What, according to Obama, are the dangers of releasing the photos? “I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.” I puzzled over that for a while with no success, but I think Digby has successfully decoded it: “Apparently, the logic is that the military will refuse to investigate criminal behavior if there is any chance that pictures of such criminal behavior could be made public. So we simply won’t make pictures of it public anymore.” To put it another way, the military has other goals that it values more than stopping the abuse of detainees, and Obama is validating those priorities.

In the end, it’s all about protecting our troops: “I am concerned about how the release of these photos would be -- would impact on the safety of our troops.” So if you oppose this cover-up, you hate our troops.

Seems to me I’ve heard all this before.

Name that party!

So the RNC intends to rename the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party.” Ha ha, the Democrat Socialist Party. It’s funny because it’s true.

Clearly the GOP needs a new name too. Any suggestions?

No role in his life and in his personality

Name of the Day (although that day may be sometime in the nineteenth century): the commander of Walter Reed, Col. Coots. Col. Norvell V. Coots, in fact. The V. stands for Vandervall, but then it would, wouldn’t it?

Donald Trump has decided that Carrie Prejean may retain her Miss California title, noting that her views on same-sex marriage are the same as Barack Obama’s. To be fair, I wouldn’t really want him to be Miss California either.

The pope’s spokesmodel, Rev. Federico Lombardi (director of the Vatican Press Office), after first denying that Ratzi had been in the Hitler Youth – “never, never, never” – had to admit that well yes he had but “This fact of the Hitler Youth had no role in his life and in his personality.” The reverend is in the good-and-evil biz, so you’d think he wouldn’t be suggesting that Benny was completely unaffected by the Hitler Youth as if this should be considered a good thing rather than a sign of deep moral obtuseness.

Pope Benny failed to mention his youthful Hitlerian experiences while visiting Israel and giving a speech at the Holocaust Memorial, and he spoke about the Holocaust (he used the approved, Jews-only term Shoah) in the passive voice, that is, without mentioning that Germans had anything to do with it. So perhaps he didn’t learn anything in the Hitler Youth after all.

Cheney is outraged

Icky Quote of the Day, from Randall Terry about Obama’s visit to Notre Dame: “Our mission is to tar him with the blood of the babies so he can never shake it between now and 2012.”

Yesterday on Fox Business News, Neil Cavuto interviewed a man whose mouth always waters when he hears the phrase “blood of the babies,” Dick Cheney.

He accused the Obama admin of missing the big torture picture: “They did it in a way that sort of blocked so far any real discussion of the results of the program, and instead focused upon the techniques themselves.”

Because when you focus on techniques such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, “walling” and the like, you miss the real outrage: “And they really began the debate then with the suggestions that perhaps people should be prosecuted for having participated in the program or the lawyers who gave us these opinions should be disbarred. I think it’s an outrage.” See, and you thought there was nothing so awful that could outrage Cheney.

A ROLLING CHENEY GATHERS NO MOSS: “I don’t think we should just roll over when the new administration says -- accuses of us committing torture, which we did not, or somehow violating the law, which we did not. I think you need to stand up and respond to that, and that’s what I’ve done.”

EXISTENTIALISM: Asked about the possibility of Israel bombing Iranian centrifuges: “I would find it that it would be a reflection of the fact that the Israelis believe this is an existential threat to the state of Israel. ... So, I would expect them to try to do something about it.”

Cavuto asked if Guantanamo prisoners should be released into the US and go on welfare. Cheney said no.

On Guantanamo, “I think if you didn’t have it, you’d have to invent it.”

He referred to the Uighur prisoners as “Chinese terrorists.”

He said Obama is using the economic situation as an “excuse... to significantly broaden the power and authority of the government over the private sector.” He has another solution, which is... wait for it... wait for it... tax cuts.

ON THE NEED FOR A FRESH NEW FACE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: “I like Jeb. I think he’s a good man. ... I’d probably support him for president.” He didn’t say who Jeb should choose as running mate...

Thought of the Day

Maybe we waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times because there were 83 ticking time-bombs.

How many Tories does it take to change a light bulb?

I’ve been enjoying the British scandal (by which I mean a lot of faux moral outrage about something fairly insignificant in the broader scheme of things) over MPs’ taxpayer-reimbursed expenses, which started with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith having to apologize for her husband’s porn pay-per-view habit, continued with David “Two Brains” Willetts (the Tory shadow secretary for innovation, universities and skills) hiring an electrician to change some light bulbs, and today reached Douglas Hogg, who was John Major’s agriculture minister, putting in claims for a mole man at his mansion (sadly, that’s a man who exterminates moles, not an actual mole-man) and of course for clearing the moat. Cleaning the moat. How many American politicians even own a moat?

Speaker of the House Michael Martin is outraged... that someone leaked the expense reports to the press. Says Times parliamentary sketchwriter Ann Treneman, “His attire didn’t help: at times, as the buffoon black robe ballooned away, he resembled an enraged parachute.”

Stand-up Obama

Obama, at the NerdProm: “In the next hundred days, our bipartisan outreach will be so successful that even John Boehner will consider becoming a Democrat. After all, we have a lot in common. He is a person of color. Although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

Read his entire gig here.

Or watch it. Part I



Part II

If we had been about torture, we wouldn’t have wasted our time going to the Justice Department

Dick Cheney went on Face the Nation this morning, because nothing says Happy Mother’s Day like Dick Cheney defending torture.

He was just happy to be there: “It’s nice to know that you’re still loved and are invited out in public sometimes.”

He accused the Obama admin of selective release of documents, and if there’s one thing Dick Cheney hates, it’s the selective release of documents: “They don’t have any qualms at all about putting things out that can be used to be critical of the Bush administration policies. But when you’ve got memos out there that show precisely how much was achieved and how lives were saved as a result of these policies, they won’t release those.”

AN INTELLIGENT INTERROGATION PROGRAM: On shutting down torture, which he says saved “thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives”: “Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America.”

OH, IT’S NEVER A WASTE OF TIME GOING TO THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: “If we had been about torture, we wouldn’t have wasted our time going to the Justice Department.” The logic is inescapable.


I’M NOT TAKING THE RAP FOR THIS ALONE: Asked if Bush knew about the torture: “I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.” He “basically” authorized it”?

Why Guantanamo is still needed: “The group that’s left, the 245 or so, these are the worst of the worst. This is the hard core. You’d have a recidivism rate out of this group of maybe 50 or 60 percent. ... I don’t know a single congressional district in this country that is going to say, gee, great, they’re sending us 20 Al Qaida terrorists.”

EVIDENTLY HE STILL HAS THAT MAN-SIZED SAFE: “I think there is room for moderates in the Republican Party.”

Rush and Colin Powell have been trying to expel each other from the Republican party. Where, oh where, does the Dickster stand?: “Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh, I think. I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”

A bridge over the valley of the Pennsylvania electorate

Follow-up: Arlen Specter’s fake cancer cure website, which I mentioned here yesterday, has now been altered, making it clear that funds raised will go to the Specter campaign and not cancer, unless of course you consider Arlen Specter to be a cancer on the body politic.

Chores

A survey (in Britain) has determined that cleaning the oven is the most disliked household chore.

Wait... you’re supposed to clean the oven?

There are people who want to create panic in the country and destroy it

Obama admin people are referring to prisoners “we cannot release and cannot try” as if that’s an actual legal category.

The Pakistani military is finally responding to American demands that they start killing Pakistanis (or, as the army spokesmodel called them, “miscreants”), using air strikes and mortars (what else you gonna do with miscreants?) and calling for residents of the Swat valley to flee so they can turn it into a free-fire zone. The army is air-dropping leaflets saying, “There are people who want to create panic in the country and destroy it. Do you want that?” That’s a trick question, right?

(Update: and the NYT quotes another government pamphlet which associates the Taliban with the worst miscreants of all: “They are the same as Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.”)

A bridge over the valley of death

Arlen Specter has launched “Specter for the Cure,” which he calls “a bold new initiative to reform our government’s medical research efforts, cut red tape and unstrangle the hope for accelerated cures.” His website proclaims, “Senator Arlen Specter intends to build a bridge over the valley of death.”

Or, to put it another way, Specter for the Cure is nothing more than a website at which you can donate money they want you to think is going to find a cure for cancer, but which actually goes to Specter’s re-election campaign.

Prick.

(Update: in case Specter is shamed into taking this down, I’ve taken the liberty of taking a screen capture.)