Someone Here is Lying

I guess it’s sort of a chicken-egg scenario. Does a polarized society breed a polarized media or does a polarized media breed a polarized society? Increasingly we are seeing folks take opposite positions not on opinion but on the facts. When that happens, someone plain and simple, is lying.

There are loads of examples but the one that was most recently brought to my attention by my readers is the case of Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings. Let’s start with the phrase “Safe Schools Czar”. This phrase fits in with the conservative talking point that Obama has all these unconstitutional “czars”. The Safe Schools Czar was in fact created by George W. Bush as part of No Child Left Behind and was staffed with two people with no qualifications in education. Jennings, appointed by Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education  (not Obama) was the first Safe Schools Czar with any background in education.

Let’s dig deeper and look at some of the coverage:

Jennings hid a case of statutory rape: A student confided in Jennings that he had been involved with an older man. Jennings “counseled” him that he should wear protection. Jennings actually contributed to the statutory rape part of the story by mistakenly referring to the boy as 15 years of age when he was in fact 16 (the age of consent).  Fox News had to correct its sensational headline when the boy himself came forward with evidence of his age. To further lay the matter to rest, Jennings said:

Twenty one years later I can see how I should have handled this situation differently. I should have asked for more information and consulted legal or medical authorities. Teachers back then had little training or guidance about this kind of thing. All teachers should have a basic level of preparedness. I would like to see the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools play a bigger role in helping to prepare teachers.

via Kevin Jennings Releases Statement on Past Controversial Conduct.

Admittedly, this statement is a bit too little too late. As gay conservative blogger, B. Daniel Blatt points out, the issue is how could anyone in counseling the boy neglect to give the obvious advice to NOT have casual sex with strangers (which is what the boy admitted to).  By fanning the flames of a bogus statutory rape charge, the right-wing lost the opportunity to hammer home Blatt’s more relevant point.

Jennings is a NAMBLA supporter: This one falls in the “Obama pals around with terrorists” category, namely lazy connect the dots journalism. Jennings, who is gay, spoke positively of Harry Hay, a gay activist from the 1950’s and  1960’s. He found inspiration from Hay’s advocacy.  Some headlines cited Hay as founder of NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association). The fact is that Hay did not found NAMBLA although late in his life he was a vocal NAMBLA sympathizer. At no time did Jennings voice support for NAMBLA nor did he say that Hay’s support of NAMBLA influenced him.

Jennings distributed porn to students: This is one of the latest shoddy jobs of journalism (i.e. lies) coming out of the right-wing. Jennings founded and led GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network). GLSEN sponsored a conference at which a third-party (Fenway Community Health) made available pamphlets describing explicit sexual activity. GLSEN did not request this information be made available nor did it approve of it. It was basically a slip up.

Now let’s look at this slip up from a few different angles. First, this was not classroom activity in a school, this was a conference about sexual matters and any parent taking their kid to such a conference had to understand the inherent risk of seeing information that might be over the top. I cannot for the life of me comprehend why any parent would take their kid to such a conference. Second, although Fenway claims no child took any of the pamphlets, let’s assume one did. Would that pamphlet scar him for life? Would it be any different from the kid finding a Hustler magazine in the basement? Cable companies have accidentally broadcast porn in the middle of a family show. While it triggered outrage, were any kids permanently scarred? Third, there is the question of what information should be shared with kids by way of preparing them for the real world. While I found the information in the pamphlet age-inappropriate (various “alternative” sexual practices were discussed) it reminded me of information I received in junior high school some 35 years ago. Back then, under the guise of informing kids about drugs so they wouldn’t use them, very detailed information was distributed to students on every drug imaginable, its effects, its slang names, etc. Years later, I looked back on it a bit puzzled. Why would you tell kids everything they wanted to know about drugs if the goal was to keep them away from it? In my opinion this is a typical pattern in educational circles of giving too much information. While the GLSEN conference is an extreme case, I think it fits the pattern.

Jennings wrote the forward to a pedophilia book: This is one of the more preposterous of the lies promulgated by the right-wing media. This lie is almost understandable because the truth is much more complex and to many minds, just as disturbing. Fox and friends simply found the lie easier to sell than the more complicated truth. The book in question is titled Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling. I read an excerpt on Amazon.com. From my reading, it starts from the premise that homosexuals are born that way and therefore, teachers have in their class straight and gay students. Right off the bat, this premise leaves behind an entire league of people for whom homosexuality is deemed a choice, not an innate predisposition. With that premise in place, the book goes on to discuss how can we educate “homosexual children” in such a way that they are not demeaned or pigeon holed into a heterosexual model of behavior.

To any ordinary Joe, this is some radical stuff. The whole idea of labeling a five year old gay is ridiculous to some and downright repugnant to many. The fact is, as far as I can surmise, Kevin Jennings is steeped in a very political view of gay rights that includes the perception that gays are unfairly treated right out of the womb. (By the way, his “hero” Harry Hay seems to have the same view.)

So what is the bottom line to all this? In the never-ending effort to dumb down America and get eyeballs on web pages and TV screens, the right-wing media chose a bunch of lies (and some half-truths) to get everyone riled up about Kevin Jennings. What is fascinating is that the truth, although perhaps harder to present on paper, still leaves the average person with misgivings about Jennings. Should Duncan have appointed him? Despite Jenning’s stellar resume, I think Duncan bought himself more trouble than he needed to. America is justifiably sensitive about who controls their children’s education. While I believe Jenning’s ultimate influence in his job is small, mostly limited to anti-bullying campaigns, his real background (not the trumped up BS) touches on radical ideas for which most of the country is not yet ready. Some may call Jennings an outright pervert, others may call him a man before his time. No matter how you cut it, Duncan could have made a better choice.

If you want to investigate the different sides of this story, Gateway Pundit has made an entire side-business to “following” Jennings. Media Matters has taken the position of supporting Jennings (unfortunately mostly by saying “that’s not true, that’s not true” but providing little contrary evidence). Think Progress wrote a practical unemotional attempt to fact check the Jennings stories. George Stephanopoulos and Sean Hannity square off on the topic, with George trying to be a journalist and Hannity yelling the sky is falling.

Unfortunately, as long as the media chooses to lie instead of doing the hard work, you will have to do your own research to get a better understanding of any issue.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Is Barack Obama an American?

No, I have not lost my mind. I have not become a “birther”. President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 (incidentally the same year I was born in New York City), is a citizen of these United States and is a legitimate President. What I want to address here goes beyond the facts of his birth. I want to get an angle on the constant “he’s not one of us” theme that we hear. I want to get beyond the obvious suspicions of racism and go a bit deeper, or since the argument is fairly obvious, perhaps not that deep. You be the judge.

On Sean Hannity’s Fox News broadcast former Vice President Dick Cheney made the usual ass of himself but one of the things he said can be examined more closely.

Cheney says, “this is a guy who … does not share that view of American exceptionalism that most of us believe in.” Let’s put aside the disrespect inherent in “this is a guy” (he’s your damn President DICK), and look at the statement. Obama does not believe that America is exceptional. One could look, as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews did, at Obama’s keynote speech at the Democratic convention in 2004 where he says that his story could only happen in America, and see that Obama thinks our country is special. But does he see this in an academic, almost clinical way? Does he feel it viscerally?

Let’s rewind a few months to see Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz’s assessment:

The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.

via Dorothy Rabinowitz: Obama’s Tone-Deaf Health Campaign – WSJ.com.

Dorothy says Obama is a “stranger to the country’s heart and character.” A similar perception to that of the former Vice President. Is Obama simply a victim of this assessment or has he contributed to it in some way?

I think there is an intuitive answer that demonstrates Obama’s contribution to this perception. From the time he was born until he graduated from high school, Barack Obama lived outside the mainland United States. I would argue that Hawaii, just barely a state in 1961, was hardly representative of the “American experience” and of course, Obama spent several years in Jakarta, Indonesia. Twenty years after his graduation from an exclusive Hawaiian high school, he wrote in their bulletin, “The opportunity that Hawaii offered — to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect — became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear.” [1] I think we could safely argue that although mostly raised by his Kansas bred grandparents, Barack Obama got anything but a typical mid-west white bread view of America.

I believe that having not lived in the mainland United States until college, that Obama had an objective view of our country atypical of most of our other Presidents. In Obama’s world view, America might be special, but not necessarily “better” than other civilized countries. America might be a land of virtue and ideals but not the be-all end-all barometer of morality. On the contrary, America could be capable of doing the wrong thing. America could be imperfect. America could need improvement.

I believe that Obama’s objective view of our country, much from the perspective of an outsider (even more outside than the average black man), makes his love for our country appear less visceral. America likes its Presidents to reek of Americana, whether it’s Abe Lincoln splitting logs or Eisenhower or Kennedy bravely defending their country in war. Obama comes to us with a different story. A story of an outsider who wants to fix the problems that the insiders may be too blind to see. Such outsiders do not usually engender affection from the insiders.

Is Barack Obama an American? Well, yes he is but he is a different kind of American. He is an American who believes you can be special and still be equal to your peers, showing them respect and apologizing when you’ve done them wrong. America is a proud country, proud to a fault. Humility, on an international scale runs, as Ms. Rabinowitz puts it “counter to its nature.” Hence she and Dick Cheney will probably never understand what a good American Barack Obama really is.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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A Typical Week in Silly Season

Let’s end the work week with some brief items mostly trivial although clearly some less trivial than others.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Apparently at the White House it is indeed guesswork to figure out who is coming to dinner. This was proven last week as the now infamous publicity whores known as the Salahi’s crashed Barack Obama’s State Dinner in honor of the Prime Minister of India. This is old news by now except for one recent and odd development in the story. Congress has been holding hearings investigating how the Salahi’s could have gotten into the White House without an invitation. When it was requested that the social secretary, Desiree Rogers appear before Congress to explain the White House staff’s contribution to this fiasco, the request was denied citing executive privilege. Excuse me? We’re not asking Ms. Rogers to spill state secrets. We’re asking her to own up to her and her staff’s screw up. Granted, the Secret Service is the first line of defense and they deserve a thorough thrashing but they weren’t the only ones who screwed up. (Apparently when the White House staff was made aware that the Salahi’s should not have been there, nothing was done to remove them.) The White House reaction to this incident, including the declaration of executive privilege leads me to believe not only were they complicit in the “crashing” but they don’t understand the severity of the error.

On a side note, should anyone be surprised that the Secret Service screwed up their end of this? Our memories are way too short. When George W. Bush got a shoe thrown at him, the only thing that saved him from minor injury was his own excellent reflexes. The fact that the assailant got off another shoe and that Bush was still in the “line of fire” for the second volly shows that the Secret Service is far from infallible. After the first shoe, Bush should have been tackled to the ground by an SS guy while another SS guy put a bullet in the shoe-throwers head. You don’t attack the President. Plain and simple. With these examples of lackluster performance, it is truly amazing that we haven’t seen a “successful” assassination since 1963.

The Joke, er, Jobs  Summit

I’ve heard two people share their view of the hastily assembled  Jobs Summit that was held Thursday in Washington. Both people said something to the effect of “I heard some interesting things at the Summit.” Sorry, I’m not interested in a bunch of CEO’s getting together and sharing interesting insights, especially when many of those CEO’s are the greedy bastards who have put thousands of people out on the street to please their stock holders.

In addition to labor leaders, economists and think-tank sorts, the attendees included business leaders from AT&T (where 12,000 jobs were cut a year ago and about 4,600 this year), Boeing Co. (where 6,212 net jobs have been eliminated since November 2008), AstraZeneca (6,000 cuts this year and 1,400 last year), American Airlines (which laid off 6,800 last summer and more workers in October), Home Depot (which announced 7,000 jobs cuts in January), Dow (which cut 5,000 last December), U.S. Steel (3,500 cuts in North America), Xerox (3,000 jobs cut this year), Disney (which eliminated 1,900 jobs in the first quarter), and Dow Corning Corp. (which cut 800 workers globally earlier this year).

via Jobs Summit Features Execs Who Have Cut Many Jobs — Sphere News, Opinion and Analysis.

What really burned me up was hearing the Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Jeffrey Sachs tell MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that a lot of businesses are claiming “they can’t hire the workers that they need right now.” You’ll never guess why. Apparently, “they can’t hire skilled workers. They can’t find the welders. They can’t find the people who really know the trades.” These companies supposedly have jobs but the kids dropping out of school don’t have the skills needed.

Yes these companies want so badly to hire more people. I call BS big time. Have any of these companies heard of unpaid apprenticeships where you train the person and don’t pay him until he can do the job? Are you telling me that the able-bodied unemployed would not gladly work for free for a few months with a promise of employment once they’re trained? People have mortgages to pay. Many will do whatever it takes to secure a job. And I’m sorry folks, while welding is hard work, it’s not rocket science. Any company that really wants to hire can train within a few months and then have the employees they claim they want so badly.  To hear Dr. Sachs repeat this drivel made me sick. This is nothing more than excuse making. To add insult to injury, for purely political reasons a key player, the Chamber of Commerce was not even invited to the summit. Will anything come out of this summit? Only time will tell but as of today, I am not impressed.

Take My Picture, Please

Our favorite Facebook political pundit, Sarah Palin is charging her “fans” sixteen bucks to get their picture taken with her on the book tour. Considering that many bookstores have reduced the price of her book, Going Rogue to $20.00, it costs you almost as much to get a lousy photo as it does to buy the book itself. On the bright side, Ms. Palin has proven once and for all that she is no socialist. In World-Palin, capitalism is alive and well.

What do Meredith Baxter and Tiger Woods Have in Common?

You wouldn’t think that the actress from “Family Ties” fame, Meredith Baxter would have much in common with pro golfer Tiger Woods but you’d be wrong. Apparently they both like girls a bit more than we thought they did. In the case of Ms. Baxter, she announced this week that she is a lesbian. OK, so what. An entertainment footnote if ever there was one. The case of Tiger is a bit different. Folks through no fault of Tiger’s, assumed he was the wholesome athletic hero worthy of being on the Wheaties box. They discovered over the past week that Tiger has been doing way more with his putter than anyone expected, least of all his wife, who may very well have smashed a hole in his car with a golf club when she learned of his indiscretions. While this story is a week old, there is a new development worth addressing.

Apparently, Mrs. Woods is renegotiating the pre-nup agreement with her husband. As I understand it, Tiger will give her $5 million now and an additional $55 million if she sticks around for another two years.

Now folks, call me an old-fashioned romantic but where I come from if a woman is justifiably angry at her husband for infidelity, she has two choices. Either forgive him and stick around or divorce him and get as much money as you can. Mrs. Woods seems to be making a third choice. We have a name for women who get paid to “stay” with a man. The nice word is “escort”. We all know what the not-so-nice word is.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Afghanistan Clear as Mud

It has been over 24 hours since President Barack Obama made his speech announcing our strategy in Afghanistan going forward. Conservatives, as could be expected, used the speech as another opportunity to bash Obama. The speech was not perfect and the plan it described less so, but in the usual brain-dead fashion Conservatives seized upon the dumbest of talking points.

Karl Rove said the President took longer to give the generals 75% of what they asked for than it took Bush to defeat the Taliban back in 2001. Karl has clearly lost his mojo since we wouldn’t be talking about Afghanistan right now if Bush had defeated the Taliban in 2001.

Another criticism is that we have announced an exit date, giving our enemy the time period in which they can sit tight and wait to re-emerge. More foolishness. We are going to have an 18 month target to achieve our objectives and then depending on conditions on the ground, we will turn over responsibility to the Afghans.

When it comes to military exercises, I’m more or less a regular Joe. I have to distill all the complexities down to the basics. If the Conservatives had half a brain they would be making their complaints based on the basics.

Here are the basics:

1. We will teach the Afghan army and police how to kick Taliban ass.
2. We will nation build. Yes I know Obama calls it a “civilian strategy” but let’s be frank. If you are helping a government behave like a democracy in the image of America, you are nation building.
3. Stronger ties with Pakistan, vaguely stated.

My average Joe perspective on this is that the strategy is muddled at best. First, we cannot afford to go into every country where a corrupt central government is unable to protect its people from the local thugs. The Taliban may be a scourge but how are they a threat to the United States? They want to oppress fellow Afghans. Disturbing, shameful but really not our problem. Our problem is Al Qaeda which has all but disappeared from Afghanistan.

Second, nation building only works in a country that cries out for our brand of democracy. The notion that we will turn centuries of tribal tradition into a united people who respect a central government within 18 months is a wild stretch of the imagination. I have seen no reports of Afghan soldiers particularly wanting to be trained by us. In fact, the situation looks quite grim:

General Egon Ramms, a German commander in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, warned last month that the current police force of around 68,000 is prone to corruption and training has been less than efficient.

Out of 94,000 Afghan soldiers trained so far, 10,000 have defected, he said, while estimating that 15 percent of the armed forces are drug addicts

via The Raw Story | Obama surge stands or falls with Afghan training.

Finally, the third leg in the stool is the wobbliest, the least well defined and yet to my mind the most important. Al Qaeda is in Pakistan. Pakistan has nukes. Pakistan seems more worried and paranoid about India than about the terrorist thugs within their own borders. The bold move and the most truly hawkish one would have been to issue an ultimatum to Zardari that either he cleans up the Al Qaeda mess in his country, including the capture of Osama Bin Laden, within a particular timeframe, or we will send troops into Pakistan and get the job done ourselves. Wonder what old Dick Cheney would have said about that?

As it stands now, we have to hope that the assumption that Afghanistan is a carbon copy of Iraq, just one surge away from stability is the correct one. It does not look like we will see the Afghan equivalent of the Sunni awakening to help us along. We have to hope that an illegally elected President with a drug kingpin for a brother will prove to be a reliable ally. We have to hope that Pakistan will act in good faith to combat the criminals in their own country.

To my average Joe mind, this seems like a lot of hope and not a lot of strategy.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Thanks and Humility

This week is the week for giving thanks and probably a time for a bit of introspection and humility. Of course, one of the things I’m thankful for are the folks who read my blog, the modest set of folks who follow me on Twitter and the handful of folks who listen to my Internet radio show. As I was finishing off a slice of pumpkin pie last night it occurred to me that eating a couple of slices of humble pie might be appropriate for today’s post.

The first slice involves a topic that I have never written about in the main body of the blog but I have mildly debated it within the comments section. I am one of those who champions the notion of climate change and calls climate change skeptics ignorant neanderthals. So, man did I have egg on my face earlier this week when some emails unearthed by a hacker revealed some shenanigans going on with the data supporting global warming. Apparently the following damning sentence was found in email exchanged among scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

When scientists use the words “trick” and “hide” it’s natural for us ordinary folks to become a bit concerned. Climate change advocates say the sentence was taken out of context. Climate change skeptics are ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. While I am not ready to throw the baby out with the bath water, this incident does make me reevaluate what government’s role should be in science. I am almost ready to say that our founding principle of separation of church and state should be extended to separation of science and state. I think it ’s worth investigating whether science becomes contaminated when politicized. I haven’t figured out when is the proper juncture for government to act on the findings of science but I think in the case of climate change it has become uncertain who is the cart and who is the horse. Scientists have always had a problem with pride of  ownership that can interfere with their objectivity, but this is doubly compounded when politicians get involved and the stakes for being wrong get too high. If you think a scientist has a problem being wrong, you haven’t seen anything until you look at politicians.  Clearly the “climate change movement” has taken a bad credibility hit. We need to restore objectivity and get the politicians out of this for a while (do you hear me, Al Gore?).

The second slice of humble pie involves some intellectual dishonesty on my part. Such dishonesty usually comes back to kick one in the ass and this week I did indeed get my ass kicked. Back in September, I published an article about a census taker in Kentucky who was found hanged under mysterious circumstances. I used the event to prove that the evil right-wing was on the march. The worst offense was the following claim:

Much of the media is approaching this story with caution. Clearly, the investigation is just beginning and this could be either a very bizarre suicide or a “prank” homicide completely unrelated to any political agenda. If either case proves to be true, we should still stop and contemplate this moment. Regardless of what really happened, what are many of  us thinking right now and why?

Well, I should have approached the story with much more caution, like not have written about it in the first place. It turns out that the terminally ill census taker staged his own murder so his son could get the insurance.  The best part is when I say that regardless of the facts we should still contemplate what happened. This kind of reminds me of when my buddy Rush Limbaugh found out that an Obama thesis story he had covered was a hoax and then said the fiction was consistent with fact and therefore didn’t deserve a retraction.

Well friends, sometimes emotional fervor interferes with clear thinking. When the facts of the case dictate that some right-wing looney tune has gone off the deep end, then and only then is it appropriate to get one’s bowels in an uproar about it. You probably won’t see Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow say “my bad” about this one, but you will see me say it.

MY BAD and I hope you all had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Religion as Salad Bar (Part 2)

During the Obama campaign, I wrote about my theory of religion as a salad bar and I suppose that article could be considered Part 1. In that article I proposed that what kept Obama in Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years was the typical salad bar approach  that many have to religion. I listen to what pleases me and I discard the rest.  Obama claims he never heard Wright say anything inflammatory. That just doesn’t pass the sniff test. I contend, Barack didn’t hear what he didn’t want to hear.

Now we move onto Part 2. For what must be purely political reasons, Patrick Kennedy, Democratic Representative from Rhode Island and son of the late great Senator Ted Kennedy, has decided to air his religious dirty laundry in public. Apparently back in 2007, Bishop Thomas Tobin told Kennedy essentially that he was not a good Catholic and therefore could not receive communion. The crux of the rift between Kennedy and his church was his pro-choice stance on abortion. According to Politico, Kennedy was not the only politician held in disdain by Tobin for a pro-choice preference.

On MSNBC’s “Hardball”, Chris Matthews pulled no punches in his interview with Tobin. If you can get past Matthews’ relentless and often irritating interview style, you get some interesting questions regarding separation of church and state.

When the church holds politicians personally accountable for the legislation they support is that a (not so) subtle way of influencing debate? Is Tobin right that it is the job of the church to provide moral guidance to government even if the church does not actually write the laws? I found Tobin’s argument compelling even if he could not handle the ultimate job of deciding what the punishment should be for illegal abortions.

But I digress. What I really want is to shine a light on the typical “religious so long as it suits me” attitude of Patrick Kennedy who wants to have his wafer and eat it too. I’m sorry dude but you signed up to be a Catholic. No one put a gun to your head to force you into it. Your church says abortion is wrong and if you support views contrary to that, then you’re not towing the line of your church. So it’s very simple, you don’t get communion. To me it’s a lot like the gay couples who want to yell and scream about not getting church weddings. Folks, at least if you’re a Christian, your religion considers your lifestyle an abomination. You’re not gonna change that. So get out of the church or find one that thinks differently. Same goes for Representative Kennedy. Catholicism is no salad bar, despite what you may see many of your hypocritical fellow Catholics do. Either you abide by the teachings of the church or you suffer whatever consequences the church has for you. It’s really that simple.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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The GOP Didn’t Care Enough to Even Debate Health Care

This is what the Republican members of the Senate did tonight. They voted unanimously that health care reform in this country was not worth debate. Period. No tort reform. No interstate sales of insurance. None of their other supposed solutions that sidestep the public option. Nothing. No debate. Just kill it.

A bunch of irresponsible bastards who will have your children’s blood on their hands if heaven forbid your children 20 years from now can’t get a job with health care and suffer a catastrophic illness. You have today’s ignorant Republicans to blame for your children’s future suffering.

As much as I disdain Joe Lieberman, at least he voted in favor of debate. That’s all we wanted tonight was a chance to carry the ball forward, to debate and amend. That is the American way. Well that is unless you are a Republican dead set on bringing down the Presidency of Barack Obama.

Well guess what, suckers. We had the votes, the votes came through and the debate will commence. I hope the obstructionist punks keep saying no all the way down the line so that true patriotic Conservatives can take notice and throw their sorry asses out of Congress in November of 2010.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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The Prosecution of KSM: Unintended Consequences

The stench of hypocrisy rising from the gut of conservatives over the weekend is overwhelming. You see, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM for short) and four other 9/11 terrorists would be tried in the Southern District of New York Federal court. Now we know the GOP is all for good old-fashioned American justice. Perhaps if a Republican administration had made this decision, we’d be hearing about what a proud moment it will be when these thugs get their just deserts in the city they tried to bring down. But alas, the Attorney General in a Democratic administration made the decision and now it is damn near treason!

The folks who want to impeach Obama just for breathing, list a bunch of imaginary horribles for why a federal trial is a bad idea. It makes New York vulnerable. That’s the claim of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (“America’s Mayor”, cough, cough). Of course he didn’t feel that way when the original World Trade Center bombers were brought to justice in New York. Giuliani was all for it then. Rudy also conveniently ignores that Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th 9/11 hijacker was tried and convicted in Virginia and Virginia still stands today, never remotely in danger of any terrorist strike.

Conservatives who are the first to scream and shout about the beauty of our constitution and criminal justice system seem to have suddenly lost all faith in it. What if KSM gets off on a technicality? Well let’s face a practical reality here folks. KSM has so many pending charges against him that if he beats the first charge (not likely), he’ll go right back into custody awaiting trial on the next charge. You won’t see KSM enjoying soul food at Sylvia’s any time in the near future.

So what is really bothering our conservative brothers? What is the “technicality” that really has them apoplectic? Well you see, our country which prides itself on the rule of law, shouted most loudly from the rooftops by chest beating right-wingers, was a baaaaaaad boy over the past eight years. We did nasty things to our prisoners during that time. Some call it torture but just about everyone can agree it was nasty. Now under the rule of law any evidence obtained from a prisoner who suffered under your watch, usually gets tossed out during a trial. As luck would have it, these fanatical thugs left an evidence trail so long and so obvious that convictions will be easy even with the smell of torture in the air. But nevertheless, just the thought that our behavior may be on trial has conservatives in an uproar.

The truth is any public scrutiny of what we did to these defendants while in custody will be an unintended but completely deserved consequence of a federal trial. Dick Cheney and his band of 24 devotees acted with such blatant disregard for international law, that their supporters are now crapping in their pants at the thought that we may have rendered KSM and other Gitmo detainees un-prosecutable. I believe Eric Holder has found a path toward conviction that detours around Cheney’s shenanigans.

There is satisfaction and dare I say justice in watching conservatives squirm right now. What they have claimed was perfectly legal treatment of detainees suddenly has them worried about how legal it will appear in a real court. Richard Nixon once told David Frost (I paraphrase here) that nothing the President does can be illegal. That was the arrogance that informed the Bush administration. Over the next couple of years of prosecutions, we liberals will show the world how our criminal justice system is supposed to work and in so doing, we will atone for the sins of the past eight years.

We will walk it like conservatives talk it. That is poetic justice indeed!

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Liz Cheney: The Chick of the Chicken-Hawk Should Just Go Away

First Obama is evil for wanting to send a positive message to our school children. Then he is evil for wanting to try to get the Olympics held here. Then he is evil for not outright rejecting the admittedly odd honor of the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, none of that should be too surprising since none of those issues reside in the sweet spot of conservatives. You would think though, that Obama honoring our war dead would be something that even our right-wing brethren could get behind.

Apparently not. On the radio, the former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, whom MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell called Dick’s “pet attack dog”, found fault with the President’s recent visit to Dover Air Force Base to honor the war dead on their final trip home. She seemed to find it unseemly that the President be there “with the White House press pool”. This stupid excuse for a “patriot” neglected to mention that unlike during her father’s time, families of war dead can now request that cameras be present at their deceased loved ones homecoming. She also neglected to mention that the families who gave and did not give permission for the televised homecoming were unaware that the President would be there.

But Lawrence O’Donnell, who subbed for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s “Countdown” can tell the story much better than I can:

That’s right. Not only could Bush not be seen at Dover since he didn’t allow cameras there, but he was NEVER there himself to honor the war dead. Vice President Cheney, no doubt afraid to leave his undisclosed location, was also never seen at Dover in the seven years that he promoted the suicide mission that was the Iraq war. Liz says of the war dead that there is no greater sacrifice that someone can make to the nation. How would she know? Her father dodged military service not once but five times.

As I’ve suffered through the increasingly frequent appearances of Liz Cheney in the media, I got to wondering why we don’t ever see Cheney’s other daughter Mary. As you know, Mary is a lesbian. So I did some digging and found what I consider to be a very conflicted woman. With apologies to everyone who finds David Letterman’s recent behavior disgusting, I offer an unusually politically astute interview he did with Mary back in 2006.

Fascinating that Mary put her concern for national security above her own self-interest. Let’s face it, she supported an administration that wanted to amend the Constitution to outlaw same-sex privileges, not just marriage, but any legal protection for same-sex couples. In 2006, with her dad a lame duck VP, she then felt emboldened to write an autobiography calling for equal rights for gays and lesbians, when it was too late to really make a difference. I can’t criticize Mary because her dilemma was understandable. Just look at the brilliant defense her father gave her a year later when she announced she was expecting her first child:

While the Dick was delighted to be getting a new grandchild (who wouldn’t be?), he stopped short of denouncing his supporters who consider Mary Cheney an abomination. He accused Wolf Blitzer of dealing a low blow. Why couldn’t he have said Focus on the Family was full of crap? The organization insulted his daughter and he felt insulted by Wolf Blitzer! After several seconds of receiving the Darth Vader death stare, Wolf sheepishly backed off. I would have persisted. I would have asked Cheney why he was a lousy hypocrite. He cared so much for his grandchild that he would have supported legislation that made that grandchild an orphan upon the death of his daughter.
This is the twisted world of the Cheneys. Why haven’t we seen much of Mary lately? Has she wised up that her father is a disgrace to this country? Or perhaps, in her typically self-sacrificing way, she’s willing to let her “normal” sister do all the talking?  When it comes to talking, most ex-Vice Presidents, unless they are pursuing the Presidency, fade into the woodwork and certainly don’t disparage the current President on a regular basis. This goes double for Vice  President’s children.

Liz, take a cue from the former Vice President’s children whose names we don’t even know, and just fade away.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Clinton Tells Pakistan What They Need to Hear

Back in May, I wrote about my distrust of Asif Zardari, the President of Pakistan, who at the time was complaining that Americans let Osama bin Laden get away. While I have criticized the Bush administration for their ham-fisted handling of Afghanistan, I found Zardari arrogant, bitter, ungrateful and no friend of the United States.

With that as a backdrop,  I was thrilled to see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tell the Pakistanis what’s what this week. Referring to high level Al Qaeda, such as Bin Laden, she said:

“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to”

via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Has Intense Exchange With Students in Pakistan.

Then in an exchange with Pakistani students, Ms. Clinton added that the government has a choice on whether to be aggressive against terrorists or be apathetic:

“If you want to see your territory shrink, that’s your choice”

When criticized for the terms of money transfers from the US to Pakistan, Clinton told her audience they don’t have to accept our money.

During the campaign I was quite critical of Clinton based on what I felt were some underhanded moves on her part, but I must say I love Secretary of State Hillary ten times more than I loved candidate Hillary. As we send young men and women to die in Afghanistan, it is partly to keep the crazies from getting hold of Pakistani nukes. Pakistan better have some real skin in the game real fast and figure out who their friends are.

I doubt, from what I’ve seen of Zardari that we can trust Pakistan any further than we can throw them. It complicates our mission in Afghanistan greatly and makes the President’s imminent decision about our strategy there the most difficult one he has faced in his first year, and perhaps the most difficult one he will face in his first term.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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