Monday, September 26, 2005

Functionally Disarmed

I've come to put this blog in order.

There's videotape of both Dick Cheney and Colin Powell saying that Iraq was functionally disarmed after the first Persian Gulf war. One statement was made right after the war, and the other was circa 2000. I don't remember which went when, since both men were involved in the war and the 2000 election. And you know my policy towards "fact checking". Suffice to say, I'm just going to treat my foggy memory as an article of faith. The point is that, after 1991, Saddam was never a threat to you, me, or Israel.

Was he following the letter of the law? Was he illegally armed to some extent? No, and yes. But so what?

Perhaps the greatest chimerical ruse perpetrated upon the American people in our history was the false choice between "letting Saddam flaunt the law" and this enormous, expensive, and thoroughly bungled invasion. I'm sorry, but this war was neither inevitable nor neccessary.

First of all, just because he was illegally armed didn't make him a threat. He couldn't have packed much of a punch. At least 60% of Iraq was demilitarized by no-fly zones. He was neutered by sanctions. He was monitored by inspectors until 1998. And despite the fact that Saddam and his cronies were flush with cash, Iraq the nation was broker than a philosophy grad student. Kurdistan was better off under the no fly zone, and women were better off under Saddam than the newly ascendant Ayatollahs.

Second, no pro-war conservative has ever thought on paper about the opportunity cost of this war. You're supposed to be conservatives. You're not thinking about alternative uses for that money? Never? Honestly, the people you'd call "Bush haters" think you've all got a bit of a "Dear Leader" thing going on. We'll get out of that feral sandpit half a trillion in the hole if we're lucky. I wouldn't know how to find out for sure, but I reckon $200 billion dollars is already a huge understatement.

What about the second degree costs? Your man ruined the prestige of the dollar. For an ideology so obessed with maintaining the economic hegemony of America, this is foolish strategy. "It doesn't matter what France thinks." "Freedom fries, fuck 'em all." And so on. How can you be so cavalier towards international opinion?

The trust of the spy network? "Screw them, I heard one of those guys took an order from his wife." All to protect a goddamed treasonous felon? What have we come to? Every one of you has spent hours of your life that you'll never get back thinking of why Karl Rove's not a scumbag for what he did to Valerie Plame.

When are the honest conservatives going to jump ship en masse? And when are honest conservatives going to admit that the Roy Moore's of the world are precisely the people the Founding Fathers were worried about when they put the separation of church and state into the First Amendment? "But the First Amendment wasn't written to keep a judge in the Deep South from planting an enormous granite carving of the Ten Commandments at the epicenter of his fiefdom." Yes it was.

And how exactly does "thou shalt not worship false idols" fit into the Enlightenment ideals of the Constitution? This is America, I can worship an Allen Iverson bobblehead if I want.

Speaking of amendments where people willfully ignore the Founders' intent:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Playing with guns in the woods of Michigan doesn't make a bunch of fat guys a "militia". Paintballers face more peril. Are you telling me you can justify a ban on oral sex and birth control, by vote of the legislature; but any laws whatsoever regarding weaponry should be dismissed out of hand?

Anyway, Saddam Hussein was an old man. He'd have been lucky to outlive Castro had we not given him bodyguards and doctors. His sons were incompetent and crazy, respectively. What would have happened when he died? A violent upheaval, some religious strife, disruption of oil supplies, and then eventually a strongman takes over. Christ it would have been terrible if something like that had happened. And don't think we wouldn't have dirtied our hands in that fight, but it would've been much, much cheaper, and a metric shitload more moral.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

"He's your President, not ours" --Dick Armey

Well my friend, I'm not going to get into a mudslinging match with you vis-a-vis levee funding. I'm familiar with your post, and I've read evidence to the contrary. We're dealing with the labyrinthine world of the federal government's budget here, and as Homer Simpson so wisely put it, "You can use statistics to prove anything, 14% of all people know that".

So I'm just going to go ahead and cede you this point. It's beautiful outside, and I'd rather flunk than do my homework. But I do have the following information from a trusted mutual friend working in Alabama right now:

"Oh... and the "it's the state's responsibility" stuff is empty. The Louisiana National Guard is around the most depleted in the country. My understanding is that their only available unit had been returned just that week. And the issue isn't really bodies, it's equipment.
All our national guard equipment is overseas. So Louisiana had no means to use their guard resources, because they were either in Iraq, or were soldiers 2 days back from Iraq.
So what did Blanco do? The smart thing. On Saturday, August 27, she struck a deal with Janet Napolitano of AZ for Arizona to send their guard and equipment to Louisiana. Here's where things get interesting. Guardsmen within their own state are under the control of the Governor. However in order to cross state lines, they require Presidential approval. That request was sent Saturday the 27th and was not approved until the afternoon of Wednesday the 31st." Maybe there's a good reason for this, but if the dates are factual than this reeks of malice.


As for "hating" President Bush, this assertion is pretty misguided. The only people I hate are Celine Deon and those two guys who mugged me a couple of weeks ago. Although they took my cash and gave me back my wallet, so I'm even having a hard time hating them.

I dislike President Bush. I think he's profoundly unqualified for the office both intellectually and morally; and I think his flowery rhetoric about freedom is rendered empty by his actions. And I agree that there are people whose reactions to him amount to knee-jerk antagonism, but I suspect that said response is really an in-house Democratic phenomenon. There are people who will give him no points for anything because there are so many Democrats who, sadly, are willing to give him credit, or the benefit of the doubt when he doesn't deserve it, just so they can seem reasonable.

In addition, Bush has earned peoples' distrust. This is in stark contrast to Clinton. Clinton did a good job by any number of Republican metrics, so you invented all sorts of phony scandals to attack and impeach him for. Bush is an abject failure by most Democratic metrics, and is treated accordingly. So I ask you, can you really equate Republican and Democratic contempt for the sitting President from the opposition party?


ps- I like the changes.

pps- **Update, I also hate these bastards posting advertising in the comments section. Brilliant assholes, may your teeth fall out and your women become barren.**

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

State Government

Given Clinton's success with socially moderate, business oriented, small government Republicans--why not just be a Democrat? Is it because you're afraid of even trying to do business with the old left wing should they regain control? That's reasonable, since that's precisely the reason so many Kerry voting Northeasters won't entertain perfectly sane paleoconservative ideas. There really is a lot of compromise potential in America. But we need to change the questions we ask.

There is something in the nature of modern business that frightens people. It's sheer scope is somehow unsettling. And now, with the end of oil and questions about sustaining our way of life gaining prominence, the institutionalized rapaciousness of corporations, and their humanity before the law, may need to be rethought.

We are not anti-business in the sense that we are fundamentally opposed to trading goods and services, or creating wealth. But it does seem to some people that some other people have a lot of money, and quite a lot of explaining to do too. There are other ways to create wealth, there has to be. Communism was about equal distribution; tomorrow's about equal contribution, or really the opportunity to contribute. The Washington Consenus has failed. Not miserably, but more than enough for people who don't have a few generations to sit around and wait to notice. Now, I'll be the first to admit I don't have the first fucking idea how this should be done, but I am sure George Bush's neo-Ricardian wet dream isn't it.

Back to the issue: State vs Federal government. This is just light years off the radar. Honestly, if that was really what's at stake here, and not defending ourselves from your lunatic fundamentalist cousins and their "Our lives suck, yours should too" revolution, legions of Clinton Republicans would come back to the table, and you could get control of your party back.

Most of us small "d" democrats believe in both smaller government and a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" ethos. Smaller government is a good principle in general, although our faith in it isn't dogmatic. We also believe that success begets success, and that success begets opportunity. Thus we believe social castes calcify over time, and that that's a bad thing, because access to opportunity should be egalitarian (although not outcomes--there's a marked difference between the two).

The examples you chose as basic Republican mantras are a little ironic though, since the current incarnation of the Republican party believes in neither smaller government nor good old fashioned elbow grease. The first point is fairly self-evident, this is big bacon meets Boss Tweed government at its worst, coupled with a knack for cutting relatively inexpensive social programs for effect. Although I don't fault you for believing GOP somehow still represents you on this issue, since even small government luminaries like Stephen Moore and Grover Norquist remain willfully blind to the very obvious in this respect.

Secondly, the Republican party believes in rewarding wealth, not work, which hardly jives with the whole idea of "picking yourself up by your bootstraps".

I don't want to dwell on New Orleans, but I thought we should mention it. This page should be casual, but not culturally tone deaf. While I agree with you that things have moved along at a reasonable pace after a chaotic start, I don't think that's what's angered so many Americans. There are two problems that are the federal government's fault, and they embody everything that's wrong with the Bush Administration.

The first is flagrant cronyism. "Brownie" is an old friend of Bush's, Joe Allbaugh's college roommate, and a heavyhitting fundraiser. And he may be the nicest guy in the world for all I know. It's irrelevant. Having been a lifeguard for 5 years, I personally am more qualified to run FEMA than Brown. He was forced out of his job as a horse lawyer, so Bush put him up at some government agency where he wouldn't attract that much attention--or so he thought.

The other is sheer fiscal recklessness. Everyone who studies these things knew the levees needed repair, and that it had to be a priority. But, in an attempt to appease the small government crowd with some symbolic cuts amid the build-up to the Iraq war, Bush gutted the requisite funding. Of course, fixing the levees would have cost hundreds of times less than this clean-up will, although probably more than the aforementioned bridge to nowhere in Alaska that doesn't seem to bother you, or Grover.

Liberals are not trying to blame the hurricane on Bush. That's a pretty basic Rove-style misrepresentation of the reality-based community's position. While the hurricane does raise questions about global warming, responsibility to future generations, and the like, they are beyond the scope of this post. But we are saying that this didn't have to happen like it did. Sober, rational funding decisions, in conjunction with political appointments based on merit, not who your roommate in college was, would have saved thousands of lives.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

The Big Talking Point

History is unfolding in New Orleans. This disaster ties together so many loose ends, so many seemingly random real-world mishaps. Because this isn’t really a story about a natural disaster; this is the story of an incompetent government with sincerely perverted priorities. This administration is a toxic mix of unwarranted certitude and an idiotic devotion to symbolism. This is the final triumph of politics over policy.


I'm all f'klempt, talk amongst yourselves...

The Price of Loyalty

Are old school liberals better off now? Of course not. Are they really worse off though? I kinda doubt it. They experienced in the 1990's what many honest Republicans are going through today: the cannibalization of their beliefs by the trappings of power. Is it better to have your party or the opposition implement legislation you hate?

O.G. Liberals are functionally neutered regardless of who's in charge, and their beliefs are alien to the Kerry-voting Northeast. I personally have little time for yellow-dogs and the Democratic dinosaurs of the Tip O'Neill era. Why on earth would I vote for a party that's both culturally conservative and economically xenophobic? Besides, I'm sure you're well aware of the unrest that stirred on Clinton's left flank for eight years.

Let me ask you a question. What if, on paper, the Republican Party represents your views on about 85% of their positions; but, you find their positions on certain things to be completely antithetical to your sense of morality? And what of the inverse? Say the Democrats get most things wrong, but stand firm and don't budge on those issues closest to your heart?

At the top of this page you characterize yourself as a "solid Republican", although you're pro-choice, pro-stem cells, and would never stoop to half-witted dittohead cliches like "there's never been a successful government program in the history of this country", or, "the world will be awed by my artistic prowess when they get a load of the ties I'm designing". What exactly keeps you in Bush's corner? Are you sticking around for the hundred gazillion dollar medicare bill, the $240 million bridge to nowhere in Alaska, or the impending crackdown on pornography?