Stupid Country

Time's come....

2008-11-04T23:34:00.001-05:00

...to unflop the flag.

Congrats, America.

I Have Been Censored

2008-06-03T23:45:00.012-04:00

Taking the woman at her word, I went to HillaryClinton.com and did as she asked tonight: I wrote a response to her blog post, in which she says:

"This has always been your campaign, and tonight, there's no one I want to hear from more than you. I hope you're as proud as I am of what we've done and that you'll take a moment to share your thoughts with me now at my website."

My comment was critical. I said she had blown an opportunity to be the unifier she promised to be, and to yield the stage to the nominee of the Democratic Party. I said the speech she gave was eloquent, but not the one Democrats or the country needed to hear. It's what I felt as she spoke tonight. It was not the worshipful pap that everyone else seems to be posting, but she asked for feedback, and I gave it.

I posted at about 11:35 pm. As I write this, it is 11:54 and my post has not been allowed to appear. I've been filtered out.

Apparently, if I really want to have my say, I can use this handy form at Hillary's home page:

Notice the comment box. That's the context in which Hillary will accept dissent.

I'm with Jeffrey Toobin, re: "the deranged narcissism of the Clintons."
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Ugliness Begets Ugliness

2008-04-29T09:46:00.006-04:00

Feelings are hardening among Democrats. Those who go on numbly suggesting the party will heal when the nomination battle is over are whistling past the graveyard.

The bottom line: After 8 years of the neoconservative program of cynicism and neglect, Americans are just dumb enough to elect another Republican president. If this actually happens, I don't ever want to see Bill or Hillary Clinton's faces again.
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What Really Went Wrong at the ABC Debate

2008-04-24T15:47:00.003-04:00

My 30-Second Spot for John McCain

2008-03-26T15:44:00.009-04:00

A Solomonic Solution to the Democrats' Impasse

2008-03-17T12:59:00.010-04:00

Before I say this, I want to make it clear that I'm in earnest. I tend to be a smartass, but today I mean exactly what I'm about to say.

I'm highly partisan in the presidential nominating process. I strongly favor Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, for a lot of good reasons that I'll lay out if pressed to do so. Suffice it to say for now that there are very meaningful policy and temperamental differences between the two. But those differences pale by comparison to the differences between the two alternative futures we have to choose from in November.

We can choose at least the possibility of abandoning the catastrophic neoconservative agenda of the Bush years, by electing the Democrat. Or we can embrace the Bush program by electing his heir and single remaining cheerleader, John McCain. It boggles my mind that the latter choice is even on the table, but there it is.

I feel rather strongly that another dance with the neocons is the last thing this beleaguered society needs, and that it is essential that the Democrats somehow find a way not to screw this up. But the Democrats apparently have seen the cliff, heard its mesmerizing siren song, and seem bound and determined to drive the bus, Thelma and Louise style, off into the canyon once again.

As I understand it, there is no known scenario by which Hillary Clinton can smack together enough pledged delegates to win the nomination before the convention. Barack Obama would have to win the Pennsylvania primary to do it, and that seems not to be in the cards. So we're headed for a scenario where the Superdelegates make the decision. These are mostly the party elite, and the elite have tended to lean Hillary's way -- she of the Democrats' royal family. If this is the outcome, they will have frustrated the will of the majority of primary voters and pledged delegates, an extremely risky undertaking.

If they break Obama's way, they alienate a powerful fundraising machine and neutralize a charismatic former President who, a year ago, was anticipated to be one of the Democrats' principal weapons in the general election. (Actually, that gun's already effectively spiked; Bill Clinton's just not likely to be that credible an advocate for Obama, having said the things he's said about Barack during the primaries.)

I think I have a better idea. Rather than waste several months' effort and funds on unproductive infighting between the remaining Democratic contenders, only to see it end demoralizingly in an old-fashioned brokered convention anyway, I offer a more Solomonic solution. I do NOT mean settling on a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton ticket -- which would be an absurd-looking pushme-pullyou in any case.

I propose that they just flip a coin.

There would be no crisis of recriminations among Democrats, if the matter were simply entrusted to luck instead of the whimsy of the Superdelegates. You can't second-guess heads or tails. It is what it is. That's why the advantage in something as monumental as the Super Bowl is decided this way each year.

I propose flying the captains of the two campaigns up to Detroit, for a globally televised meeting on the 50 yard line of the Pontiac SuperDome. (This would give Michigan an opportunity to regain a stake in the nominating process without undertaking an expensive and complex do-over primary. As for Florida...screw Florida. Democrats never win there anyway.)

Let the principals shake hands and commit themselves to abide by the result of the toss. Give the coin -- an ordinary half-dollar, chosen at random from a bag of half-dollars by a Deloitte auditor -- to someone of excellent reputation: Lee Hamilton or George Mitchell, say, ideally someone uncommitted to either candidate. Let Hillary, as the underdog delegatewise, call it in the air.

One toss, no double-or-nothing. Let the world see it as it happens. Let the candidates accept the outcome with grace and dignity, shake hands, and get on with the work of defeating the Republicans instead of eviscerating one another.

I'm open to suggestions as to why this solution is inferior to collective self-immolation on the way to a cacophonous clown show in Denver. Thoughts?
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Framing 2008

2008-03-06T08:28:00.018-05:00

Cognitive linguist George Lakoff is making the rounds with another exposition of the ideas that make him such an important contributor to the day's discourse on government, policy and ideology. I'm a fan, but there's another reason for my thinking that this latest piece, "Why Voters Aren't Motivated by a Laundry List of Positions on Issues," is important now.

The article (written with colleague Joe Brewer at the Rockridge Institute) reiterates a core Lakoff contention: That behind each "material" policy prescription -- universal health care, charting a new foreign policy course, immigration reform, stimulating the economy -- are a set of underlying, subliminal assumptions that voters fail to understand and policymakers obscure, sometimes deliberately but frequently because they don't really understand them either. These "cognitive-level" assumptions make up the framing of the issue addressed by the policy. In policy debate, Lakoff asserts persuasively, the side that succeeds in imposing its framing of the question generally has the high ground and wins the argument.

Lakoff is unapologetically liberal, although he's pragmatic enough to prefer the term "progressive." He's argued, with increasing urgency over the last several years, that conservative ideologues have understood the cognitive level framing of issues for a generation and have been able to shape issues in American politics far more effectively than progressives have because they succeed in forcing each discussion into the conservative frame. This, in essence, is how the Gingrich mob pulled the rug out from under Bill Clinton in the '90s. It's how Karl Rove's boys got George W. Bush taken seriously in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. In general, the Republicans have mastered framing and the Democrats haven't.

I'm putting Lakoff's latest version of this conception in front of my little audience here to make a specific point. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are in a close and increasingly divisive race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Party leaders like James Carville and Howard Dean are trying to put the best face on this by suggesting that their constituents like both candidates and have trouble making a choice between two equally qualified people. I wish I could feel that way.

Read the Lakoff article and consider the distinctions between policy on the material level and the cognitive level. I believe this distinction matters, and that it provides an insight into the differences between Obama and Clinton. Clinton has a capacity to convey confidence in her competence. Obama motivates. He moves people because he disturbs his audience's cognitive-level perceptions of whatever he's talking about, and then gives them another way of feeling good about progressive positions. Many Democrats adopt progressive prescriptions because they are the endorsed planks of the party to which they belong; they're no different from rank and file Republicans in this respect. Obama gives these same Democrats a way to feel that these ideals are their own.

There is a faulty view of voting behavior – widely held by political strategists on the left – that people already know what they want. All you have to do is conduct a poll to find out where they stand on the issues, then build a platform of positions that accords with the polls, and they will vote for you. Missing from this view is the importance of cognitive policy – the ideas necessary to understand what the issues are and how they should be addressed. It is the ability to understand where a candidate is coming from that makes public support possible. Endorsement quickly follows when this understanding combines with a sense of shared values.
- George Lakoff, Joe Brewer

Barack Obama instinctively gets cognitive-level framing. Hillary Clinton may get it, but she really, really has to work at it. I'm being a little charitable here -- honestly, I don't think Hillary gets it at all, which is why her rhetorical style and her hammering on the "experience" talking point leave me cold.

I've seen it again and again in the debates. The journalists who formulate and pose the questions often have challenged the Democrats with issues incorporating conservative framing: Should English be the national language? Why pull out of Iraq just as the surge is starting to work? Should we build the fence along the Mexican border? Hillary plunges in and tries to just answer the question. Barack listens to the question, grasps the framing, and reframes the issue on the fly to force listeners (a) to understand the bias behind the question and (b) to provide an answer that expresses a position on the larger issue beyond the original frame.

In other words, Clinton is conducting a purely material-level campaign -- which works with a large slice of the Democratic rank and file. She does this well enough to win in some of the biggest primary states, against a fellow-Democrat who is conducting a very different campaign. Obama campaigns on both the material and the cognitive level, which is why he wins in landslides among the voters principally motivated by "change."

The general election is going to be a referendum on eight years of ideological conservative government, and thus highly winnable for Democrats, if Democrats control the framing. John McCain is already on the trail attempting to divert attention from the Bush Administration's record, even as he embraces that record more literally than did any of his rivals in the Republican primaries. Republican framing in 2004 was about fear, and fear won over all of John Kerry's rational but ineffectual material-level arguments about his policy differences with Bush.

I look for McCain to adopt the same playbook this year, because it works. The Democrats had better adopt a different plan. Bad enough as the economy is, I believe Americans largely view it through the conservative Republican frame -- government bad, free market/private sector good. Taxes, environmentalism, regulation and illegal immigrants bad, growth good. China bad, American entrepreneurship good. Head to head against Clinton, McCain wins these arguments.

The Democrats have to make the electorate really uncomfortable this year. It's going to take much more than a rational argument about competence and experience to win. My take is that Obama has the tools to shift the framing. Hillary, a smart and accomplished woman, has yet to prove to me that she has them. I think the difference could be decisive.
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Starpower for Obama

2008-02-03T16:55:00.001-05:00

Yep. This is the official Stupid Country endorsement. Barack is the genuine article.
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What the World Loves About Americans

2008-01-22T21:59:00.001-05:00

The State Department mailed me this little brochure with a recently renewed passport. Good old American humility. I guess keeping tabs on currency exchange rates was someone else's bailiwick.

As the saying goes: "The large print giveth, the small print taketh away."

Of course, it could be that the slogan was inspired by this...

Here We Go Again

2007-11-05T07:43:00.001-05:00

Remember him?

Some knotty questions about the ongoing crisis between the Islamic world and the West actually have intelligible answers. Case in point: Why do Iranians hate the US so much? It has largely to do with the late Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a creature of US policy who ruled Iran despotically for almost 40 years. We put the Shah on his Peacock Throne; we armed him, and for as long as we could we propped him up, until popular revulsion brought him down in 1979, giving birth in the process to the concept of the Islamic Republic. Iranians aren't thankful to us for this.

We're living through the same sad charade all over again in Pakistan, only today, events move an order of magnitude faster. Pervez Musharraf will be gone one way or another, soon -- before the 2008 US election, I suspect, in time to become a very high-profile issue. What Musharraf will leave behind in Pakistan when he slinks into exile (or, perhaps as likely, dies) is certain to be an angry, widely anti-American nation in crisis, tilting toward establishment of another Islamic fundamentalist state (it's too soon to say "Republic").

In other words, Iran all over again, but with two important differences:

Pakistan has provided a haven and home for al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership for at least seven years. With Musharraf gone, the US military will have to take a serious look at crossing the border from Afghanistan to take al Qaeda's leadership out, consistent with US policy that countries that harbor terrorists are subject to attack, precisely as we did to rout the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocity out of Afghanistan. Bush policy in effect requires the US to take this step, and it will be too late to worry about the effect of such an incursion on our "ally" in Islamabad. However...

With Musharraf gone, we will no longer be able to pretend that an incursion into Waziristan has any sort of official support from the Pakistani government. It will be war with Pakistan, and Pakistan is already heavily armed with nuclear weapons, largely with the blessings of the US.

Now is when we want to launch air strikes on Iran, over nuclear weapons they might some day manage to whack together? I think we have more immediate things to worry about just to Iran's east. Pakistan, after all, already has the world's worst documented history of proliferating nuclear weapons technology to countries hostile to the US.

I could go on; I got up this morning feeling as if I was onto something original in connecting Musharraf's fate to the Shah's, but of course this has all been said eloquently before. Ivan Eland, Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty, said it well enough back in May.

So I'll just add a postscript: The infamous 1979 hostage-taking at the US embassy in Teheran was sparked principally by the US's decision to provide the deposed Shah with a comfortable exile. Note to Sec. Rice: Assuming Musharraf manages to escape from Islamabad with his skin intact, could we possibly avoid making that mistake all over again? Hmm?
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I Betcha...

2007-10-31T22:29:00.001-04:00

Iran's Nuclear Deterrent

2007-10-31T14:18:00.000-04:00

George W. Bush is spoiling for a war with Iran before his sordid spell in the White House ends. He wants it so badly he can taste it. In fact, it's so tangible and endearing to him that he's now given it a pet name: World War III.

Bush has made it an article of global faith that the world can't live with a nuclear-armed Iran, and that the community of civilized nations has a duty to keep Iran from ever acquiring nukes. He backs this up with the fatuous contention that the heads of state of all the significant industrialized countries are in lock step with him on this, and that it's one of the few things he and Russian President Vladimir Putin still see eye to eye on -- he made this last assertion on October 18, the same day Putin made it clear that no such consensus exists.

"...if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nucular weapon.”
-- George W. Bush

Bush's latest rant on Iran is pointless, counterdiplomatic, perhaps evidence of a worryingly unbalanced state of mind. Dennis Kucinich and I are not the first or only observers to suggest this.

I do have a question, though, that I haven't heard anyone else ask: Where does the US supposedly get the authority, the moral imperative, to dictate to the Iranians and to the world that Iran can't have nuclear weapons?

This question is worth analyzing because public discussion of Iran's nuclear ambitions virtually unanimously assumes Iran has no right to develop a nuclear capability. That was the consensus at last night's Democratic Presidential debate, where Tim Russert framed the issue to suggest candidates' positions should be differentiated according to what Iranian weapons development provocation should trigger an attack. Even opponents of Bush's expansive military doctrine and the Iraq occupation frequently agree that military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes is justified.

Does anyone ever ask how or why?

The authority the administration claims flows from Iran's supposed violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran signed onto in 1970, by embarking on a nuclear energy program with the potential for weapons development. The UN has imposed political and economic sanctions on Iran over this, but the fact is, NPT signatories are allowed to develop nuclear energy for power generation, so long as they don't build nuclear weapons.

Iran maintains it isn't building any nuclear weapons. Of course, Iran could be and probably is lying about this, but that can't be proven, leaving European and Asian governments who are trading partners with Iran a convenient excuse to play down tensions with Teheran.

That leaves the Bush Administration dependent on its own doctrine calling for pre-emptive attacks on states sponsoring terrorism, especially Bush's floridly named Axis of Evil. The administration hopes to inspire, among lawmakers who would have to authorize a strike, sufficient fear of the potential for an Iran in possession of nuclear technology

to use it offensively to threaten Israel's security and the security of other countries in the region -- possibly even to strike Israel itself, and

to pass the technology along to terrorist entities who might use it against the West and especially the US.

Some would argue the Senate already has given the President the tacit approval on October 25 when it signed off on the designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as sponsors of terrorism and proliferators of weapons of mass destruction.

An ascendant Iran, nuclear or not, certainly is a threat to the post-Cold War world order, but Iran functions mostly outside that order. Iran does sponsor causes antagonistic to the US, to our policy and our military forces in Iraq, and to Israel. But I've argued before that supporting anti-American insurgents, and even supplying them with cash and weapons, makes Iran guilty of nothing that hasn't been standard operating procedure for the US for the last 60 years.

Nested within all of the rhetoric about Iran's nuclear program is the assumption that, if Iran built nukes, its intentions would be to use them offensively. Since a nuclear first strike launched from or traced to Iran would invite Iran's annihilation, it seems reasonable to question that scenario.

Iran's governing ideology and foreign policy may be repugnant, but no one questions Iran's sovereignty. With sovereignty comes the right to self-defense. If Iran were willing to admit that it is attempting to build nuclear weapons, it would have a reasonably compelling argument that it needs nukes to defend itself from increasingly likely military attacks by its most hostile enemies, chiefly the United States.

Consider:

Shi'ite Iran borders Pakistan, which is Islamic but more than 75% Sunni, politically unstable, and nuclear-armed to the teeth. Iran is within easy missile range of nuclear-armed India, China and Russia, not to mention the nuclear states in Europe.

Iran's two most hostile adversaries, the US and Israel, are obvious nuclear threats. Israel has both nukes and ICBMs to deliver them; the US can nuke anyone it chooses to strike, anywhere on the planet. The US military is on the ground in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, in former Soviet 'stans in Central Asia, in Sunni Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait -- the Saudis being regional rivals with Iran for power and influence. The US almost certainly has clandestine operations inside Iran itself.

The US clearly demonstrated that it is prone to irrational acts of hostility when it followed up the Bush Axis of Evil pronouncement with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The other inescapable lesson of the Iraq attack comes from the choice of target: Of the three Axis countries, we invaded the one that most clearly did not have the capability to counterattack with weapons of mass destruction. We spared North Korea, an actual international proliferator of WMD technology with whom tensions with the US were at least as high at the time as they were with Iraq. The obvious difference was that an attack on North Korea would have been far costlier and might have met retaliation in the form of a nuclear strike on the invasion force or on Seoul. The object lesson? The way to avert an increasingly credible threat of attack by the US is to develop and brandish nuclear weapons.

I believe there is sufficient will in the Congress to prevent the administration from actually taking us to war in Iran. Assuming that's the case, the next US president will have to take the world as he or she finds it -- the administration will no longer have to view it through the neoconservative lens of its predecessor. The new administration will face an increasingly multilateral world, and will be challenged to find ways to co-exist with an influential and possibly nuclear-armed Iran. It will have to own the realization that for the first eight years of the 21st Century, the most dangerous, aggressive and destabilizing regime in the world has not been Iran at all. It's been us.

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Hypocrisy Watch

2007-09-05T14:21:00.000-04:00

Yikes.

"One of Sen. Larry Craig’s lawyers said Wednesday the Senate has no business looking into the conduct of one of its own following Craig’s guilty plea in connection with an airport men’s room sex sting.
"An unbroken line of precedents dating back 220 years makes clear the Senate does not consider misdemeanor private conduct to be a fit subject of inquiry, asserted Washington attorney Stan Brand."
AP, via MSNBC, today

Two words: Monica Lewinsky.
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Dialog

2007-09-04T22:11:00.000-04:00

So, I got an unsolicited e-mail a few weeks ago. I don't know whether the individual who sent it expected me to reply, but I did, and this developed into a dialog that went on for a couple of weeks. I thought I'd share it.

It began, you could say, with an unprovoked attack from a stranger -- but not an anonymous stranger. Richard signed his e-mails -- he works for a construction company in Texas. I have redacted his last name here, because it became a sort of point of honor: He speaks in the open, and I, for reasons of my own, choose to go with my pen name. Richard's invited to supply his real name if he cares to, in a comment.

At any rate, after Richard got tired of berating me while I got bored with talking down to him with my effete east coast nonchalance, we got down to a quite reasonable exchange. My point in sharing this is, I guess, that reasoned exchanges are feasible between ideological polar opposites, and I have always hoped blogging could be a place to let that happen. Thanks, Richard.

Here's the exchange in full, as if it were a private conversation:

Richard: GO TO HELL!!!

SC: Cheery greetings to you too.

Richard: Why don't you post your real name and address "ASSHOLE" like a real man. You have mine below.

SC: Why, you offering dinner?

Richard: Sure "AssHole" come on down to Texas. When you get here, anywhere, just tell them who you are so that you can get a real Texas "Ass Whipping!!
We will be waiting for you "FAGOT"!

SC: I can see where this is going. *yawn* I'm curious, though. Where did you find me and what did I say that got your attention?

Richard: I was thinking the same thing.

Seriously, tell me what is it about America that you dislike/hate. Grant you there is much room for improvement but don't you feel that it is our politicians that have failed us in not full filling their duties....as servants of the people.

SC: I don't hate America. I see Americans as generally unable to understand how the system that governs their lives really works, and as too easily swayed by simple, shallow slogans. I see Americans convinced that government is about morality, when the truth is government is more than anything else about money and class. I don't understand how middle class Americans are convinced that they are members of a conservative base, when conservative policy as it's been acted out over the last several decades has worked against middle class people, and for the wealthy and well-connected. I see Americans screwing themselves because they believe leaders like George W. Bush represent freedom and upright morality -- leaders I see as the most corrupt we've had in generations.

America frustrates me. But I don't hate it. I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Actually, I can't quite figure out what we're arguing about.

Richard: You asked me earlier how I got your e-mail address. I found it browsing through a military site. What caught my eye is that you had the American Flag upside down. That got my blood to boil, and felt that this need to be responded to. I don't know if this is how you wanted your page to be displayed over the internet...but it was.

I am glad to see that you don't hate this country. As you can tell I love this great land of ours. Yes I am a conservative. No I am not swayed by slogans or gimmicks put out by our politicians and amplified or twisted by the media or talk show hosts.

Conservatism is allowing individuals to be all that they can be without government intervention.
Conservatism is believing in God, family, and hard work.
Conservatism is lower taxes and using our funds to enhance this country and not the politicians pocket book. Only the naive and uniform [sic] believe that government is the answer to our problems.

Many "Liberal Democrats" tout that if you vote for me I will make your life better because I am for the little guy. That is the most ridicules statement of all. No politician can make your life better only "You" can by getting up and doing something about it. More taxes never made the poor wealthy only good old fashion honest hard work and a persistence to make your life better.

Recall that since after WW ll, this country was under the controlled of the Democrats for forty years. It was during this time that many of the entitlements came to being under the Johnson adminstration. Welfare, the food stamp program, paying individuals for staying home and doing nothing. It was during this time prayer was taken out of school and the killing of inocent babies was legalize. Morality of any kind was under attack because of "Liberalism".

I could go on and on but you are a smart guy and can figure out what I am saying. I go back to my earlier statement in that our politicians have let us down and have not fullfill their oath. That oath is to be a servant of the people.

SC: It seems pretty clear to me that we're going to disagree about a number of important things, but it also seems to me that we could have a civil enough conversation about it all if you wanted to. Question, though: A military site? What site would that be? I'm wondering why a military site would want to link to Stupid Country. Or am I selling them short? There are plenty of open minds in the military.

Richard: I don't recall because it was a link leading to where your address was located.

SC: Whatever. Tell me: Are you ok with the suggestion that this failure you see in our leaders is as true of those who position themselves as conservatives as it is of those calling themselves liberals or progressives? Because if so, we have at least one thing we can agree on.

Richard: Our leaders have failed us miserably in everyway. They are not leaders but leeches. They tout themselves as either conservative, liberal, moderates, or whatever just to appeal to some base of people for "Re-Election". Mean while they do nothing for the people but drum up idiotic investigations over "Bullshit" avoiding real legislation like the social security mess, trade deficits, illegal immigration, airport security etc.

Our leaders are not leaders, many do not have any core values, traditional American values, to live by. Our media keeps the pot stirred so that people hear only what they feel we should hear, and sadly many Americans are not informed of the issues as we should be.

As more individuals become aware of the issues at hand we can and should hold our representatives in check to how we would like our Country to be governed. If we are not willing to get involved then we can only blame ourselves.

My name is Richard _______. I was born and raised in the great state of Texas!

What is yours?? I know you are from South Carolina. Right!

SC: Hard to argue with your assessment of US leadership, which makes it hard to understand why we hold ourselves up as a model for democracy elsewhere in the world. I think the point I differ with you most on is the value of investigations. All of the issues you raise have become significantly worse, and more obvious and arrogant, in the last 6 1/2 years. Investigations can serve bullshit partisan purposes, but they can also drag out in the open a lot of things that complacent Americans need to see to appreciate how bad it's become. That's the only way to begin the process of undoing the worst of the rot.

I don't think there are any easy fixes -- it's not as though ordinary middle class Americans are about to suddenly come to their senses one day, throw out the leeches and start over. We have to recognize the flaws in our own culture -- media fail us because media are profit-driven and choose to give us what we keep telling them we want, which is generally mindless entertainment and "lifestyle journalism." Issues are complex. We defer to leaders who are willing to at least look as though they're taking those issues on, even when we know these people are corrupt.

I don't have the faith that you do in any specific "values." A lot of lies have been told in the name of faith, strength and tradition, generally by people with agendas that have nothing to do with any of those values. We have to consider and take seriously the possibility that some of the supposed truths we live by aren't truths at all.
Americans' absolute faith that free enterprise gets everything done better and faster than government institutions looks a little ridiculous when you see the state of health care here. The profit motivation of the private sector simply doesn't work for some things, and if you think the right vision for health care is to eliminate all the entitlements and let it all sort it self out through survival of the fittest, then I guess I differ with you there too. (You have had harsh words about entitlements generally, and I do agree some of them have been excessive.)
The US isn't always right. In many instances, we have been the aggressors and the bad actors in global conflicts. I happen to believe Iraq is one of the worst cases of this. We're not always the good guys, despite individual acts of kindness and courage on the part of the grunts on the ground. Iraq's not America at its best.
I appreciate your wanting to do this man to man, Richard, but it's my choice to have these discussions anonymously. Sorry if that doesn't work for you. I will tell you I'm from New Jersey, not South Carolina.

Have you ever actually read any of the Stupid Country blog? I mean, you could form an opinion from glancing at it that it's just simple-minded Bush-bashing, but I like to think there's a lot more there. You comments on any of the actual posts are more than welcome.

There the dialog ended. I suppose Richard agreed that my continued anonymity didn't work for him. Too bad. We were getting somewhere.
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Duty Mouth

2007-07-11T20:46:00.000-04:00

Last night I caught a set by the enormously talented singer-songwriter-smartass Jonathan Coulton, at a small club in Brooklyn. He's best known for a couple of songs from his sprawling catalog: "Code Monkey," an anthem for computer programmers, for whom he seems to be some kind of lay patron saint, and "Skullcrusher Mountain," a love song from the viewpoint of a Dr. Moreau-style (but much hipper) mad scientist.

The man's got stage chops to spare, but what I didn't know until I banged around his web headquarters today is that he's a techno mix and mash sensei.

And lo and behold...here's something fun from Coulton's download site that was just meant to be shared here.

(The song will download automatically in QuickTime, but you have to click Play.) Big fun.

It Works

2007-06-15T07:56:00.000-04:00

Flag desecration really, really, gets under people's skin. That's why it matters.

"Michael thought about it a good long while before he made his statement.
"As a former Boy Scout and U.S. Army soldier, he knew flying an upside-down flag from the front of his condominium might draw some heat.
"'Look, I know the flag code — and I know my rights,' Michael, 30, said yesterday.
"Michael asked that the newspaper withhold his last name and the unit number of his condo after seeing the sometimes angry responses that a story in yesterday's Times Herald-Record paper inspired. 'If I don't use those rights, then what's the point?'"
Times Herald-Record, Orange County, NY, June 15, 2007

Escaping Frames

2007-06-14T17:13:00.000-04:00

Here's an extended soundbite from what is shaping up to be the most crucial battleground leading up to the 2008 election, and everything beyond.

Wolf Blitzer often pretends to be a neutral broadcaster while framing his questions and his news using conservative frames. During the second Democratic debate on June 3, he was caught, and Barack Obama caught him. Wolf's "question" was:

BLITZER: I want you to raise your hand if you believe English should be the official language of the United States.

Obama refused to take the bait:

OBAMA: This is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us. You know, you're right. Everybody is going to learn to speak English if they live in this country. The issue is not whether or not future generations of immigrants are going to learn English. The question is: How can we come up with both a legal, sensible immigration policy? And when we get distracted by those kinds of questions, I think we do a disservice to the American people.

I certainly don't mean to suggest that the June 3 debate was the crucial conflict. The bite comes from a June 12 essay by Christina Smith of the Rockridge Institute, the progressive think tank built around the work of UC Berkeley linguist George Lakoff ("To Catch a Wolf: How to Stop Conservative Frames in Their Tracks"). Lakoff and his associates at Rockridge have been arguing for years that political discourse has been rendered meaningless by subservient media figures whose questions in interviews and debates reinforce conservative framing of issues. They essentially trap the interviewees into implicitly endorsing that conservative framing merely by answering the questions as posed. It's the old "how long have you been beating your wife" game.

Smith's essay begins by congratulating Obama for seeing the framing under the veneer of the question and pushing back. When other legislators -- all of them, not just the ones running for President -- learn to see the underlying framing in public discussion, especially media coverage of upcoming bills, and then challenge that framing, then we may start to see some lights go on in the Capitol and on the Op-Ed pages. That's the conflict I'm talking about.

There's nothing really newsy in this. I'm just convinced Rockridge is onto something fundamental. At least one credible Presidential contender is getting the hang of it.
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One for the Next Debate

2007-06-11T20:49:00.000-04:00

Campaign 2008 is underway early, so those of us who care have to mark a lot of time waiting for something meaningful to happen in the long, long run-up to the caucuses. So here's a fun exercise: Drafting debate questions for the hopefuls. Here's one I find particularly interesting.

Dear Hopeful:

On the day the next administration takes office, the largest embassy in the world will be the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. This 104-acre behemoth, four times the size of the United Nations headquarters, is scheduled to be completed (while the rest of the city sweats and makes do with sporadic electricity and running water) in September 2007, on time and within its budget of almost $600 million.

The only rational purpose for such a monstrous edifice, meant to house a permanent staff of 1000, is to serve as the headquarters for a massive and permanent US presence in Baghdad. On the day the next administration takes office, this notion will be obsolete. It's a neoconservative relic, an artifact of a governing philosophy that will be outdated and abandoned by anyone who has a prayer of being the President-elect in January 2009. There is no way that individual will be committed to a massive and permanent US presence in Baghdad. Even the Republicans are fleeing the Bush Administration smog cloud.

Nor is there any way to know for certain how long Iraq, or whatever has its capital in Baghdad in the future (assuming Baghdad even has a future as a capital), will even choose to have diplomatic relations with the US.

The building is a colossal, humiliating white elephant. No foreseeable post-neocon US policy can possibly have a use for it.

Debate question, then: What will you do with the building?

I Wish I Could Believe This Was Faked

2007-05-24T23:46:00.000-04:00

Americans are NOT stupid - WITH SUBTITLE
Uploaded by antoinetheone

Vocabulary Watch: "Failed State"

2007-05-11T16:26:00.000-04:00

Definition: "A weak state in which the central government has little practical control over much of its territory...a state that has been rendered ineffective (i.e., has nominal military/police control over its territory only in the sense of having no armed opposition groups directly challenging state authority...)."

In other words, a state in which, to accomplish the simple act of traveling from anywhere (A) to anywhere else (B), it is no longer feasible to rely on one of these:

and now, instead, requires the traveler to ride in one of these:

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Bush's Real Iraq Strategy

2007-05-03T18:45:00.000-04:00

The best, most comprehensive argument that I've read for pulling US forces out of Iraq, now, is right here. It's an article called "Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq," from the February 14, 2007 issue of Policy Analysis, a journal published by the Cato Institute. Yes, the Cato Institute, that Libertarian think tank based in Washington. The author is Ted Galen Carpenter, the Institute's Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies.

I don't know that I'd have looked first to the Cato Institute, a group generally associated with conservative intellectuals, for inspiration. But there's Carpenter, bluntly asserting:

"It is time to admit that the Iraq mission has failed and cut our losses. The notion that Iraq would become a stable, united, secular democracy and be the model for a new Middle East was always an illusion. We should not ask more Americans to die for that illusion."

Trust me. This is a long and thoughtful argument (a 24-page pdf, with footnotes). Your time in reading and pondering it will be very well rewarded.

One of the things this piece reinforces for me is the need to proclaim loudly and insistently that the Iraq occupation is a lost cause, has been a lost cause since its inception, and is George W. Bush's lost cause. Yeah -- Harry Reid got it right, even if he did backpedal on his characterization of the war as lost. Shame on him.

It's important because the Administration's strategy for Iraq gets clearer with each passing day, and I don't mean the "surge." The Republican leadership has been wrong about virtually every major policy since the first days of the Neoconservative experiment, but they are not fools. They can see as clearly as anyone else can that the occupation is a failure and that nothing will prevent Iraq's descent deeper into chaos in coming years. They (with the possible, inexplicable exception of John McCain) understand that all talk of prolonged occupation or increases in troop commitments or "victory" become irrelevant after the 2008 election, because the next administration will be committed to withdrawal.

The Republican strategy for Iraq is to stonewall on any acknowledgment of any of this until 2009, when the inevitable pullout becomes the Democrats' problem. Thus, Republicans can go right on insisting that withdrawal equals defeat, surrender, humiliation, up until the moment it happens, whereupon they will frame these events as the Democrats' defeat, surrender and humiliation. There will be some defections between now and the election, most likely among Republicans whose seats are at risk in 2008, but I suspect few among the GOP leadership will break ranks with this bunker strategy. It's a question of partisan survival.

Countering this framing of the Iraq issue won't be easy. To me, though, it seems clear enough that one discredited administration's policy does not need to be the permanent policy of the US. Foreign policy priority 1 for the next team must be to disavow the entire Neocon program and proclaim a break from its policies, starting with the immediate withdrawal from Iraq -- announced in November 2008, not January 2009.

Oh by the way...as a proponent of withdrawal, I have to allow that it's not something that can be done overnight or without risk. What exactly are the logistical problems associated with removing US troops from Iraq, even if only to "over-the-horizon" bases in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman? I can't speak to its accuracy, but here's one attempt at an accounting. It won't be a cakewalk.

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Happy Anniversary

2007-03-19T22:17:00.000-04:00

Iranian Provocation

2007-02-15T23:35:00.000-05:00

Before we decide that evidence of Iranian weapons transfers to insurgents in Iraq is a pretext for an attack on Teheran, let's ask a couple of simple questions.

In how many countries are US-made weapons killing people every day? How did those weapons get there?
In how many countries are US-made weapons killing Americans or people who consider themselves friends and allies of the US?

"According to analysis done by the World Policy Institute’s Arms Trade Resource Center, using Pentagon and State Department arms transfer figures, the United States provided countries in the developing world with more than $12.6 billion in arms in Fiscal year 2005. Of these 25 countries, all had human rights problems according to the State Department's Human Rights Report, and 10 (including three of the top five) were 'undemocratic' in the sense that citizens of those nations 'did not have a meaningful right to change their government' in a peaceful manner."

Frida Berrigan, Foreign Policy in Focus,
November 16, 2006

How many people do we have, now, on the ground, inside Iran (to say nothing of the clearly hostile troops we have stationed in countries that border Iran) carrying American-made weapons?
Who are we kidding about Iranian provocation?

Beginning of the End? Could Easily Be

2006-10-20T05:08:00.000-04:00

It's been a very long time since I blogged, but I wanted to be one more point of light... ahem, I mean point of reference for Keith Olbermann's comment on the Military Commissions Act. I couldn't have put it better, certainly.

Stuff like this matters and needs to be heard.

All I actually have to add is a caution that all of these measures are presented as targeting "terrorists" -- incarcerating terrorists, interrogating terrorists, refusing to coddle terrorists and the like. None of these characterizations has the slightest truth to it.

"This President now has his blank check.

"He lied to get it.

"He lied as he received it.

"Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?"

These measures all target individuals the Bush Administration accuses of being terrorists -- this being an administration with a history of imprisoning individuals without charge or justification for months or years because they see, rat out and photograph inconvenient realities, documenting America's abandonment of and disdain for moral authority in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. AP photographers, for example.

I think this is an extremely important distinction.

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Statistics

2006-09-10T22:41:00.000-04:00