Crikey, it's Christmas!

Merry Christmas, eh! Nothing more cherry than old Donald Rumsfeld barking lies on CNN while waiting for our delayed flight telling us everything in Iraq is aokay. It's a Christmas Miracle!

[posting intermittent! Why politicize the holiday? Just have a happy time.]

Chalabi's Conundrum

Ah yes, Ahmed Chalabi.

International banking criminal and Iraqi dissident whose "intelligence gathering" operation was paid $30 million a year for the past ten years or so, in order to both stoke the flames of a neocon-driven Invasion of Iraq, and position himself as its democratic reformist savior turned US pariah, finds himself in yet another confusing postition. Not only did his paltry attempt to raise an army to overthrow Saddam fail [funded and propagandized entirely by the US]; but it turns out that nobody over there voted for him in the recent democratic elections.

What to do, what to do?

When you're Ahmed Chalabi and you don't win an election you don't deserve that's come from an invasion partaken with your false information, you scream these words "ELECTION FRAUD!"

Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi appears to have suffered a humiliating defeat at the recent Iraq polls, according to the uncertified preliminary results.

The news comes just a month after Chalabi had conducted a tour of Washington in an effort to patch up his tattered image in America. Paperwork shows that in November Chalabi’s Washington representative hired a powerful D.C. lobbying firm.

The election results in Iraq may present Chalabi’s ardent U.S. supporters with a quandary: Chalabi, as well as other losing candidates, is alleging fraud in the election, even though the Bush administration hailed the vote as a historic step for democracy in Iraq.

Oh come on, Mr. Chalabi. You were the man that led the US into Iraq! You were responsible for "liberating" your people! Even your campaign posters said so! It couldn't have been that bad:

Out of almost 2.5 million voters in Baghdad, only 8,645 voted for Chalabi.

In the Shiite city of Basra, the results indicate he had an equally dismal showing of 0.34 percent of the vote.

In the violent Sunni province of Anbar, 113 people voted for him.

During the election, Chalabi’s campaign posters proclaimed, "We Liberated Iraq."

The reference was to Chalabi’s role in pushing the United States toward war against Saddam Hussein. Over the years, Chalabi’s group received tens of millions of dollars from the CIA and the State Department.

[Crikey! I nearly got more votes as a write-in contender for County Coroner with no media presence and no declaration of intention to run! Hell, I didn't even know I was running!]

This puts Mr. Bush in a rather interesting position. Chalabi, you see, is involved in a great deal of the pre-war intelligence gathering that led to the war in Iraq, and he was the favored son of the neocons and The Administration. He quickly fell from favor when he couldn't deliver the hearts and minds of the people, as he'd promised, and The Administration has attempted to distance themselves from him.

But he recently, again, met with Secretary Rice in Washington DC, just before the elections. And with Bush backpedaling on the very intelligence in the war ["I was surprised when there weren't WMDs there,"] he risks pedalling all the way back to Chalabi again.

Bush says, of course, that Iraq's elections were historic and unprecendented in the region- but the Iraqi tool who provided the information that led to those elections says the elections were a fraud.

Uh oh. The Golden Child finds himself in a predicament. Problem is- he's built relations with the US- who may cut him off- and with the hardline Iranians- who may welcome him- he knows something of value to them, and his ties to Iran are still under investigation by the CIA.

I'm just so glad we paid this guy $30 million a year. What a great deal. Wise investing.

The War of Attrition

...seems to be one we're losing. That whole Coalition of the Willing thing continues to crumble.

The "I" Word

Michelle Goldberg over at Salon [click for the "free day pass"] works around the likelihoods in the discussions about Bush's culpability for illegally authorizing wiretaps of Americans; and the the tenuous usage of the "I" word... Impeachment [all emphasis in the following quotes are mine]-

Indeed, speaking on the Diane Rehm show on public radio, Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said, "I think if we're going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed."

On Dec. 17, after the story of Bush's domestic spying broke in the New York Times, the president conceded that he had ordered the National Security Agency to intercept Americans' communications without seeking judicial approval. Unrepentant, the White House insisted that Bush had been granted such authority by the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing "all necessary force" in the fight against terrorism, and that the president would continue to order warrantless searches.

The next day, during a public discussion with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., former Nixon White House counsel John Dean called Bush "the first president to admit to an impeachable offense." Boxer took Dean seriously enough to consult four presidential scholars about impeachment.

"This startling assertion by Mr. Dean is especially poignant because he experienced firsthand the executive abuse of power and a presidential scandal arising from the surveillance of American citizens," she wrote to them. "Given your constitutional expertise, particularly in the area of presidential impeachment, I am writing to ask for your comments and thoughts on Mr. Dean's statement."

Boxer has not made public any of the responses yet. But other political scholars have weighed in. "The American public has to understand that a crime has been committed, a serious crime," Chris Pyle, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College and an expert on government surveillance of civilians, tells Salon. "Looking at this controversy objectively, you inevitably end up with a question of impeachment," says Jonathan Turley, a professor at the George Washington University School of Law.

So how serious is it getting? Keep in mind that the President's confidence comes from two places: A) a sense of justified moral positioning in the "changed world of 9/11" as a viable defense, and B) control in numbers of all venues of government, with basically "friendlies" in power in the House, Senate, and Judiciary.

It was bracing to see impeachment mentioned as a possibility in the mainstream media. But experts say it's not unreasonable. According to Turley, there's little question Bush committed a federal crime by violating the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The act authorizes a secret court to issue warrants to eavesdrop on potential suspects, or anyone even remotely connected to them, inside the United States. The bar to obtain a FISA warrant is low; more than 15,000 have been granted, with only four requests denied since 1979. In emergency situations, the government can even apply for FISA warrants retroactively. Nevertheless, Bush chose not to comply with FISA's minimal requirements.

"The fact is, the federal law is perfectly clear," Turley says. "At the heart of this operation was a federal crime. The president has already conceded that he personally ordered that crime and renewed that order at least 30 times. This would clearly satisfy the standard of high crimes and misdemeanors for the purpose of an impeachment."

Turley is no Democratic partisan; he testified to Congress in favor of Bill Clinton's impeachment. "Many of my Republican friends joined in that hearing and insisted that this was a matter of defending the rule of law, and had nothing to do with political antagonism," he says. "I'm surprised that many of those same voices are silent. The crime in this case was a knowing and premeditated act. This operation violated not just the federal statute but the United States Constitution. For Republicans to suggest that this is not a legitimate question of federal crimes makes a mockery of their position during the Clinton period. For Republicans, this is the ultimate test of principle."

Ahhh HA! The current situation favors Bush- and he knows it- because it relies on self-policing and internal ethical choices made by the Republicans- "the ultimate test of principle."

Of course, that may be exactly the problem. While noted experts -- including a few Republicans -- are saying Bush should be impeached, few think he will be. It's not clear that the political will exists to hold the president to account. "We have finally reached the constitutional Rubicon," Turley says. "If Congress cannot stand firm against the open violation of federal law by the president, then we have truly become an autocracy."

Tasty. Again, to reinforce, none of these talking head sources are Democratic partisan voices- in fact, they heavily have trended, in their careers and work, toward the right. And they, themselves, do not say that they believe that Bush should or will be Impeached- only that the law would call for it, and any honest reading of the law must understand that.

And that it will, likely, not happen- because we don't have honest people reading and controlling the law.

Dick Likes Spying

Dick Cheney, the highest official voyeur in current American politics, says that American's are cool with the government spying on American citizens and the FBI monitoring vegans and Catholics. Dick says that American's support it.

No...

Dick says that they like it.

[Other notable figures in history who have said that they "liked" it or "asked" for it: The Rapist]

Brokeback

[Behold! an actual "Movie post!" - And likely SPOILERS.]

As our friend Lons over at Crushed By Inertia has said, when you call a film by it's shortened title, you infer alot about your relationship to it.

Don't get me wrong...She's never come out and said anything. We just talk about movies. But she just always asks me about whatever gay-themed film we've gotten in that week, as if I'll have seen them all. (Although, to be honest, sometimes I've seen them...) This week, she came in, returned her movie, leaned against the counter and asked me the following question...

"So, have you seen Brokeback yet?"

I'll call your attention to two red flags in this brief query.

(1)

Shortening the title of the film from Brokeback Mountain to Brokeback. She's assuming that I'm intimately familiar with the film already, one week into its theatrical run. As if it has been a major topic of conversation for me all week.

(2)

The use of the word "yet." I don't mean to get all High Fidelity on you, but by saying "yet," she's making the assumption that I will definitely see Brokeback Mountain at some point in the near future. I've never spoken of a particular affinity for Ang Lee films (probably because I don't have one), nor favor towards Mr. Ledger or Mr. Gyllenhaal (though I do like Donnie Darko a lot). So I can only assume that she thinks I'll definitely see the movie because she thinks I'm gay.

Don't get me wrong. It doesn't really matter that she thinks I'm gay. I don't want to get 100 comments down there insisting that I must be gay if I'm worried that the woman at work thinks I'm gay. That's a myth, okay? Just because a man is slightly self-conscious doesn't mean that, deep down, he has an intense craving for cock. Sometimes, a guy is just a little self-conscious.

For starters, the guy's right- there doesn't have to be a hidden secret there- sometimes a guy is just self-conscious.

Anyway-
I'm titling this post, intimately, "Brokeback." And I'm saying, if you haven't seen it yet, go.

Lons comments on the apprehension of a heterosexual male seeing a pretty directly, honestly marketed "gay cowboy" film. I, as is Lons, am a heterosexual male; but I've been watching this film develop since the source material- a brilliant short story by Annie Proulx that rounds out her first collection of Wyoming Stories, Close Range.

I think the best way to deal with the film is to first realize that it's not an advocacy film at all. The political perception of the film is yours entirely to make. As Roger Ebert notes:

"Brokeback Mountain" has been described as "a gay cowboy movie," which is a cruel simplification. It is the story of a time and place where two men are forced to deny the only great passion either one will ever feel. Their tragedy is universal. It could be about two women, or lovers from different religious or ethnic groups -- any "forbidden" love.

The movie wisely never steps back to look at the larger picture, or deliver the "message." It is specifically the story of these men, this love. It stays in closeup. That's how Jack and Ennis see it. "You know I ain't queer," Ennis tells Jack after their first night together. "Me, neither," says Jack.

...
They aren't gay; one of them is a womanizer and the other spends his whole life regretting the loss of the one woman he loved. They're straight, but just as crippled by a society that tells them how a man must behave and what he must feel.

"Brokeback Mountain" could tell its story and not necessarily be a great movie. It could be a melodrama. It could be a "gay cowboy movie." But the filmmakers have focused so intently and with such feeling on Jack and Ennis that the movie is as observant as work by Bergman. Strange but true: The more specific a film is, the more universal, because the more it understands individual characters, the more it applies to everyone. I can imagine someone weeping at this film, identifying with it, because he always wanted to stay in the Marines, or be an artist or a cabinetmaker.

[The above Ebert link is also an operable story outline, for those of you who are curious for more story details]

Ang Lee has been repeatedly questioned as what his validity and qualifications could be in making a gay film when he and all the principles involved are heterosexual. He has said, with the same focus and intimate candor that makes this film absolutely brilliant:

"Some people maybe feel a gay director is the right person to do this movie. But I don't think whether a filmmaker is gay or if the actors are gay matters. They have to be sensitive. They have to make it real and think beyond sexuality to romance. To me it's called 'Brokeback Mountain' because it's about the illusion of love. We can all relate to the love we miss out on."

That's the success that Ebert is talking about, as well- the film exists in such a tight point of view it's almost unparalleled- I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the perspective of the film, which I think is the magic that gives it so much force- it's so zeroed in on Ennis and Jack that the emotional experience becomes your own. Films of a similar, tight, completely emotionally focused POV or perspective that come to mind include Lost in Translantion and the little-seen and much underappreciated Toni Collette film Japanese Story, a film told in perhaps only a few hundred shots, and intense emotional focus.

There's anxiety in the way this film unfolds- if you have nervousness about the content, but want to feel "sensitive to it," the development of Ennis and Jake's relationship might seem unnerving. Ang Lee takes his time here, but it's because this relationship is exactly not a joke- it's not a payoff in itself, the sex scenes aren't the release of the tension you might expect them to be. But because of the time Ang Lee dedicates to these characters in the spacious mountain, their entire world sinks in nearly organically. It's some of the best directing I've seen- it forces the relationship to grow out of the landscape- which is the only place or refuge and honest emotional openness for the characters through the rest of their lives. Spectacular.

Heath Ledger puts up perhaps the best single, most consistent, most immersed character performance of the year; and Jake Gyllenhaal also nails a great performance- who, if you forget his Day After Tomorrow yawner, puts forward a true career year between Brokeback and Jarhead. Hell, all of the principles are fully deserving of the praise their getting. Anne Hathaway has one scene in particular, talking on the phone no less, that kills many of the performances this year in terms of emotional authenticity. But Heath Ledger and his real-life darling, Michelle Williams, both nominated for Golden Globes, absolutely work themselves into inhabiting those characters. I don't have any particular favoritism toward any of these performers, but I think that's changing quickly. I know the people these guys play in the film- I grew up with them- and Ledger could have been any number of distant friends out there in the hills.

So it's such a tightly-carved film- Lee seems to have lifted it from the emotional space [and I do mean space- it's lonely out there, and these are all lonely characters] to put it on screen. As Ebert argues- that's what makes it universal- it's not the homosexual content- the film's not even homoerotic- it's the life-long love and the oppressive environment which prohibits it.

When the film ended, I watched the couple seated next to me. They were a well-dressed pair, mid thirties. The woman, wiping a tear from her eye, [ the final scenes are, again, among the best single scenes this year], asked her partner if he liked it. He shrugged.
"Nothing?" she said. "You didn't feel anything? I thought it was absolutely beautiful. Come on. What'd you think?"
"You know. It was fine," he put on his jacket, collected his things.
"Nothing? That's it?"

It strikes me that he didn't respond to the film because he wouldn't have responded to any film that takes place in the tight-knit emotional world, the isolated world, that's on the film. Any love story, any emotional story, he'd have been insulated from as much as this one.

Earlier, I posted on the strange false controversy over at Fox News about Brokeback's R rating. Fox was reporting that people wanted the film to have an NC-17 rating, and the best and only justification I could see for that perception [which wasn't even supported in the interviews in the story on Fox itself] was that Fox believes that any film that has an honest portrayal of gay love deserves to be rated R.

But Brokeback isn't really about gay love- just, love. Passion. Identity. All of that is tied up in it. So perhaps what really harms Fox, and that whole way of thinking promoted by Fox, is that Brokeback promotes men coming to terms with their emotions as much as it is about men loving men- doesn't seem so revolutionary to me.

Anyway-

a Challenge [capital "c"] to Lons et al-

Have you seen Brokeback yet?

Secret Judges, Public Resignations

Not everybody thinks these tactics are reasonable.

Today, a powerful, secret judge has resigned in direct protest to the President's assertion that he has ulitmate power [and his Attorney General's basic agreement to that despite what happens to the PATRIOT ACT and congressional or judicial power checks]. The powerful federal judge, U.S. District Judge James Robertson, sits among a council of 11 judges on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [for a fascinating, brilliant This American Life story on the FISA, check this out. It's really great] a court whose entire purpose is to issue instant, emergency warrants that are legal and entirely covert, and who has gained substantial power and influence in the Terror Era, but also has become a target of The Administration's power-grappling manipulation:

Robertson indicated privately to colleagues in recent conversations that he was concerned that information gained from warrantless NSA surveillance could have then been used to obtain FISA warrants. FISA court Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had been briefed on the spying program by the administration, raised the same concern in 2004 and insisted that the Justice Department certify in writing that it was not occurring.

"They just don't know if the product of wiretaps were used for FISA warrants -- to kind of cleanse the information," said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the FISA warrants. "What I've heard some of the judges say is they feel they've participated in a Potemkin court."

Robertson's resignation comes because of his concerns that illegal information was used to get the warrants- it's an interesting issue, because the secret court, up until this point in time, wasn't necessarily known for its hard-nosed reequirments for warrant requests prior to 9/11. If the federal government had reason to suspect an individual or a group, and had reasonable evidence to support a legal, secret, search, the FISA gave them provisions to do so.

So here, Robertson's concern is this: the intelligence itself that was used to get the FISA warrants from the court in the Bush Terror Era would have been the information learned from the searches and taps after the warrants were issued previously. This is like money laundering [Mr. DeLay? Any thoughts?] only in secret, illegal intelligence- the Administration is knowingly laundering dirty intelligence to make it clean.

Also, they're taking relevent information to the court to do this- information which might, reasonably, yield more information from further taps. But that means that there's likely tons of documented, secret, unused dirty information all over the place, all covering who-knows-what... [and check out Think Progress' breakdown which shows that no, Clinton and Carter, contrary to rightwing talking points, did NOT authorize illegal, secret wiretaps on American citizens.]

The Daou Cycle

Salon's Peter Daou pins down The Administration's scandal-riding cycle :

[T]he dynamic of a typical Bush scandal follows familiar contours...

1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.

2. The story breaks (in this case after having been concealed by a news organization until well after Election 2004).

3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.

4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.

5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution. A few 'mavericks' like Hagel or Specter risk the inevitable rightwing backlash and meekly suggest that the president should obey the law. John McCain, always the Bush apologist when it really comes down to it, minimizes the scandal.

6. Left-leaning bloggers and online activists go ballistic, expressing their all-too-familiar combination of outrage at Bush and frustration that nothing ever seems to happen with these scandals. Several newspaper editorials echo these sentiments but quickly move on to other issues.

7. A few reliable Dems, Conyers, Boxer, et al, take a stand on principle, giving momentary hope to the progressive grassroots/netroots community. The rest of the Dem leadership is temporarily outraged (adding to that hope), but is chronically incapable of maintaining the sense of high indignation and focus required to reach critical mass and create a wholesale shift in public opinion. For example, just as this mother of all scandals hits Washington, Democrats are still putting out press releases on Iraq, ANWR and a range of other topics, diluting the story and signaling that they have little intention of following through. This allows Bush to use his three favorite weapons: time, America's political apathy, and make-believe 'journalists' who yuck it up with him and ask fluff questions at his frat-boy pressers.

8. Reporters and media outlets obfuscate and equivocate, pretending to ask tough questions but essentially pushing the same narratives they've developed and perfected over the past five years, namely, some variation of "Bush firm, Dems soft." A range of Bush-protecting tactics are put into play, one being to ask ridiculously misleading questions such as "Should Bush have the right to protect Americans or should he cave in to Democratic political pressure?" All the while, the right assaults the "liberal" media for daring to tell anything resembling the truth.

9. Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on.

10. The story starts blending into a long string of administration scandals, and through skillful use of scandal fatigue, Bush weathers the storm and moves on, further demoralizing his opponents and cementing the press narrative about his 'resolve' and toughness. Congressional hearings might revive the issue momentarily, and bloggers will hammer away at it, but the initial hype is all the Democrat leadership and the media can muster, and anyway, it's never as juicy the second time around...

Rinse and repeat.

It's a battle of attrition that Bush and his team have mastered. Short of a major Dem initiative to alter the cycle, to throw a wrench into the system, to go after the media institutionally, this cycle will continue for the foreseeable future.

And the scandals keep coming for this Administration. Their agenda here is to reassert what they see as "lost" presidential powers-- to reaffirm the presidency as the powerful head to enact the fist of justice and democracy upon the world in the name of the ideological public. The intent has been, since their first inauguration, to assert the powerful, manly Thrust of Bush- to send glorious Democracy out into the world and to make ohsomuchmoney for one's pals in doing so.

And they've eroded the capability to challenge that. Not by legal means, no- strangely, as Daou suggests, by the simple fact of weathering the storms. As Osama Bin Laden believed he could defeat America luring the superpower into a prolonged, brtual war, as he had done with Soviet Russia, because America would run dry of patience as they did with Vietnam; so Bush and His Administration believes they can supplant the very ability of questioning their tactics by weathering scandals and confrontatative engagement with the public. The idea, with both men, is to wear us down into obvlivious acceptance and resignment of our fate. Equally contemptuous teams, Bin Laden's al Qaeda and Bush's Administration; and equally effective.

Light Posting

I'm sure you've all noticed the light posts. Things will pick up again soon!

What You Saw When You Voted

Seems like it was just yesterday, Bush was saying:

Some of the most irresponsible comments - about manipulating intelligence - have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein, These charges are pure politics.

Whoops! It was yesterday! Ha ha ha ha ha! What a difference a day makes, eh? Because today from Knight Ridder, we have:

WASHINGTON - President Bush and top administration officials have access to a much broader range of intelligence reports than members of Congress do, a nonpartisan congressional research agency said in a report Thursday, raising questions about recent assertions by the president.
...
The Congressional Research Service, by contrast, said: "The president, and a small number of presidentially designated Cabinet-level officials, including the vice president ... have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods."
...
The CRS report identified nine key U.S. intelligence "products" that aren't generally shared with Congress. These include the President's Daily Brief, a compilation of analyses that's given only to the president and a handful of top aides, and a daily digest on terrorism-related matters.

Surprisingly, the White House refused to comment on the issue.

We can only hope some fightin' Dems come out tomorrow with plenty to say.

That last statement is crucial: "We can only hope..." The Dems still have to step up to these challenges. Here we've got a president who has completely been turned around by John McCain from saying he'd Veto an anti-torture bill to actually endorsing a version of it; it has been uncovered that he began spying on American citizens in America's borders; seemingly every branch of conservative support is under threat of indictment or investigation; and nearly every facet of The Administration's go-to promotable policy, the war on terror and the war in Iraq, have been exposed as corrupt, visionless, enacted with poor intelligence at worst and manipulated intelligence at best. Absolutely every justification given for the war has fallen away as incorrect or irrelevent. Every attempt the President has made to say that Democrats were involved in his awful decision making in the lead up has been exposed as a sham.

This is a Presidency that, at the moment, seems to be corroding from the inside unlike what we thought was possible. The Democrats still have yet to propose an alternative and still have yet to fully capitalize on this. They're not a viable alternative party at this point- they're still confused as to what people want them to do- they need to work it out - we've got to figure out how to communicate the needs of this country to them again...

It needs to happen...

"I Will Not Comment On An On-Going Investigation"

Orrrr.... maybe I will:

Democratic leaders sternly criticized President Bush yesterday for saying former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is innocent of felonious campaign finance abuses, suggesting his comments virtually amounted to jury tampering before DeLay stands trial.

"The president of the United States said a jury does not need to assemble, that Tom DeLay is innocent," said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "To have someone of his stature, the president of the United States, prejudge a case is something I've never seen before."

During an interview Wednesday on the Fox News Channel, Bush was asked whether he believes DeLay is innocent of the charges of money laundering and conspiracy that led to his indictment in Texas and resignation from the House Republican leadership in September. "Yes, I do," the president replied.

That response pushed the White House on the defensive yesterday. Administration officials have repeatedly deflected questions about other legal probes -- especially Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's inquiry into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name -- by saying they could not comment on ongoing investigations. White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the apparent inconsistency a "presidential prerogative."

"The president was asked a question and he responded to that question in the interview yesterday, and made very clear what his views were," McClellan said. "We don't typically tend to get into discussing legal matters of that nature, but in this instance, the president chose to respond to it. Our policy regarding the Fitzgerald investigation and ongoing legal proceeding is well-known and it remains unchanged."

"Call it a presidential prerogative," he added.

I say, let the President maintain his close connection to Tom DeLay, let him maintain his hypocritical legal "prerogatives." As the DeLay investigation continues, and as the Abramoff investigation widens, seemingly engulfing everything, let's let the President get tangled in these legal nets again. Tom DeLay is moving rapidly toward irrelevance anyway- the Supreme Court is hearing formal complaints about the DeLay orchestrated redistricting in Texas; and in his home district he's being faced by two GOP challengers. Tom DeLay is facing legal challenges and questions on three fronts - he may get out of all of them, but he is tainted.

Bush thinks he's innocent- Bush will roast right along side him. It only hurts Bush's credibility to hang on to Tom DeLay.

Rejection, Sweet Rejection

Frist has led his group of staunch Republican party-liners directly into potentially forcing the Patriot Act's rejection today. The Democratic-led filibuster of the vote to permanently extend the act has succeeded through this first cloture vote, meaning the Patriot Act may expire in several years. Thankfully.

Frist and the Republican ilk will chalk this one up to yet another "obstructionist tactic" by those politically conniving devious Democrats. Frist will be, of course, misrepresenting everything that's happened because it's in his political interest to do so- but he'll be missing the fact that he was eight votes short of ending the filibuster- meaning that the filibuster had substantial support from moderate Republicans. Also, Frist refused to even consider any negotiations, which is what this filibuster was really about- to allow the Act's extension but not permantly. He refused to even consider that compromise- his obstruction of the act of compromise is what has led to the Patriot Act's defeat.

Coupled with the very recent and frightening exposure that The Administraiton has been spying on Peace Activists since 9/11, it's clear that these powers and provisions have been misused. Many in the Peace Movement have "known" since they began that they were being watched, completely without merit or need - and as Atrios points out, the only purpose the government could really have for warrantless spying is intimidation.

But let's also not forget the resurgence in the Democrat's backbone. Keep it up.

And while you're at it, check out Sen. Russ Feingold's blog about this battle to remove the stain that is the PATRIOT ACT from the American legal annals.

Al-Zarqawi Update

We Got Him!!!!

Number One International al Qaeda Terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured.

And Released.

A Year ago.

... sigh.

Keep up that pursuit, boys.

Don't Bug Me

Bob Novak [despite the fact that he wrote the piece outing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, which has led to the indictment of the Vice President's chief of staff, and an ongoing criminal investigation] says "Don't Bug Me! Don't Bug Woodward! Bug the President!"

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak is still not naming his source in the Valerie Plame affair, but he says he is pretty sure the name is no mystery to President Bush.

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is," Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't."

"So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.' "

Grumpy Mr. Novak is fed up with the constant pestering. But he, again, refocuses that spotlight at the very highest levels of the Administration in this ongoing case.

Religious Protests

There's a fascinating story in the WaPo today - A Religious Protest Largely From the Left:
Conservative Christians Say Fighting Cuts in Poverty Programs Is Not a Priority

When hundreds of religious activists try to get arrested today to protest cutting programs for the poor, prominent conservatives such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will not be among them.

That is a great relief to Republican leaders, who have dismissed the burgeoning protests as the work of liberals. But it raises the question: Why in recent years have conservative Christians asserted their influence on efforts to relieve Third World debt, AIDS in Africa, strife in Sudan and international sex trafficking -- but remained on the sidelines while liberal Christians protest domestic spending cuts?

Conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family say it is a matter of priorities, and their priorities are abortion, same-sex marriage and seating judges who will back their position against those practices.

"It's not a question of the poor not being important or that meeting their needs is not important," said Paul Hetrick, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, Dobson's influential, Colorado-based Christian organization. "But whether or not a baby is killed in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, that is less important than help for the poor? We would respectfully disagree with that."

...
Dobson also has praised what he calls "pro-family tax cuts." And Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at the Christian group Concerned Women for America, said religious conservatives "know that the government is not really capable of love."

"You look to the government for justice, and you look to the church and individuals for mercy. I think Hurricane Katrina is a good example of that. FEMA just failed, and the church and the Salvation Army and corporations stepped in and met the need," she said.

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said the government's role should be to encourage charitable giving, perhaps through tax cuts.

"There is a [biblical] mandate to take care of the poor. There is no dispute of that fact," he said. "But it does not say government should do it. That's a shifting of responsibility."

The Family Research Council is involved in efforts to stop the bloodshed in the Darfur region of Sudan as well as sex trafficking and slavery abroad. But Perkins said those issues are far different from the budget cuts now under protest. "The difference there is enforcing laws to keep people from being enslaved, to be sold as sex slaves," he said. "We're talking here about massive welfare programs."

There are other forces at work, of course. In the Sudan, the Khartoum-led rogue bands from the north are led by fundamentalist Muslims who have been consistently trying to either convert or exterminate Christian tribes [and various other religious identity tribes] in all parts of the Sudan. It is a lawless, horrifying world there- but it also provides for well-funded conservative Christian missions plenty of great PR. [This is absolutely not to discount the highly beneficial aid work done in these desperate regions]

The American poverty question is another question- even though there is such a "biblical mandate" described by Mr. Perkins - it is not the responsibility, you see, of the government to provide any provisions to assist the poor. That should be left to "the Market."

I'm sure that the first thing we're all thinking is "Why are the conservative Christian organizations who are attempting to redefine the nation as a solely Christian one, and who push for more political power and more politicalization of their religion, also demanding that the nation is not responsible for those same Christian values they say are mandated?" [They do, of course, pin most of this paranoia onto the Left- or the "Secularists" out for the blood of Christmas] It's such a strange position to take- that somehow you can be all about "compassionate conservativism," wich aims to give federal money to Christian social programs, without giving money toward governmental aid for the poor.

All this has been said about the "Liberal" Christian groups. It'd be interesting to hear more from these organizations- whether they feel they're being adequately represented in their media, whether they feel the perceptions of "Christians" are appropriate or whether they feel their position is not on most peoples' radars.

I'd guess they aren't; I'd guess that many people feel disenfranchised by a Conservative "mandate" that does not reflect the values they see in their religion. I'd really like to see more coverage and more "Liberal Christian" voices in these debates.

Responsiblity: Faulty Intelligence Edition

The President had yet another of his public ramblings today. This time around, he shocked the nation for the second time by uttering this bizarre-sounding phrase: "I take responsibility." This time out, for going to war:

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq, and I am also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities and we're doing just that," he said.

But he said, "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision" because he was deemed a threat and that regardless, "We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator."

Bush's new admission was significant in that he rarely admits mistakes, although he has acknowledged failures in U.S. intelligence on Iraq before.

His administration touted Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a reason for going to war in March 2003, but such weapons were never found.

Cute. Just adorable. We were wrong, but we did the right thing.

This is, as I said, the second time Bush has approached an admission of error. The first was his half-ass attempt at taking responsiblity for various federal failures following Katrina, which came much too late, without any on-the-ground improvement, and has yet to provide an adequate plan for short-term living arrangments for the displaced or for long-term restructuring in the hurricane-hit areas.

In a way, this is more telling of the complete shift in America's international policy during the past 5 years of The Administration. Many of us have argued for this entire duration that, in effect, the intelligence and information itself was meaningless- it was merely justification for the Agenda- it was the easiest, quickest, and most effective way to sell the policy of preemptive strike- which is a revolutionary concept and one of extreme international danger. This is made more clear in the headline and text of another Yahoo! posted news item reporting the exact same event. This one, rather than being titled "Bush takes blame" has been recast to fit the ideology which is more important: "Bush defends Iraq invasion, preemptive war doctrine"

"In an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," he said in a speech aimed at shoring up flagging US support for the conflict.

The president took responsibility for launching the March 2003 invasion based on intelligence that "turned out to be wrong" about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction, none of which were found.

"As president, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq -- and I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that," he said.

The US president, who embraced preemptive war as US strategy after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, did not name any potential targets, but said the Iraq vote would put pressure on the governments of Iran and Syria.

Bush clearly can concede fault, to a degree- by "taking responsibility," or at least saying he does, as a way to maintain a resemblance of control during dark hours.

But he has basically exposed that greater question. The debate will rage eternally whether going to war on the premise of their reconstituted nuclear program was justified or not. But at no point, really, were we not going to war after September 11, 2001. We had no choice, given the circumstances of an Administration in power who finally, with their majority hold in all branches of government, could see a series of events which allow them the opportunity to push into action their great experiment: exporting democracy using 'preemptive' strikes against enemy nations. That shift, that assumption that you could just strike others before they strike you, is the biggest change in international politics.

Because now, declared or not, everybody- every state that has an enemy on any front, is both a bully and a suspect. Everybody in the world will attempt to engage in Bush-designed preemptive strikes.

So when he takes responsibility for his broken intelligence- we must remember that at no point did they think the intelligence was any good. They knew it was bad.

But it was the quickest and dirtiest way to get their bigger project in action.

War by Numbers: 1000 days

The Independent via dKos via Editor and Publisher compiles a list of what the war in Iraq looks like after 1,000 days:

Here are some of their calculations:

• $204.4 billion: The cost to the U.S of the war so far.
• 2,339: Allied troops killed
• 15,955: US troops wounded in action
• 98: U.K troops killed
• 30,000 : Estimated Iraqi civilian deaths
• 0: Number of WMDs found
• 66: Journalists killed in Iraq.
• 63: Journalists killed during Vietnam war
• 8: per cent of Iraqi children suffering acute malnutrition
• 53,470: Iraqi insurgents killed
• 67: per cent Iraqis who feel less secure because of occupation
• $343: Average monthly salary for an Iraqi soldier. Average monthly salary for an American soldier in Iraq: $4,160.75
• 5: foreign civilians kidnapped per month
• 47: per cent Iraqis who never have enough electricity
• 20: casualties per month from unexploded mines
• 25-40: per cent Estimated unemployment rate, Nov 2005
• 251: Foreigners kidnapped
• 70: per cent of Iraqi's whose sewage system rarely works
• 183,000: British and American troops are still in action in Iraq.
• 13,000: from other nations
• 90: Daily attacks by insurgents in Nov '05. In Jun '03: 8
• 60-80: per cent Iraqis who are "strongly opposed" to presence of coalition troops

In an accompanying piece from Baghdad, the newspaper's Patrick Cockburn adds one more stat: A BBC poll yesterday showed that half of the Iraqis questioned say that Iraq needs a strong leader--while only 28 per cent cited democracy as a priority.

"Iraqis are cynical about their political leaders," Cockburn writes. "The election results are likely to show that the great majority of Iraqis will vote along ethnic or religious lines as Shia, Sunni or Kurds. The country is turning from a unitary state into a confederation.

"There is no sign yet of the thousand-day war ending. Every month up to a thousand fresh corpses arrive at the mortuary in Baghdad. A new Iraq is emerging but it is already drenched in blood."

That Side of Town

An Associated Press analysis of a little-known government research project shows thatblack Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.

Residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution scores also tend to be poorer, less educated and more often unemployed than those elsewhere in the country, AP found.

"Poor communities, frequently communities of color but not exclusively, suffer disproportionately," said Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration when the scoring system was developed. "If you look at where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they're not in the upper middle class neighborhoods."

With help from government scientists, AP mapped the risk scores for every neighborhood counted by the Census Bureau in 2000. The scores were then used to compare risks between neighborhoods and to study the racial and economic status of those who breathe America's most unhealthy air.

President Clinton ordered the government in 1993 to ensure equality in protecting Americans from pollution, but more than a decade later, factory emissions still disproportionately place minorities and the poor at risk, AP found.

In 19 states, blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods where air pollution seems to pose the greatest health danger, the analysis showed.

Though it is unofficial and unanalyzed, it has become achingly clear that blacks, minorities, and the poor also live in areas likely to be annihilated by catastrophe. They are the worst effected, and the worst treated. We allow industry to spew pollution into these neighborhoods; we allow these people to live in very-high-risk areas will little, or no, assurances of protection and evacuation.

We only seem to think this way of life is okay so long as we do not have to prepare a universal health care plan ["Keep spewing that toxic waste into the South Side's school yards. We don't have to pay for their cancer treatments!"] and so long as we can remain sufficiently distracted from any real conversation about democratic values with some ridiculous war. Shameful.

The Vote Tally Machine

Here's a fun parlor trick for you to try out at your next social function, aimed at raising millions of dollars for your power-entrenched social conservative circle of political pals: Start a company that makes millions making ATMs, then branch out into, say, computerized voting machines that have no paper trail, never get thorough testing, have no accountability or recount capabilities. Ensure they stay this way by having said pals in power, ready and frothing at the mouths for their re-election [extra cool-points if you do this during an election cycle following one where you seized the office without getting the majority of the votes in the democracy].

Promise and vow that you will "Do what ever it takes" to keep your pals in office, in the one state [Ohio] that everybody says will be the battle ground state. Get your pals in that state to write new laws mandating that they'll use your machines, and only your machines, in that state to vote [again, lacking any and all provisions that would ensure accountable election tallies].

Wait until voting day. Oh, the excitement! Look, indeed, it is down to that one state!

And yes! You did all you could! Your guy wins! No recounts [not that they could, anyway, but that's just one of many "assurances"]!

And here's the real trick: Resign from office amid internal scandals and revelations that you did, indeed, assist in possibly enacting federal voters' fraud! Leave the party in handcuffs and the butt of all Democracy-loving jokes!

But know that, in the end, you still got away with fleecing the country. What a fun trick!

The Christmas Catch-22

Anybody wandering around Washington DC around the area of the Supreme Court only needs to look across the street to see a complete nativity scene oh-so-close to the hallowed public grounds of America's final word in legalese. But this is not just any manger. Oh no. It is the enacted master plan of the Anti-Anti-Christmas Brigades:

WASHINGTON - One man's quest to get the ten commandments displayed in government buildings is taking an unusual turn: a nativity scene located across the street from the Supreme Court.

Reverend Rob Schenck says the manger -- set up in the front yard of his office across the rear entrance to the Supreme Court -- is part of a national effort.

Schenck, a member of Faithandaction.org, needs a special permit for the religious display since his front yard is technically public property, but he never applied for one.

Instead, Schenck says he is challenging the city to force him to remove the nativity scene. If the city allows Schenck to display the manger, his next step will be to "ask the city, 'Why not a permanent public display of the ten commandments?'"

YESSSSSSS! EET EEES BREEEELIANT!

For those of you too slow to understand, this is how it works: He puts up a Christmas display near the Court. If they make him take it down, he protests on anti-Christmas grounds. If they don't make him take it down, he protests using the line of logic that since they allowed it to remain up, they condone Christ on state property, and then they must put up a permanent display of the 10 Commandments.

HA! See! He's at least one or two steps ahead of all of YOU! You didn't see it coming!

[The above so-called 'attitude' is a satiric expression of the insolance this individual seems to have for any meaningful public debate about any of this. This is the line of reasoning that they attempt to use to force these things down our throats- it serves many purposes, but the main goal is to buttress the non-existent complaint of their perpetual societal persecution for being conservative Christians. But, before they mistake this honey trap argument as a Christian debater's gift from above, they should know that many of us think that it is, simply... moronic.]

No Clemency

The Terminator lets the ruling stand: Stanley 'Tookie' Williams will be put to death tomorrow in the State of California.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday refused to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the murderous Crips gang who awaited execution after midnight in a case that set off a debate over the possibility of redemption on death row.

Schwarzenegger was unswayed by pleas from Hollywood stars and petitions from more than 50,000 people who said that Williams had made amends during more than two decades in prison by writing a memoir and children's books about the dangers of gangs.

"After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency," Schwarzenegger said, less than 12 hours before the execution. "The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this case."

Schwarzenegger could have commuted the death sentence to life in prison without parole.

It's certainly no secret that The AntiCentenarian is firmly anti-death penalty [a value we share with Bill O'Reilly, among others] for many reasons. In fact, the first post, ever, in the AntiC memoryhole lamented the fact that consistent human-rights abusing, rapidly industrializing nation China has led the world to record-breaking year in executions.

I closed that post with this thought:

But we thirst for this kind of justice, thinking that it is morally acceptable. Those people all want the death penalty, and many of their reasons are understandable. but are any of them JUSTIFIABLE?

Despite far-exceeding my monthly alotment of bound derivational adjectives, the question does seem to be one worth asking: is this justifiable?

It's a tough question.

Tookie William's case, however, cuts to the absolute core of the values exhibited through the Death Penalty. Gov. Swartzenegger has shown that this society's power figures believe acceptable use of the prison system is one of retribution over rehabilitation. Tookie William's case is interesting because of his personal, private choices, made after his internment, to move from his youthful choices of violence into a constructive, positive life. In a way, he's a testament to human choice- when given the opportunity to thrive in the world of hatred and violence, he chose instead a better path, where he tried to show children that they, too, had that ethical choice to make in their own lives; and that his consequences could be theirs if they chose violence and crime without thinking about it.

Williams should, of course, serve out his sentence. But the condemnation to death is undoubtedly a missed moral opportunity by America in its best form; and a moral outrage in its worst. Williams has not yet and will never be able to repay society for what the crimes he's been convicted of, but he also chose to redefine his life.

He made the right choice. It's a shame to squander that.

The Centenarian

We here at The AntiCentenarian don't think you should heed any attention to this list of long-life secrets- or, at least, we surely don't believe them. But if you want to live to be 100, try more long showers.

[And don't be old, sick, or poor in America, or have a job that doesn't have excellent health care coverage. And stock up on a 401k with a company that won't go Enron on you. ]

No More Nukes

U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei accepted the Nobel Peace Prize this week and made some stirring comments on the nuclear crisis:

"We are in a race against time," the 63-year-old Egyptian said about efforts to keep nuclear weapons away from terrorists. "In four years, we have completed perhaps 50 percent of the work. But this is not fast enough."

To escape self-destruction, the world must make atomic weapons as much of a taboo as slavery or genocide, ElBaradei said in his acceptance speech. It has been 60 years since the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, yet the world is still deeply concerned over nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

The Bush administration has bristled at ElBaradei's positions on the nuclear threat posed by Iran and Iraq and unsuccessfully lobbied to block his appointment to a third and final four-year term this year.

It is not enough to simply sanction rogue nations, and viciously torture insurgent forces who might be hell-bent on nuclear armaments. The best, and only, successful path toward ending the nuclear threat is by disparaging them beyond cultural acceptance.

In the gun-crazy nation of America, where even Congressmen can suggest nuclear attacks on enemy capital cities and holy sites like Tom Tancredo has, it's hard to see this happening here. One of the primary reasons America hates ElBaradei- his vision of a world without nuclear threat includes America as a nuclear threat.

And he's right.

On Their Knees Thanking Jesus for Being Born

The Esteemed Mr. Bill O'Reilly, in some earlier stages of his battle against the so-called "War on Christmas:

O'REILLY: What's happened is frightening. A legal assault by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] combined with the media that blatantly promotes secularism has succeeded in convincing some Americans that the words 'Merry Christmas' are inappropriate while celebrating the national holiday of Christmas.

This, of course, is nuts. Anyone offended by the words 'Merry Christmas' has problems not even St. Nicholas could solve.

Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born. Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable; more than enough reason for businesses to be screaming Merry Christmas.

Ahh yes. Every American corporation has much thanks they must owe the baby Lord Christ, and Bill O'Reilly has taken the prophetic leadership role to ensure that we all remember this Holiday Season in the correct framework and light. With his noble allies, he'll assure that when buying all of our junk at Macy's, Target, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.com, you are able to sweetly thank the Lord Christ.

O'Reilly is, of course, an Irish Catholic, with his thoughts about the hard-line concerns about the new Pope Benedict XVI. But what does the Pope of the Catholic church say about secularist war-mongers destroying the moral code and values exhibited during the Christmas season?

"In today's consumer society, this time of the year unfortunately suffers from a sort of commercial 'pollution' that threatens to alter its real spirit," the Pope told a large crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square on Sunday to hear his weekly Angelus blessing.

He said Christmas should be marked with sober celebrations and urged Christians to display a nativity crib in their houses as "a simple but effective way of showing their faith and conveying it to their children."

CONSUMERISM is POLLUTING the Christmas message. While Bill O'Reilly wants to force every coporate entity to get "on their knees" for Jesus during Christmas, his own religion's highest figure says that this is exactly what damages the purpose of Christmas. How do we reconcile that, Mr. Bill?

The Constitution and The Administration

Doug Thompson:

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that “goddamned piece of paper” used to guarantee.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the “Constitution is an outdated document.”

Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn’t matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine – in the end – if something is legal or right.

Every federal official – including the President – who takes an oath of office swears to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the Constitution a “living document.”

“"Oh, how I hate the phrase we have—a 'living document,’” Scalia says. “We now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete's sake.”

As a judge, Scalia says, “I don't have to prove that the Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it's better than anything else.”

...

I have nothing to say to any of this. Wow.

Ethics class

No exceptions! Now Speaker Hastert says it's time to go back to school for Congress.

This idea that somehow just sending people "back to ethics class" is going to take care of the ethics problems in the White House, Senate and House of Representatives is totally asinine. America, of course, thinks this is a terrible problem that must be dealt with, but going to ethics class does nothing.

I'm not even going to try to link to all of the ethical violations the Ruling Party and The Administration have made. That's another project. But suffice to say that their entire system of choices has been exposed on nearly every front as being at the least insufficient, and at the most completely dibilitating for a nation.

Ahh well, we don't want to deal with all of that. Back to class, kids!

Flying the Anxiety Skies

A troubled man, a tense standoff and only seconds to decide whether to shoot or wait. It's a difficult but common situation for police officers and others with a gun and a badge.

But when it plays out at a busy airport and a troubled man winds up dead, shot by those hired specifically to make airlines and passengers safer, nothing is routine. Toss in fears of terrorism, mental illness and threats of a bomb, and Wednesday's shooting by Federal Air Marshals becomes one of the most scrutinized in the post-Sept. 11 era.

So far the investigation into Rigoberto Alpizar's final minutes aboard an American Airlines 757 that was to take off for Orlando, Fla., is focusing on his wild rage and whether he said he had a bomb. Federal officials from several agencies said Alpizar repeatedly made that claim and reached for a backpack, leaving the two air marshals little choice but to open fire on the jetway just outside the plane's doors.

Several of the 113 passengers who arrived in Orlando from Miami, however, said Alpizar may have been delusional and ran out of the plane only because he feared a bomb was on board.

The task of sorting out exactly what happened falls mainly to the Miami-Dade Police department, which is in charge of the homicide investigation. Miami-Dade Police Lt. Veronica Ferguson issued a statement saying early indications point to Alpizar running frantically from the airplane "with a backpack strapped to his chest, yelling that he had a bomb."

Detective Juan Del Castillo said people on the plane other than the marshals also heard the bomb threats. Del Castillo said Alpizar's threats and the marshal's orders to him were all in English.

After running off the plane, Alpizar, 44 of Maitland, Fla., turned in the jetway, walked menacingly toward the agents and reached into his backpack, police said. Marshal's stepped back before firing at Alpizar, who died at the scene, police said.

Police would not say whether he made the threats on the airplane, out on the jetway or in both locations. The marshals, who were not identified, have been put on paid administrative leave pending a full investigation.

At its best, the shooting which occured two days ago in Miami is a sober reminder of the constant tension which still persists here. It's pretty horrifying. Alpizar's behaviour was clearly confused and frightening to those who were there with him; his wife has stated that her trip with her husband, who did not have access to his bipolar medication for the duration of the flight, was a terrible exercise in anxiety and tension which ended with his explosive behaviour and his death at the hands of armed Marshalls.

So far, even the claim that he'd stated he had a bomb has come under confusion: several passengers on the flight have said that they never heard him say this. His erratic behaviour was itself frightening, and the way he clutched his backpack across his chest would have been terrifying to anybody. No explosives were found in any of his luggage- nothing tangible that would suggest he was anything other than a desperately confused person in a bout of mania he's had to deal with for much of his life. His friends describe him as everything opposite a terrorist.

With the anxiety of this country, absolutely everybody is suspect, everybody is a horror waiting to happen. We are the most fearful culture- not because we enact it, but because we can't get rid of it. Here, perhaps Alpizar was reacting in absolute terror thinking there was a bomb aboard his plane; and he was shot because we were afraid he had a bomb.

There was, of course, a recent parallel shooting in London when, only days after their subway bombings, London police shot and killed a young Brazillian named Jean Charles de Menezes. His case was somewhat more confused than this one- but the coverup of the facts by the police and the immediate judgement of the necessary action of his death exposed the irrationality of all of this. None of this makes sense.

In fact, the police in the de Menezes case are very likely to be prosecuted for their actions- which they felt at the time to be completely appropriate action given the confusion of the circumstances of the world they suddenly found themselves living in. When de Menezes was shot and killed, and before we knew his name or that he had a name, Tony Blair stated that there could be "no doubt" that he was a terrorist, and that the action was done with due course and judgement. Likewise, before the complex and scary scenario of the Alpizar shooting gave us even his name, or the terrored pleas of his wife, a woman who was simply trying to get home with her unmedicated husband, who we sympathize with beyond belief, The Administration has claimed this action as appropriate given the confusion of the situation.

Long-Eared Ronin put up a post about the coverup of the de Menezes issue called "You're Next...?" I didn't like that title because it was scarily present. I didn't like the openness of it, the fact that there were two unknowns punctuated- an elipsis which gave way to the untold, and a questionmark opening the door to the unknown.

It was, of course, the perfect title then, and it is now even more perfect. Because the fact is- any of us are subject to the converging forces of confusion and terrorist fueled anxiety. And if you behave in any way to contribute to that confusion...

You're next.

The sad part is this- given the horrors shown in Katrina, where nothing anybody did could ever make the situation more clear, where every good action became more clouded in fear and missteps and every bad action was false and myth, and yet the prominent sin was the non-action of FEMA and others, it's clear that there's nothing any of us can do, when you get down to it, to clear up a bad situation.

So just don't get in them.

Tax Cuts, Tippee!

Thank God the House just made a Christmas Miracle: They voted to solitify Bush's Tax Cuts!

Wahoo! They voted to enact $95 billion in tax cuts. Now, coupled with the over $50 billion dollars in spending cuts, that leaves us only $40 billion dollars more in debt!! WOW! Progress!

And paired with the upcoming requirement of an additional $100 billion dollars for the Iraq war alone, the House only wants us to be $150 billion in worse position than now!!

Wahoo! Bankrupting the country without sacrificing for it is always a great plan! Three cheers for the first MBA President! Hiphip... hooray!

Brokeback Mountain, Rated

FoxNews, surprise surprise, files a bizarre homophobic story about the "controversy" which they percieve as pestering the [potential masterpiece] Ang Lee film Brokeback Mountain. This is, of course, another manufactured controversy [paired with the "war on Christmas" they're waging], an attempt to bolster credit and credibility to the conservative culture war.

I am extremely excited for the film for many reasons- but non of which are dependant upon a judgement of sexuality. Fox News, however, has filed a self-depreciating report stating that Brokeback Mountain's gay sexuality deserved a box-office-killing NC-17 rating, at least according to some:

With a modern-day Shakespearian doomed-love tragedy called "Brokeback Mountain" opening this weekend, the debate over this country's ratings system — handled by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) — has once again bubbled over like the witches’ cauldron in “Macbeth.”

The much-blogged-about, critically acclaimed Ang Lee film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger is rated R. But its storyline of two male ranch hands who fall for each other in the early ‘60s and keep their relationship a secret has led some to wonder why the movie didn’t get an NC-17.

“I think the only reason it got an R is because Ang Lee directed it,” said film critic Anderson Jones, referring to the clout of the director behind “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “The Ice Storm” and “Hulk.” “I don’t believe it deserved an NC-17 rating, but I’m surprised it didn’t get one considering the storyline.”

It doesn’t hurt that the movie's studio is Focus Features, the "indie" division of mammoth Universal Pictures. Focus Features co-president James Schamus, the film's producer, said there was no discussion of an NC-17 rating — or a lesser one like PG-13. He said nothing was cut to get it an R.

“We assumed it would be R; it was R. It was totally fair,” Schamus said at a press roundtable discussion about the film. “It’s an adult, grown-up movie. It’s a movie I think young people could see or should see in the context of their parents talking to them about it. That’s an R rating to me.”

But some have blanched at the R as too strict for "Brokeback," since there are only two scenes where the main characters kiss and one short sex scene between them in which more is implied than shown.

"I don't believe it would be inappropriate [as PG-13]," Jones said. "The ratings system continues to prove how flawed it is. It's flawed, and it's controlled by larger studios."

This is the entirity of the debate over Brokeback's rating in this article. The entirity. And it is a self-contained non-debate- not one person in this article says that the film was ever considered, or in its current form, deserving, of an NC-17 rating. Yet the supposition that it somehow culturally deserves one seeps through the article.

The article itself seems to exist solely in a world where the only possibility for homosexuality would be a stern, adults-only rating- preserved in the queer-cinemas; insulating the average American from the possibility of having to deal with the subject matter. If the same story were heterosexual, it could fly with a PG-13. But GAY?!?! Slap it with the Showgirls treatment!

And that is exactly why the source material for the film is brilliant, and why the film is so promising to me. Annie Proulx's series of Wyoming Stories, Close Range, in which Brokeback appears as a short story, do just this. The goal is to resist this sense of over-simplification. Her stories crack through the veneer of how people percieve Wyoming and the citizens of the West. They crack that western mindset of machismo and present characters dealing with specific troubles and conflicting truths. They remove the factor of insulation, through choice or trauma. Brokeback, in particular, deals so delicately with a guarded secret of the west [and of course, by extention, this entire country]- that yes, homosexuals exist even in the most barren, isolated, and difficult landscapes in the country, despite our continued attempts to contain and deny it.

The Matthew Shepard case brought this issue again to the front of the cultural mindset, but there were complexities there as well, which quickly were dilluted and pushed aside. Specifically, as discussed in this interesting piece on Z Commentary Online responding to a 20/20 story which ran in Nov. 2004, Matthew Shepard's murder was more complicated than we understood it.

The power of the Matthew Shepard story rests on his being the innocent victim. His gayness had to be presented in such a way that it was free of all possible homophobic interpretations. He could not be seen in the news reports of his death as being anything but perfect: he was friendly, he was loved by everyone, he had a vision of world peace, he was good looking, he never made enemies, he was the traditional boy next door in all ways—except he was gay. He put a “human face” on hate crimes.

The flip side of this meant that Matthew Shepard couldn’t have problems, couldn’t be a stereotypical flaming queen, couldn’t be promiscuous, and couldn’t even be sexual. In a deeply homophobic culture, the overt brutality of Shepard’s murder could be understood as brutal only in direct contrast to his innocence. This, obviously, is not a problem with Matthew Shepard, but with our culture.

When “20/20” reports that Shepard was a crystal meth user, that he liked to party with the drug crowd, and that he was HIV-positive (during the AIDS epidemic when he would have understood the consequences of unsafe sex), the show—whether they meant to or not—diminished the importance of gay bias crimes. The “20/20” contention that the murder of Shepard was not a hate crime only works because they also repeatedly showed that he was not an “innocent victim.”

Of course he wasn’t. Who is? Even today, after nearly 40 years of second-wave feminism, rape victims are judged by their sexual history, even how they were dressed. In a world that continues to see gay men as sexual predators, disease carriers, criminals, and socially dangerous, its’s no wonder that to get Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder to be taken seriously the truth of his life had to be compromised and misrepresented.

The problem is that gay activists and the mainstream media both agree—for similar reasons—that this compromise is necessary and useful. The original coverage of the Shepard murder would not have been the same (or as extensive) if his HIV status or his alleged drug use was a factor. One of the ironies of the “20/20” piece is that because of the raised public consciousness of gay bias crimes, it is now permissible for his murderers to go on national television and say they were totally fucked up crystal-meth addicts rather than homophobic. Progress, sort of.

The problem was not one invented by “20/20.” It is the result of a world so twisted by hatred of gay people that the only way Shepard’s brutal murder can be taken seriously is to see him as the ultimate innocent victim. Matthew Shepard was human and no one who is human can be completely, perfectly innocent. If the need to define hate crimes and to argue against homophobic violence means we have to extract them from the complicated fabric of everyday life, then we are all in trouble—more trouble than “20/20” can ever cause with this exposé.

The 20/20 show included "revelations" that Aaron McKinney, on of Shepard's killers, had at least some history of homosexual contact himself; and that his motivation was fueled by drugs and robbery. But Z's comments are more correct: the social dichotomy required no complications in Shepard's murder. In fact, it was the perfect hate-crime for everybody involved. In the barren, relentlessly uncompassionate, conservative Wyoming badlands, a gay student is killed, ruthlessly, horrifyingly. And out of this, social change can come... [and it offered an interesting opportunity for the people of Wyoming to show their compassion and goodness, which many and most truly did.]

But again, if McKinney and Shepard's humanism were shown, the story becomes complex and impenetrable. If they remain simple and talking-point clear, it's easy for us to understand where we stand in relation to the story. Unfortunately, this doesn't do whole and complete justice to the victim, or the perpetrator.

Proulx's Brokeback takes at least narratively pre-dates Matthew Shepard's gross torture and death. It exists, however, in a similar social climate- the isolated and hard badlands of Wyoming. There is a significant response, in a way, to the Shepard case: in Shepard's world, the world of truth and reality, we find isolation, torture, pain, solitude, and simplified confusion. But in Proulx's Wyoming, the "ideal" world of literature, we find two men who encroach upon, and must deal with the conflicts of, warmth, connection, and love. It's the same world, but an entirely different world as well.

Brokeback Mountain is not a gay story as much as it is a love story- the story of two humans, men, who build such a spontaneous connection- and that connection itself causes every conflict in their world. It is a conflict against their culture, the landscape, and their concepts of themselves. But it is undeniable [Some would disagree; or at least differ in this opinion. Particuarly, "former gays" saved by the Lord].

It is, of course, this granting of humanism that freaks out Fox News so much. Because if gays become not only two-menorwomen-kissing-in-sin but actual creatures of warmth, love, and conflict, they become dangerous to us [ie the "fabric of society, the moral fibers of family"]. It's the same reporting they take in any sphere- simple, dichotomous, and misleading. And that's why Proulx's story can be revelatory under Lee's sensitive direction- it forces humanism and complexity back into relationships, and forces us to realize that society, actually, is good. Warmth is good. It's part of us all.

They intrinsically attack the film and the story because it is "gay." That's the first concern they can even come close to understanding. But for the rest of us, it'll appeal to us because it's "human." That's more valuable to our culture and our society, anyway.

Ringing in the New Year

EASIEST POST OF THE DAY

First Daughter Barbara Bush has been seen sporting some hardware on her left hand, third finger... For those of you counting, that's her ring finger.

Could Barbara be joining the ranks of young non-celebrities who keep making and breaking engagements? Is she any better than Paris, Kimberly Stewart and Talan-that-guy-from-the-crap-MTV-show...? It's hard to say.

The White House denies her engagement.

We at the AntiC are, for once, erring on the side of believing The Administration on this one. You see it's just as likely, if not more so, that Barbara is just using the old trick learned from her Daddy's drinkin' days- wear the ring, and the boys don't hit on you as much when you're plastered, leaving you more time with your beer steins.

[When did we become The Wonkette...?]

Stupider Than I

Everyone in the blogging world is probably all over this one, but I'll toss in. Delightfully charming Ann Coulter, when faced with hecklers at a recent function, said this:

"I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am," Coulter told the crowd of 2,600 Wednesday.

Before cutting off her speech after about 15 minutes, Coulter called Bill Clinton an "executive buffoon" who won the presidency only because Ross Perot took 19 percent of the vote.

Coulter's appearance prompted protests from several student groups. About 100 people rallied outside the auditorium where she spoke, saying she spread a message of intolerance.

"We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech," said Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major who heads campus group Students Against Hate.

So considerate, Ms. Coulter. But nobody's claimed you to be the considerate type, including yourself.

Can somebody explain to me precisely what Ann Coulter contributes to the debates? She is a figure of distration, in my opinion, who seems most functional as a lightning-rod for controversy in order to manipulate issues. She never says anything relevant or even interesting...

Action Item: Torture

Take Action.

We at the AntiCentenarian believe that the very least we can do is click a damn button and make a statement about something that is, in the very best form, absolutely absurdly wrong.

And Torture is one of those things. It is not a functional issue- it does not aid with intelligence gathering, it creates imeptus among the victims of it to give false testimony, and it has no moral value. It is, in its current US form, giving the US much more damage than credibility in the war and in the effort to reinstate the US as a moral leader. It is not something which we can support, condone, or even accept.

Click these links. The very least we can do is sit around and complain. The second least we can do is click a button and send an email through Amnesty to Congress.

Thanks-
-GS

Make not my Father's House

As the cultural conservative factions continue to manufacture the so called "war on Christmas," [whereby they declare that Christmas is under seige by various unnamed and non-existant secular entities, and in actuality declare war on Christmas themselves], Bush's card is the latest thing to come under fire, ringing hollow.

Many people are thrilled to get a White House Christmas card, no matter what the greeting inside. But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush stuck coal in their stockings.

"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Bush "claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one," said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. "I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."

Isn't he supposed to be the staunchest, most unweilding Christian President Ever, on quest from God? Or was all of that mere political pandering and manipulation of a group of Evangelicals to maintain power, done with more disdain and contempt than appreciation?

But more distressing than Bush's religious cowardice are the factions of extremists parading in Christian garb and protesting the Other God of America- Consumerism:

One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. "Sometimes it's hard to tell whether this is sinister -- it's the purging of Christ from Christmas -- or whether it's just political correctness run amok," he said. "I think in the case of the White House, it's just political correctness."

Wildmon does not give retailers the same benefit of the doubt. This year, he has called for a consumer boycott of Target stores because the chain issued a holiday advertising circular that did not mention Christmas. Last year, he aimed a similar boycott at Macy's Inc., which averted a repeat this December by proclaiming "Merry Christmas" in its advertising and in-store displays.

Yes. These Christian soldiers are protesting stores like Target, Macy's, and Wal-Mart because they didn't include the word "Christmas" in their consumer Catalog. Any body who has read the book of John in the New Testament should be outraged by this, and by all the profit garnered during the Christmas season in the greatest Consumerist nation ever made. But they're not. They want it- they want to remind everybody not that Christmas is the birthday of the Lord, but that Christmas, the birthday of the Lord, is when you buy a whole bunch of shit- and you'd better not forget it.

Right, Jesus?

2:13 And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2:14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
2:15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;
2:16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

All in Error

BUCHAREST, Romania, Dec. 6 -- The Bush administration has admitted it mistakenly abducted a German citizen it suspected of terrorist links, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice, addressing reporters in Berlin with Merkel, declined to comment on the specific case of Khaled Masri, but she said she pledged to the German leader that "when and if mistakes are made, we work very hard and as quickly as possible to rectify them." Her aides scrambled to say Rice did not admit an error.

Merkel's statement that "the American administration has admitted this man has been erroneously taken" was relayed by an interpreter and came as European scrutiny of the U.S. policy of secretly taking terrorism suspects to clandestine detention centers for extrajudicial interrogations has intensified.

The Washington Post has another interesting story about how this mistake occured in the CIA here.

Condi and The Administration stop short, of course, of formally appologizing or explainingg what's gone on in this case. Nor do they touch the topic of Masri's torture while incarcerated, illegally and mistakenly. Was the torture or a German mistakenly picked up also a mistake to be brushed away and forgotton?