Political Blog—April 2009

April 1—No Fooling.

Rachel Maddow interviewed Colin Powell today. He talked about torture, saying we needed to review the written record and that it never works. He also said that spending freezes never work and that Senator Reid's budget will make our economic problems worse.

Powell also described the Powell Doctrine in a way that made sense and differentiated it from the "brute force" reputation I've heard elsewhere. He said "if what you are trying to achieve politically and if it can’t be achieved through political and diplomatic and economic means, you have to use military force, then make sure you know exactly what you're using the military force for and then apply it in a decisive manner." That does not sound like anything Bush did.

April 2—Never Never Land

Now, for someone who is not making the country look good: Blagojevich was indicted today on sixteen felony counts, including corruption, extortion, bribery, racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy, lying to investigators, and I forget what else. It's probably not good when people can't remember all the things you're charged with. He's in Disney World now, though he could lose his house. So he's almost literally in la-la land. Nice.

April 16—There will never be a good time, so you may as well take the plunge.

Obama today said he would not prosecute CIA operatives who performed torture authorized by the Bush Department of Justice. WTF! He said we need to look forward, not backward. What kind of future will it be if it's tainted by the past? And this is after he released torture memos. The Bush administration approved water boarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and who knows what else with dubious legal justification. There will never be a good, convenient time to prosecute. It needs to be done now, and with a vengeance.

April 17—Don't blame me; I was a Kinky Friedman supporter.

How embarrassing. My governor, Rick Perry, thinks Texas retains the (treasonous) right to secede from the union. I wish he'd read the fucking Constitution. That's incredibly embarrassing. As a general rule, I like Texas—or at least, parts of it—and am proud to be from Houston and to have gone to the University of Texas at Austin. There are a lot of great things to be said for this state. I wish I could say anything great about our governor. Somehow, I don't think "Great; we're governed by an illiterate lunatic" really fits.

April 20—I just might get a "straight but not narrow" sticker for the car.

Jay Bybee. Jay Fucking Bybee, who authorized torture memos, was just appointed to a position just below the Supreme Court in a 12-6 vote with 10 Republicans and 2 Democrats for and 6 Democrats against.

Holy mother of God.

In a ridiculous moment of hypocrisy as usual (read: The above was irresponsibility; not the following.), the GOP has decided that Obama being friendly with Hugo Chavez was irresponsible. So what was he supposed to do; spit in his face and wave his fists and rattle his saber and say "bring 'em on"? Much as I enjoy watching the GOP collapse in on itself like the black hole it is (extreme density will do that . . . God, what a terrible pun.), I can't help but feel really embarrassed for them.

Speaking of embarrassing Republicans, Rudy Giuliani wants to be the frontman for the sanctity of marriage. Rudy Giuliani. The guy who's been married three times (once to his second cousin) and dresses in drag from time to time. This is precisely why the arguments about the so-called sanctity of marriage are so ludicrous. As Voltaire said, "God created sex; priests created marriage." I have nothing against marriage; on the contrary, I think it's a good idea in general and that multiple divorces and infidelity ought to be frowned on, but God damn. Marriage is for whomever wants it, not just a certain group of people. How would you feel if someone said you couldn't marry the person you loved because of some arbitrary moralizing law with roots in a tome nobody can prove isn't a work of fiction? Would it stop you from loving that person and being with them anyway? Wouldn't it send you into a towering rage against whomever stopped you from being with that person? I never really understood this debate, and the more I hear about it, the less sense it makes.

April 21—If anyone has any duct tape left over from the terror alert days, I need it. I have to tape Cheney's giant fucking mouth closed.

I wish Cheney were still in his undisclosed location. He sure didn't waste any time going from "undisclosed" to "full disclosure wobble jaw flapping mouth spitting all over the Obama presidency." He said he formally requested the memos to be released, but he didn't actually do it. Yet. I think really he only wants them released so he can protect his ass from being arrested. Though really, burning the memos would be a better way of ensuring that.

Anyway, Cheney went on to criticize Obama as weak and that he should have ignored Chavez. Like I said yesterday, what was Obama supposed to do? It's not strong to make enemies unnecessarily. Cheney, I'm looking at you.

On that note, while I don't plan on reading the book Chavez gave Obama (Eduardo Galeano's The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent—you can guess what the hint might be), I do think it's worthy of noting that Nixon gave Breshnev a Cadillac and Reagan sold arms to Iran OMG. So, yeah. Book = end of the world.

Actually, books are more dangerous, now that I think of it. Whoops.

April 22—SERE

Obama is leaving the door open to prosecute torturers, but our illustrious attorney general says he won't. Ugh. And this is coming after we all learned about SERE. The U.S. military designed a program called SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance Escape) during Vietnam so American troops could be more resistant to torture, false confessions, etc. Turns out people in the Bush administration decided to reverse engineer SERE techniques to use on American prisoners of war to get false confessions out of them. Apart from being incredibly illegal, this is also inept and ineffective . . . and well deserving of prosecution.

April 23—"Mommy, why are Republicans symbolized by elephants?" "Because they both make a lot of noise and leave a lot of shit behind, dear."

In keeping with yesterday's theme, Rumsfeld apparently thinks that SERE (as ruined by the Bush administration) is not torture. Hardly surprising. Torture has been redefined in an Orwellian fashion to the extent that it's not even about confessions anymore, and the law has been rewritten to give immunity to the guilty parties.

Boehner, meanwhile, was talking about it and slipped up and called it torture instead of "enhanced interrogation techniques." When called on it, the hysterical right of course leaped to his defense, saying "Well, he meant—" as usual.

Either way, none of the above changes the fact that the Bush administration signed off on torture six months before the memos were even written.

And now the RNC, ludicrously out of touch as usual, wants the Democratic party to rename itself the Democratic Socialist party. Fine, but only if the Republicans rename themselves the Hysterical Grasping at Straws Full of Shit party.

April 27—As Clouseau would say, "Swine flu."

I don't actually think the swine flu is that big a deal, so I can't really agree with those who say Obama is handling the swine flu better than Bush handled Katrina. I mean, he handles everything better than Bush did, but this is not on the same scale.

In other news, though it's not exactly news, torture was used to tie Iraq to September 11th and push the case for the war in Iraq. Like we didn't know that.

Somebody said that the GOP is all about the three Gs: Guns, God, and gays. I really thought (hoped) that even they would realize that the economy is more important than gay marriage, but I guess that's giving them too much credit.

April 28—Obama's Press Conference

President Obama opened his press conference tonight by telling us all to wash our hands, stay home if we're sick, etc. Common sense. Some right wingers are bound to pounce on this for whatever reason, but I thought it was kind of nice that the president was taking care of his country. Anyway, he maintained that common sense approach throughout the questions on swine flu, saying no we don't need to close the border because duh, the flu is already here; and it is a cause for concern, not panic.

He did agree that waterboarding was torture, but he stopped just short of calling it a crime (most likely because that would lead to calls for action). But really, agreeing that it is torture is by proxy admitting that it is a crime. He called it a shortcut instead, which I didn't like since that implied it worked, but at least he went on to say that it undermined who we are.

Then he talked about EFCA, saying (DAMN) that it was not his highest priority. Granted, with two wars, a pandemic, and a recession teetering on a depression; I can see why he might not be thinking about it, but still.

There was a bit more about immigration reform, but I kind of tuned out at that point since it inevitably boils down to barely closeted racism. Obama did say something about keeping wages good. I'm glad to hear that.

April 30—I can't believe someone that ignorant was ever in such power. And for once I'm not talking about Bush.

Condoleezza Rice just royally fucked up in Nixonian fashion. She was giving a talk at Stanford and, when asked about torture, very nearly repeated Nixon verbatim with his famous "If the president does it, then it's not illegal." WTF. (By the way, Frost/Nixon was a damn good film.) And then she trivialized the Nazis—the fucking Nazis—when some student quite rightly pointed out that the Nazis were the greatest threat we ever faced. Rice had the idiocy to say something like, "Excuse me, the Nazis never attacked us on our own land." So . . . what the hell were all those U-boats doing off our waters? As my dad said, "God, what a dumb bitch."

In other news, Governor Perry the secessionist today asked the federal government for assistance in dealing with the swine flu. Bet those stars and stripes don't look quite so bad now, hm?

Oh Lord. And Michael Steele tripped over his own giant mouth again (what a buffoon) by talking about the GOP wearing different hats. I think it was supposed to be a cool metaphor, but judging by the hilarious, appalled look on Pat Buchanan's face as he listened (starts about 5:30), I don't think it was very effective.