Iranian Mayhem

++Anyone reading this blog or even the Times of Israel knows the fight over the Iran Nuclear Deal is over. 

++Hillary Clinton gave her speech at the Brookings Institute supporting the Iran Nuclear Deal and said those suggesting a better deal was possible were deluded. She went on to say that we should assuage Israel's security concerns and step up efforts against Hezbollah and others. Yes,Hillary is a liberal interventionist. Her positions have been right of President Obama on national security since Day One.

++But she was eclipsed by the meltdown among the Right. At Dick Cheney's AEI speech yesterday ,Josh Marshall noticed that the head of a pro-Israel think tank , a Mr. Clawson went berserk and started attacking the Cope Pink demonstrators, even though Dock Cheney had security at the event.

++This morning Louie Gohmert vowed to quite Congress if the Iran Nuclear deal passed Congress and would go home and await the nuclear holocaust.

++Rep.Roskom,the Republican head of their Israeli Caucus, said he had a majority to reject the deal. He moved to vote on it on 9/11, Subtle. But then he did a bait and switch and suggested that because the details of the so-called side deals with the IAEA were not shared with Congress then Congress could not vote on the deal. This position of not voting on the deal is seen by the Right in Congress as prohibiting President Obama from listing the sanctions. 

++Mitch McConnell doesn't want any part of this and wants to move forward. But Ted Cruz has endorsed the House Plan and wants to postpone consideration of the resolution because it violated the Corker-Cardin  legislation that President Obama would have to give Congress 60 days to consider the plan. Cruz is now insisting that the IAEA "side" agreements are part of the plan--you have to read my past posts to see why this isn't true.

++Now let's say Congress doesn't vote on the Iran plan. Does this affect it at all? I proposed yesterday that the Democrats could filibuster the resolution of "disapproval" without the need for President Obama's veto. Now if the tea party doesn't bring it to vote,isn't the same thing accomplished.

++Josh Marshall at Talking Points is observing this circus and wondering whether grieving counselors shouldn't be sent in to help everyone get over their loss.

++Meanwhile Bibi Netanyahu and his cabinet are saying that Bibi didn't fail,it was a masterstroke to procure more arms from the United States. Josh Marshall points out that these arms were in the pipeline ,sometimes for years, and notes that Bibi refused to meet with John Kerry when he was in the region and wanted to talk about this. But Bibi is declaring victory.

++Col. Wilkinson appeared on Chris hayes show to discuss what he called Dick Cheney's "lucid insanity" about the Iran deal and his total disregard for reality.

++I noticed that ABC got into the Nuclear Iran craze by saying "the deal brought Iran closer to the bomb". In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. The Interim agreement pushed them back about a year and the new agreement puts them about 20 years away.

++But Roskom's gambit intriques me because I can't comprehend its logic or any sense. This is the new brain fart of the tea baggers and I can't understand how they can conceive this will hold up anything but Congressional business. If I figure this our ,I'll let you know.

It's Dump on Obama Day

++I've listened to right-wing radio this morning and you would never know that Bibi speaking to a joint session of Congress was unusual, There was no mention that it is unprecedented in our history to invite a foreign leader to attack the policy initiative of a sitting president--and in the midst of negotiations.

++Lindsey Graham, speaking to AIPAC, told the crowd that he would cut off funding for the United Nations because it fomented anti-semiticism in the world and he would block the Iranian deal.

++Dick Cheney will be briefing the GOP Caucus on the House side about these important issues.

++Bibi got over 80 standing ovations at AIPAC and claimed that the relationship between Israel and the United States was stronger than at any time. 

++AIPAC participants were told not to boo Samantha Powers, who appeared in a paper given out to the press during Bibi's flight as having made concessions to Iran. I would love to know how she could have anything to do with the Iranian nuclear talks.

++So the neo-cons are out in force today but they don't answer one of Israel's generals' complaint. Bibi could have played a subtle background role in shaping an Iranian deal but blew it. Now what is to be done.

++The Republican side really does support a war with Iran. It is incumbent on everyone for force them to flesh this out. There have been multiple studies showing that any bombing attack on the installations would have to be more intense and prolonged than anything we have yet seen in our Middle East ventures. Also,the conclusion of the studies show that Iran is likely to strike back both at Israel and the United States facilities within the region. 

++Then what happens with the Iranian participation against ISIS. Do they immediately become hostile to the United States? 

++For all the bluster of Bibi and the GOP neo-cons,massive questions need to be asked because their basic position is nihilism/

++For all of us who are on public record supporting a negotiated settlement of the Iranian nuclear program,we have to remain intellectually honest and not get carried away by the war fever. 

++This is a situation where all intelligence agencies and Mossad agree that Iran does not have a nuclear device. It's like getting whipped up with disinformation about Weapons of Mass Destruction that just aren't there. 

++Watch the IAEA and its reporting. I feel sorry for the guys because they can not confirm whether Iran worked on weapons systems before the negotiations began. You will recall the George W. Bush administration did everything to discredit the agency in its investigations into Iraq, which showed there was no longer a nuclear program since it had been dismantled after the Gulf War. This is just non-political reporting being done now but this time they will be used to justify some awful scheme.

++Ray Takyh today in the Washington Post wrote a surprising , for him, op-ed about the strategic genius of Ayatollah Khameni. His point was that yes the Ayatollah wants nuclear weapons but he will wait out the deal,reviving it in ten years when the ability of the West to respond will have waned. His op-ed is excellent. But I and people in the Obama Administration believe that he will be gone and that Iran will suffer a crisis of regime which will challenge the theocratic state. 

++In fact both Bibi and Takyh worry about the agreement dwindling down after 10 to 15 years. The odds are I will be dead then and so will the Ayatollah. And Israel will not have any transparency about its nuclear program

++There is one school of thought that believes Iran possessing a nuclear weapon makes them invincible throughout the region. We've seen governments with Weapons of Mass Destruction haven't been invincible just very scary. This school of thought says that such an achievement will solidify Iran's control over Iran, Syria, Yemen and possibly Lebanon. The vaunted Shi'ite Crescent. 

++This ignores that Iranians are Persians and must militarily attain hegemony over the Arab world. If we have learned anything in the last 12 years is that tribalism and ethnicity are controlling factors in conflict states, not just whether the population is Sunni or Shi'ite.

++I have heard the old cry of regime change again from conservative Republicans. But additional sanctions do not cause the unrest the conservatives want. You are more likely to experience popular unrest with a rising middle class. Sanctions never provoked an uprising against Saddam Hussein and in the case of South Africa it was the sports boycott that did the most damage.

++I believe that the nuclear talks do not have a positive or negative effect on human rights or the prospect of a democratization of Iran. 

++Some wave of amnesia has swept over the GOP on this issue. The party is practically owned by the champions of Iran sanction busters like the Koch Brothers, who were exposed in Forbes a couple of years ago. The GOP presidential candidate in 2012 , Mitt Romney lost out as a candidate to be vice-president to John McCain because of his sanctions busting investments. Do you have to square this to be intellectually honest?

++There is one thing that an Iranian deal will do. It will stop the return of the neo-conservative project and force the United States to soberly look at its options in the region. 

++ I expect Bibi to lie like hell tomorrow about the negotiations like he did about the Iraq War bringing an age of peace in the Middle East. If he believes the negotiations are an existential threat to Israel,he knows what to do. But as his military advisers suggest that would be insane.

++I expect this whole week to be filled with nonsense. I also expect that the "details of the plan you hear tomorrow" doesn't resemble in thought or deed the plan being negotiated.

Boehner Admits To Stumbles

++John Boehner admits his new House hasn't got off to the smooth start he wanted. Today the House couldn't figure out their own border security bill, which even Jeff Sessions admitted got too confusing. Senate Democrats are united in telling Mitch McConnell to just fund Homeland Security and not even thinks about bringing the House bill to the floor.

++John Boehner said that he is about ready to sue President Obama over immigration. The litigation strategy has just been reviewed. We are still waiting for his suit on Obama delaying the employer mandate.

++But Good news for fans of the Boehner/ Bibi show. John Boehner insisted he had the absolute right to invite Bibi because the House is a co-equal branch of Government. Even his math fails him. 1/6th or forget it. And by gum, he's going to stick by his decision.

++Dave Weigel reports that the Boehner invite was the brain child of Louie Gohmert and that Boehner made his dream real.

++Ed Kilgore , who isn't a very persistent Israel watcher, writes today "Bibi's Reckless Gamble". In sum, he writes that Bibi has alienated Obama's White House,congressional Democrats and American Jews, who overwhelmingly voted for Obama. He's receiving mixed reviews at home and earned a new bond with Republicans who have nothing whatsoever to do with foreign policy. Other than that,his plan is working brilliantly. 

++More seriously he gives the floor to Jeffrey Goldberg, who has been a fan of Bibi, but who writes "The Netanyahu Disaster" in the Atlantic. Goldberg thinks that Bibi's management of his relationship with President Obama has been a disaster and perhaps beyond repair. He's suspicious of the timing from the point of view of the Israeli elections. He's relieved Bibi hasn't attacked Iran--yet--which he agrees would be a real disaster. He's concerned that a bipartisan support for Israel may be threatened and he hopes it is not irreparable. That's heavy coming from Goldberg.

++So far,Jennifer Rubin has backed Bibi and Marc Thiessen. Marc as you know supports Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, which really did come from Gestapo handbooks. 

++Perhaps in honor of the occasion, they should invite Dick Cheney to be honorary President of the Senate so that the optics are complete.

12-13-14, Take A Walk On the Dark Side

++The release of the Feinstein Report psychologically marked the end of the Obama era. Obama may have some victories ahead but we have been thrust back into the dark times post 9-11, which we hoped we have gone beyond.

++I support Andrew Sullivan, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, and all those arguing that the culprits for the torture policy must be held responsible. But political reality tells me they will not.

++All the things I talk about concerning torture appeared in this circumstance. I always try to persuade foreign governments it doesn't produce "good intelligence". I say that torture corrupts every institution it touches. 

++In this case, you can see this in  John Brennen's pained support of those involved and the torture lawyers self-defense. The APA had to come out and condemn torture as against everything psychologists stand for and they had to note the two psychologists who created the program weren't members. We have yet to hear from the medical doctors about why they participated in the war crime.The international community had to protect their own institutions by condemning the United States.

++But let's go back to my axiom it doesn't produce "good intelligence". Clearly, recent books about the Nazi occupation of France document that Hans Barbie's torture did assist in rolling up the cells of the French resistance and discover where French Jews were hiding. We forget that the international humanitarian law pioneered by the United States made torture a "crime against humanity" after WWII to prevent the klaus Barbie's of the future.

++But let's go to the word "good". In this case, it was so-called "actionable intelligence". Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Integrity sats "Both Sides are wrong: Torture did work-to produce lies for War (see Footnote 857 of the Report)" Printed in Huffington Post ,Husseini refers to a footnote that describes the torture of al-Libi by the Egyptians which produced the misinformation that Colin Powell used before the United Nations to justify the Iraq War. 

++Husseini goes into depth that one of the reasons the CIA destroyed the torture tapes because they exposed the whole program. CIA personnel directed by characters in Washington were torturing detainees to find out about connections of bin Laden with Saddam Hussein (there were none) and if these ever saw the light of the day the torture program would be shown to be elaborate manipulation of American and world public opinion.

++This makes sense when we saw the curious release by Senator Levin of the CIA letter informing him that Al Atta, the so-called Al Qaeda agent never met and Iraqi in Prague--one of Dick Cheney's old saws to support Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. I thought Senator Levin was doing a Chuck Schumer for the media coverage but rather he was signaling that he knew what lay behind the torture program.

++The Torture program was a raving success. Dick Cheney and other apologists just don't tell you the reason. It was to fabricate intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. And it succeeded. We even have a newly elected Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa who campaigned saying Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

++Despite all the evidence the torture program did not prevent a single terrorist plot,the entire Republican Party with the exception of John McCain and Lindsey Graham, supported it then and supports it now. But I am sure they don't know it's real purpose.

++The Defense appropriation bill set to President Obama represents over 60% of our government spending. In it is authorization for his fight against ISIS. The administration objected that the authorization was too limited in scope and time. John Brennen was right in saying at his press conference policy-makers may use the torture program again.

++Remember how quickly the CIA dissolved its bin Laden office after the invasion of Iraq? Remember George W. Bush's jokes at the National Press Club about not finding bin Laden. The pathetic attempt in the lost week by former CIA chiefs to claim intelligence obtained under torture led to Bin Laden's demise just hides the fact the program produced the results it was designed for--The Invasion of Iraq. 

++The monkey is still on our back and will haunt the remaining days of the Obama Administration as they try to grapple with the aftermath in Iraq and Syria brought forth by the last administration.

White Men Acting Out

++Mississippi Tea Party leader, lawyer Mark Mayfield,committed suicide as he was indicted for participating in the stunt of video-taping Tad Cochran's wife in a nursing home where she is because she suffers from dementia.

++Teabaggers tweeted back to Cruz' call for impeachment of Eric Holder, saying what is stopping him and escalating to calls for impeaching the President.

++GOP politician Timothy Ray Murray accuses Rep. Fred Lucas, a fellow Republican, of being dead, having been executed three years ago. Lucas was then replaced by a lookalike. It didn't stop Lucas or his lookalike winning the primary with over 85% of the vote.

++Dick Cheney now says we will experience a massive terrorist attack within ten years or make that twenty-five years unless we adopt his ideas.

++The Virginia GOP has been caught out offering a Democratic Senator a job, phone and a car before he resigned and killed Medicaid expansion for the state.

++Mississippi GOP chairman flatly rejects the Tea Party claims that 700 were illegally cast for Cochran.

++Sarah Palin wistfully wonders whether there should be a third party because the GOP establishment acts like Democrats. Interesting observation. Should pass it onto the DNC.

++Chris Christie is still up to it for taking money for the cancelled Bridge project and using it on the Pulaski Highway Bridge. 

Iran Opposes American Intervention

++Leslie Gelb and others proposed that the United States can coordinate its actions on Iraq with Iran. This idea was floated when Iranian President Rouhani suggested that Tehran was interested in assisting. But today, the hammer came down. Ayatollah Ali Kamenei came out strongly to oppose American intervention in Iraq. Last night ,the Shiite militias also told BBC journalists that they don't want Americans back.

++Secretary of State John Kerry is en route to Baghdad with a stop in Egypt where he urged President al-Sisi to create a government of diversity to prevent further violence. 

++I'm sympathetic to these calls for more inclusive governments in the area and think that represents our core national interests but there are some hard truths. We selected Prime Minister al-Maliki and we have given him billions to prop up his regime. He has purged the army of anyone except loyalists. He has developed a system of corruption within each ministry and where he has the portfolio he gets a cut of every contract. He's come a long way from the days when he was working as a butcher in Damascus. He has allowed Iranian intelligence control of his own intelligence agency. What is the incentive for him to leave when he received greater votes than before in the last election? And who are we at this stage to pressure him to leave?

++Are we at the stage again where we might have to accept the Saddam proposal--I'll leave if I can keep $1billion?

++Ayatollah Sistani beat us to the punch when he called on all Iraqis to defend the country and sanctioned the mobilization of the Shiite militias. 

++The Shiite fighters who were off fighting to defend Assad are returning home. It should be remembered that Maliki supplied arms to the Assad government and ignored our request to stop fly-overs from Iran to resupply the Syrian army. 

++Dick Cheney did battle with Rand Paul this morning. Rand Paul said we created a jihadist play land in Iraq and Libya. Cheney decried Paul's isolationism and warned of another 9-11 as he has warned of another 9-11 since 9-11 when he failed to heed warnings the first time. 

++The American Embassy has scattered in many directions as many have been evacuated to Erbil and other consulates. The same is being done in Nairobi, Kenya, where Islamic militants rampaged through coastal towns.

++Maybe we should heed the advice of a former Vermont Senator during Vietnam, "Let's declare victory and come home." 

Morning Notes

++Senators Sessions and Graham want to know what Hillary knows about the release of Sgt.Bergdahl. After all she had lunch with President Obama this past week.

++Hillary did come out and defended the swap.

++Dick Cheney thought a staff shouldn't let President Obama get so exposed. He won't have done the deal. But he did in releasing Al Qaeda members to Yemen. We call them Cheney's Raiders.

++GOP strategists have been arranging interviews with Bergdahl's platoon. Thanks to the New York Times for letting us who was behind these series of stories.

++Jeffrey Toobin says President Obama broke the law with the exchange. 

++The Imperial Post asks whether the price was too high.

++Lindsey Graham is going to hold hearings on the release.

++Senators McCain and Chambliss had been briefed on the prisoner swap in February.

++President Obama had made a signing statement on the bill that held his hands on releases from Gitmo. Both Reagan and W liked signing statements.

++General Martin Dempsey defended the Bergdahl move and said that the US brings back their own whoever they are and that complaints about his behavior will be dealt with.

++The Pentagon will look into whether anyone was killed looking for him as one Platoon leader claimed.

++The always charming John Sunnunu says that concerns over Bergdahl's health are like Obama's explanation for Benghazi.

++Marc Thiessen reminded us that it was the big bad Taliban who were released. 

++Columnists reminded us that Bibi Netanyahu exchanged 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for 1 Israeli soldier and President Reagan swapped 1,500 rockets for hostages.

++Fred Kaplan at Slate says that the release of the five Taliban commanders may lead to larger peace talks in Afghanistan.

++One note. The five Taliban commanders have been in GITMO for ten years and have been tortured. They will be kept in Qatar for a year. Presumably we will have ended the war in Afghanistan by that time.

Pushback Against the Naysayers

++Sometimes the resurgence of the long dead spark writers to flourish in their rebuttal to the past. You may not agree with Andrew Sullivan but when he senses the neo-cons believe we are sleeping he will respond. Since people like Bob Kagan have a distinct history of disaster that they have not owned up to,people like Sullivan are great at lancing the boil. I strongly suggest your reading "Thoughts on Kagan" in today's The Dish where Andrew eviscerates Kagan's comeback bid in the article "Super-Powers Don't Retire." Sullivan also dwells on the once dominant theme that Americaphiles like himself growing up in England saw a flawed democracy trying to live by international law and combating a totalitarian rival. Those days were gone with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States violating international law at a whim. Kagan was an enabler and a big one for an America trampling on his own ideals. Andrew warns that America's overreach also means it is hollowed out domestically, allowing even its basic infrastructure to collapse. After sinking the S.S. Kagan, he moves on to Doug Brooks and his op-ed this morning to zero in on Brooks' unfortunate metaphor as America as the international gardner, trimming and weeding the international order.

++Sullivan's long post is worth the read. He is at his most articulate.

++Meanwhile Dick Cheney surfaced the last few days to lament Obama's weakness and opine that the international elites with whom he confers with lament America's failure to lead. Peter Beinart in the Atlantic is moved by Cheney and Rove's recent statements that we should suddenly be concerned about international opinion. In "Is the World Really Losing Faith in Barack Obama",Beinart decides to look at the comparison of international public opinion polls on the Bush and Obama eras. Alas,Obama's America still retains large approval numbers over W. If anything,Obama bought back the global respect for the country. This too is worth the read.

Meanwhile as the Imperial Post sleeps in their pup tents

++By the way, Dick Cheney says Obama is "weak,weak,weak".

++Fred Kaplan at Slate posts a positive article about President Obama's speech at West Point entitled "Obama Lays Siege to His Critics". Kaplan points out that Obama's point is to ween our foreign policy away from military adventurism and create a high bar for the future use of the military in overseas wars.Kaplan lays out President Obama's typology for varying American national interests from "core interests" where we will respond to issues like dictators where we find human rights violations appalling.

++Over at Ezra Klein's new shop The Vox, Max Fisher  wrote "Obama just announced the most anti-war foreign policy doctrine in decades." I think that might explain the Imperial Post's horror. Fisher thinks the closest analogies may be Jimmy Carter's Notre Dame speech on the Cold War and more precisely Ike's military industrial speech.

++Of course, Morning Joe Scarborough was alarmed.

++I thought President Obama was trying to make American actions around the world coherent and rational. Good Luck with that. His explanation of American leadership on the Ukraine helped explain how various actions formed a coherent and effective response,the explanation of which escaped the media while it has been on-going.

++However,if you look at our military and intelligence budgets, you will see it will take some time before the United States can step down from its imperial pretensions.

++Meanwhile in the world of elections, there is great news--the amazing Sam Wang of Princeton Elections is back with an article in Politico to explain when real data will appear to explain the mid-terms. He tries to explain how the Imperial Post and New York Times reach different conclusions about how will take the Senate. The Post has the GOP near 80%, while the Times have the Democrats at 58%. Basically, Sam sides with the Times because they use polls,the Post doesn't. Wang says the polls will tell the story. He also says that at this stage both predictions are statistically toss-ups because there is scant data available.

Leader of Free World Endorses Same Sex Marriage

Let's praise President Obama's decision to come out and finally endorse marriage equality. It was the right and the decent thing to do and no matter what, if any the political costs, it is a moment of huge cultural significance for the United States. For other cultures, it sends a powerful message that gays and lesbians deserved to be treated fairly and equally. 


The problem politicians have been dealing with over the last several electoral cycles always centered around the issue of "civil unions" for gay couples, a growing awareness that gay couples sought stability ad legal rights for their union. But marriage has been a recent phenomenon and was actually promoted the most forcefully in the beginning by people like neo-conservative Andrew Sullivan. We saw the more conservative strain of thinking on this issue emerged with Ted Olson's advocacy against Proposition 8. Even Dick Cheney this year lobbied for gay marriage in Maryland. It has been a tough hurdle for politicians to move from the idea of civil unions to marriage.


While President Obama's discussion of it tonight seems almost like an afterthought to those who follow the issue, its impact will be large, especially among communities who resist the notion of equal rights and protections for gays and lesbians such as the African-American community.


David Frum wrote today that this put the Democrats as the party of modernity as he sees the GOP slump into the reaction of social conservatism and anti-modernity.


I've read dozens of assessments about the political impact of this statement on the election. Some lament he said it after North Carolina passed its Amendment One ,banning same sex marriage. I lament he said it after the death of Maurice Sendak,who had a relationship with a psychiatrist for fifty years, and never saw it recognized and never heard the President of the United States said that such a relationship should be honored. Some say he solidified his support among the young, who heavily favor same sex marriage. Others say he has given fuel to social conservatives and unwittingly united the conservatives behind Romney. Still other observers felt it was a mixed bag--acceptance of gay marriages has gained rapidly over just the last two years and the President avoided looking hypocritical or weak if he didn't come out in support, while the social conservatives would oppose him no matter what. 


For the immediate return, President Obama brought in $1 million in less than 90 minutes after he made the announcement. Standing in a field with an oil rig, Mitt Romney told a group of about 200 people he had always believed a marriage was for one man and a wife. (Like most things Romney says, it isn't true.) He accused the President of flip-flopping on this issue, another great laugh. But,I thought he was vicious in his statement that he was against hospital visitations by gay partners. How brutal do you want your society to be?


I am sure the lightning rod of President Obama's statement will be his justification of his change of mind on his Christian beliefs and his view about the Golden Mean. He got personal in his discussions like most people eventually do when discussing gays in citing the people who work for him who have stable family relationships and also how his daughters thought it was a no-brainer. Younger people think anyone who doesn't accept this reality is a dinosaur. But I am sure we will see the endless preachifying on this for the next week. We will also see Willard appear at Jerry Falwell's college for the commencement address, a certain venue for his pronouncements on family values.


Dan Savage was less than joyous about the President's statement because President Obama still said that the issue should be decided at the state level. But those who support the President's approach said that he has indicated that such state actions have to be limited by federal authority. What is being set up by supporters of marriage equality is the Supreme Court case--another reason to vote for the President. President Obama's approach also runs counter to Romney's goal of federalizing the definition of marriage through a constitutional amendment. We saw the Administration reject defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) this year and we should expect this issue to play out over the next few years. So I am not impressed by Dan Savage's critique. 


The criticism of the Log Cabin Republicans was bizarre. On this issue they praise Dick Cheney and felt that President Obama had been cowardly in not supporting equal marriage prior to the North Carolina vote. However, they back Mitt Romney who was all for the Amendment 1 vote.


PPP has found that a majority of people who already oppose President Obama always believed he supported equal marriage rights. So it certainly didn't surprise them. What surprised Washington pundits was that he didn't wait until after the election so as not to risk negative electoral consequences. Clearly Joe Biden was the trial balloon and that just created pressure on the White House to endorse the idea sooner rather than later. But when is it the right time to do the right thing?


President Obama already has the most progressive record concerning gays and lesbians in our history. While holding back would be somewhat disappointing to the gay and lesbian community, it would be understandable and wouldn't lead to any negative consequences in light of his strong record of achievement.


But President Obama did us the service as a country to lay bare the reality that when we are discussing these issues we are discussing the lives of real people and real people who inhabit every rung of society and work in every political administration. And it is long past time to recognize this fact and live with it. Contrast this administration's attitude to the homophobia generated during the AIDS epidemic in the Reagan years. 


If it helps those of us who are not gay to be more empathetic and sensitive to these issues, the President has done an enormous service for us all. Today gave us one example of what real political leadership is.


Now if Joe Biden would say,"Weed is awesome."

No,Torture Does Not Work and It Did Not Get bin Laden

I should also point out that George W. Bush had all the time from 9/11 until leaving office to capture bin Laden. He didn't and one can't give him credit for something he did not do and that took place almost two and a half years after he left office.

Dick Cheney was cute, saying he could help by wonder whether the techniques that were put in place didn't assist in getting bin Laden. He knows damn well they didn't.

Even Don Rumsfeld told Newsmax that waterboarding had nothing to do with getting bin Laden.

Heritage Foundation, the group who did the math of Paul Ryan's budget, out out a paper,"Detainee Interrogation Key To Killing Osama bin Laden."

John Yoo, who believes the President of the United States can crush the testicles of a boy to make a detainee speak but can not force a contractor to reveal his political donations, said that "Without the tough decisions taken by President Bush and his national security team, the United States could not have found and killed bin Laden."

Karl Rove told Fox and Friends that 'rendition, enhanced interrogation, obviously served (Bush's) succesor well."

Until past American officials are brought to justice for torture, we are going to repeat this nonsense until I am senile and in a nursing home. Point number 1: the compound was unknown to anyone at Gitmo because it had not been built yet. Point number 2: the pseudonym of the trusted courier--not his real name--was discovered in 2005 ot 2006--years after the torture program at Gitmo was shut down. The courier's name was not gotten from KSM during his waterboarding sessions.

The historical fact of the matter is that the Bush Administration failed to protect the United States against the 9/11 attacks after having been briefed on the imminent threast posed by Al Qaeda to the mainland of the country. The Bush Administration failed dramatically to capture bin Laden and his cohorts at Tora Bora. For a good explanation of this, watch PBS' "Bush's War", which explains how the bureaucracies fought over Afghanistan. The Bush Administration quickly downgraded the hunt for bin Laden and discontinued the unit that was in charge of this mission in 2006.

So, the Bush Administration in my view deserves no credit--even an afterthought--for the murder of bin Laden. None of the great torture techniques produced any usable intelligence for this recent mission.

Sunday Mishmash

Bravo to Nate 'The Great" Silver,baseball's leading statistician, for taking a break from politics to do an analysis of Derek Jeter's salary compared to performance and the compartive prices of other shortstops. I tend to believe this column printed in the New York Times led to the Yankees' upping the offer and snagging Derek for the next 3 years. Jeter now stands to become the first Yankee to pass the 3,000 hit level,to surpass Mickey Mantle's record for most games played as a Yankee, and to top Ricky Henderson's stolen base record for the franchise.

Dick Cheney in a moment of lucidity told Tim Russert that the tax cuts for the wealthy did not create any jobs and that they only account for 25% of the national debt. I have an ingenious solution to Cheney's Interpol problem. Since Cheney literally doesn't have a pulse anymore, his lawyers should claim he's dead, thereby sparring the Obama Administration from having to finesse the arrest warrant. The bonus to this is that he can take advantage of the Estate Tax, which is due to re-appear in 2011.

Since it looks like the tax cuts for the wealthy will be extended, Glenn Beck will get $2,500,000 in tax breaks and Mitch McConnell, whose net worth is $34 million, will get enough of a tax break that he will earn more than the President of the United States. Not bad for saying "no"

James Fallows writes in the Atlantic about how John McCain became a shell of his former self. Fallows likens McCain's fate to that of Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, who became right-wing crackpots in their old age. Regenary, the right-wing publisher, has printed a new book extolling Lindbergh's politics when he was challenging FDR. It must have been underwritten by the Koch Brothers, who are trying to rehabilitate their families' reputation during that period.

For his part, McCain is trying to run out the congressional clock on DADT as GOP spokespeople claimed in the Sunday news shows,saying DADT is dead for this Congress. Don't bet on this.

Remember to revisit Prop 8 trial tracker tomorrow as the oral arguments begin at the 9th Circuit Court on same-sex marriage in California. So far, no names have been announced about the defenders. Boies and Olson are back up for the same-sex marriage advocates.

Meanwhile in Illinois, the Governor signed the bill allowing same-sex marriage and partnerships. What's interesting about this bill is that it allows for "marriage-lite" for both gays and straights. Straight couples can opt for domestic partnerships instead of marriage. A little shot across the bow was said by government authorities when they told the press, "No church can define marriage." Ouch!

Nate Silver in today's New York Times does a post-mortem about the House races. In short, he concludes that the Republican 60 seat pickup was a result of the polarization in those districts and that over 48 of them were districts where McCain had won in 2008. he also notes that the Democrats picked up all seats in Massachusetts, suggesting that the Coakley candidacy was incredibly weak when she lost to Scott Brown.

Newton Leroy Gingrich sort of thinks he may run for President so far. Stay tuned. He came up with an ingenious suggestion that the "rich" should determine when their tax cuts end. After all aren't they the ones who built America?

Robert Kaplan is an author I have enjoyed over the years but he leaves me today with a sophomoric article in the Washington Post, which will pass in this town as wise, saying that the problems in the world today are the result of the weakening of empires, including our own. He extols the fact that both the United States and the Soviets were "missionizing empires" and deplores China's reluctance to play the same role, exporting their values. He tut-tuts that China is not stepping up to the plate to accept their leadership role in this age. A strange argument but one that was heard on the Senate floor this week uttered by the "Liberator of South Ossetia" himself, John McCain.

Kaplan tells readers--wrongly--that we do not face the same fate as the Soviet union because of our wealth and personal freedom. This stuff just fries me. We have a war against the Middle Class--the Poor lost out two decades ago--,the world's largest debt, and the greatest shrinking of personal freedom in a generation but, no, Robert thinks we can go on with building up our military power. I guess the royalties for his books have been so good that he doesn't have to live in everyday world. I suggest Kaplan may be hanging out too much with Niall Ferguson, who has been on a global speaking campaign saying the American empire is threatened by the country's social benefits.

Dick Lugar risks being renditioned by teabaggers to Arizona to placed in Governor Brewer's death panels. Lugar praised the President for his outreach to Republicans, claimed the Republican leadership appreciated it and said that Repubicans have to come up with some constructive programs and can't be the party of no. The Teabaggers are issuing a Fatwa against Senator Lugar for faintly praising the Muslim President.

Actually the founder of the Tea Party Express said this week we should return to the days when only those who owned property could vote. Does a car count?

The new Teabagger Governor of Maine,LePage, discovered something interesting. He is urging his Attorney-General to sign on to the case against the Healthcare Bill because when Maine becomes the 35th state,the law becomes null and void. Isn't that Great? It's also wrong. A great state now run by a total moron.

But in Virginia, we have the great Cooch, our fanatic Attorney-General, who now wants to streamline his appeal on the healthcare bill straight to the Roberts Court,Inc. You see the first federal court suit here in Virginia upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Now Cooch doesn't just want an appeal he wants the final decision while Gumba Tony Scalia is still on the court.

I recommend reading Andy Rowell and Eveline Lubbers' "Ken Saro-Wiwa was framed, secret evidence shows" in today's The Independent (U.K.). This article details the multi-year investigation by Nigerian authorities into the military's killing of four Ogoni elders whose murders led to the execution of the playwright and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. The article should be read not only for this infamous case but also for the tawdry atmosphere around all abuses. Remember Saro-Wiwa was charged with murdering the elders for their moderate stance on issues in Ogoniland. The article details the activities of the military leading to killing the Ogoni elders and later to the whole frame-up and execution of Saro-Wiwa. And one of the details--those gratuitous details that show up in human rights cases--is the delivery of Ghana Must Go Bags filled with money to Lt.Col Okuntimo and how they spill open with guards present. The bags were the Shell Oil Company's payoff to the Colonel. Will anything be done?

The whole Wikileaks controversy has certainly opened the door to politicians' inner fascism around the globe. Both Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin call Julien Assange a traitor--even though he's Australia. Mike wants all leakers executed. I object--I don'tthink Scooty Libby should be executed. Mitch McConnell calls Julian Assange a "high-tech terrorist". Australian journalists are calling for Donald Assange, Julien's 20year old son to be kidnapped and used as ransom for his father's return. I guess this is Colombia-style democracy. Senator Lieberman,I-Knesset, said he got Amazon's cloud network to drop Wikileaks. And the woman who has accused Assange of sex with a broken condom turns out to have worked with the CIA and on other issues with anti-Castro groups organized by Carlos Alberto Montaner. (Full discloser--Carlos is a friend of mine.) Meanwhile,the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom are doing an all-global press to shut down any Wikileaks websites and their new tweeter accounts.

Now,let's focus on what our Government thinks of us. The Middle Eastern governments have basically enforced media censorship on the Wikileaks stories and shut down all internet sites commenting on it. We expect that. And we expect Russia and China to do the same as human rights activists have protested for years about authoritarian governments waging cyberwarfare against dissidents. Aside from the amateur hacker in the first days of the story, it has been the United States' government ,which has unleashed the electronic war to swamp every and all Wikileaks websites. It makes me sick to see our country is the best in the world at this. I had always felt it was Iran and China, working with a software called "Rain" that were the champs in suppressing information.

Now graduates students in Ivy League Schools have been warned not to read Wikileaks if they want a job in the State Department. Government employees have been warned not to read any of the Wikileaks' cables--even in the press? We have heard that lives at danger. American diplomats have been fanning out across the globe to offer their sources the opportunity to relocate for protection. How much of this concern is based on realistic threats I don't know. But the attitude of American politicians to the American public certainly is eye-opening.

Is there anything you have read that suurprises you? Are you shocked to find that Hamid Karzai is not a Jeffersonian Democrat? Are you surprised to find that an American defense contractor procured young boys and drugs for the Afghanis they are training as policemen? Were you stunned to find that the Saudis want to fight Iran to "the last American"? I'm not sure that the American public is shocked by anything in these cables.

But what I cam certain is that the over-reaction to Wikileaks will stir up more anti-Americanism than before. It seems very peculiar that we are hunting down Julian Assange with an insensity we lack against Bin Laden. Our plea to interpol was immediately after Assange said he was going to dump thousands of documents about an American bank. The Iraq and Afghanistan dumps--which were massive--elicited a very nonchalant response from Bob Gates at the Pentagon. Or maybe it has been Assange's call for both Hilary Clinton and Obama to resign for ordering spying on the United Nations that triggered the harsh reactions. I thought both statements showed how Assange was actually very naive about politics in general. We've been spying along with everyone else on the United Nations for decades.

But one question I do have is why the manic urge to shut down Wikileaks but no such effort has been made to close down the Jihadi websitesthat recruit new Al Qaeda members. We have Al Qaeda in Yemen recruiting American college kids from Virginia and relaying praise to the FT. Hood shooter. These websites actually kill people and yet we haven't made a move on them. I know it's so we can obtain intelligence on these groups so we allow them to operate. Meanwhile, troubled youths destroy their own lives and maybe others.

The simple lesson on Wikileaks is to keep your condom on, others the feds will come get you.

If you want to own a part of American history, the Unibomber's parcel of land in Montana is on sale. Unfortunately, it doesn't include the cabin. The last time I looked the cabin was at the Newseum here in Washington.

In Your Guts, You Know He's Nuts,and She is too

Emerging like a huge cartoon head from Monty Python, Dick Cheney returned to the video screen to lament the failure of the Obama Administration to waterboard the gonad bomber. Interviewed by my old executive assistant Jon Karl, Cheney again complained that Obama took away the tool of torture in fighting terrorism. But the Liberator of Buffalo did suppport the rescinding of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Cheney blasted Joe Biden's statements this week on Larry King supporting Obama's policy in Iraq. CNN--which has gone mental these days--referred to Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin as the voices of the GOP on national security.

Thank heaven, Joe Biden showed up to point out that Cheney is trying to rewrite history. Joe pointed to the Obama Administration eliminating 12 out of 24 of the top Al Qaeda leaders and 100s more of their affiliates. Al Qaeda is now in disarray and running for cover, which inhibits their chance to wage sophisticated attacks. He also repeated the refrain that the gonad bomber was not treated any differently than the Shoe Bomber. Biden also got the dig in that so far over the 300 terrorists tried in criminal courts, none are free and all are in prison. But two out of the three tried by military commissions are free on the streets. He also blasted Cheney for being responsible for shredding the Constitution.

My point about trying terrorists in crimnal court is pretty simple. These are people bent on killing, they are not warriors; they are not combatants and to treat them any different is to afford them the status they don't deserve and that they crave.

The Washington Post printed an article today rehashing the criticism that Obama is killing more terrorists through drones, depriving our intelligence services of the chance to capture terrorists and interrogating them for more information. The sourcing of the material is indicative of the internal fight. Anonymous intelligence agents decry their lack of human materials to work on, while the military positively respond to the new policy and say the Commander-in-Chief often gives the go-ahead himself. They also cite the killing of the person responsible for the Kenyan embassy bombing in Somalia and how fast Obama responded in attacking Al Qaeda in Yemen.

So far we haven't heard from Cheney and his acolytes about the Obama Administration breaking up a large-scale plan to attack New York City on the anniversary of 9/11. That was done by the FBI and not the spooks. Nor have we heard about the killing of the mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole. But conservatives did send e-mails out purporting to be from a window of a sailor slain in the incident claiming Obama was weak on terrorism. Nor have we heard from our vaunted media about how Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula is the sole creation of Dick Cheney himself who personally released the men from Gitmo.

Ms. Lindsey Graham weighed in today calling for Jack Brennen's resignation as counter-terrorism czar. Brennen, who has served several Presidents, doesn't take prisoners as witnessed by his sharp response to the Republicans this past week.

Sarah Palin said on Fox News that Obama would try to win re-election by declaring war on Iran. Now today, she believes he should declare war on Iran. The Republican adoption of pre-emptive war, an unprecedented doctrine in American history, got us where we are today. Apparently, it doesn't matter that Obama has beefed up defense systems for the Gulf states, looked sideways at Israeli assassinations of Iranian agents and Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, and sent Hillary Clinton to the Gulf to prepare for the next stage of sanctions on Iran. Presumably, we should declare war--the Congress' role, not the President's--and wing it like in Iraq. I don't think we have the manpower or the $1 or 2 trillion to do the job. Or I don't think we can take the massive hit again on American prestige in the world.

But, never fear, operatives in the RNC are preparing for Ms. Sarah. Rumors have it that there is such bad blood after the last election that knives are being sharpened for 2011 to take Palin out. RNC operatives believe Palin was a massive mistake and that she is dangerous. When you hear negative news about her, it will be Republican leakers. We already know from the words of Steven Schmidt and others on the McCain campaign some of the politically juicy stuff but there is alot more to follow. Apparently, Sarah has an open marriage with her husband "The First Dude", who was revealed this week to be a major decider on policies in her State House. While the Obama campaign purposively avoided frontal attacks on Palin during the campaign, we should expect Republicans to be not so queasy. They claimed she had sex all along the campaign trail with leading Republicans. They also know that at least two affairs in Alaska led to her family businesses being closed--the laundromat and a snowmobile franchise. They also claim that her business woes far surpass Clinton's Whitewater 's problems. They also know that her son serving in Iraq was giving a choice of jail or enlistment by an Alaskan judge for his rampage vandalizing school busses. RNC people promise they will not let her get off the ground in 2011.

Possibly the Last Post of 2009

I've kept my New Year's Resolution simple: I'm not putting plastic explosives in my underwear and I'm getting a haircut. Everything else is up for grabs.

Here's hoping this year brings some peace and calm to our troubled country as well as economic recovery.

A tip: When ever you hear Dick Cheney mouth off, it means that something has occured legally behind the scenes. Cheney's tirade accusing a man of escalating the war in Afghanistan, sending predators to pick off Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen of "pretending we're at war" comes the day it appears that Cheney was explicitly linked to a mass of legal violations in the torture of detainees. Even, according to the legally unsound Bush torture memos,the waterboarding of detainees was illegal "if it wasn't aimed at preventing future attacks on the United States." Apparently, as I have written before, the whole rash of waterboarding was aimed solely at establishing an Al Qaeda--Saddam Hussein to justify the Iraq war and nothing else. The primary pusher of this was Dick Cheney, who was obsessed by the subject. It's ironic that the very administration he attacks is actually trying to protect him. It's like a giant case of chicken.

If you read the White House answer to the Cheney charges, a subtext can be read about basic American strategic errors committed during his watch. Shortly after 9-11, the United States decided to attack Afghanistan and then were planning to "pick off the low-hanging fruit" in Somalia and Yemen. The idea was to wipe out Al Qaeda in both places but the plan got sideswiped by people like Cheney who wanted the war in Iraq. We see the fruits of this blunder today as Al Qaeda restores itself in Yemen and the Obama Administration plays an almost eight-year old game of catch-up in Afghanistan. The underwear bomber incident only underscores the strategic blunder of the Bush Administration during these critical years. Cheney knows this in heart of hearts.

I believe Dick Cheney is coming close to the Nixon zone when Nixon became non compis mentis during the Watergate investigations. Alot of this has a background in the second Bush term. During the first term, Cheney studied the Threat Matrix-we knew the Matrix would come into this. This was all the unfiltered intelligence on every threats against the United States and the President from around planet earth. Most intelligence analysts said these were garbage. Cheney read them everyday and presented them to President Bush everyday. If you inhabited this world, you would go stark raving barkers.

The two personalities Bush personnel said needed a muzzle were Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. The whole Valerie Plame incident gave Bush the excuse to usher Rove out the door and banish Cheney to the Vice Presidency. By 2004, President Bush understood in his own peculiar way that Cheney's way was the wrong way. You began to see langauge about closing Gitmo and we now know that the torture memos were being revised,if not rescinded. All the Cheney rhetoric now is in part to re-fight the bureaucratic battle he lost.

But now with the CIA's Inspector General's Report somewhere in the limbo of being released and the OPR report on the torture lawyers promised soon, the stakes become a little higher.
God knows what will emerge with the millions of e-mails recovered recently because they cover the whole time period of the outing of Valerie Plame and some of the torture times.

It is not incidental that Cheney claims Obama will release hard-bitten terrroists when it has become known that it was what he personally ok'd with the release of the two men who taught the underpants bomber about explosives. My jokes about Cheney's Raiders, referring to Gitmo detainees released to Yemen and Saudi Arabia under the Bush Administration, literally turn out to be true. He was the man who personally approved their transfers. And they are all back in the field.

(Parenthetically--Could we release the remaining Uighurs from Gitmo? If real Al Qaeda people can got to art therapy classes in Saudi Arabia, why can't people who had nothing to do with nothing be released?)

Conservative of the Year--the Man Who Wanted To Invade Buffalo

Human Events selected its Conservative of the Year--the one and only Dick Cheney. Editor Jed Babbin has a keen sense of humor and the choice usually has a large dose of intending to provoke liberal outrage. Last year, the choice was Sarah Palin, who galvanized conservatives for the Republican ticket when most conservatives thought John McCain was a RINO.

But let's take this seriously. When Dick Cheney was in the Senate he had a voting record right of Jesse Helms, the beacon for conservatives then. But is the Dick Cheney of today really a conservative? Let's take his advocacy through his aide-de-camp Richard Addington of the constitutional theory of a unified executive. Real conservative constitutional scholars like Bruce Fein, who has become more of a libertarian, thought such a doctrine was worthy of impeaching George W. Bush. It's a constitutional doctrine that is radical to the extreme--the President can basically do whatever he wants. It makes even King George look wussy.

Or how about abandoning the Geneva Conventions and embracing torture as American policy. Thewhistle-blowers on these Bush policies were all Reagan conservatives. To his credit William Howard Taft IV, with the proper conservative lineage, drafted memo after memo condeming the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions, which the United States helped draft, and attacked the Torture Memos of the Department of Justice. It is no small irony that when he was Governor of the Phillippines, former President Taft called waterboarding Philipino insurgents the "most disgraceful acts in our history". Abandoning Ronald Reagan's commitment of the United States to the Convention Against Torture doesn't seem very conservative. Ronald Reagan's Justice Department even prosecuted a Texas sheriff for waterboarding a prisoner.

What about Gitmo, a subject on which Dick Cheney is famous?Most of the materials in the reports of human rughts groups condemning practices at Gitmo were derived from military personnel who were self-proclaimed conservative Republicans. Even the chief prosecutor at Gitmo claimed torture had been committed and that cases against the detainees were jeopardized by these practices was a Reagan appointee to the Pentagon.

Suspending the fourth amendment of the Constitution--admittedly with Democratic consent--is not very conservative. And advocating the invasion of Buffalo with US troops during the Lackawanna terrorist plot doesn't sound very conservative. Dick Cheney did advocate this and was over-ruled by President Bush.

And what about over-riding the FISA courts. After all it was Reagan appointee to the bench, Judge Lambeth, who was available 24/7 to approve wire-tap requests from the Government. He was removed because he was too inconvenient and the NSA simply decided to tap all Americans without warrants. That doesn't seem so conservative.

Dick Cheney made his fortune as the head of Halliburton. Now we're getting somewhere. But wait up--his actual performance in real private sector-private sector deals were a disaster. He made the company real money by procuring government contracts. That's not so conservative.

Dick Cheney said, "As Ronald Reagan said, deficits don't matter." Here we can give him the benefit of the doubt as his administration left the United States in debt to the tune of $12 trillion according to the Office of the Treasury Report for 2008. Maybe not so conservative as he would like.

He sacrificed all his Halliburton bonuses and stock options when he took public office and donated them to charity. That's compassionate conservatism. But wait, the donation was to the Richard Bruce Cheney Vice Presidential Library. Maybe not so conservative.

He supported the creation of a whole new doctrine of "Pre-emptive Warfare", which abandoned America's traditional doctrine of deterrence. That's not conservative at all.

Dick Cheney never met a President whom he felt was strong enough. His days now are spent fighting bureaucratic fights he lost in 2004 when it dawned on President Bush that maybe his vice-president preferred living on the dark side all the time. But then again the Vice President wasn't really part of the executive--that's not very conservative.

If CPAC can be sponsored this year by the John Birch Society, then maybe it makes sense to declare Dick Cheney "Conservative of the Year". It is a good joke played by Human Events.

Health Care You Die; Torture Good

A week away across the midwest to Ohio. It was the first time I've watched television for a year and came away with that feeling one used to get in the sixties when ads were aimed at making you neurotic and anxious about your Bad Breath and Body Odor. Now one is assaulted with medicines for ailments I never heard of. From incontinence, female heart disease, erectile dysfuntion, and ringing in your ears. I thought 50 was the new 30 but you would never know from watching mid-50 year olds suffering from prostate and strange bladder diseases. You would think my generation is reaching crepitude at a blistering pace. And maybe we are.

The good news if this is our condition is that the Republicans tell us we are all going to die. not from Al Qaeda or jihadis, but from Obama's healthcare plan. Michael Steele reversed historical GOP position against medicare and issued a Bill of Health Rights for Seniors, which will preserve Medicare coverage and prevent the Democrats from summarily executing senior citizens through Death Panels. The GOP is warning fellow party members that the Democrats will be using party registration to deny Republicans healthcare. So it's best if everyone registers as an independent just in case. If you are a veteran, you're going to die because of the Democrats' Death Book, which advises serious ill veterans about their end of life options. And in case, you haven't gotten the message, the Democrats will put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. In fact, it's all going to be run like the DMV--which is actually run at a state level. If a public option is chosen, millions of Americans will lose their private health insurance and they too will die. Even John McCain argues that a public option will destroy the private health insurance industry. And the beat goes on. Real Republican members of Congress are saying on the floor that health care reform is going to kill people. There are actual members of Congress, not the public, who believe Government will intervene in Medicare--at the last notice this was a government-run program.

The birthers and Rush Limbaugh have raised a more serious threat--male circumcision. The birthers believe Obama is not circumcised--which would indicate what I'm not sure. Rush Limbaugh is afraid that under Obama's healthcare he would be cirumcised. All of this was heard in the background as the Center for Disease Control put out a report how circumcision would help control certain illnesses. Naturally, since a black man is President, he's going to sick Eric Holder on white males and shear off their foreskins.

This fear-mongering raises the delicate topic of Death itself. For a party, which is dominated by evangelical Christians and observant Jews, why would death actually be such an issue? If death is not the end, then isn't it worst to go bankrupt through illness and become incapacitated through catastrophic illness? Isn't the long-term effects of destitution on the future of one's family more horrifying than death itself? Let's face it--America is one of the least death obsessed cultures in the world and by talking about it the idea is to raise irrational fear. If you preserve the status quo, you live; if you change, you die. It doesn't matter that the insurance and drug companies are coining money at the people's expense because I'm still alive. And if you change the system,there might be unintended consequences which with long odds might, might result in you not gettting treatment for some obscure and relatively rare sickness.

I'm not sure I know where the Republicans are going with this. I know for sure if Republicans are returned to power, they will sure as shooting drastically cut Medicare and Social Security benefits in the name of cutting the deficit. Many such as John McCain and Newt Gingrich are on record, saying so. There is some archetype that still exists in the Republican Party, which causes an almost knee-jerk reflex to undo the safety net first created by Franklin Roosevelt. I had long thought that had passed. But the rhetoric these days from the base is even blaming Roosevelt for prolonging the Great Depression and arguing that Barack Obama is doing the same through the stimulus package and the increased deficits. There is little self-reflection here that Republicans historically are the big deficit-spenders, almost totally for political motives. In a time when it looks like the United States will be lingering around 10% unemployment for some time, people are naturally anxious, people are worried. So one political strategy is to exploit this anxiety and create real fear. However, if you create fear, you must have something to replace it with--so far the Republicans are found lacking.

Not lacking in entertainment value is the Great Glenn Beck. Dozens of sponsors are fleeing Beck show as he has turned up the amp of his rhetoric against Obama, who now is going to create civilian national security corps to implement policy from the census-taking to poll-watching. Beck, a self acknowledged recovering alcoholic, has been barking lately that he will go down with his ship and re-emerge on a larger stage--hinting that if his 9-12 project goes el floppo or violent Australian mogul will give him the heave-ho. Glenn Beck will then team up with his best fan Sarah Palin and tour the country as ther conservative's version of Elmer Gantry and Aimee McPherson. If you think his incoherence and misinformation is deliberate, it's not--he's that ignorant of political affairs and history. But, there is a role for a conservative/libertarian version of the Jerry Springer Show. I'm not sure Glenn Beck is the best choice but he is ably carrying on to sell atheist Tom Paine to the religous right. And his ratings are knocking off Bill O'Reilly. Alot of the reasons to watch is to guess when he's going to cry and if he is going to commit suicide, which is an unfortunate occurrence in his family. He's like Howard Beal in Network screaming ,"I can't take it anymore" with the cynical television producer checking his ratings. So, do, please keep asking questions.

The conservative movement has fully embraced the Radical Left. There are now seminars on Saul Alinsky's theories of organization for Town Hall conservatives. It seems Republicans got the idea that the entire Obama campaign could not have succeeded without the mastery of these Alinsky principles. Even side figures as movie star Jon Voight claims that Obama is governing based on Saul Alinsky's writings. A lot of this comes from the work done by the Republican Opposition Research on Hillary Clinton, whom they thought would ultimately secure the Democratic nomination. Secretary of State Clinton wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky. So why let 1,000s of pages go to waste. A spokesperson for the Alinsky Institute said, however,"We would never call Mayor Daley of Chicago a Nazi because our goal is to work with people in power." This obvious point has gone unnoticed.

Karl Rove--still avoiding jail--was out on the hustings this week to say that this year the Republicans would be defined as to what they are against. He claimed--presuming he would still have a say in the Party he wrecked--that in 2010 Republicans would define what they are for.

Meanwhile, the Dailykos, which uses the polling firm Research 2000, published a blog called " Political Re-Alignment on Steroids". The piece dissected the recent decline in Obama's polling and ascertained his and the Democrats' strengths according to region. The bottomline is that Obama's approval ratings are basically incredibly strong throughout the country, except in the South. The South, which constitutes 21% of the country, is the only region that shows Republican strength. Generic congressional questions show Republicans with slight leads over Democrats. Everywhere else Democrats have 5 to 1 leads over the generic Republican. Obama's approval rating among White Southerners is a dysmal 9%. With nation-wide approval of congressional Republicans only slightly above 12% or in other polls at about 20%, what appears from digging deep in the Research 2000 numbers is that the Republicans have become a regional party far faster than anyone realised. What is also occuring is that whatever support Republicans used to have among non-whites is vanishing at an even faster rate.

But if health care makes you die, torture makes you good. Eric Holder finally appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the cases of abuse by CIA personnel involved in the torture of detainees. In my opinion,this was inevitable if not necessary because of the obligations of the United States and once stated ideals of advancing human rights. Immediately, the CIA started their Beltway political maneuvering and started to beat the drum of morale falling. What about the morale of those intelligence personnel who thought torture was wrong and have carried out their difficult tasks within the law? I've never understood the morale issue of punishing people who did wrong. Our town paper, The Washington Post today tried to feed the old saw that torture works by publishing a long story about how Khalid Sheik Mohammed after being water-boarded a cosmic number of times became a solid citizen and turned to a new life as a lecturer to the interrogators and assembled military and intelligence personnel on the theology and strategy of Al Qaeda. This was to back up Dick Cheney's claim that everything we know about Al Qaeda comes from the torture program. He no longer argues that imminent threats were averted because the CIA Inspector General's report clearly states this isn't true. But it does say lives were saved--but nobody knows whether they could have been saved without torture. But that's enough to serve as talking points for Republican members on the Hill who have come to the defense of the CIA interrogators. Dick Cheney called these people professionals but the record is showing they had very little training and were often contractors who had no experience in interrogation.

I have doubts about Obama's new interrogation oversight panel, which will be located at the FBI. First, he got it right that the CIA has no experience in interrogation. Only the FBI and the military do and in the case of Al Qaeda, the most successful interrogations were conducted by the FBI without the use of torture. The most successfull actually involved given a diabetic terrorist a sugar-free cookie. But I have deep misgivings about the President of the United States actually being in charge himself of the interrogation program, reporting through his National Security Council. As we saw under Reagan, the National Security Council should not be a policy implementing body.

We end with the war in Afghanistan. No one should be surprised about the irregularities reported in the Afghanistan elections. Nor should one be surprised by the increased casualties taken by our military personnel. Rather one should raise questions of what is our ultimate purpose there. Only a few months ago General Petraeus confirmed what others had already reported--Al Qaeda was not there; it was in Pakistan. Do we want to nation-build and defeat a nationalist fundamentalist group, who have no international terrorism capabities or intent? Or are we after Al Qaeda? My fears are that Al Qaeda will eventually move out of Pakistan and set up shop once again in Yemen and Somalia. Because their ultimate goal is the liberation of Saudi Arabia and its sacred shrines. There is evidence now that at least with proxies this is taking place. But I suspect the leadership will move there as well. Then we will be pouring money and men into a war that like Iraq was peripheral to any war against terrorists.

Cheney Death March Continues

Greta van Cistern looked absolutely destroyed when Dick Cheney told her there was absolutely no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. He also reminded us there were no WMDs in Iraq but that was the fault of the intelligence comunity ( notice it's always "community" not the more menacing "services"). 9/11 itself was the result of failures by Richard Clarke and the same intelligence community because they didn't pound on his door enough. Well, the two memos that prove he was right all the time--well, they really talk about the success of the "interrogation program in general" like, I presume, the FBI agent who coaxed information out of an Al Qaeda operative by giving the diabetic man a sugar-free cookie. Apparently, the two memos are not the ode to torture Cheney had previously claimed. Now he says that invading Iraq has saved thousands of lives--torture is gone now from the lexicon and now the real life-saver is the Iraq War. So, is there anything else he would like to get off his chest? Today's papers report that Cheney was involved in the briefings on the Hill, where torture was ok'd.

Pat Buchanan is right,"White guys can't seem to catch a break." I believe it dates to the time the Lil' Rascals let Darla into their clubhouse. At least we had the Raccoons, while the "Honeymooners" was on television. Now it looks like seven men on the Supreme Court might be tied by the apron strings of two women. Lindsey Graham wants to know what Sotomayor thinks about "America". Where does he think she came from? Even the MSM refer to her parents migrated from Puerto Rico? If you move within the United States, does that make you an immigrant?

Mitt Romney has always been awkward. His speech on national security at the Heritage Foundation was an inopportune attack on President Obama as he departed the U.S. for his Middle Eastern tour. Mitt argues that Obama must spend more on defense--even though he's spending more than George W--because we face China, Russia and the jihadis as enemies. The bigger price tag is because China pays their army less and can make things cheaper than in the United States. Now that we spend more on defense than the entire earth combined, how much more? Are there any other enemies we can conjure so that as we re-militarize we can pay trillions in interest to the Chinese to foot the bill? To me the speech was a incoherent patchwork of the old, the used and the preposterous.

Down Cheney's 9-11 Rabbit Hole

Richard Clarke appears today in the Washington Post with an op-ed "The Trauma of 9/11 is No Excuse". Clarke was the national co-ordinator for security and counterterrorism under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and was at the White House on that fateful day of September 11. In the realm of the ever-moving bottom-line to justify the Cheney torture policy,both Condi Rice and Dick Cheney have invoked the trauma they experienced during that day. Dick Cheney called it "a defining" experience that "caused everyone to take a serious second (my emphasis) look " at the threats to America. This is the more sophisticated version of George Tenet's memorable words," I hope to God they aren't the men from the pilot training schools."

Clarke slams both Rice and Cheney for the trauma argument, saying that the decisions they made in the following months and years--on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping--were simply not appropriate. Panic and impulse replaced careful analysis. Cheney's reass the threats statement underscored how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qeada attack. Remember the FBI had already interviewed the Millenium Bomber, who revealed the details of the plot months before it happened.

Concerned about the 2004 presidential elections if there was another attack, Bush officials authorized the most extreme measures available without any assessment whether they would do any good. Clarke argues the first response proposed, even as the Pentagon was still burning, was Don Rumsfeld arguing for an attack against Baghdad. Bush officials somehow could not believe that al Qaeda could have mounted such an attack themselves so they fell to the Iraqi explanation. Even though he was told there was no such connection, Cheney himself later ordered the waterboarding of Iraqi prisoners of war so they could provide evidence of an Iraqi role in the terrorist attacks.

Clarke argues that the Bush team leaped to the assumption that U.S. Courts,even though they had a 100% conviction rate against Al Qaeda terrorists, would not work. So the American system of justice was abandoned for the establishment around the world of secret prisons and Guatanamo Bay, where prisoners were and are still held without being charged or tried.

Similarly, as we all have heard over the past month from military officials and interrogators, the administration conducted no meaningful professional analysis of which techniques of interrogation worked and which did not. The FBI, which had successfully questioned al Qaeda terrorists, was effectively excluded from interrogations. Instead, the Bush Administration jumped right to the extreme measures.

Finally, on wiretapping, they moved to the extreme, listening in on communications here at home without legal process. The FISA court system had been a fairly reliable procedure in the past and could have been corrected. The Bush adinistration dumped a Reagan appointed judge ,who had only denied 15 warrants out of 18,000 requests.

As Clarke concludes,Condi Rice and Dick Cheney were surprised by 9/11 because they had not listened. And this shock led to the adoption of extreme counterterrorism techniques ,which proved to be unnecessary and unproductive. According to Clarke, 9/11 may have changed many things but it did not change the Constitution, which even the Vice President had pledged to protect and preserve.

Friday Night in the Beserker Lounge

Now that Karl Rove picked up the Cardozo item as the first Hispanic, let me change that and say Cardozo was the first Ibero-American nominee. Also,I'll take the Obama White House word that Sotomayor is pro-choice, even though I still have some doubts.

With gubernatorial elections coming up in Texas and Florida, conservatives have chosen a perfect time to go anti-Hispanic. What political genius had Tom Tancredo, Mr. Anti-immigrant, appear to denounce Sotomayor's involvement with La Raza as a "KKK without hoods?" Unfortunately for them, La Raza backed Fredo Gonzalez for Attorney General and earlier had written a moving tribute to Ronald Reagan on his death. And, of course, leading RINO John McCain, Spanish-American war veteran, appears, addressing the La Raza conference in the summer of 2008. La Raza immediately released point-by-point rebuttals of all the criticism they have received.

Republican attacks on Sotomayor are already creating backlash in the party itself. Texas Senator Cornyn criticized Rush Limbaugh and New Gingrich's charges that Sotomayor was "racist". Even Charles Krauthammer, who appears to be suffering from distemper these days, today walked back his dog to say, after making a statement about her judiciary theory, she must be confirmed.

In the YouTube world, the Fox attacks and those of Gingrich,Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh dissolve rather quickly. On Empathy, first President Bush, standing in front of his Kennebunkport home, endorses Clarence Thomas for his "empathy and good humor". On your background affecting your judicial judgment, Sam Alito tells the Senate he takes his background into account because of the discrimination his family faced as immigrants. On the Appeals Court making law and policy, we have the godfather of judicial conservatism, Tony Scalia lectures on the subject and points this out clearly in his court opinions.

William Gheen, the President of an organization known as Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, claiming 25,000 members,called Sotomayor a "Hispanic Supremacist" , who would define the law according to race. Gheen and others subscribe to the views that La Raza backs La Reconquista or the recapture of southwest United States for Mexico. If you want a reference how this idea came about, consult David Niewert's The Eliminationists, who provide the background on the ideology of the militia movement and these ideas.

You will notice creeping across the television screen a few random Reaganites, who are sounding the call for the New Right to back off. Ed Rollins in his avuncular way explained on CNN when you have very little political capital don't blow it on a battle you can not win. He called Sotomayor a great choice who's liberal because she's chosen by Barack Obama , who has the right to make the choice. He told the Republicans to back off. Peggy Noonan, whose state of mind should worry anyone, called on Republicans to play grown up and said Sotomayor was a brilliant choice. "Politically she's like a beautiful doll containing a canister of poison gas: Break her and you die."

Nate Silver at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ has an interesting analysis on "Operation Gringo" or can Republicans win without the Hispanic vote. Worth a read. Basically, the answer is yes if they don't lose any more constituents and embrace some form of protectionist policies toward NAFTA, the latter will never happen. What is clear is that the electoral map for Republicans becomes further restricted.

I expect it will anyway because Barack Obama is holding on June 6th a White House meeting with Congressional leaders on Immigration Reform. My bet is that something very similar to the Kennedy-McCain bill supported by George W. Bush will be embraced and passed. And I also believe that the Republican base will be mobilized again to try and stop in to their permanent damage.

Recent convert to the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church, Newt Gingrich has e-mailed his fans that this summer is the war on health care reform. I'm sure we will be treated to the Obama as socialist meme that has proved so successful and convincing. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, was asked yesterday about Republican plans on health care reform. He said he had consulted with his House colleagues and surveyed the Senate and he said,"The Republicans have no plans." Instead we are being treated to a barrage of attack ads by the lobbyists for the medical industry, warning about a public option.

Michael Steele sent out an e-mail asking us to "Ride the Wave to Victory" or previously to be like Ronald Reagan and get on the horse and gallop. It's interesting to note that there are two body-surfing Presidents--President Reagan and President Obama--which is a good omen for the Obama Presidency. While telling Republicans to chill out over Sotomayor,almost two days after attacking her, Steele and the RNC are auctioning off a lunch for future Fuehrer Newt Gingrich. Not to be outdone, Mitt Romney is scheduled to appear soon with a major speech on national security.

Dick Cheney continues his Death Tour--this time criticizing President Obama's economic program without admitting culpability in the collapse of the world's economic system. Applauding the "tea parties"--which aimed its ire at the TARP program his administration created, Cheney didn't remind listeners that he told Senate Republicans when Paulson demanded $750 billion without strings that this "is your Herbert Hoover moment." Larry Kudlow, trying to make hay on Cheney's criticism of Obama, interviewed a number of CEOs and bank executives, who have been working with the Obama Administration, who had nothing but praise for the president's team and their approach.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin, speaking at the Foreign Policy Association yesterday, said in few words that Dick Cheney was a liar on the issue of just "a few sadistic prison guards being responsible at Abu Ghraib, that "enhanced interrogation was not torture", and that the two memos Cheney claims vindicates his position do not reveal any evidence to that fact. Previously, Senator Feingold has testified he had read both memos and that they do not prove that torture prevented attacks on the United States.

I am amazed that after these months that Republicans and the conservative movement can sustain a high-decibel 24/7 attack on this administration. There is no let up and there has not been any evidence that Republicans are reflecting on any significant issues facing the country. While talk radio and Fox News provide the available media to mount this effort, there is also no evidence that any of the conservative think tanks are formulating any policy alternatives to the Democrats. The Republicans and the conservatives are simply brain-dead.

To understand where Republicans are at or more precisely where the so-called base is coming from, I recommend Allan J. Lichtman White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, Grove Press, 2008. This study was nominated as a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award. For getting an approximation of where we are today, the most useful period to study in the book is "Crying in the Wilderness 1929-1936", where the right adopted strategies with the collapse of our economic system and the reforms put into place by FDR. A few months back you could hear some of the conservative riffs on Obama being lifted from the anti-FDR playbook. The emergence of blatant racism has its parallels in the Right's embrace in the 1920s and `1930s of the Ku Klux Klan, which was a national organization and not simply in the old states of the confederacy. And the right's radio announcer was Father Charles Coughlin, who once had the same size audience as Rush Limbaugh. What's instructive is how some of the right morphed into pro-fascist groups just prior to WWII. And you are seeing some of that beginning to happen today.