Author: rakemag

All I did was order a few pizzas. Really!

Last week I was in a place with no TV news or newspapers, so it was a blissful time free of worry about bombings in London or the rattish morality of Karl Rove. I got back on Saturday, though, just in time to read about the bombings of candy grabbing school children and market place gas tankers in Iraq. Two loud bangs and there were more dead Iraqis in two days than Londoners or Madrilenos in the past two years.

Who do we blame for this? It might be a good idea to look at what’s behind all this Rove/Cooper/Wilson stuff to find an answer.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, (and the fact that calls for a certain President’s impeachment haven’t yet reached the level engendered by a stained blue dress indicates you haven’t,) the whole mess was ultimately precipitated by Joseph Wilson writing an op-ed piece for the NY Times saying that the administration’s claims that Iraq was on the verge of making nuclear (or nucular, if you’re the village idiot of Crawford, Texas) weapons was unsubstantiated.

Now, those idiots don’t much like being called idiots, so they got right after Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA agent. Now whether you believe that revelation broke the letter of the law or not, you still gotta admit that’s pretty low, at best. And if there’s one thing that’s certain about Rove, it’s that there is nothing too low for him. (As one person said, the only reason he can’t get any further into the mud is that his shirt buttons are in the way.)

But what is important to keep in mind is not that Rove actually set out to get Wilson and his wife, but rather the mindset that Bush’s people can do anything they damn well please, up to and including lying to the country to start a war. That, and that anyone who tries to stop them will, at best, be dismissed as ineffectual, and at worst, end up with ruined lives or ruined political careers. If you have a short memory, look up what was done to John McCain in South Carolina in the 2000 primary or Ann Richards in the Texas governor’s race in 1994. (OK, you don’t remember, but McCain’s wife is nuts and had a mixed race child, and Richards was a lesbian, according to their opposition.) That’s just for starters, though. Read Bush’s Brain if you want real nightmares.

So here’s how I read the whole Rove thing: it’s just part of the most insidious government we’ve had in this country in my lifetime. Nixon’s boys were complete amateurs when it came to dirty tricks. Donald Segretti went to jail for much less than what Rove does daily as a matter of course.

And that’s why children and shopkeepers get incinerated in Iraq.

Tom Friedman, much revered St. Louis Park multiple Pulitzer winner has a pretty provocative column today in the NY Times entitled “If It’s a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution.”

He states, “The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day – to this day – no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.”

So, I wonder, does this suggest that Muslim hierarchy is supportive of terrorism? One could easily infer that it does. And, then, could one also infer that any Muslim devotees of this hierarchy are our enemies?

Think about it. And think, too, of all the horror that religious fundamentalism of all sorts has wrought upon this world since history began. It should not be lost on us Christians that the communique from the presumed London bombers called the British government “crusaders.” Long memory they have. Longer than Bush, certainly. And certainly more cognizant of the meaning of the word. Crusade, literally, means to “mark with a cross.”

The War on Terror came home to roost again this morning, and reminded us that there is a price to be paid–and that the ones paying it are innocent civilians and volunteer soldiers from the countries Bush dragged with us into Iraq.

But, it would be stupid to say this is Bush’s and Blair’s fault. It isn’t and anyone who says it is is full of shit. That said, though, it might be time to ask when we’re going to stop messing around in Iraq and concentrate on getting these bastards where they live–wherever that may be.

That means stopping financing our own opposition by driving SUVs all over hell. It means we ought to raise the gas tax significantly and use it to discourage the consumption that funds our enemies, and to fund the war machine to kill them. It means concentrating on killing the SOBs in Afghanistan, where they started, and leave Iraq to sort itself out. It means, let’s stop worrying about gay marriage. And it means no more income tax cuts during war time.

Aside from the few thousand killed on 9/11, the innocent commuters last year in Madrid and today in London, and our volunteer soldiers and their families, we haven’t paid a damn penny for this war. Hell, a lot of us even got tax refunds while we’re charging the price we will pay–mere money–to our children. Maybe they’ll realize what Mommy and Daddy were really like when we’re dead and gone and China presents them the bill for the oil they’re buying out from under us.

We’re a rotten, selfish country to let others pay our bills. While we sigh, “Isn’t that terrible,” when London and Madrid are bombed, we can’t fill our recruiting quotas because we’re bogged down in the wrong war. The British and Spanish, to their cost, stood by us after 9/11. We should at least do the same for them by keeping our eye on the ball.

When the Roman historian Livy wrote the preface to his history of Rome, he knew the beginning of the end of Rome when he saw it. Greed was everywhere, and the sense of duty and discipline which had made Rome great was failing. Here’s how he put it: “…we slide more and more, until we begin to fall over the cliff to that time when we finally see we can no longer bear the vices which afflict us nor their remedy.”

Unless we’re really willing to take some of that remedy, and soon, Livy’s cliff is just going to keep getting bigger in the windshield of our SUVs.

And my friends in my former home cities of Madrid and London will continue to pay for the gas that’s getting us there.

I’ve got a strategist named Rove and a press corps I call Rover

Judith Miller of the NY Times reports today to a judge for sentencing for her refusal to reveal her source in the Plame matter. There are some who think she should be going to jail for her complete bullshit reporting on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. (I love Jack Shafer.)

But, I still can’t get behind the government essentially using reporters to do their investigative work for them. After all, prosecutors have the subpoena and the threat of jail they can use on suspects. And, as we saw in the Martha Stewart case, they can even put people in prison who didn’t actually commit a crime, but only lied to investigators.

So, why jail reporters? A lot of us think it’s because it’s a hell of a lot easier than jailing the guys at the White House who actually did the leaking…and don’t think the prosecutor doesn’t know who it was. He has information from the slimy Robert Novak–otherwise he’d be in jail, too, right?–and he now has Matt Cooper’s notes from the spineless Norman Pearlstine at Time. (BTW, “Pearlstine” will henceforth be the default answer to the question, “Why should we not entrust the First Amendment to publicly held corporations?”)

But, the real answer is that reporters, when they’re doing it right–and Miller (in this case) and Cooper were doing it right–are a danger to government run amok. Let’s look at some of the stories in my lifetime that relied on reporters being able to protect their sources: Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, My Lai, the Downing Street Memo–and those are just some of the big ones.

Yup, a government who can’t control the press, either through subterfuge, payments, or intimidation can’t survive for long.

Woof.

I want your property

I happened to spend part of my Fourth of July with the former mayor of one of our most affluent suburbs…as if I needed reminding of why I don’t live out there. First I heard of all his suburb’s problems–high taxes, hard to park on main street, white kids into beer (or was it martinis?) and driving too fast, and the local scandal at the country club over who was banging who else’s wife. So far no murders, though.

From this perspective, he began to tell me what was wrong with liberals like me. The answer, basically, is we like oral sex and don’t care who knows it. Yup, Clinton and the gays. That’s why the religious right has taken over. “It’s your fault I have to explain what a blow job is to my 10-year-old daughter.”

That logic kind of got past me. I asked, “Could you please explain that to me?”

“It was all over the TV for a damn year. How you gonna keep them away from that?” he sputtered.

“Turn off the TV news,” I suggested. “It works for me.”

He didn’t like that idea, so I followed up with, “Don’t give a special prosecutor an unlimited budget and an unlimited portfolio to attack a sitting president and his wife unless you have a reasonable cause to believe he’s done something wrong. You started in on Whitewater, found absolutely nothing except that the Clintons lost money on the deal, then ended up impeaching him because he lied about having sex with an intern. How would you answer if I asked you in front of your wife if your intern had been under your desk?”

Of course, there’s not much sense in arguing with someone who doesn’t see any connection about lying about sex and lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Because one stained blue dress is certainly more of an indictment of our disrespect for truth, justice and the American Way than having started a war that’s killed 1700 American soldiers, maimed thousands of others, and killed untold thousands of Iraquis. Even when I tied it up neatly with the question “Why do we impeach Clinton for screwing an intern and let Bush get away with screwing the whole country?”

Of course, we know the answer to that one: the government is completely for sale. Every level of it. The only difference between the federal, state, city or dogcatcher levels is how much it costs.

And, don’t kid yourself, both sides are for sale. If you didn’t believe that before, be sure to think again about last week’s Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. City of New London. The court’s liberal wing got together to sanctify the right of governmental bodies the right to take private property in order to give it to other private concerns so they can build something that will qualify for big tax breaks. (If you don’t think that can happen here, remember the Walser car stores that used to be where the Best Buy headquarters is now.)

I never thought I’d find myself on the same side of an important issue as Antonin Scalia, and I really hadn’t given much thought to how much we’re going to miss Sandra O’Connor until I read her dissent. But damn if I didn’t think what a bunch of idiots Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer, Stevens and Kennedy are, to give more power to local governments, who are well known to sell out cheap, to take your property and sell it to big campaign donors.

Yup, that’s in the best tradition of exactly what Bush has been doing since he was elected President by the Supreme Court in 2000. Take from the poor and give to the rich. Dems can do it too, and they will get to like it more and more…especially when they can use the power of eminent domain to help themselves get re-elected, too. Why didn’t we think of that sooner? Let’s us liberals ally ourselves with big business and let the Republicans have the religious right wing.

If you Christians don’t quit worshipping golden calf statues, I’m gonna smash your laws.

I was just listening to MPR’s Talk of the Nation, and they were discussing the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on the display of the Ten Commandments in public space.

It was going along about as these things usually do (everyone treated with courtesy and respect–even the most preposterous–and everyone quite sonorous and boring) until we got to the inevitable Christian boob-of-a-caller. This guy, in a spirit of American tolerance and ecumenism, suggested that, since we, (the Christians,) get to place the Ten Commandments monuments, it would be okay with him if the “Jewish people” could put a symbol of their religion in our courthouses, too.

Now that’s entertainment I’m willing to pay a membership fee for.

And after we bomb Cambodia, I’ve instructed the National Guard to shoot four students at an Ohio college…

Michael Smith, the London Sunday Times reporter who broke the story of the Downing Street memo has followed up with two more pieces. It seems, in his piece from last Sunday, that the Americans were bombing Iraq in order to provoke Saddam six weeks before the American Congress authorized military action against Iraq.

Today in the LA Times, he explains it a bit further.

So what we have here is pretty good evidence, supplied by the British government itself, that Bush actually started the war in Iraq without Congressional authorization. I seem to recall secret U.S. bombing under a previous president.

Is it just me, or does that seem a little more serious than a few stains on a blue Gap dress? But, I could be wrong. What do you think?

(Thanks to my friend Kit for pointing out Smith’s LA Times piece today.)