Copyright © 2009 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2009 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings.
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Ambivalence over torture makes no sense. I can sympathize with those who think we shouldn't prosecute those who thought our torturers were acting within the law, but I reject it. Because no matter what the law says, there are some things which are so heinous that you should be repulsed from doing them. Obviously, I feel this way about torture: it wasn't enough that the FBI knew it was wrong and walked away, the CIA and its operatives should have also. So what's up with Saint McCain?
So why the ambivalence? If you think it was wrong, and it damaged our international reputation, why not go forward? Don't dig a deeper hole for us by saying "We know it was wrong but we're giving oursleves a free pass." That's certainly no way to repair our international standing, nor is it a way to repent of our sins. Pursue the damned investigation: start with those who exceeded what the law allowed, and then progress to those who twisted the law and ordered the torture. None of this "we were following orders" crap. Get it into a court, get it into the open, and if a judge rejects it, fine. But don't just irresponsibly act like it's over, let's move on. And as for Cheney, he won't promise to cooperate with prosecutors. Perhaps he fears self-incrimination? 
Such an excess of stupidity is not to be found in nature. The important thing to remember is that this is not "local access cable." And by that, I don't merely mean that Glenn Beck is some stray wacko only visible to the bored people of some hamlet who accidentally land on his rant when just hitting the 'up-channel' button on the remote... I mean that you need to understand that this is not a solo effort, he has people who help him make these mistakes, producers, proofers, everyone in the studio let it go by. It wasn't a solo effort, it was a joint effort from a bunch of highly paid people. Now, the night after this Beck defended himself by saying that he'd had the word "czars" on the board earlier in the week, it just kind of "fell off." But still — no one caught it and it went out. And I'm sorry, there have been just too many stupid things that have come out of his mouth to make me think that he's naturally intelligent.
On the record, Cheney supports breaking the law. Cheney taped an interview to be shown on Fox News Sunday, and in it, said he thinks it's wrong to prosecute interrogators who exceeded their authority, because he's fine and dandy with that:
And why the hell wouldn't he be OK with it? After all, he was very much a "F**k the law" kind of guy. That's why he loved people like David Addington and John Yoo who would come up with these weird, unjustifiable, unsupportable intepretations of the law which basically surrendered our country's ideals to the terrorists, and made us sink to their level. In Cheney's view, the lawbreakers (those who "exceeded authority" and took the law into their own hands) were only doing what Cheney probably wished he could do himself. Only Cheney would have drooled and foamed a bit as he did so, with that maniacal half smirk he's famous for.
Finding the toast to butter. The health care industry is giving heavily to the Blue Dogs. In fact, half of the donations the "Blue Dog Coalition" has received this year have come from the health care industry. Not saying the money has influenced their votes; it's smart for that industry to put the money where it matters. But I would guess that it makes the Blue Dogs less likely to see what people really need.
The Blue Dogs should be taking a broad view of what the country needs, not just what the citizens of their states need. They may think they already are, when they weigh the many who are already insured against the smaller proportion that isn't. But it's myopic to look at how the latter group is outweighed by the former, and at the same time ignore what the country is being set up for, for the long haul, if genuine health care reform (with a public option) doesn't get accomplished. Johnson had the utmost admiration for Burke's thinking, but hated his politics and his methods. Johnson thought Burke was an alarmist, and focused on small issues rather than big picture. But this is big picture, and I'm inlcined to think that Burke would have recognized the travesty we're confronting with the status quo on health care. Conservatives love Burke becuase he defended property rights and the established order. But he spent a lot of political capital trying to correct abuses, and I think he'd do the same with the health care we currently have established. Kennedy's harangue isn't at all a bad connecting line to Burke. May you be in Heaven an hour before the Devil knows you're dead.
9/11 is only for GOP conventions. One of the greatest of many criticims of President Bush's handling of 9/11 was how he changed a period of national unity into divisiveness. Cheney warned against investigations, as if there was nothing to learn; Ari Fleischer cautioned everyone to be careful about what they were saying. The whole point was to use 9/11 as an opportunity for war, and they did it effectively in the 2002 midterms as well as when they convened here in NYC in 2004. How many times did they walk on the dead in an effort to retain power? You can be forgiven for having lost count. The Republicans could have taken the national moment and focused it onto a great coming together to do something good. But they didn't. Apparently that's an idea that Obama's gotten behind. And some on the Right are acting very territorial about their 9/11.
If President Obama is reading the Wall Street Journal while vacationing, perhaps he'll see an op-ed piece written by conservative pundit Fred Barnes:
There's no "bipartisan" in Congress, Mr. President. That only happens when the vote is over something like a reapproval of the colors red, white, and blue. Forget about it!
Not listening to you. Not listening to you! Howard Kurtz writes that the the press tried to argue down Palin's "death panel" meme, using a laundry list of examples. (They tried, they really tried, is his argument.) Never mind that his own paper, the Washington Post, also printed a column from one of its own regulars arguing that he saw a dangerous conflict of interest in compensating doctors to provide counseling, as if it would sway their opinions any more than all the compensation they get for other procedures. The problem may be not in the number of attempts, but in the placement of the stories as well as the language. He cites one "A section" article, but as we know from the coverage leading up to the Iraq war, being in the "A section" isn't an argument of sufficient coverage (section A is often the default for these stories) when it really needs to be on A1, the front page. Let the editors put it on the front page, and then tell me the press pushed back hard enough: "the press" isn't just the reporters, it's the editors who decide on story placement. And as for language, isn't there room to use simple statements like "she's wrong"? Kurtz tries to give CNN's Jessica Yellin a kudo for "That's not an accurate assessment of what this panel is." But how about something simple and direct, like "She's wrong" ? Why not? The press has gotten into the habit of being genteel. It will not call a liar a liar. It really should: if you're really trying to combat emails that amount to lies and slander, you need to be just as direct. No need to be hyperbolic. Just direct. And then support your argument. "It's wrong, and here's why." Otherwise you get the feeling they're being paid by the word. I have Charles Dickens if I want that.
A long overdue apology from former Lt. William Calley. This week, former Lt. Calley made his first apology for the My Lai massacre of 1968. It reads like a full apology, but with the claim that he was following orders. If you have time, read the Wikipedia account for a reminder of how horrid the events themselves were, as well as the surrounding circumstances. Calley's defense that he was falling orders isn't sufficient, of course, but his commander got off, even though he'd been seen shooting an unarmed civilian at point blank range, and later admitted that he'd supressed evidence. As well as the Army's decision not even to count the bodies and the excoriation of those who came out against the massacre. If you want to better understand the intensity of people's reactions to our invlvement in Iraq, this is a good place to start. Oh, and by the way, Calley could have apologized long before this week. Not sure why he waited for a podium. An op-ed combining apology, acceptance of guilt, and condemnation of Abu Ghraib would have been well-timed years ago. A "take it from me, this can never be justified" sort of thing would have been welcome.
Bipartisan vs. Bipolar. Not sure if you heard, but some Republicans have been making noises that Democrats looking to pass a healthcare reform bill need to aim for an extra super majority of 75-80 Senate votes. This is of course an unheard of standard: if you assume unanimity among the 60 Democrats and Independents (with all of them voting), it demands at least 38% of the opposition to tag along. When has that happened? When have the Republicans ever required that of themselves? We're not talking about approving nominees for cabinet positions: we're talking about a philosophically divisive issue where the parties should have differences of opinion. Senator Hatch says this is a special bill, an important one. I agree. But I don't agree that its special nature requires a new bar. It wasn't suggested on the 2002 Authorization to Use Force (allowing Bush to invade Iraq), certainly. And so far as I can tell the concept isn't even hinted at in the Constitution. It comes down to this: this is yet more proof that Republicans don't want this bill. They don't even want to consider a compromise bill or come up with ideas of their own. They're following in the rhetoric of Jim DeMint, who saw this as a political opportunity to derail everything Obama might want. (They hate change, especially change that dethrones them.) And this is why they worked so hard to block so many bills in the last Congress; the stats jumped up so high so quickly that if this were baseball you'd suspect steroids. In 2006, they lost a bunch of seats. In 2008 they lost more, and did everything they could to support the protracted court battles in Minnesota, to try and prevent the "magic 60" that could theoretically overcome fillibusters. The Republicans are not exercising any wisdom here. In contrast to the principles the country was founded on, they're not accepting basic democratic processes, showing themselves to be petty, and saying things that will come back to haunt them. Their new threshold will not matter; the fate of a healthcare reform bill will hang more on the opinions of Blue Dogs. But these silly statements will be played back for them time and again whenever they want anything. Whoever is writing their talking points should be fired, immediately.
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