The wisdom of children:
Kid power! Democrat John Kerry is the winner, and the rest of the country should pay attention because the vote on Nickelodeon's Web site has correctly chosen the president of the United States in the past four elections.
Nearly 400,000 children and teens voted, and the results were released Wednesday. Kerry received 57 percent of the vote; President Bush got 43 percent.
Today’s Salon features an interview with Ron Suskind, who authored the NY Times piece that launched a thousand responses from the reality-based community:
Fair enough. You seem to have luck with Republican sources, and specifically with those from Bush's faith-based community and his advisors. Do you think they're among the most disillusioned?Republicans in significant numbers are, at best, troubled and, at worst, frightened by the actions of the current administration, so why is it that I can count the Republicans who have publicly spoken out against this administration on one hand? Suskind says they take ‘not insubstantial’ risks to come to his office, but I wonder – is it not worth it to these concerned American citizens to perhaps incur some real risk to protect the very future of this country? After all, it’s risk to their political careers we’re talking about, isn’t it? It’s not exactly the risk that the men and women who are serving in Afghanistan and Iraq are taking, which is substantial, to put it mildly.
Absolutely. They're among the most disillusioned because it comes from a direct, personal experience with the president of the United States.
So they thought there was a connection with Bush. They thought there would be a follow-through, that he meant what he said during the 2000 campaign?
They thought a whole variety of things, and then they saw what "is" is. And some of them were troubled by it, and some of them have been, frankly, frightened by it. These are Republicans who in significant numbers have been coming to my office. One of the jokes is that my office is now the government in exile for Republicans. They come because they're concerned -- not as members of a political party but as American citizens. That's what they say over and over. And they take not insubstantial risks to come.
My betting line right now is, and has been since midsummer, to stick with Bush. There was something very interesting from that [September] luncheon, where Bush spoke for 65 minutes in a very open and freewheeling way to his top contributors. He said, "I'll be criticized and there will be a lot of who won, who lost. And just prepare yourself for [the fact that] I will not necessarily be at my best. But after that, during the final three weeks, that's when the real campaign will resume." That means an extraordinary electoral machine targeted at energizing the base, largely the faith-based core of the base. And that machine is kicking up now, and I think you're seeing it in the poll data.
It's like two great machines racing across the horizon. I think the Bush machine, with its support from the powers of the executive, is a machine that's hard to beat. Having said that, I think the Kerry machine is certainly the most forceful, energetic and well-running machine the Democrats have ever created. But the Republican machine is also best of breed for Republicans. At the end of the day, it's not just the man but the machine he sits on, and I think Bush sits on a slightly more pointed and efficient machine -- one that Karl Rove has been building and oiling and calibrating the gears on for four years. That's why, right now, it looks to me at least, like Bush.
Matt Damon, at the Berlin premiere of "The Bourne Supremacy": "I would pay $1 million to have Kerry in the White House.'' (The Boston Herald via Salon)
Sting, to a German newspaper this week: "[I'd] rather vote for a chimpanzee than Bush." (Rush and Molloy via Salon)
Wal-Mart has struck again. The discount giant is refusing to stock Jon Stewart's best-selling book "America (The Book)" because it contains an image of nine naked people with the heads of the members of the Supreme Court affixed atop them. The retailer will, however, offer the book for sale on its Web site. "We felt a majority of our customers may not be comfortable with the image in our stores," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Karen Burk said. "But we still wanted to give them the option of buying it from Walmart.com." Warner Books publisher Jamie Raab said the company was "disappointed" by the decision. The book is nevertheless selling like hotcakes and has been No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller for the past three weeks. (N.Y. Daily News via Salon)
"We're not going to have a draft so long as I'm the president." - George W. Bush
Meanwhile, at the Pentagon...
[C]hief Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence T. Di Rita, said Monday: "It is the policy of this administration to oppose a military draft for any purpose whatsoever. A return to the draft is unthinkable. There will be no draft."
The Selective Service has been updating its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelms the military's medical corps.
In a confidential report this summer, a contractor hired by the agency described how such a draft might work, how to secure compliance and how to mold public opinion and communicate with health care professionals, whose lives could be disrupted.
You thought the Bush administration couldn't get any more secretive, corrupt, and irresponsible? Ha! Now the L.A. Times reports that "The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago." It goes on to say that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward." Hm, didn't Richard A. Clarke, in his revealing Against All Enemies, basically outline the lengths that the outgoing Clinton administration went to in an effort to warn the incoming Bush administration that Osama bin Laden should be one of their top priorities? And didn't they brush him aside, not worried about planes or terrorists or bombs that terrorists could "sneak into the middle of a city" (as Cheney tried to warn us about today in a bit more of his patented brand of election-oriented fearmonfering), but worried instead about long range missiles, and taking down Saddam Houssein? Did they not sit on a memo entitled "Osama bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the U.S.?" Why then are we remotely surprised that this is being covered up?
My suggestion: when your Republican friends or family members try to blast John Kerry for his supposed weakness on terrorism, ask them what Bush & co. have to gain from keeping this report a secret. If he is so resolute, such a good protector of this country, have them explain to you why Bush refused to testify under oath to the 9/11 Commission members, instead "chatting" with them in the presence of his puppeteer Dick Cheney. But most important of all: CONTACT YOUR LOCAL MEDIA, EMAIL THIS STORY TO YOUR CONTACTS, MAKE NOISE about this blatant disregard for the intelligence of our country. We are getting too comfortable with just lying back while this administration bulldozes us with their underhanded tactics. All they have is a lame "outrage" about Mary Cheney and some video of John Edwards combing his hair. We have the truth.
You can read the full article here at dailykos.com.
The Boston Globe’s Derrick Z. Jackson examines the continuing disparity between black and white home ownership and household wealth, which then segues into a good general discussion of the ever-increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Aside from insisting on policies that disenfranchise African- and Hispanic-Americans, we also know that Furious George seems to know next to nothing about Native Americans and isn’t too keen on women and gays.
Additionally, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that No Child Left Behind actually hurts many children (not to mention educators), the weapons ban expired thereby endangering the lives of countless police officers, and recently we’ve heard plenty about the poor treatment of the troops.
It must be nice to be a rich, white, straight old man. Of course, I wouldn’t know. I wonder if our president has any idea what it means to be any one of us.
A: They both have members who are voting for Kerry.
The AP reports that while some outdoorsmen still associate Democrats with threats to second amendment rights, others have decided to cast their votes for Kerry in response to Furious George's abysmal environmental record.
Bob Elderkin's vote would appear to be a sure bet for President Bush on Nov. 2. He is a hunter, part of a conservative-leaning group of outdoorsmen that is 38 million strong and avidly supports gun rights.Good point, Bob.
"I can't vote for Bush knowing what it's going to be like the next four years," said Elderkin, a retired Bureau of Land Management employee in western Colorado where natural-gas drilling is booming. "With John Kerry, it's an unknown. As far as Bush goes, it's going to be `Katie, bar the door.'" [...]
Sportsmen like Elderkin worry that proliferating gas wells dotting private and public land will affect some of the nation's largest deer, elk and pronghorn antelope herds. "If there's nothing to hunt out there," he asks, "what use is a gun?"
Alan Lackey of Raton, N.M, and Stan Rauch of Victor, Mont., both Bush voters in 2000, said they are angry about the administration's proposal to allow logging and new roads on up to 58 million acres of national forest that were declared off-limits by a Clinton-era rule.Kerry, who himself is a hunter, would no doubt ensure that outdoorsmen continue to have access to the guns they need for outdoor sport. Hunters could certainly do worse than a fellow hunter who has a keen interest in protecting the environment. In fact, they have - and the proof is in the White House.
"Kerry, I believe, would be better on environmental policies, which to me equates to taking care of habitat and wildlife," said Rauch, a retired Air Force pilot.
A recent National Wildlife Federation poll said many sportsmen disagree with the administration's environmental policies, federation spokesman Vinay Jain said. The poll, conducted in July, found that 75 percent believe carbon dioxide emissions should be reduced and 49 percent think the oil and gas industry have the most input into Bush's conservation and hunting and fishing policies.
"The poll affirmed what we'd been hearing for years anecdotally about increasing hunter and angler backlash," Jain said. [...]
"Sportsmen are predominantly Republican and very patriotic," Lackey said. "But the federal government has become an instrument to convey the public wealth into private hands at our expense."
The Rude Pundit has more on Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire. (As always, not for the squeamish or humorless.)
In watching the tape of the now infamous spot again, I was struck by what was happening to Jon as he begged Carlson and Begala to listen to his message - he was slowly realizing that, indeed, they are not simply ignorant of the effect such 'news' programs have on the society at large; it's worse than that - they just don't care. It's what we've all suspected, but to have our fears confirmed was truly something to behold. I shared Jon's increasing frustration as the truth hit home, and then the slumping resignation.
The only saving grace for the reality-based community is The Daily Show. Which, of course, we already knew.
Since the beginning of the Iraq conflict, opponents of the war have been accused of not supporting the troops. It’s enough to drive me stark raving mad. Not wanting to send our troops into harm’s way for an unjust war isn’t unsupportive. Wanting to redirect defense spending away from the vacation from reality that is the Star Wars program and toward body armor and armored vehicles isn’t unsupportive. Believing that our troops shouldn’t have to buy body armor on eBay isn’t unsupportive. I respect, admire, and feel gratefully indebted to every man and woman who is willing to risk his or her life for me and every other citizen of this nation. I want them home and safe. I don’t want one more of them blinded, paralyzed, disfigured, or killed. Let’s get this straight – the Left supports the troops.
The question I have is whether our administration feels the same. ABC reports on a growing number of vets of the Iraq conflict whose sacrifices are being gravely dishonored upon their return from the battlefield:
ABC’s inquires have now ensured that Johnson will not be charged with repaying his enlistment bonus, but that seems the very least they could do for this brave young soldier. Unconscionably, we’re sending a message to these troops that we have no use for them once they are unable to return to the front line.Army Spc. Tyson Johnson III of Mobile, Ala., who lost a kidney in a mortar attack last year in Iraq, was still recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center when he received notice from the Pentagon's own collection agency that he owed more than $2,700 because he could not fulfill his full 36-month tour of duty. […]
Johnson now lives in his car. It is where he spends most of his days, all of his nights, in constant pain from his injuries and unwilling to burden his family.--------
On July 14, 2003, [Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly] had been on his way to a meeting about rebuilding schools in Iraq when his unarmored Humvee was blown up. A piece of shrapnel the size of a TV remote took his right leg off, below the knee, almost completely, Kelly said.
Kelly attests to receiving excellent medical care at Ward 57, the amputee section of Walter Reed, but said he quickly realized that the military had no real plan for the injured soldiers. Many had to borrow money or depend on charities just to have relatives visit at Walter Reed, Kelly said.
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Perhaps as a sign of the grim outlook facing many of these wounded soldiers, Staff Sgt. Peter Damon, a National Guardsman from Brockton, Mass., said he is grateful for being a double amputee.
"Well, in a way, I'm kind of lucky losing both arms because I've been told I'll probably get 100 percent disability," he said. […]
The military fails to provide a lump sum payment for such catastrophic injuries. And Damon still has not heard from the military about what they plan to give in terms of monthly disability payments.
The last time Damon asked about the payments, he was told by the military that his paperwork had been lost.
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Staff Sgt. Larry Gill, a National Guardsman from Semmes, Ala., wonders whether his 20 dutiful years of military service have been adequately rewarded.
Last October, Gill injured his left leg when on patrol during a protest outside a mosque in Baghdad. A protester threw a hand grenade which left Gill, a former policeman, with leg intact, though useless. He received a Purple Heart from the military, but no program, plan or proposal of how to make a living in civilian life.
"It's not fair, and I'm not complaining," Gill said. "I'm not whining about it. You know, I just, I just don't think people really understand what we're being faced with. […]
"Where are the politicians? Where are the generals?" he asked. "Where are the people that are supposed to take care of me?"
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To help these neglected soldiers, [Gen. Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck, a three-star general and the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel] said, the military created an advocacy program this past April called Disabled Soldier Support System, or DS3. The network is set up to fight for a soldier's benefits and entitlements, ease transition to civilian life, and deal with any other problems facing a disabled soldier, according to Hagenbeck.
Editor & Publisher updates their tally of newspaper endorsements. Kerry now leads Bush 44-22:
He has many more large papers on his side, maintaining his "circulation edge" at better than 3-1
Ron Suskind has an amazing profile of Bush in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. It’s quite long, and I recommend reading the entire thing, but I have also tried to boil it down here:
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''
It seems to me that the most important person for a man in Bush’s position of leadership should be someone who doubts him. When making a decision that is going to affect so many people, surely seeking an opposing view to your own is imperative to ensuring that the decision is the right one. Such insularity will inevitably lead to exactly the type of tactics to which Wallis was referring – those that address complicated problems (such as terrorism) with tunnel-visioned fixation at the expense of context. Ignoring poverty’s fundamental part of the tapestry of issues that breeds terrorists is foolish and short-sighted. Nuance has become a dirty word in politics, but as we increasingly shun the value of nuanced policy-making, the more likely we are to develop strategies that can win battles but lose wars.A few months later, on Feb. 1, 2002, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners stood in the Roosevelt Room for the introduction of Jim Towey as head of the president's faith-based and community initiative. John DiIulio, the original head, had left the job feeling that the initiative was not about ''compassionate conservatism,'' as originally promised, but rather a political giveaway to the Christian right, a way to consolidate and energize that part of the base.
Moments after the ceremony, Bush saw Wallis. He bounded over and grabbed the cheeks of his face, one in each hand, and squeezed. ''Jim, how ya doin', how ya doin'!'' he exclaimed. Wallis was taken aback. Bush excitedly said that his massage therapist had given him Wallis's book, ''Faith Works.'' His joy at seeing Wallis, as Wallis and others remember it, was palpable -- a president, wrestling with faith and its role at a time of peril, seeing that rare bird: an independent counselor. Wallis recalls telling Bush he was doing fine, '''but in the State of the Union address a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our energies, our focus, our resources on this war on terrorism, we're going to lose.' I said, 'Mr. President, if we don't devote our energy, our focus and our time on also overcoming global poverty and desperation, we will lose not only the war on poverty, but we'll lose the war on terrorism.'''
Bush replied that that was why America needed the leadership of Wallis and other members of the clergy.
''No, Mr. President,'' Wallis says he told Bush, ''We need your leadership on this question, and all of us will then commit to support you. Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll never defeat the threat of terrorism.''
Bush looked quizzically at the minister, Wallis recalls. They never spoke again after that.
''When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a self-help Methodist, very open, seeking,'' Wallis says now. ''What I started to see at this point was the man that would emerge over the next year -- a messianic American Calvinist. He doesn't want to hear from anyone who doubts him.''
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.This is jaw-dropping. Little wonder that, with this view, the Bush administration, without hesitation, enacts policies that are domestically polarizing and exclusionary, and internationally disastrous. It is of grave concern that the current American leadership believes it appropriate to dismiss empirical evidence and the experience of others in favor of designed facts structured to perpetuate presupposed “realities.”
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
George W. Bush, clearly, is one of history's great confidence men. That is not meant in the huckster's sense, though many critics claim that on the war in Iraq, the economy and a few other matters he has engaged in some manner of bait-and-switch. No, I mean it in the sense that he's a believer in the power of confidence. At a time when constituents are uneasy and enemies are probing for weaknesses, he clearly feels that unflinching confidence has an almost mystical power. It can all but create reality.If only it were the power of confidence, but indeed, we have seen repeated examples of the Bush administration’s willingness to, at best, massage the facts, and at worst, outright lie to attain their objectives. Confidence is one thing, but when backed by a seemingly never-ending supply of “officials” and talking heads who will represent twisted logic and half-truths as factual evidence, what is called confidence becomes something inimitably worse: mendacious manipulation of the electorate.
And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.Do you hear that, my neighbors in Middle America? Do you hear the contempt with which this administration regards you? They depend on your ignorance to stay in power. They don’t care how hard you work, how hard your life is; the harder you have to work, the more exhausted you are, the less likely you are to ever take the time to find out the truth about who they really are. And the truth is, though you might think this president is a guy with whom you’d like to have a beer, he would never, ever want to have a beer with you.
A regent I spoke to later and who asked not to be identified told me: ''I'm happy he's certain of victory and that he's ready to burst forth into his second term, but it all makes me a little nervous. There are a lot of big things that he's planning to do domestically, and who knows what countries we might invade or what might happen in Iraq. But when it gets complex, he seems to turn to prayer or God rather than digging in and thinking things through. What's that line? -- the devil's in the details. If you don't go after that devil, he'll come after you.''This was the great failure of all those who assumed in 2000 that there was no difference between the two candidates. There were, in reality, fundamental and important differences between Al Gore and George Bush, not just as candidates but as men. And because you failed to take the time to discern the differences, because you ignored the details, the devil has come after us all.
That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and talk about with George W. Bush. That's impossible now, he says. He is no longer invited to the White House.The dangers of easy certainty are these:
''Faith can cut in so many ways,'' he said. ''If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness -- that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There's no reflection.
''Where people often get lost is on this very point,'' he said after a moment of thought. ''Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not -- not ever -- to the thing we as humans so very much want.''
And what is that?
''Easy certainty.''
Go here immediately and watch the clip of Jon Stewart on Crossfire. It's absolutely amazing. The very last exchange between Jon and Tucker Carlson is priceless. I would have paid good money to call Bowtie Boy a dick right to his face on his own show, but thanks to Jon Stewart, I don't owe a penny.
Today on AMERICAblog, Rob in Baltimore discusses the Mary Cheney issue and why he thinks it shouldn't go away. I don't believe this issue should just go away, either.
Because I am straight, sometimes I've been told that I don't have a right to have an opinion on this issue, but ultimately, my passionate support of gay rights is motivated by two things: one, my firm belief in the equality of every American, and two, my belief that it is the obligation of everyone who holds a right that is withheld from others to fight for the extension of that right to their fellow citizens.
I am guided by a quote that is attributed to Reverend Martin Niemoller, a practicing Protestant minister in Germany, in 1945: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
First and foremost, the issue is ensuring equality because it's a Constitutional guarantee. Secondly, if we let this administration get away with marginalizing gays and lesbians as a political tool, who will be next? Not standing up to such tactics is akin to passively endorsing the slippery slope toward fascism.
I also believe that straight people have a particular obligation in the fight against the Marriage Amendment because the primary excuse given for codifying discrimination into the Constitution is ostensibly to help us somehow, to "protect the sanctity" of our marriages. My marriage needs no such protection.
I acknowledge that the given reason is, of course, bunk, that even the most virulently anti-gay crusaders have no real belief that allowing gay marriage would subvert straight marriage, but as long as they are using that as an excuse to perpetuate discrimination, it needs to be challenged on its face, until they are left with no legitimate reasons, and their disgusting, baseless prejudices are revealed for what they are.
Shakespeare's Sister has a new look. I'm sure it will continue to evolve, but hopefully this one will stick for awhile...
Rush & Molloy report:
Jon Stewart is voting for Sen. John Kerry, he said yesterday, "unless there's some sort of 'Hail Mary.'"
The satirist explained it simply to Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications breakfast, hosted by the New Yorker magazine at the skylit Bryant Park Grill.
"It's as if a guy drove me into a ditch and said, 'Don't worry, I know how to drive us out of this,'" he said. "I don't think [President Bush's] decision to go to Iraq was principled because he said in 2002 he's not into nation-building."
Comedy Central's "Daily Show" host also had harsh words for 24-hour news network anchors: "You can't just say, 'Okay, Hitler, back in a minute with Loni Anderson.' The person needs some expertise. ... Remember when CNN's motto was 'You can depend on CNN?' Guess what? I watch it, and you can't.
"I don't consider Fox to be news. I consider them to be an active political arm, with an agenda they've been building for 30 years."
Questioned by New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta on whether he'd want to replace David Letterman when he retired, Stewart responded, "One of my strengths, and one of my weaknesses, is I have a complete inability to look past the next day."
The panel is set to air on C-SPAN.
The L.A. Times reports that the Bush administration is “determined to pin a fourth star” on Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Now in case you’ve forgotten who Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez is, let me remind you – he is the man who oversaw the military jails at Guantanamo, where prisoner abuse became a problem, and was then transferred to Iraq, where he oversaw all the detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib, where (you might recall) prisoner abuse became a problem.
Sanchez "authorized the use of techniques that were contrary to both U.S. military manuals and international law," [Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.)] said in an Oct. 1 statement. "Given this incredible overstepping of bounds, I find it incredible that the reports generated thus far have not recommended punishment of any kind for high-level officials."But as we all know, discipline isn’t a big part of the Bush administration, in any sense of the word, so instead, Sanchez will get his fourth star. Of course,
Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee questioned at a hearing on the prisoner abuse investigations whether Sanchez should be disciplined for helping to create an environment that contributed to the abuse by failing to adequately staff the prison, which at its peak had a prisoner-to-guard ratio of 75 to 1. An Army directive says the ratio should not exceed 8 to 1.
Rumsfeld and others recognize that Sanchez remains politically "radioactive," in the words of a third senior defense official, and would wait until after the Nov. 2 presidential election and investigations of the Abu Ghraib scandal have faded before putting his name forward.Ah, yes. Aren’t we all looking forward to the days when the Abu Ghraib scandal has faded and we can pin another star on the man responsible for it? The only thing dumber than that would be to reward Bush with a win on Nov. 2.
Common Dreams reports that Bush is AWOL as 250 world leaders reaffirm women's rights:
With the notable exception of U.S. President George W. Bush, more than 250 global leaders, including former President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, reaffirmed their commitment to a ten-year-old UN plan to ensure the rights of women around the world.
In an unprecedented statement, the former and current leaders, including 85 heads of state and government, also called for the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted by the UN in 2000, that call for greater efforts to sharply reduce global poverty and achieve universal access to education and health by the year 2015. […]
The targets included universal access to family planning, safe motherhood, treatment and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), such as HIV/AIDS, basic education and greater opportunities for social and economic advancement.
But the Bush administration, which has cut off funding of UNFPA and repeatedly voiced reservations about the ICPD’s commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, declined to sign on to the statement. […]
The United States, which helped draft and strongly supported the Cairo plan of action, as well as the UN women s conference in Beijing in 1995, abruptly changed course after Bush became president six years later.
It has not only refused to spend over US$70 million in contributions approved by Congress to UNFPA, but has also sought to weaken international support for the ICPD and the Beijing “platform of action” by lobbying “so far, unsuccessfully” other countries to back its efforts to exclude references to sexual and reproductive health services in regional conferences in Latin America and Asia.
Last spring, senior officials even threatened to withhold U.S. contributions to other UN and private agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children s Fund (UNICEF), if they failed to break their links to UNFPA, despite its active role in the global fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS. […]
As one of his first acts in office, Bush also reinstated the so-called “global gag rule” first decreed by former President Ronald Reagan.
Under it, foreign family planning agencies may not receive any U.S. foreign aid if they provide any abortion-related services, including counseling or referrals on abortion, or even lobbying to relax anti-abortion laws in their own country, even if they use their own money for that purpose.
Some U.S. lawmakers and a number of feminist groups have accused the administration of waging a “war against women” in its international population policies.
The conventional wisdom throughout this campaign is that, whether you support Kerry or Bush, the latter comes across as the man with whom most people would prefer to have a beer, that somehow he is more likeable and warm than John Kerry. Even though I tend to disagree with assessments of Kerry that he seems standoffish or aloof and personally find him quite affable, I suppose that likeability is in the eye of the beholder.
However, when confronted once again last night with Bush’s snarkiness, bad jokes, flippant attitude, and unpreparedness (as James Wolcott noted, Kerry once again had a great command of local issues while Bush seemed barely aware of where he was) juxtaposed against Kerry’s poise and professionalism, I realized that the souls of these two men can be found less in peers of adulthood (such as the aforementioned drinking buddy) and more in those of childhood.
There are times in your childhood when you learn grown-up lessons. One of those times is when you find yourself a part of the playground audience of a bully. Maybe you find the victim of the bullying disagreeable in some way, or maybe you find him strange or awkward, or maybe you are glad for his persecution, because it is all that stands between your being the target, but whatever the reasons, you find yourself laughing along until some teacher or other breaks it up.
Occasionally, though, there is the rare and wonderful bird among us who knows better, does better, even as a child. There is the classmate who breaks the circle and rescues the picked-on child, who says, “Come on – come play over here with me.” In that moment, the spell is broken, the audience parts, as victim and rescuer wander away, two oddballs that shame everyone they leave behind, leaving them with their guilt and, inevitably, envy.
It may be true that Bush is the prankster, the class clown, the bully who gets by on charm and succeeds as long as people are afraid. But it is Kerry who is willing to step in and take the mistreated by the hand, to do the right thing even if it’s not easy, to be honorable rather than amusing. That is the difference between power and strength, and it is a distinction that Bush will never understand.
Finally this getting more coverage. This needs to continue.
Notice the mention of Sproul & Associates.
Now I'm really getting furious. I am already sick of Lynne Cheney and the rest of the Bush-Cheney camp whining about how "low" it was to "drag" Mary Cheney into it by announcing that she is a lesbian during the debate. Newsflash, bitches: most of America already knows. Cheney himself made it a campaign issue a few weeks ago at a townhall meeting to try to show how "compassionate" he is and rally gay support. Mary Cheney is out, she's an adult, and she is very active in her father's campaign. Kerry was merely stating a fact. The fact that Mary's own mother thinks it's "tawdry" to discuss her lesbianism is quite revealing of the homophobic nature of the Republican party. Perhaps they didn't want the few households of "middle America" who hadn't gotten the memo to find out that they had a lesbian in their ranks. Woops. Guess you should have thought about that before you got "personal" and tried to write discrimination against gays into the US Constitution. You can't have it both ways, bitches. And shame on Mary Cheney for being the Uncle Tom of the gay community. And an extra shame on the normally reasonable Ron Reagan for getting his ballet panties in a bunch after the debate because "you don't bring family into it." Guess what, Cheney brought family into long ago, and Kerry and Bush have been asked about their daughters at two of the three debates. Plus both sets of daughters have been very active throughout the campaign. Their families, and the families of gays and lesbians across the country for that matter, are very much part of this debate.
