Goss Incompetence

The Bush Administration brought Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, into the CIA to “clean up” the ideologically suspect agency. The CIA’s staff, in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, had the audacity to tell some people that the Bush administration was picking and choosing their intelligence and squashing dissent on the Sacred Goal.

The guy publicly got up and said he was surprised at how much work it took to be the Director of the CIA. Oh, man, for one well-placed punch in the mouth. Are you kidding? Even if you think it, you don’t SAY it! The administration called him a “transition” figure and nobody expected him to be around for too long, but he let relations with foreign intelligence agencies atrophy because he didn’t like traveling and didn’t feel like entertaining their staff when they visited.

The guy was a stooge. When former CIA leaders tried to give him advice, he refused to meet with them. Staffers who sent in assessments on the Iraq situation that didn’t match the Defense Department’s were asked about party affiliations. This is coming pretty close to enforcing Soviet-style ideological unity.

In keeping with the Soviet comparison, Russian military units would have a commanding officer, and then a second-in-command, the “political officer,” whose job was to maintain loyalty to Moscow and to the communist ideal. Basically, Goss was a political officer who got put in charge of the whole show. He sucked and it’s probably good that he’s gone.

What worries me is his replacement, who will probably be General Michael Hayden. He’s clearly competent, smart, and has had a lot of intelligence experience. The problem is the kind of intelligence experience he’s had. He worked at the NSA for a long time, and is an avowed expert on technical intelligence- the kind that lets us read Ahmadinejad’s license plate or see how many people are working in a nuclear weapons facility at midnight.

The problem is that we already do such things very well. We have the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency, and the vast (and totally secret) resources of No Such Agency...erm, the NSA. What those advanced satellites and eavesdropping technologies cannot do, however, is give us the kind of intelligence that we need to penetrate terrorist networks, locate radical leaders, or prevent an attack.

There are two basic types of intelligence. One is called TECHINT, and the other is called HUMINT, out of the intelligence community’s love for acronyms. TECHINT, or technical intelligence is what we’re so good at. Listening to people’s phone calls. Mapping terrain changes that could indicate buried hideouts. Spotting some terrorist in his car in the Yemen desert and blowing him up with a Predator drone (which, let’s be fair, was awesome.)

HUMINT, surprisingly enough, is human intelligence. This is occasionally the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it’s more about cultivating relationships. You need officers on the ground in a lot of different places to make connections with locals, develop leads, and generally get your ear to the ground. And if you’re capable of pulling that off, you might even be able to develop a source within a terrorist organization, and all the technical intelligence in the world can’t provide that kind of data.

The CIA used to do an amazing job with this, especially against the Russians. But since the inception of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA has seen its analysts transferred to DNI, its funding cut, and its direct line to the President (the CIA directors of old would always deliver the Presidential intelligence briefing) eliminated. Staffers report a morale problem, and the Washington Post quoted one as saying the CIA was “hemorrhaging officers.”

Enter General Hayden, a guy whose Trailblazer modernization program at the NSA was a dismal failure and whose career specialty has been technical intelligence. Do we really think that he’ll go around improving our ability to collect human intelligence? If the CIA was adrift beforehand, I could see this guy providing a steady hand to guide it in exactly the wrong direction.

Plug-In Hybrids

So the energy industry is celebrating windfall profits for this quarter, especially ExxonMobil, whose executive board is now considering the purchase of Australia for "company outings." Inside sources report that the island-continent will be turned into "the world's largest 18-hole golf course" for the private use of oil company executives.

I made that up, except for the first part about the profits. But here's what drives me bonkers. Bush has been refusing to tax their insanely high profits, instead emphasizing they should "reinvest" the money into new energy technologies (instead of- and this is just a guess- $400 million retirement packages for their executives. Looking at you, Lee Raymond.)

But the technologies he mentions include such random panaceas as "plug-in hybrids." Now we know how hybrids work- rechargeable battery charged by brake friction, along with gas-powered motor. Works pretty well, I'm actually hoping to get one soon. Plug-in hybrids save more gas because they run off home electricity.

You have now picked up on the obvious problem. We're saving gas in our cars by taxing the energy grid, which is powered by- what- magical freaking elves? Plugging our cars into the wall is just going to create more demand for oil and gas for the power plants!

By the way, the proponents of these cars claim that people will put solar panels on their roofs, and not just charge them off normal electricity. Trust me, I'll be holding my breath for widespread purchases of solar panels.

Big Mistake, Big Opportunity

If you look a little closer at the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, you'll see something very interesting. The military forces of both countries are within spitting distance of each other, since Iran shares a massive border with Iraq, where our troops are currently soaking up the sun and the shrapnel. In fact, the U.S., Iran, and Iraq all share the same security problem, namely, the swirling vortex of crap that is the budding Iraqi civil war.

So a little lower down the bill from the nuclear posturing was a proposal for the U.S. and Iran to hold bilateral talks on the best way to stabilize the Iraq situation. Somewhat disingenuously, Iran's President Ahmadinejad (see? I got the name right) said today that there was "no need" because the Iraqi compromise candidate for Prime Minister, Jawad al-Maliki, was forming what Ahmadinejad called "a permanent government of Iraq."

Okay, I'll wait until you all stop laughing. Ahmadinejad (while crazy) is certainly not stupid, and obviously he realizes that a new government is not going to be able to turn on the lights, get the sewers working, and stop the festival of destruction that insurgents are constantly celebrating on the streets of Iraq. And since they can't do that, the security concerns that the U.S. and Iran share, are not going to go away. What this boils down to is, Ahmadinejad is just being a jerk. Go figure.

But in his statement on the need (or lack thereof) for bilateral talks on security in Iraq, Ahmadinejad said something very interesting on the possibility of sanctions against his country. Keep in mind, the Bush administration is publicly pushing diplomacy while busily preparing for all-out war. He said, "I think it is very unlikely for them to be so stupid to do that [impose sanctions,]" and continued, "I think even the two or three countries who oppose us are wise enough not to resort to such a big mistake."

In the words of Jon Stewart, "Whaaaa?" Ahmadinejad has claimed that his country has the right to enrich as much uranium as it wants (highly enriched uranium, by the way, is one of two excellent ways to make a nuclear weapon.) He's been testing nuclear-capable missiles equipped with countermeasures that could dodge Israeli air defenses. He's announced the production of a nuclear-capable torpedo that could take out one of our carrier battle groups. And he's saying that sanctions are intolerable?

Let's get this straight. Sanctions do not hurt us. Hell, we've had sanctions in place against Tehran since their fundamentalist college students decided to hold an Iranian frat party and invaded the American embassy. If we could convince other countries (not Russia, since they've got lucrative energy contracts with Iran) such as France, China, India, and Pakistan to impose sanctions, we might actually be able to shut down this lunatic's nuclear program.

What we're claiming is that Ahmadinejad doesn't have the right to a nuclear weapon. He's saying that he's not building one, and we're trying to take away his right to peaceful nuclear technology and that his country has the right to produce their own nuclear fuel. (Why a country that sits on a vast wealth of oil and gas reserves needs nuclear fuel so badly, I'll never know.) Of course, if we do attack him, he threatens all kinds of outlandish doom for America, most of which has a decidedly radioactive theme.

The real problem is that enriching nuclear fuel is the height of dual-use technology. Dual-use technologies are capable of being used either for peaceful or warlike purposes, like pesticide components that can kill bugs or (with a little tweaking) people, or fermenters that can brew beer or anthrax. Uranium, enriched to 3%, is effective nuclear fuel, and with a little extra time in a centrifuge, can be enriched to 90%, which is an effective core for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has no need for actual nuclear fuel. Its energy needs are more than met by its oil and gas reserves, and if it really wanted nuclear fuel it could buy it (at a substantial U.N. discount) from any other nuclear power in the world. What they clearly want is a bomb. The problem is, they want to build a bomb because they fear for their security- specifically, they fear an American invasion. Of course, we only really want to invade them if they try to build a bomb. Is this sounding circular?

The point is that every time we start beating our chests and saying Iranian nukes are "unacceptable" and practice dive-bombing missions in the Persian Gulf, we give them more of an incentive to build a bomb. And every time they get closer to a bomb, we get more nervous and ramp up our military posturing. In a poorly-covered press conference today, Ahmadinejad showed us that there are consequences Iran fears that don't involve invasion.

I'd like to see a carrot-and-stick approach being adopted (similar to what was previously attempted) but the old military stick replaced with a stick of unacceptably harsh sanctions. We address their security concerns- meet with them on low levels, quietly outline how badly we want to get out of Iraq, and maybe (God forbid) eat a little humble pie on our regional ambitions. One thing that is near-unacceptable to Rumsfeld, but would go a long way towards defusing the Iran situation, would be a quiet pledge to abstain from establishing permanent military bases in Iraq.

You're not going to see Iran giving up its nuclear program under any circumstances. But what we could work for (if President Bush weren't messianicly obsessed with the invasion of Iran and didn't see it as his "true legacy") would be a steady defusing of the nuclear tensions in the area and a return on the Iranian side to actually-peaceful nuclear power. This is not going to happen by addressing their energy concerns, it's going to happen by making concessions and working towards fixing their security concerns. Could America lose some military influence in the area? Definitely. But is avoiding that loss worth another war we can't afford, a war that would ignite global Islamic tensions and unleash a tidal wave of new terrorists? Definitely not.

Ha!

Did I call it or did I call it? McClellan's toast. Also, don't expect to see Karl Rove going anywhere. He's working more on "campaign issues" now? Everything in Washington is a campaign issue. He might not stay as visible but Uncle Karl is still going to be looking over George's shoulder.

"I'm the Decider"

This has had me chuckling all freakin' day long. Bush declared, "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best" when it comes to White House personnel issues. Apparently, the national news and wire services are getting a laugh out of it too, because when he spouts a Bushism on the subject of the week's news cycle, it's just too good to pass up.

On a slightly more important note, Bush has been noticeably absent from the role of "decider" with the recent shakeups in the White House staff. The new Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, recently told anyone who was going to leave the staff to do it now, so it didn't appear that they were being forced out later on. The Chief of Staff is the real center of power behind any President (or most- in this case, I think Dick Cheney's the real driving force.)

It occurs to me that the President is perfectly content to have the support personnel in the White House get shuffled around, since the guy really doesn't listen to anyone except his chief advisers anyway, and they aren't going anywhere. There has been great demand for a shakeup at the White House (primarily espoused, actually, by Republican strategists who want to see the President do a better job.) But in all likelihood, any personnel shakeups are just going to be window dressing. I think the worst we could expect would be the departure of Scott McClellan, who is almost universally despised by the White House press corps.

But since the big shots are going to keep running the show, "shakeups" are going to happen on a less-visible level. If I were a mid-level White House functionary, I would not be putting a down payment on anything bigger than a Happy Meal right about now.

The Donald

Has it occurred to anyone what a phenomenally bad job Donald Rumsfeld has to be doing, for his commanders to complain about him?

This was actually brought up in Hersh's New Yorker article that I mentioned a few days ago, buried in one paragraph maybe halfway through. The civilian leadership at the Pentagon, or OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) is pushing very hard to keep tactical nuclear weapons on the table as an option against Iran. And the military leadership in the Pentagon is institutionally opposed to this. As much as some of us on the left think that the military always wants to light off its biggest firecrackers given the chance, those with their fingers on the button (actually a series of keys) are very cautious about even talking about nuclear usage.

This is a connection that I hadn't seen until tonight, when it hit me. The Pentagon leadership is clearly unhappy with Donald Rumsfeld, who is pushing nuclear first use (a highly aggressive doctrine in the world of strategic policy) against Iran in "contingency plans." The Joint Chiefs have actually discussed a public dissent against the OSD (all deniable, of course.)

And now a chorus of Pentagon officials (all recently departed) speak out about how Donald Rumsfeld is doing a bad job? Maybe these two things aren't a coincidence. The war planning against Iran is clearly kicking into high gear, and there are serious concerns in the military about its course (and the ways it might be fought.) Maybe these anti-Rumsfeld voices might have been pushed by current Pentagon brass to try to weaken him, interfering with Rumsfeld's ability to plan a nuclear attack.

It definitely got me thinking.

Nuclear Issues

There has been a lot of talk about Seymour Hersh’s article in this week’s New Yorker, which interviews a bunch of anonymous sources within the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, and political circles throughout Washington on the subject of Iran. There are a couple major points. The administration refuses to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons, regardless of what it has to do to stop them. The administration believes that a bombing campaign will endear us to the hearts and minds of Iranians and that 1.2 billion Muslims around the world will not be pissed about this. And (over the violent objections of the Pentagon) they are willing to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s nuclear-production facilities.

This. Is. Bad. Contained within the article is one source’s report that Bush wants to do what no Republican or Democratic president would have the courage to do in the future- effect full regime change in Iran. He supposedly wants this to be his legacy.

Before I go too far here, I should point out that it's a little shaky to base an enormous article full of groundbreaking foreign policy conclusions on a body of sources, of whom 75% insist on anonymity. I was always taught that with every anonymous source, the credibility of your articles goes down a little more. True, these folks probably need to protect their jobs, but if no one is willing to go on the record with their concerns, apparently, no one is too worked up yet.

Obviously the Bush administration came out with guns blazing (in a figurative sense) insisting diplomacy was their chosen track and the crisis could be resolved peacefully. It all rang a bit hollow in the context of Hersh’s article, and it didn’t help that the president of Iran (whose name is totally impossible to pronounce and I feel hypocritical trying to type) had made an enormous speech earlier in the week claiming that his country had “joined the nuclear club,” which I mentioned yesterday.

(If you want a really funny bit of trivia, go back to CNN.com or the AP or wherever and look up some pictures of the Iranian president delivering his “nuclear club” speech. In what I find incredibly hilarious, he’s giving the “we’re a nuclear nation now” speech in front of a mural full of white doves and peace signs. Unbelievable.)

On an immediate level, I get nervous because of the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Whether or not U.S. Navy aircraft have actually been practicing nuclear dive-bombing in the Gulf, there’s something called “the nuclear taboo” in international politics. There’s an unspoken agreement that, since Nagasaki, nuclear weapons should never actually be used. They can be threatened, of course- but they should remain essentially a defensive technology, making the cost of invasion or attack on a nuclear state unacceptable high.

If we break the nuclear taboo, we shatter one of the fundamental tenets of world peace for the last 60 years and permanently undermine the international non-proliferation effort. It would be a case of “do as I say, not as I do” that ended in a mushroom cloud, and America would cement its place on the world stage as an untrustworthy evil empire.

But here’s what spooks me even more than the use of nuclear weapons, on a broader level. There seem to be credible portions of Hersh’s article pointing to a Bush-administration assumption that the Iranians are going to rise up and welcome us as liberators. Never mind that the Shiite majority in Iraq is going to start a civil war (okay, more of a civil war) if we go after Iran. The Bush administration has learned absolutely nothing from their experience in Iraq. Muslim fundamentalists are going to fight us until the entire country is a graveyard and they’ll be thrilled to do it, too.

Most Democrats agree that, even though we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq, we’re going to have to clean up the mess that this administration made. And that’s smart. But I can see a major fight brewing, especially if Congress’s Republican majority gets shaved thinner or even eliminated this fall, when the Bush rhetoric starts to escalate towards action. We cannot afford to go to war with Iran. The rest of the world will go from distrusting us to actively balancing their forces against our military. The international leadership we have accumulated since World War II will crumble before our eyes, and the economy, school systems, and homeland security (which we’ll desperately need) will be under-funded to a laughable extent.

The only chance we have of preventing this from happening (and, at this rate, it will probably happen) is a Congress, either Democratic or moderately Republican, which is willing to stand up to the President and tell him and his advisors that the country is not going to support this. Iran having a nuclear weapon would be extremely, extremely bad. That is true. However, going to war with them to prevent that from happening would destroy the tattered remnants of our credibility in the wider world and strain our relationships with key allies like Britain and western Europe to the breaking point.

Positive Omens

The immigration debate right now has me very happy for one particular reason. The reason George Bush won the White House in 2004 was The Base. I’ve written about this before- it’s the evangelical roots of the Base, its ability to shut out economic problems and foreign policy disasters in favor of unity over comparatively pointless social lightning rods, along with its friendly laissez-faire business philosophy, that fuels the Republican Party.

So immigration reform is the perfect issue to rip the right’s little Coalition of the Willing apart. You’ve got big business and Republican moderates on one side, who want illegal immigrants in the country because they’re good for the economy. On the other side, you’ve got hard-right conservatives who want to make it a deportable felony to be an illegal immigrant and want to build an Israeli-style border fence through the desert.

Here’s a rare glimpse of me-as-hard-liner. I actually support the hard-right conservatives on this one. If people come into this country illegally, we really ought to make it illegal. When you fly in, we don’t just say, “We’d really prefer you come through immigration,” but let people walk through to the taxi stand anyway. We don’t put up a sign that says “Welcome to America” on the highway from Mexico and just wave people through. But if you’re an illegal and you’ve been here for more than a few years, we ought to give you a chance to become a citizen. I think that people who sneak through illegally shouldn’t run around with the claim that “we’re Americans, too.” Uh, no. Not yet. And it’s not racism or bias to expect that people who illegally entered the country to maybe make some amends for doing that.

But it doesn’t really matter what I think. The fact is, the Republican Base is split cleanly in two on this one. Republicans are walking a ridiculous tightrope to ensure they don’t upset too many of their core voters, but they don’t know how many of their core voters are on one side of the debate or the other! They know that all of them are anti-abortion, most are anti-gay marriage, and most are pro-gun, but immigration?

The real problem, to be honest, is that Republican money says illegals are good, and Republican voters say illegals are bad, and that’s not a winning combination.

Here’s the other interesting thing. Iran announced today that they were “joining the nuclear club,” purportedly by enriching uranium. But they chose their words carefully. The Nuclear Club means, in everybody’s mind, the club of countries with nuclear weapons. They’re going to have a bomb soon, and they’ve got weapons with the advanced delivery systems to have an offensive capability. This represents (alongside North Korea) one of the most fundamental failures of the Bush foreign policy. They got nukes while we screwed around in a country that wasn’t even trying to get them in the first place. Good job, George.

The point is, the Republican Party is getting pulled in too many directions. 63% of Americans want a Democratic Congress this fall, and if things keep going in the direction the Bush administration is busily pushing them, we’re going to get one.

The Politics of Life or Death

Democrat John Giannetti represents a number of Washington suburbs in the Maryland General Assembly. He’s a freshman state senator, and while he’s a Democrat, he has a thoroughly crappy record on gun control. He voted against a number of common-sense gun control measures, including a firearm accountability system and the assault weapons ban. Basically, the guy likes his weapons a little too much to be a good Dem.

What’s weird is that Giannetti represents, at least in part, Prince George’s County. For those of you who don’t listen to rap music or know the Mid-Atlantic very well, Prince George’s (better known as “PGC”) is one of the most violent municipalities in America, with a murder rate that’s starting to play in the same league as Baltimore. Last year, PGC (with a population of 850,000) went up to 173 murders, while Baltimore fell to 269 with 650,000 residents. PG is rapidly rivaling “The City That Bleeds” as one of the most dangerous places in America.

(If you’re interested in learning more about how dangerous these “suburbs” can actually be, Gory Prince George’s does a pretty good job of tracking violence in the county, in the same manner that Baltimore’s City Paper tracks them with “Murder Ink.”)

Here’s the point. PG Police Chief Melvin High repeatedly stressed the need to take guns off the street, even instituting the uncreatively-named “Take Away Guns,” or TAG program. Yet Giannetti seems to do an outstanding job of undercutting the safety of his own constituents by denying police officers the common-sense gun control laws that they desperately need.

So the Brady Campaign has targeted (forgive the expression) Giannetti in this primary, hoping to replace him with, in their words, “someone who will make sensible gun laws a priority.” It’s set to be an ugly race between him and Jim Rosapepe, a member of the University of Maryland Board of Regents who’s practically salivating at the chance to attack Giannetti’s gun control record.

So last Wednesday night, Rosapepe was at dinner in Annapolis when he started choking. A friend tried the Heimlich maneuver to remove the airway obstruction, but it didn’t work. Suddenly, someone waiting at the take-out counter ran over and performed it correctly. The food came loose and Rosapepe’s life was saved.

As you probably guessed, the guy at the take-out counter was none other than Giannetti. He didn’t recognize his opponent until afterwards. Maryland’s Senate President expressed his hope that the incident would lead to a much more “uplifting” campaign.

I just find it funny that Democrats who hate each other will jump in to save each other’s lives, while Republicans will shoot their campaign donors in the face.

Globalization and Other Minor Issues

So, I’ve decided to pick back up on this thing. Here goes nothing.

I just got back from a lecture by the NYT’s Tom Friedman in Baltimore. He’s still in the process of promoting his book The World Is Flat, which approaches the subject of globalization with wide-eyed, almost childish optimism through the lens of information technology. He’s a smart guy and by the end, I was pretty well on board with his basic thesis- that IT technologies developed in the last 15 years are going to reshape the world on the scale of electricity.

My personal gripe was that he never really addressed the problem of access, since information technology is still, fundamentally, a first-world luxury. Though terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan might use Outlook Express, very few of Africa’s 850 million people even have access to the Internet in the first place. And given the deplorable condition of education and human rights in the third world, a high-speed Internet connection doesn’t level the playing field for an illiterate subsistence farmer.

Regardless of the hole (or hole) in Friedman’s arguments, his talk got me thinking about what seems like a gaping double standard in American trade policy. The Bush administration is a loud proponent of globalization, and if you listen to Scott McClellan, you’d believe that we’re on the march across the planet to spread social and economic freedom. The people of Iraq might not believe it, but at least Bush does.

For all of its crappy implementation, globalization a la Bush is an admirable goal. I can’t deny that a world with fewer trade barriers and increased global communication would be more productive and (since it would be so interdependent) probably a little more peaceful. But the problem is, America in general (and Bush in particular) don’t quite get that it’s a two-way street.

America is great at doing things, but in the last 30 years, we’ve lost the competitive edge in making things. And we tend to be pretty crappy when it comes to admitting that other people do a better job. From Canadian lumber to Korean steel, the United States has been trying to prevent inexpensive foreign goods of comparable quality from making it into our markets, using a battery of legal (and illegal) measures.

Let’s start with the Korean steel. Up until the winter of 2003, the United States was putting heavy tariffs on foreign steel (especially East Asian products coming out of South Korea, Japan and China.) The American steel firms couldn’t effectively compete without the U.S. government’s help, and they had plenty of friends in that government. Eventually, however, this proved counterproductive- the WTO came pretty close to slapping sanctions on American exports and the Bush administration buckled and removed the tariffs. We didn’t even pretend they were legal.

On the other hand, with Canadian timber, we have a semi-legal method of recourse to supposed predatory trade practices known as “anti-dumping legislation.” Foreign goods sold significantly below the current market value of domestic goods can (under WTO rules) be subjected to tariffs. In theory, this prevents countries like China or India from flooding other markets with dirt-cheap goods and driving domestic manufacturers out of business. In practice, however, it’s usually used as a tool by the United States to keep foreign competitors from getting too competitive, as in the case of the Canadian lumber industry.

We’ve invoked anti-dumping protections against Canadian wood products because (according to Congress) their government owns 95% of the Canadian timberland and leases it to local mills for about half of market value. Granted, it sounds pretty bad. Our logging industry, it’s true, can’t really compete with subsidized Canadian timber. Isn’t Canada violating the founding principles of free trade? What about NAFTA?

Well, not really, if you consider the fact that every taxpayer spends around $500 a year to subsidize America’s farmers. American farm subsidies are bad for our economy, and bad for everyone else. The vast majority of the money goes to support large corporate farms that reap- quite literally- billions of dollars in tax breaks every year (think of what that money could be doing if we invested it in education, or maybe small-business loans.)

So, not only is tax time pretty much stress-free, but every American farmer gets a guaranteed minimum price at which to sell their crops. So when we’re done selling all this cheap produce at home, it gets shipped off to the rest of the world and- you guessed it- dumped on domestic markets, bankrupting local farmers.

It’s true that Canada is being pretty unfair with the softwood lumber issue, but the damage they’d be doing to our logging communities is positively laughable compared to the damage we’re doing to local farmers around the world, and all to subsidize a nearly-extinct conception of the “family farm” that has been replaced by massive corporate entities.

All of this makes me a little bit surprised to see George Bush stepping into the fray on (at least what I perceive to be) the right side of the globalization debate, in regards to this ridiculous controversy about port ownership. I guess, after six years of unmitigated disasters, he had to get one right. Monkeys on a typewriter, maybe.

In terms of security, it really, truly, does not matter who owns the company, who owns the company, who owns the companies, who own American ports. American port security was crappy before 9/11. It remains crappy after 9/11. And regardless of whether a company based in the United Arab Emirates buys the British firm that’s been controlling the ports of Miami, Baltimore, Newark, Philadelphia, New Orleans and New York.

The main, articulated fear is that a company based in the same country as two of the 9/11 hijackers would somehow be tainted by Islamic extremism. This could, in theory, compromise port security and allow terrorists and weapons into the country. This is crap. More specifically, this is pure, unadulterated xenophobia, allowing Congressional politicians to grandstand during an election year about a homeland security issue that is really quite pointless. Okay, some of the hijackers came from Dubai. Well, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Timothy McVeigh came from Britain and New York State. How about we start preventing British people and New Yorkers from owning transportation assets?

I live in one of those cities. I am not worried about who owns the port. The Bush administration is spending billions of dollars on a pointless war in Iraq that could have been spent (among a zillion other things) on equipping those ports with more ICE inspectors, radiological detection devices, and X-ray systems. The likelihood of a nuclear bomb making into my city by sea, is not going to change based upon the nationality of who owns the port. What interest does any company, be it based in Dubai, Manhattan, or Outer Mongolia, have in allowing terrorists to blow up its assets?

If we really intend to promote freedom and free trade throughout the world, we’re going to have to suck it up and play by the rules that we want everyone else to play by. America is historically bad at this. Take national security. We don’t want to allow anyone else to have nuclear weapons, but we’re perfectly comfortable not only retaining them, but threatening to use them. We don’t want to allow cheap foreign products into our markets but we have no problem flooding others with our exports.

As David Brooks of the NYT mentioned, the people who own the ports in Dubai are some of the few Arab folks who still like us, and now we’re pissing them off. If we’re going to get behind globalization and the free flow of economy activity, we have to play by the rules, and that means we’re not always going to come out on top.

Rainy Days

The last few months have been phenomenally bad for the Republican Party, and also for the entire country. Spurred by the Katrina and Rita disasters, Bush's approval rating has gone through the basement. His Supreme Court nominee is hitting a wall of resistance from the left and the right, and it looks like she won't be confirmed. The special prosecutor investigating the Valerie Plame leak is about to return inditements. And this bad news has somehow managed to relegate the other bad news about Iraq (it's not getting any better) to the back seat. In a day or two, we're going to pass the 2,000 dead mark.

A lot of people on the left side of the aisle are taking this as cause for celebration. Specifically, the country seems to be making the connection that it failed to make in 2004- that the president's reactions to everyday events are causing the problems we're seeing. Maybe the war in Iraq wasn't such a hot idea, everyday people are saying. Why are we still there again? How did this Katrina thing happen? What the heck is going on with the CIA and that investigation?

The Bush Administration and the Republican Party have suffered a steady diet of bloody noses in the last few months, and I would ordinarily be happy, especially with the 2006 elections coming onto the radar screen. The Democrats will probably do well in that election, and that is very, very important.

I'm not thrilled, however, that it took this constant barrage of bad things to force America to hold their president accountable. It's obvious to me that if it weren't for Bush's reactions (no, I don't blame him for 9/11 or the hurricane) to the bad events in the last five years, they wouldn't have been so bad. But it took a lot of really horrible things for the country to figure that out, and I had been hoping that America would be able to do that without such a high cost.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Bush's approval rating is tanking and Red America is looking a little less red, but unlike MoveOn and Howard Dean, I don't have the heart to capitalize on it. Despite what the right might tell you, it's not worth your country getting beat to shit to be proven right.

Dual Perspectives

I occasionally read Very Small Doses, which is a couple turns to my right and puts a lot more Jesus on my plate than I ordinarily prefer to stomach. However, it's well-written and intelligent, and its author recently brought up a point that I wanted to expand upon. He pointed out that political debate in America has polarized to such a degree that most people subscribe to one of two specific ideology (liberal or conservative) and each paints the other side as totally out of touch with reality.

I mentioned this in the "Two Truths" post, way back in the day. However, I feel like this is somewhat different. It's ceased to be a method of political discourse these days, and people actually buy into it with the zeal of religious fanatics (which, of course, a bunch of them are.) I basically get the same thing from my MoveOn.org e-mails and George Esseff's "What I Am" ad in the Washington Post. The orthodoxy of each side automatically portrays the other guy as misguided and uninformed- and that's using polite terminology.

The best example I've seen of this has been that poor woman protesting outside of Bush's ranch in Texas. As he continues his streak of being the hardest-vacationing president in history, Cindy Sheehan- whose son died in Iraq- arrived with an enormous media entourage to demand an audience with him and ask why her son died. In a move that shocked me, the Bush administration actually sent National Security Adviser Steven Hadley and Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin out to meet with her. (In a move that did not shock me, Bush stayed inside.)

Essentially, this woman demanded to know why her son had died, and wanted all the troops brought home so that the killing would stop. I mean, this woman has pretty much made up her mind about what we're doing in Iraq (it's not worth it) and what we course we should take (get the hell out of Dodge.)

Of course, Steve Hadley and Joe Hagin had made up their minds as well. According to Sheehan, they were "very respectful" but gave her the "party line" about Iraq. For those of you keeping score, the party line is that we are keeping America safe by building an Iraqi democracy (which I don't totally disagree with,) we have to defeat the terrorists (yes, and it would help if we admitted that they wouldn't be there if we weren't) and that Saddam had to go because he was a threat to the free world (which is crap.)

Let's try to break this down. I think Sheehan does a pretty good job of representing the liberal side of the issue, and Hagin & Hadley do a good job of representing the conservative. Forgive me if I add a little more geopolitical detail to this, but here's how the whole thing looks to me.

Liberal: A lot of American troops are getting killed in a war that should never have happened in the first place- we went after WMD that didn't exist and we basically did it alone, because the rest of the world (rightly) told us we were crazy. Keeping our guys there is an attempt to establish an American stronghold in the Middle East, with strategic airbases and access to oil. Our interests would be best served by withdrawing from Iraq, which would free up resources to secure our homeland from terrorists and stop the loss of American troops.

Conservative: American troops are defending freedom in Iraq. WMDs didn't matter. Saddam was a threat to the free world and we've liberated a country. Those who criticize the war are undermining our national unity, and dishonoring the memory of the men and women who have died to advance the cause of freedom. Leaving Iraq before the job is done would send a message to terrorists that, given enough bloodshed, the United States can be intimidated.

I had a hard time even writing that conservative bit, because I simply don't understand the logic of it. For example, a lot of conservatives tell me that while I disagree with the war, the soldiers are fighting to preserve my right to say it. That's garbage. They're fighting because Bush sent them there on false pretenses. Even if Saddam had chemical- no, biological- no, NUCLEAR weapons, and he had lobbed one of them into downtown Manhattan, he wouldn't be threatening my right to say exactly what I felt about it. If the troops were actually defending my right to free speech, I'd grab a helmet and an M-16 and join them.

This is basically turning into Vietnam, with one horrible twist. Middle- and upper-class kids aren't getting drafted, so there is no widespread protest, no swarm of outrage on college campuses. If 3,000 working-class kids die in Iraq, there aren't going to be mass protests to bring them home, because no one with a good job or educational opportunities is left with the military as their only option. The lives of the soldiers in Iraq are no more expendable than the lives of the Bush twins, who Cindy Sheehan recommended be sent to Iraq.

This has been a little disjointed. However, if you have any other point-counterpoints on liberal/conservative issues that simply talk past each other, please e-mail me and let me hear them. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say.

Media Habits, or, Tom Daschle's Ghost in Space

All right, this might be a little lame, but I'll admit it. I signed up for BloginSpace, which allows you to broadcast your blog into space. Using RSS feeds (I don't know what they are either) they send the data from your site into deep space using a satellite dish. Or something. These guys could be totally making it up. However, it's entertaining. You can also send individual messages out into the Final Frontier, though they give you a solemn warning you not to send anything that could start an intergalactic war.

As you can probably tell, I occasionally get bored at my summer job, and find interesting ways of wasting time. In that vein, somebody recently asked me where I get my ideas for what to write about, and I figured that might make a decent (albeit short) post.

CNN.com. Oh, man, this website is my heroin. Without exaggeration, I can check this website 50 times in an hour. They're pretty fast with breaking news, if you can ignore the fact that the articles are written for fourth-graders. Also, CNN is excellent when it comes to sniffing out amusing, time-wasting "news" stories, such as the diplomatic spat between Denmark and Canada over a tiny island in the Arctic Circle. Other than that, CNN's website doesn't have much analysis, and has no qualms about posting unverified hearsay in the name of breaking the story first.

(I guess I did that, with the Secret Service arriving at Hopkins Hospital thing, last year. Guilty as charged.)

NYTimes.com. Not much needs to be said here. They know what they're doing. And the opinion pages have some of the most insightful analysis that's ever been thoroughly ignored by an administration. Except Maureen Dowd. I think many liberals would agree that Maureen Dowd is the crazy relative we'd rather not talk about. But I resist comparisons between her and Ann Coulter. Maureen Dowd is batty; Ann Coulter is criminally insane.

TheHill.com. I mentioned this newspaper in a previous post. It primarily circulates among people who either work on, or write about, Capitol Hill. Almost every story they publish could make a good report over the AP wire. But they assume you know the ins and outs of Congressional procedures, which involves a fairly steep learning curve every now and then. Like I mentioned earlier, I'd rather read Roll Call, but only The Hill gives you access to their articles for free. Also, they have some pretty awesome restaurant reviews.

WashingtonPost.com. Another fairly obvious one, that falls somewhere between The Hill and the New York Times. They occasionally fall prey to their inner policy wonk, but that doesn't bother me. Plus they do some of the best investigative reporting in the world, and they're good about getting policymakers to write editorials, even better (in some cases) than the New York Times. My yardstick for whether a paper is worth reading, is whether it's worth giving them my e-mail address. The Post and the Times both pass that test.

DailyKos.com These guys are even more left than I am, and occasionally I don't agree with them. (For example, I'm against the idea of a timetable for the Iraq pullout. I think that's a death sentence for the new Iraqi authorities.) However, if you're looking to take the overall pulse of young, progressive America, it wouldn't hurt to start there.

Virtual Pus. Kind of a goofy URL, but more power to them. It's a mix of the everyday blog and standard progressive musings, but the way the two are blended makes it good. Plus, the bloggers are Family Guy fans, so you know they're all right.

HomestarRunner.com This has absolutely nothing to do with politics, democracy, or social change. It has everything to do with being hilarious. If you haven't seen it, you should. If you have seen it, you know why.

As you can tell, my main sources of news come from the Internet. I only watch one TV show regularly, which I assume most of you watch as well. That's The Daily Show, which is amazing. It's the answer to conservative talk radio. Not only can liberals be smart and persuasive, we can also be funny. I challenge you to find a conservative TV show that is consistently hilarious. (And no, Hannity & Colmes does not count. I mean intentionally funny.)

So that's where I get most of my information. And Google. Oh, Google. Not only do you provide me with every piece of useless information I could possibly want, you have also provided me with the data I needed to write many useless term papers.

Why Kenyon?

So, Kenyon College in Gambier, OH marks the beginning of my Facebook PR campaign. It's not much of a campaign, since I don't have a lot of resources available for it cough poor college student cough. But Kenyon is close to my heart for a few reasons. First, I almost went there- spent an overnight there and loved it, but decided to stay on the East Coast for college. Also, a good friend of mine goes there, and she sometimes asks me why I didn't go. (I rarely have a good answer for her.) And a lot of my family's from Ohio.

But another, different reason for starting this off with a Facebook announcement at Kenyon, was because of a Facebook group I saw there. "I Waited 5+ Hours To Vote Against That Redneck Jackass and All I Got Was This Lousy Facebook Group." I'll be honest, that's pretty awesome. A lot of us went through this election voting in solid blue (or, to be fair, solid red) states, and just felt helpless the whole time. The liberal population at Kenyon registered to help swing Ohio blue, and waited up to 11 hours to vote. Even though it was ultimately unsuccessful, they did a hell of a lot more for Kerry on Election Day than I did.

Anyway, that's why I bought an ad on the Kenyon Facebook. If this is your first visit, let me know what you think.

This Could Backfire

Okay, so I don't really mind this Roberts guy. (This is going to be a quick post.) NARAL instantly came out against him, because he'd argued a case against Roe v. Wade, but they ignored another quotation (11 years more recent than the first) saying that nothing in his personal beliefs would cause him to overturn Roe. I mean, that sounds pretty solid to me.

And he's smart. I respect smart conservatives the way I respect Yankee fans who know their baseball. Don't get me wrong, I hate you and everything you stand for. But as an enemy, I can respect you. And Roberts deserves some respect. Harvard College, Harvard Law (editing the law review) and clerking for a Supreme Court justice. This guy knows what he's doing.

Most advocacy groups on the left like MoveOn have prepared for this fight for so long that it would almost be seen as a disservice to do anything but fight, which gives me a little pause. They know it's not such a big deal, but to appear (pardon the phrase) "true blue," they're going to try to battle a Supreme Court nominee who is probably the least of all possible evils.

I think we ought to give Bush his nominee and be dignified about it, just like he asked. Grill him a little on his political leanings and do some digging into his background, sure. But his record was as white as snow in 2003 when he was appointed to the federal bench. This guy is Mr. Clean. Don't make a fight out of something that doesn't require a fight.

Here's what the Bush White House didn't expect. If the Senate Democrats gracefully confirm his nomination with a minimum of mud-slinging, what does the media attention shift right back to?

Oh, that's right.

Senors Rove and Libby.

Exactly where it should be.

Holding My Breath

It's 8:05pm EST and I'm pacing around my apartment, alone and more than a little bit worried about what Bush is going to say on TV in 55 minutes. It doesn't seem like an impending disaster; so far, the two names that have both been floated, Edith Clement and John Roberts, haven't left enough of a political footprint that anyone is setting off alarm bells on either side of aisle.

I haven't usually advocated "wait-and-see" policies on this blog, which is probably a little irresponsible on my part, but I've never claimed to publish more than opinion on here. But it looks like we don't have much choice on this one. DailyKos mentioned that some of the nominees were essentially a blank slate, and it's tough to figure out which way they're going to swing.

Personally, I think Roberts would be worse news. From what I've read, his stand on abortion has been predictably negative, although Bush would be crazy to appoint someone who wasn't a commited pro-lifer.

This couldn't come at a better time, of course. The news cycle is squarely focused around Rove, and if Bush announces his nominee early, the heat comes off the White House and onto the Democratic opposition to his nominee. Doesn't matter if he nominates Hilary Clinton, Alberto Gonzalez or the man in the moon. Suddenly, the Rove issue takes a backseat to the Confirmation Hearings.

Slick move. Now let's just see who he picks.

The Rick Santorum Post

I’m originally from Boston. It says so on the little profile to the right, and I’ve mentioned it a few times. I’m proud of that. I love the Red Sox, I love the culture, and I want to live there when I have a family. A friend of mine from school, also from Boston, just sent me an IM, saying I should write something about Rick Santorum and the comments he made about Boston. I hadn’t heard anything, so I checked Boston.com.

I did not believe what I was reading.

In comments he posted on a Catholic website- no, dammit, I’m not even going to paraphrase this shit. I’ll let him speak for himself. He was talking about innocent kids being sexually molested by priests.

“It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

That’s right, you actually just read that.

According to this man, priests in Boston molested, abused and traumatized innocent little boys because they were living in a city of liberals. The people of the state of Pennsylvania elected this man a United States Senator. The same guy, entrusted with the responsibility of confirming Supreme Court justices, who also compared homosexuality to “man on dog” sex.

He wrote this crap in 2002, to be fair, and bloggers only dug it up a few weeks ago. But it is, appropriately, causing a firestorm. The mayor of Boston openly groaned when a Globe columnist asked him about it, and even the Republican governor of Massachusetts (whose coreligionists, about 150 years ago, were calling polygamy a “new and everlasting covenant,”) said Santorum had proven he knew nothing about the culture in New England.

I’ve had an extremely difficult time writing this because I’m so angry, and I don’t do my best work when I want to wring someone’s neck. A friend works in Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, and has emphasized to me the importance of defeating Rick Santorum. I knew he was vulnerable to Bob Casey, and that he represents a gathering storm of religious extremism in the Senate. But until today, I didn’t know just how truly insane Santorum- and his constituents- could be.

There is good news and bad news about this situation, and there is a whole pile of bad news compared to a puddle of good. The truly bad news is that Rick Santorum is not the only person who believes this. He did not proclaim this ignorant and evil garbage because he thought it would sound good against the walls of his private office, nor did he think he would be breaking new ground by claiming that liberalism bred pedophilia. No. Rick Santorum, and his conservative constituents from every religious stripe, believe that unwed priests raping little children are in the same moral category as monogamous gay couples who love each other.

If you want more evidence of conservative opinion leaders espousing learned and intelligent opinions on sexual deviance, look no further than radio commentator Michael Savage, host of “The Savage Nation.” Five days after the December 16th, 2004 tsunami, he got on the radio with some words to guide us through a global time of tragedy.

"If you are a God-believing, God-fearing person, I am sure at some point you ask yourself, wait a minute: the epicenter of [the tsunami] was adjacent to the sex-trade island of Phuket, Thailand... We shouldn't be spending a nickel on this, as far as I'm concerned."

You heard about it here. (Thank MediaMatters.org on that one, by the way. This was the same guy who said women’s hormones were “out of control” and they shouldn’t have the right to vote.) The reason the tsunami struck Thailand and Indonesia was because of the sex trade. Oh, I’m not defending the sex trade here. I’m just saying that if you believe the tsunami swamped Phuket because of little boys having sex with American tourists, it’s safe to say that you’d believe priests could be coerced into having sex with little boys because their neighbors voted Kerry.

That is the bad news. A lot of people have the same view of liberals as Rick Santorum, or worse. The good news is that this jackass has managed to polarize a lot of people. Rational religious voters have been forced into doing a double-take at the guy they elected, and his reactionary rhetoric has given the Pennsylvania Democratic establishment an exceptionally good cause to rally around. I’ve always thought that Democrats should be running for something, and not against someone, but Rick Santorum is a great reason to bend that rule.

And it would have been one thing if he’d taken a swipe at liberals in, say, Alabama. There would be about 10 people there who were getting real worked up. But when you go after one of the strongest bases of liberal power, and the school-year home of thousands upon thousands of college students just itching to volunteer for your opponent’s campaign, you have, pardon the term, drawn a bullseye upon your ass. I’d love to see the federal funding report for Bob Casey’s campaign PAC next week. There are going to be a lot of new zeroes there, most with a return address of Boston, MA.

A note to the approximately 1.2 conservatives who read this blog. The biggest complaint of the American right, the motivation behind much of the vitriol coming from Fox News, talk radio and the White House, is that liberals are sanctimonious and convinced of their own intellectual superiority. A common right-wing tactic has been to combat this by claiming a moral superiority, through either religion or patriotism. If you think that you can get away with claiming moral superiority and then attacking liberalism as promoting pedophilia, you are going to learn your lesson at the rapidly-approaching moment when the Congressional aisles turn a refreshing shade of blue.

My recommendation to the Republicans, which I hope (for our sake) they do not follow, is that they cut Rick Santorum off and leave him to the political wolves in November 2006. He’s already trailing 50-39% in early Pennsylvania polls. However, if they don’t, I look forward, along with the rest of blue America, to choking this guy with his own well-chosen words.

I hope we get the privilege of using Rick Santorum as a brick to tie to the Republican Party's submerging feet. And when he’s unemployed next fall, I hope he takes a vacation to Bay State, so we can show him a real Boston welcome.

The Endgame of Plamegate

I’m not jumping to any conclusions, but it’s Karl freaking Rove.

Karl Rove has become synonymous with the most amoral and ruthless political agenda since Joe McCarthy. Part of the reason that we all hate him is because he’s effective; Rove is remarkably good at stirring up “the base,” the hardcore, red-state, evangelical conservatives that put the gas in the neocon tank. Karl Rove’s strategy is appealing to “the base,” and assuming that the rest will take care of itself. So far, it’s worked- until the war in Iraq really started to go south, the Republican Party didn’t have to worry about being a “big tent” party in the first place. “The base” was enough.

(Today’s Arabic lesson: the word for “the base” in Arabic is…anybody? Oh yes, that’s right. It’s “al-Qaeda.”)

Even Rupert Murdoch, the poorly-regulated loudspeaker of the neocon movement, indirectly acknowledged Rove’s universally-poor reception among Americans in the animated show American Dad. The protagonist, a family man/CIA agent, hires Karl Rove to help him win his campaign for church deacon. Great moment: Karl Rove, face concealed beneath a red-and-black cloak, speaking in sepulchral tones, and accompanied by Satanic sound effects, is unable to pass through the doors of a church. Everybody knows the guy is evil.

Real-life Karl Rove story, which some people know and most don’t. The guy broke into Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon’s offices, stole a whole bunch of letterhead, and printed up an ad for a nonexistent campaign rally, which was to provide “free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing.” He called it a “political prank” and laughs it off, which I would be okay with, if he didn’t falsely accuse his opponents of doing the same thing about 15 years later. (Just before a major debate, Rove went to the press with a claim that Democrats had bugged his consulting firm’s office. Turns out he did it himself.)

However, he did manage to pull off a number of impressive successes. His trademark is attacking an opponent on their strongest issue. In fact, a few of his business associates consulted for a couple of guys you may have heard of- Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The perception of irony is clearly not present in Rove’s skill set, but winning elections is. He recently decided to attack MoveOn.org by claiming that liberals wanted to offer “therapy” to the 9/11 hijackers, while the conservatives were “prepar[ing] for war.” The group Families of September 11th asked him to please shut his mouth or apologize, and he promptly did neither.

I’m not saying Karl Rove doesn’t have a good reason for being a psychopath. During his parent’s divorce, he found out that his dad actually wasn’t his dad. Then his mom killed herself. I hate him, but I think I can guess why he snapped.

The fact is, Karl Rove has gotten so good at being evil that I assumed the goon who leaked Valerie Plame’s identity would be an underling whose orders from above were carefully obscured. Up until now, I had assumed that the guilty part was Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I.L. “Scooter” Libby. Presumably he was acting out of shame and rage that the world was going to either forget him, or remember him as “Scooter.” Also, he sounded a little like G. Gordon Liddy.

But as of Tuesday, July 12, this thing has been blown wide open and there isn’t even much of a media frenzy. The White House is clamming up, understandably, and Scott McClellan is backpedaling faster than a Lance Armstrong tape on rewind from his earlier comment that whoever leaked the information would be fired, and that it categorically was not Karl Rove.

Except there’s an e-mail in which Karl Rove told Matt Cooper that Joe Wilson’s trip to Iraq was authorized by his wife, who worked at the CIA on WMD issues.

(Rove’s lawyer is only contesting that Rove did not reveal Plame’s name, and that he did not identify her as an undercover agent. It’d be like telling a gang of drug dealers that the new recruit “worked for the FBI” but without saying whether he was an undercover agent or not. What the hell else would they be doing, mopping the floors?)

Matt Cooper is not brain-damaged. He would be able to figure out that Valerie Plame was Joe Wilson’s wife about as easily as you or I could. And he would also be able to figure out that since nobody knew Plame worked at the CIA, it was probably some kind of, um, you know, well, secret.

Karl Rove told Matt Cooper that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA on WMD. Nobody is contesting that. Karl Rove is the leak, and as Bush stated nearly two years ago, he needs to be fired. He also needs to go to jail.

Anybody on the left or the right who wants to argue that is welcome to try.

Something Worth Sharing

Apparently this little gem has been going around various progressive listservs. I myself spotted it on Virtual Pus and was fascinated. My summer job involves market research and polling, and I've always appreciated when numbers can paint an accurate picture of American society. Granted, statistics are malleable, but some of them can't be argued with.

I was most taken aback by the divorce number. That's one of the most important weapons in the conservative arsenal; the claim that red-state, moral-values voters are Pro-Family, dammit. Which is patently ridiculous, because they get divorced a hell of a lot more often than us effete, blue-state moral relativists. I understand that going after the Bible Belt divorce rate is a low blow, but if they're going to bash gays using The Family as a hammer, they deserve it.

The piece's author is anonymous, but I wish I could get his or her e-mail address to talk about where they got their facts. Not just for purposes of verification, but because it sounds like a gold mine of information that I'd like to dig into.

I made a few slight revisions (deleted a paragraph about Iraq that I didn't agree with) and added a few tidbits of information that I thought my particular audience would enjoy. Otherwise, it's pretty much verbatim as I found it.

Enough talk. I'll let you read it.



"Dear Red States,
We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the Northeast.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma, the Southwest and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole Miss.

We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, and the University of Georgia.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent think Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in Nueva California."

Supporting The Troops

I was taking a summer EMT course last year when I overheard an exchange between two of the students in the course. One was about as liberal as you could get. She was a tattooed art school graduate with profane, anti-Bush stickers plastered across her fuel-efficient car- she was almost cartoonish. The other one was an enlisted guy in the Air Force who'd overheard her talking about how she was against the war in Iraq.

He ambled over. "So you're one of the ones who spits on our guys when they get home from Iraq, huh?" he asked. He wasn't being sarcastic, either. He was legitimately curious.

She shook her head. "Oh, no, I don't have any problem with military personnel. I just don't support Bush or the war."

He nodded. "So you support the troops, though?"

"Yeah," she responded, "of course I do."

What does this mean? "Support the troops." The most common expression of this sentiment is to put one of those yellow ribbons on the back of your car, which don't exactly seem designed for longevity (they're all magnetic.) Even people who are against the war, support the troops. Huh?

In 2005, we take our all-volunteer military for granted. A lot of us don't see the military as a particularly attractive option, especially the more privileged among us. And everyone in the military has their own reason for joining; some needed college money, others wanted to see the world, some wanted better opportunities, and others just wanted to serve their country.

The fact is that, regardless of why they're doing it, military personnel are serving the country's best interests, even if they're doing something that a lot of us- including me- don't support. Having an established corps of professional, well-trained warriors is not something that a lot of other countries can pull off- most major European nations still have a draft between high school and college. We have enough courageous people who, for many different reasons, are willing to serve without being required to.

And they get ordered into some things- like Iraq- that many of us don't believe in. But nobody is disputing that the job they're doing is honorable, and they deserve to be supported by the people they serve. So it seems like a lot of anti-war folks say they "support the troops," but really just mean that they don't bear them any ill will.

I think it's fair to say that most military personnel would choose to be deployed to Iraq about as quickly as most liberals would choose to send them there. It's a miserable place, and 1,700 of them have gotten killed there, and counting. Not to mention all the servicemembers who lost limbs or eyesight or hearing in combat. We claim to support them, but many of us just don't pay them much attention.

And the body of evidence, from recent polls, shows that blue America believes in what the military is doing there now. There aren’t many liberals who would agree with the decision to go to war in the first place, but the majority would agree that since we did, we’re obligated to clean up the mess in Iraq before we head home. We broke it, so to say, and we bought it. Even if there is widespread dissatisfaction with how things are going, it’s safe to say that Americans believe in bringing peace to Iraq after we brought war.

So we all support the troops and the mission of rebuilding Iraq, but the liberal establishment hasn’t exactly been printing up “Hug A Soldier” bumper stickers. I’m not saying that MoveOn.org ought to start selling camo. I do think that, since blue America supports the troops, too, we ought to do something about it. If I had my way, the College Democrats would start sending care packages overseas.

That might be tough, so I decided to start doing it myself. There are a lot of Americans getting shot at, in the middle of a godforsaken desert, who are in need of stuff like air freshener and a couple DVDs. I don’t make a lot of specific appeals, but please check out www.anysoldier.com, browse through the profiles of the personnel deployed overseas, and do what you can. If you support the troops, do something about it.