Couple of things to comment on this week. I’ll be brief – it’s a holiday, for chrissake.
Unforced confession. George W. Bush has been hawking his memoir for the last couple of weeks, proudly admitting that he personally authorized the use of waterboarding – a torture technique he considers legal because his legal advisors told him so. “I’m not a lawyer,” he told Matt Lauer in one interview. How far would that get any of us in front of a judge?
No one seems particularly bothered about this, but Bush’s proud admission, along with Cheney’s, is basically a declaration that our justice system is in a shambles; that the law applies only to the powerless and that cruel and unusual punishment is acceptable. Torture is a violation of U.S. statute and of international conventions to which the U.S. is both a signatory and a primary participant. Waterboarding is torture; it has been recognized as such since the days of Torquemada and before, I’ll wager.
Bush and Cheney have admitted their guilt; bragged about it, in fact, with the arrogance of men who know they are safe from accountability. The Justice Department should act upon these admissions without any thought to political expediency. That is not how the law is supposed to work. You break the law, you face justice – that’s how. Mr. Holder? Do your job.
Money rules. The results are in, and the winner of the 2010 election is corporate cash, by a landslide. The financial industry, health insurance lobby, and energy industry mad a massive investment in Republican candidates, both before the Citizens United decision and after, and they’ve certainly gotten their money’s worth. An astounding $3 billion was spent on composing the 112th congress; far more than in the 2006 cycle or even the 2004 presidential race. This piper will be paid, with interest, using the means at the disposal of any legislator; blocking, repealing, watering-down, stalling, inserting poison pills, defunding, delaying, and all of the tactics we’ve seen over the past two years.
Who are the winners? Just watch network or cable television for ten minutes and you’ll see them, preying on the public mind with their multi-million dollar ads about “our energy future” or what you should “ask your doctor” about. That’s who we need to defeat in 2012, and we’d better start working on it… yesterday.
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jp
Hey, Harry Reid – time to take the gloves off. If the Republicans threaten a filibuster over benefits for the long-term unemployed, hold them to it. Make them stand there, hour after hour, day after day, through the bloody holiday weekend, defending their obstructionism and showing the entire country how little they care about those on the losing side of our economy. What a great opportunity for you to demonstrate that your pro-working stiff rhetoric isn’t just a lot of hot air. (Unless, of course, it is.) There would be those who call you partisan, divisive, etc. Let them! They say that anyway. Slug it out on behalf of workers, both poor and middle class, and you’ll end up with something a lot more valuable than a weekend barbecue.
comprehensive health insurance reform? Never. Rebuild the entire thing to suit them, and they’ll still vote against it purely for spite. The problem here is, of course, the democrats themselves, who can’t seem to recognize when they’ve got something that’s both popular and worth defending. I’m referring to the public option, Medicare expansion, and other measures denounced as “socialism” by the other side (and conservative dems) but which the general public is strongly in favor of. The reason why people aren’t fired up about the current plan is that they stripped those measures out to please conservatives. Obama – congress – get a clue! Pass something that will make a real positive difference in people’s lives quickly, and they will support you.
The latest Afghan campaign continues unabated. I’ve heard the Taliban being accused of using civilians as human shields. Just a couple of weeks ago, though, the U.S. and local Afghan government leaders were encouraging people to stay in Marjah so that there would be someone to govern when they had taken over; and there have been reports of refugees being blocked from exiting by our military. Numerous civilians have been killed in what quickly became a war zone. How is this different?