Tag Archives: republicans

Political Rants

Clown car chronicle.

Doing something a little unusual this week. I’m going to consider watching the first G.O.P. debate, hosted by Fox News in Ohio. Granted, this will be a partial forum, leaving out seven of the magnificent seventeen. Amazing that the also-rans in this particular event almost outnumber the entire Republican field in 2012.

Spot the nutball.This crowded clown car is such a stunning illustration of the extent to which the national Republican Party has lost control of their own electoral process. Either that or they have completely lost their minds. There was a day when the party could take someone aside and say, “No, no. Not this time. Next time, maybe,” and the ambitious pol would refrain from competing. Now the process is being driven from the outside; it’s being pushed by talk radio, conservative bloggers, and Fox News, as well as foundation-funded think tanks and 401(c)3’s and 4’s. If I were a Republican, I would be disgusted by this lack of discipline. There is no way to foster a meaningful televised debate between 10 egotistical people, let alone 17.

Okay, so it’s debate day. The kiddie table has already done their thing. I didn’t watch it (because I wanted to keep my dinner down, thank you very much) but I viewed the aftermath on MSNBC’s wall-to-wall coverage featuring Chris Mathews, Joe Scarborough, Michael Steele, and a bunch of reasonably well dressed people imitating journalists. Got to hear from the shining star of the kiddie table, Carly Fiorina, failed CEO of HP, unsuccessful candidate for Senate in California, and mother of the most hilarious political television commercial of all time – the “Demon Sheep” ad. She hasn’t lost her touch, freaking out about Hillary Clinton’s “lies” about Benghazi (that’s a city in Libya), about email, and about her private server (um … see lie #2). In the fact-free zone that is modern television, it doesn’t matter whether there’s anything to these allegations, so long as you keep repeating them, over and over again. It’s all about the show, folks.

Hey, they never disappoint, the GOP debates. Hard to say who the biggest dick is in that field.

Tell Chuck. Our own Senator Charles Schumer has caved to the scaremongers and decided to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran. Please join me in expressing your extreme displeasure by calling him at 202-224-6542.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Back at it.

The year is just getting started, and already there are too many things to write about. Let’s start with the obvious.

New Congress. The all-new, all-GOP controlled Congress is now in session, with old Kentucky Mitch holding the gavel in the first Republican-led Senate since 2006. You might think you could resist, even for a single moment, the impressionThe Keystone cop that the GOP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America, the energy companies, and Wall Street … but that wasn’t possible even on  the first day of the session. Our representatives are ready to push forward the Keystone XL pipeline, repeating all the bogus claims that this project will create jobs, jobs, jobs, make America more energy secure, and is only opposed by “environmental extremists”. Sure, blow up the atmosphere on your first day. Good going, Kentucky Mitch.

Charlie Hebdo. The sickening murder of 12 people in Paris by extremists has focused our media-driven culture on the issue of speech freedom. The principle is a good one. I have to say, though, that we live in strange times when the symbols of free speech are somewhat vulgar and childish cartoons about the prophet Mohammed and some dumb-ass Seth Rogen movie. You’d like to think that if people are going to sacrifice their lives and those of their colleagues for freedom of expression, it would be over something that really needed saying. In any case, for all of the anxiety over a threat to free speech, I hope people save some concern for ethnic Algerians in France, who will now be the target of even greater abuse than the substantial measure typically meted out to them.

P.S. – Just so no one understands me, I think Charlie Hebdo and anyone else has every right to publish whatever the hell they want without fear of harassment, imprisonment, or terror attack. People also have the free-speech right to say a particular piece is dumb, inflammatory, gratuitous, childish, etc. (I’ve said as much about our own podcast. Useless rubbish!)

Palestinians and the ICC. I’m not a big believer in the International Criminal Court. The minute they haul a powerful nation in and put them on the dock, I’ll start believing. As of right now, it’s victor’s justice. That said, it’s always a positive thing when there’s a move in the direction of real justice, however modest. Establishing the principle that, say, Netanyahu might be held accountable for killing more than a thousand Palestinians last summer, is worth doing. That would be a far cry from accountability, but a place to start at the very least.

Do that and Cheney might need to start sweating a little. Not much, but … a little.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

What worked.

The Senate report on torture (a.k.a. war crimes) perpetrated by our government is out, and of course, the vast majority of media and political commentary misses the point by a mile. As is often the case with discussion of this issue, the question of efficacy is paramount. Did torture “work”? Did it yield the intelligence our government needed, for instance, to conduct its unauthorized raid on a sovereign country (Pakistan) and assassinate the prime suspect in the 9/11/2001 terror attacks (rather than bring him to trial)? Does it, more generally, extract reliable, “actionable” information, or just a bunch of blather that victims of torture usually pipe up just to make the agony stop?

Dressed for The HagueThis discussion is not limited to the full-on, proud of all we did crew, like the execrable Dick Cheney, snickering from his podium, confident that he will never pay for his crimes against humanity. This is the discussion being advanced by Senators who supposedly oppose these interrogation techniques. They didn’t work, they say. No useful intelligence was gained. What a strange conversation to be having at this moment in history, when we are confronted with detailed evidence of this latest foray (far from the first) into systematic abuse of those we seek to dominate and suppress.

These are crimes. They are explicit violations of both U.S. law and international law. Whether or not they “work” is immaterial, though I think it’s been fairly well demonstrated that you can’t torture the truth out of people. When someone robs a bank or shoots their neighbors in order to steal their car, we aren’t particularly interested in whether or not they successfully obtained the goods. When people break the law, they should be held accountable and have their day in court. That’s a conservative principle of long provenance.

Of course, what the torture program did produce was intelligence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. That was, of course, completely bogus, waterboarded out of Al Libbi. It’s not hard to imagine how this worked. The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq. They were, at some level, aware that torture may not be an ideal tool for extracting the truth, but it DOES work at getting people to say what you want to hear. Why else waterboard someone 80 times or more? In the end, they got what they wanted – a rationale for invasion.

So … torture works, if your aim is to produce incendiary lies. That’s what Bush/Cheney wanted, and the torture program didn’t disappoint.

luv u,

jp