A Remembrance

Update: Please read this; also, if you possess an American flag, today is a good day to fly or display it.

Tuesday Mashup (8/3/10)

1) Even the animals are feeling the effects of the wars (here)…

Gina was a playful 2-year-old German shepherd when she went to Iraq as a highly trained bomb-sniffing dog with the military, conducting door-to-door searches and witnessing all sorts of noisy explosions.

She returned home to Colorado cowering and fearful. When her handlers tried to take her into a building, she would stiffen her legs and resist. Once inside, she would tuck her tail beneath her body and slink along the floor. She would hide under furniture or in a corner to avoid people.

A military veterinarian diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder _ a condition that some experts say can afflict dogs just like it does humans.

“She showed all the symptoms and she had all the signs,” said Master Sgt. Eric Haynes, the kennel master at Peterson Air Force Base. “She was terrified of everybody and it was obviously a condition that led her down that road.”

A year later, Gina is on the mend. Frequent walks among friendly people and a gradual reintroduction to the noises of military life have begun to overcome her fears, Haynes said.

Haynes describes her progress as “outstanding.”

I came across this after reading another spot-on column by Bob Herbert today on Iraq and Afghanistan (describing the effects on humans who are serving and those non-serving who are sick of the wars and want to end them, bring our people home, do our best to try and heal their wounds and fix our country as well).

And by the way, the VA recently finalized regulations on processing PTSD claims as of July 13th; to learn more about the regs and obtain related information, click here.

2) And in news of the California gubernatorial contest, Repug Meg Whitman is outspending Dem Jerry Brown 86-1 (here).

And she still trails (here).

3) Also, Joke Line is at it again (here, on the matter of the upcoming congressional elections)…

The total damage assessment will have to wait until election day. As I wrote a few weeks ago, the Democrats’ losses may fall short of the 1994 wipeout–the loss of the Senate is still a prohibitive longshot. But the House is in jeopardy, especially–as always–its most moderate members. It will be interesting to see if a House composed entirely of radical Republicans and safe-seat liberal troglodytes is any more successful than the current disaster. I suspect not.

I’d like to introduce Joke to a concept called “reporting,” and by that I mean that he should bother to read the information from this link listing the accomplishments of the 110th Congress, which he, being a scion of villager punditry, considers a “disaster.”

Has this congress had its share of pratfalls? Yes. However, let’s consider them in light of the good that has been done, outpacing the wretched, Repug-run 109th, shall we?

Do I actually think Klein will bother to take me up on this, though?

I suspect not.

4) Finally, this tells us the following…

Angry relatives of 9/11 victims last night clashed with supporters of a planned mosque near Ground Zero at a raucous community-board hearing in Manhattan.

After four hours of public debate, members of Community Board 1 finally voted 29-1 in support of the project. Nine members abstained, arguing that they wanted to table the issue and vote at a later date.

The board has no official say over whether the estimated $100 million mosque and community center gets built. But the panel’s support, or lack of it, is considered important in influencing public opinion.

Holding up photos of loved ones killed in the Twin Towers and carrying signs such as, “Honor 3,000, 9/11 — No mosque!” opponents of the proposed Cordoba House on Park Place called the plan an insult to the terror-attack victims.

“That is a burial ground,” said retired FDNY Deputy Chief Al Santora, referring to the fact that victims’ remains were scattered for blocks.

Santora’s 23-year-old son, Christopher, was the youngest firefighter to die that day.

“I do have a problem with having a mosque on top of the site where [terrorists] can gloat about what they did,” said Santora, with his wife, Maureen, by his side.

I’m not taking sides on this one way or the other, but I just wanted to note the following in response.

This tells us about the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association, Inc. (SSMA); here is how the group came to be formed as a result of a horrific WWII battle…

At dawn, on October 14, 1943, in foul weather, the 8th Army Air Force, also known as the Mighty 8th, dispatched 291 B-17 bombers to the town of Schweinfurt Germany, a flight of some 800 miles. Since this city was vital to the ball bearing industry, it was at the top of the list of strategic targets for the allied forces and had already received a first attack on August 17, 1943.

The bombers were initially protected by friendly fighter escort, which were forced to turn back about half way to the targets. Arriving at the target, the bombers were attacked by an estimated 1,100 enemy fighters firing cannon and large caliber rockets manned by the German Lufwaffenhelfer (LWH) or flak-helpers. The vicious attacks were continued and repulsed until the bombers reached the English Channel on the return flight to England.

The battle brought great loss to both sided. Sixty heavy bombers and 600 airmen perished. Many lost their lives in the burning, badly damaged, crashed planes. Many became prisoners of war. Fifteen additional aircraft were so damaged they could never fly again. On the ground, 276 people died and countless more were injured. Businesses and homes were razed. Valuable and treasured possessions perished. Consequently, October 14, 1943 – Mission 115, became known as “Black Thursday” in American military history and one of the greatest air battles of World War II.

Thirty years later some of the survivors from the Mighty 8th, including Colonel Budd Peaslee, S/Sgt. Phillip Taylor and 1st Lt. William Allen, decided to form an organization to commemorate their fallen comrades-in-arms. They called it the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association, Inc. (SSMA), giving it direct connection to the second air raid on Schweinfurt.

The story also tells us that…

“(on) the 50th Anniversary, two Germans, Dr. Helmut Katzenberger and Vomar Wilckens came to the reunion in New Orleans to present to the group information they had on that fateful day. Then in 1996, the SSMA members invited more of their former enemies, including Georg Schaefer, whose grandfather founded one of the “targeted” ball bearing factories, to attend their reunion in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mr. Schaefer, now retired from the Board of Directors of FAG Kuglefischer, had served, along with his classmates, in one of the 8.8 cm Flakbatteries around Schweinfurt. He brought many artifacts from “Black Thursday”. Many of these artifacts are permanently included in the Second Schweinfurt display at the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum in Savannah, Georgia.

It was at this reunion that the Americans suggested erecting a joint memorial remembering this mission. Mr. Schaefer presented this idea to his fellow Luftwafferhelfers, who embraced the idea and June 16, 1998 a German American Memorial was dedicated on a former air raid bunker site in Schweinfurt.”

It should be noted that, concerning the proposed mosque near the WTC site, a memorial to the victims of the attacks has been proposed, as noted here.

I’m not saying that the mosque is a good idea at this point. I’m also not saying that the wishes of the friends and families shouldn’t be paramount here (they should).

All I’m saying is that an earlier generation of combatants was able to put aside its differences to the point where they could construct a memorial honoring the sacrifices made by both sides.

I’m just saying that it’s possible to do that. That’s all.

Monday Mashup (6/14/10)

1) The Bucks County Courier Times ran a Guest Opinion today from Rob “Self” Ciervo, running as a Repug against incumbent Dem Steve Santarsiero for the PA-31 State House seat (here).

Among Ciervo’s supposedly innovative ideas is to cut the staffing of each state representative’s office (which I’m sure will do wonders for response to constituent requests) and cutting down the number of mailers allowed per state representative (Ciervo states that Santarsiero has sent out five over the prior year, but I honestly cannot recall that many – by the way, I’ll await word on how many campaign mailers have been sent from Repug PA House reps Frank Farry, Gene DiGirolamo and Paul Clymer during that time, as long as Ciervo has brought this up).

Ciervo also states as follows…

No state senator or representative should be allowed under any circumstance to hire an individual who was paid to perform political tasks for any campaign the two years prior to their appointment. This is one of the main problems with our legislature; Harrisburg politicians hire their campaign staff to be on the state payroll. Santarsiero did just this by hiring all three of his paid campaign staff from the 2008 campaign to the state payroll immediately after winning election. How will we know they will not continue to do political campaigning for him, perhaps unpaid, while they are supposed to be serving the residents of our area?

That’s a pretty low, baseless attack against Steve’s staff, with no proof of any wrongdoing of course.

Ciervo also says that any state employee under 50 should have his or her pension benefit “frozen and transferred into a 401(k) style defined contribution retirement account,” which makes me wonder what other industry or category of worker in existence has been subject to such a draconian measure (I realize we have a pension issue in this state, but the public employees have paid their fair share while the state has been neglectful in paying its matching amount, as noted here).

And as noted in the prior linked post, Santarsiero voted in favor of a bill to amend payment of unfunded actuarial liability to PA pension plans (again, not that Ciervo would ever acknowledge that…curious that the Courier Times published this from Ciervo the day after they gave column space to that nitwit Simon Campbell for his monthly rant against the Pennsbury teachers union – their contract expires on the 30th, Simple Simon; are you gonna move “off the dime” and do the job you were elected to do, or goad them into a strike instead…dumb question, I know).

This is all part and parcel for Ciervo, who accused Steve of voting against funding state colleges (here – not true), and who trivialized Steve’s efforts on behalf of PA residents working for the state of New Jersey who face the very real issue of forced relocation to keep their jobs (here).

I can hardly wait for more bold ideas in Ciervo’s next Guest Opinion, such as placing a quota on the number of Post-Its, ballpoint pens and notepads allocated to each State House rep. And how about mandating that each member of our legislature hold up one or two fingers as appropriate for a “bio break,” Rob?

(And by the way, to contact Steve, click here.)

Update 6/15/10: Gee, I wonder if Teabagger Rob will endorse Steve’s idea of a constitutional convention, one of the many worthy suggestions from Santarsiero’s Guest Opinion today (here)?

2) Also, I give you J.D. Mullane of the Courier Times (here)…

June 12, 1987. President Reagan delivered one of the great speeches of the Cold War era. Two years later, the hated wall came down, endng “the brutal division of a continent.” The columns behind him are real, by the way.

I guess that last sentence is a dig at Obama and his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party Convention in 2008 (here).

While Mullane is not factually incorrect for a change, his insinuation that The Sainted Ronnie R had one damn thing to do with the collapse of the former Soviet Union is laughable (yes, I know this is familiar territory, but J.D. is the one resurrecting this piece of mythology, not me).

For, as Madeleine Albright, secretary of state to President Clinton, put it here, “attributing the end of the Cold War to Ronald Reagan is like attributing the sunrise to the rooster’s cackle.”

3) And speaking of Repug presidents, Laura Ingraham over at Fix Noise took a short at Number 44 also with the specious claim that he was “fundraising off the Gulf spill” (here).

She continues…

Did President Bush ever raise money off of 9/11?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that he used it in his campaign commercials when running for president in 2004, as noted here, with some relatives of the victims claiming that Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History was “exploiting the tragedy for political gain.”

I guess John Kerry is too honorable of a man to do what I’m suggesting he should have done, but if I were his campaign manager in 2004, I would have run an ad showing 43 sitting dumbfounded in that Florida classroom next to film of the WTC, Pentagon and Shanksville, PA crash sites while the attacks were in progress, with the words, “it happened on his watch” onscreen, and absolutely nothing else.

Paging Elin Nordegren – Someone Else Needs To Be Smacked With A Club

(And I don’t mean Tweety here…)

OK, so let me get this straight – Chris Matthews asks Ari Fleischer if the latter is satisfied with the economy Bush handed to Obama, and Fleischer immediately goes all “Terra! terra! terra! Saddam Hussein was a BAD MAN, terra! terra! terra!,” and Matthews reminds him that 9/11 happened on Dubya’s watch, and Fleischer goes all “How dare you! SADDAM HUSSEIN 9/11 9/11 9/11!!!”

Before I actually felt a bit sorry for Tiger Woods – I thought he was monumentally stupid and hurt his family and himself more than anyone else by his actions. However, if he thinks that hiring Fleischer as a spokesman will enhance his image, then he’s a total idiot and I feel no sympathy for him whatsoever.

Update 3/22/10: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

A “Wowie” Of An AP Gaffe on Moussaoui

Sarah Palin’s expert fact-checking service gives us a real doozy today (here)…

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Zacarias Moussaoui was a clown who could not keep his mouth shut, according to his old al-Qaida boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Moussaoui was surprisingly tame when tried for the 9/11 attacks — never turning the courtroom into the circus of anti-U.S. tirades that some fear Mohammed will create at his trial in New York.

And that wasn’t the only surprise during Moussaoui’s six-week 2006 sentencing trial here — a proceeding that might foreshadow how the upcoming 9/11 trial in New York will go.

Really? This tells us the following (from the conclusion of Moussaoui’s trial in May 2006)…

The twelve anonymous jurors who sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison Wednesday showed that it is possible to reconcile prosecution of terror with the rule of law. Three of the jurors went to the trouble of writing into their report that Moussaoui, despite his fealty to Al Qaeda, had but “limited knowledge” of the September 11 conspiracy. Nine of them agreed that the extraordinary violence of his childhood weighed against a death sentence. Ordinary citizens, in the shadow of a unique and heinous crime, were still capable of telling the difference between justice and blood vengeance.

For defense lawyers Moussaoui was the client from hell, for four years alternatively denouncing the court and his legal team and demanding his own execution. Yet even Moussaoui’s raving could not disguise the fundamental flaw of the government’s execution demand, which defense lawyers emphasized so tirelessly even against the wishes of their megalomanic client: Whatever his malignant intent, Moussaoui was in jail on 9/11, and even before that was peripheral to the plot.

Some jurors clearly understood that the Ashcroft-Gonzales Justice Department’s decision to press for the death penalty against Moussaoui turned a legitimate criminal prosecution into a show trial. Five years and tens of million dollars in prosecution costs were exhausted to make sure that someone would get the needle for September 11– never mind if he was only marginally culpable.

On one level, the Moussaoui trial has been so exceptional in every way that it would be misleading to read into it too many broader implications. Yet if you strip away the extraordinary circumstances represented by 9/11 and the extraordinary challenge represented by Moussaoui himself, there was much in this trial in common with standard capital trials: an emotional but factually sloppy case for execution; a volatile defendant with a family history of mental illness and extreme violence; survivor families divided by the prospect of a death sentence.

And commenting on the events preceding the trial, Dahlia Lithwick of Slate told us the following in March 2003 (before Iraq War II started – hard to remember such a time existed, but it did)…

The Moussaoui trial, a shambles almost from the first bang of the gavel, is on indefinite hold, postponed for the third time now, pending a Justice Department appeal of a ruling by the trial judge. Part of the problem is that in the year and a half since the war on terror began, the Bush administration has been unable to determine how it wants to treat captured terrorists. Legal analysts have struggled to discern a pattern in the government’s inconsistent treatment of suspects, and finally one has begun to emerge: The truly dangerous criminal masterminds are interrogated indefinitely, the insignificant bumblers are tried as dangerous criminal masterminds, and the rest are left to rot in military jails. It’s an interesting approach, but one can hardly call it justice.

And as ABC News told us here in 2007…

An apparent breakdown in communication at the CIA caused its analysts to submit inaccurate declarations in the case against convicted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, keeping taped interviews with enemy combatants from being reviewed in the case.

That admission came in the form of a highly redacted letter, classified Top Secret, sent from the federal prosecutors to the trial and appeals judges on the case.

The prosecutors noted that a CIA attorney informed them in September that the agency found one tape pertaining to the case, and after the prosecutors requested a more extensive review, the CIA found an additional video tape and one audio tape.

“The fact that audio/video recording of enemy combatant interrogations occurred, and that the United States was in possession of three of those recordings is, as noted, inconsistent with factual assertions in CIA declarations,” the letter noted.

The CIA had submitted declarations from 2003 to the court, stating that no recordings of interrogations existed. “The existence of the video tape however is at odds with statements in two CIA declarations submitted in this case,” the letter states.

Still, though, a trial in Federal court is the way to go against KSM and the other defendants; as Jonathan Alter of Newsweek noted here on Monday, “this will bring a faster conviction than in the military tribunals because the tribunals are uncharted waters. There’s much more room for appeal. Remember, after tribunal, there’s an appeal up to the Supreme Court and those appeals will take longer than the appeals in this case.”

And as Alter also told us, if Rudy 9iu11ani were still a prosecutor instead of a politician, he would be chomping at the proverbial bit to try the suspects in question instead of fear-mongering about why they should be locked up forever without having their day in court (and does it really need to be pointed out that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg supports having the trials in NYC?).

So all that remains is for our intelligence services and our system of justice to work in concert and bring convictions against the alleged 9/11 plotters. And since we now have grownups in charge who are interested in recognizing the rule of law here, as opposed to incompetent grandstanders interested only in political outcomes, I feel much better about our prospects.

Update 11/19/09: In response to this, I have a question for Rudy! – how do you feel about using the words “stupid” and “demagogue” in the same sentence, then?

Sweeping More “Turd Blossom” BS Under The “Afghan Rug”

“Bush’s Brain” opined as follows in the Murdoch Street Journal yesterday…

In an interview with CNN’s John King on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said President Obama is now asking tough questions about Afghanistan “that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side and the strategic side.” It was a not so subtle dig at Mr. Obama’s predecessor and was meant to distract from the White House’s mishandling of the war.

The Bush administration did in fact conduct a top-to-bottom strategic review of Afghanistan in 2008. That review was provoked by two developments.

The first was that Pakistan’s government wobbled starting in 2006. It cut deals with tribes that created safe havens for the Taliban and al Qaeda and then became distracted from fighting terrorism as President Pervez Musharraf was pressured to leave office and replaced by a new democratic government. The second was al Qaeda’s decision to refocus its efforts on Afghanistan after having been driven from Iraq.

In response, I’d like to provide this link that tells us that, while the threat of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq was quite real, to say nothing of the suicide attacks, “Pentagon documents leaked to the Washington Post (around April 2006) regarding Zarqawi have revealed that Al Qaeda in Iraq is fabricated.” And just to refresh our memories, this McClatchy story tells us the pains the Bushco regime went through to try and fabricate a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

And as far as the Obama White House’s supposed “mishandling of the war,” Cenk Uygur “keeps his eye on the ball,” so to speak, by telling us the following (here)…

Right now, there is a debate as to what President Obama should do in Afghanistan. As there should be. Should he send in more troops? Does it make sense to escalate the war without a viable partner in the Afghan government? Will this be his Vietnam? Woh, woh, woh … whose Vietnam?

What is not being talked about enough is the disastrous situation George Bush left for Obama in Afghanistan (as he did in just about every aspect of government). What the hell did Bush do in Afghanistan for over seven years? Apparently, not a damn thing.

Do you know how many troops Bush had in Afghanistan in early 2008? He had an unbelievably small contingent of 26,000 troops in the whole country. At the same time, he had 160,000 troops in Iraq. I don’t know if you know this, but Iraq did not attack us. The people who did attack us on 9/11 lived in … Afghanistan.

So Bush had 26K troops in Afghanistan, and we’re debating about whether or not we should have almost four times that amount now.

And before any of this occurred, Afghanistan had been our radar, as it were, since the Soviets were driven out of the country, mainly for the following reason (as noted here)…

The strategic location of Afghanistan can scarcely be overstated. The Caspian Basin contains up to $16 trillion worth of oil and gas resources, and the most direct pipeline route to the richest markets is through Afghanistan.

The Alternet article discusses in length how the American company Unocal (aided by an Arabian company, Delta Oil) fought Bridas, an Argentine energy company, who had leases to drill for oil in the region…

…and by November of 1996 (Bridas) had signed an agreement with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

…

Unocal wanted exclusive control of the trans-Afghan pipeline and hired a number of consultants in its conflict with Bridas: Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage (now Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), Zalmay Khalilzad (a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton) and Hamid Karzai.

Unocal wooed Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas, and hosted them in meetings with federal officials in Washington, D.C.

Unocal and the Clinton Administration hoped to have the Taliban cancel the Bridas contract, but were getting nowhere. Finally, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice President, testified to a House Committee of International Relations on February 12, 1998, asking politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted. His discomfort was well placed.

Six months later terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and two weeks after that President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack into Afghanistan. Clinton issued an executive order on July 4, 1999, freezing the Taliban’s U.S.-held assets and prohibiting further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca could count that as progress. More would follow.

Immediately upon taking office, the new Bush Administration actively took up negotiating with the Taliban once more, seeking still to have the Bridas contract vacated, in exchange for a tidy package of foreign aid. The parties met three times, in Washington, Berlin, and Islamablad, but the Taliban wouldn’t budge.

Behind the negotiations, however, planning was underway to take military action if necessary. In the spring of 2001 the State Department sought and gained concurrence from both India and Pakistan to do so, and in July of 2001, American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence agents to inform them of planned military strikes against Afghanistan the following October. A British newspaper told of the U.S. threatening both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden — two months before 9/11 — with military strikes.

According to an article in the UK Guardian, State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban at their last pipeline negotiation in August of 2001, just five weeks before 9/11, “Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

And Think Progress tells us of the following from here, as the Iraq war and the neglected Afghanistan war dragged on…

JANUARY 24, 2006: Army has become “thin green line”
Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a “thin green line” that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon. [AP, 1/24/06]

OCTOBER 4, 2006: Iraq and Afghanistan war vets say military is overstretched, underequipped. 63 percent of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe the Army and Marine Corps are overextended. 67 percent of Army and Marine veterans believe their forces are overextended. [VoteVets Action Fund, 10/4/2006]

OCTOBER 19, 2006: Staff on the House Veterans Affairs Committee report that the “number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) doubled — from nearly 4,500 to more than 9,000 — from October 2005 through June 2006.” [McClatchy, 10/18/2006]

And Bush’s “boy genius” tells us more…

There is also the heavy whiff of politics in the administration’s war deliberations. The president’s senior political adviser, David Axelrod, apparently attends war cabinet meetings—something I did not do as President Bush’s senior political adviser.

For Rove to imply that he separated the wars from politics is laughable in the extreme; here is another reminder…

Implying that Democratic Party liberals were little better than traitors, Rove continued, “Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said: we must understand our enemies. Conservatives see the United States as a great nation engaged in a noble cause; liberals see the United States and they see … Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia.”

Yep, I would call that an example of the “heavy whiff” of something, but not politics (certainly befitting of Rove’s nickname, though).

“Decisive support” of a new Afghan strategy is certainly required, though (one to help remedy the failures of the old strategy, or what passed for one, by Rove and the rest of the disreputable Bushco bunch).

Update 10/25/09: I guess it shouldn’t at this point any more, but it continually astonishes me how much our lapdog press seems to crave pro-Bushco BS like this (a “secret plan,” huh?).

Update 10/27/09: And silly me for thinking that Rove was telling the truth about supposedly not participating in “war cabinet meetings”; maybe he didn’t, but he’s a liar for saying that he never participated in high-level national security meetings, as noted here.

A Silver Sendoff Full Of Barone-y Baloney

I guess people are judged to some degree by the company they keep, and if so, then I don’t think Ron Silver should be celebrated too much for that (not trying to impugn the man, just making an observation).

What makes me say this is the following tribute of sorts from Michael Barone in U.S. News and World Report yesterday, in which he tells us that…

(Silver) had made after 9/11, as I had made more slowly some years earlier, the political journey from left to right, but he seemed entirely lacking in the hard edge of hate that (is) so evident in some liberals and some conservatives.

Well, I’ll giver Barone a bit of credit for holding his own ideological kinsmen to account. However, I think it’s truly amusing for him to cast moral aspersions on anyone, given the following:

Barone said here that “liberals didn’t like Sarah Palin because she didn’t abort her Down’s baby” (nice).

He also basically lied here, saying that former Dem presidential candidate John Kerry “called for military strength at the ’04 convention and everyone was ‘silent’.”

He also said here that “Democrats want to ‘hang up the phone and go to court’ rather than intercept terrorist phone calls.”

He also misrepresented a Senate report here to allege an al Qaeda-Iraq connection (God, that is so old).

He also repeated a popular lie here about the 2000 presidential election (namely, that had the Florida recount been allowed to proceed, George W. Bush would have still won).

And yes, I could go on with this, but you get the idea.

I don’t want to stain the image of Silver by associating him to an idiot like Barone, but I really don’t have a choice here. And I wasn’t really planning on saying anything about Silver, but this post came along and I felt I had to respond.

As an actor, I always felt he was basically playing the same, intense guy who could go one way or the other (good in “Reversal of Fortune,” bad in “Blue Steel,” and halfway more or less in “The Entity,” a film I definitely don’t recommend…I don’t know what Barbara Hershey was paid for that role, but I’m sure it wasn’t enough).

As an activist, yeah, I think he was a dupe, but the Bushies fooled a lot of people for varying lengths of time (sorry to sound like I’m patting myself on the back, but I never fell for any of their nonsense, not because I’m so smart, but because I’d read “Bushwhacked” when it started to look more and more certain that Dubya was going to be president a little over eight years ago, and I was duly warned by The Eternal Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose). And Silver was entitled to his opinion – even though I disagreed with him, I don’t have evidence that he was openly hostile to liberals in general (the transcript of his ’04 Repug convention speech doesn’t reflect any of the frothing animosity of, say, Zell Miller – so yes, shockingly enough, I agree with Barone on that).

But it is a shame that Silver ended up in a position where he could be “celebrated” by someone like Michael Barone. Had he not found a way to make common cause with those life forms, I think it would have cast a much more favorable light on his achievements.

An Obama Advisory For Spineless Steny

This CNN story tells us that, though Obama will sign the omnibus spending bill that recently passed the Senate with about 9,000 earmarks…

…the president will lay out the new guidelines on earmarks as a not-so-subtle threat that he could veto future spending bills that do not comply with his objectives.

Obama may sign the bill into law behind closed doors rather than make a public show of it, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

“Although it’s not perfect, the president will sign the legislation but demonstrate for all involved rules moving forward that he thinks can make this process work a little bit better,” Gibbs said at his daily briefing with reporters.

White House officials have tried to dismiss the pork-laden legislation as “last year’s business” that Obama is dealing with reluctantly.

Gibbs added that “over the course of the president’s tenure in Washington, dozens of those bills will come to his desk” and Obama wants to make clear “that there will be some new rules of the road” for lawmakers to follow.

As I’ve said before, I really don’t have a problem with earmarks provided that they’re disclosed (and the Bucks County Courier Times tells us here that Reps. Patrick Murphy and Allyson Schwartz will bring about $30 million of earmarked funding back to their respective congressional districts).

However, Obama has clearly signaled that he wants the guidelines on obtaining earmarked funding to change, which is his right as far as I’m concerned.

Of course, that’s not going to quell the umbrage in the ranks (back to the CNN story)…

Top Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, have suggested lawmakers do not appreciate being dictated to on an issue that is a congressional prerogative.

Asked last week about the administration’s plan to put forth guidelines to overhaul earmarks, Hoyer said flatly, “I don’t think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do.”

He paused and quipped to reporters, “I hope you all got that down.”

(And of course, the story contains the typical “Repugs trying to make an issue out of nothing because they have no clue” whining about Obama supposedly going back on his earmark pledge, with Eric Cantor and John Boehner passing out the crying towels, as it were.)

I realize that Hoyer, a fixture in the House for 28 years now and a prolific fundraiser (how do you think he’s been able to last for so long?) isn’t going to care about what I have to say (also because he’s not my rep – Patrick Murphy is), but I’m going to say it anyway.

Hoyer embodies much of what I truly detest about politics, including the Democratic Party (yes, I support them on balance, but that doesn’t mean I like everything they do, which I most certainly don’t).

As noted here, Hoyer flipped out at fellow Dem House Rep Jim Moran for the latter’s statements against AIPAC, including the entirely accurate observation by Moran that “AIPAC has not represented mainstream American Jewish opinion and…the organization’s Middle East policies, while in direct alignment with the Bush administration, have been counterproductive to Israel’s long-term security” (and by the way, no one solicited Hoyer’s opinion – he slammed Moran on his own).

Hoyer also helped the Repugs here with their little faux outrage party about Rep. Pete Stark’s criticism over the Republicans’ blockage of the SCHIP bill in October 2007 (making Stark the issue instead of pointing out that Stark was correct in noting that nonstop funding of Dubya’s Not-So-Excellent Iraq Adventure was somehow “off the table” but SCHIP was something for the chopping block…Stark used indelicate language, sure, but he made a good point).

And just for good measure, Hoyer ensured retroactive telco immunity in the FISA sellout from last June (here).

So what does Hoyer have to say about the Repugs? Well, as noted here…

Outgoing President George W. Bush’s greatest success in eight years was protecting America from any further terrorist attacks since 9/11, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told CNSNews.com on Monday.

Uh, Steny, I have a question – is Rush Holt apparently the only member of Congress who remembers the GODDAMN ANTHRAX ATTACK, which took place about four weeks after 9/11? Perhaps this will refresh your memory.

Oh, and did you know that Hoyer’s AmeriPAC actually donated $10,000 to Republican Kay Granger of Texas, in the course of helping many Dems including Patrick Murphy, as noted here (h/t Down With Tyranny)? Anybody have any idea of how that happened?

Though I’m sure Hoyer will never read this, I would like to remind him anyway that the voters of this country didn’t elect him to the Presidency last November; they elected Barack Obama (who, last I checked, still enjoyed a favorability rating in the high 60s, more than twice that of Congressional democrats). Maybe Hoyer doesn’t think Obama can “tell him what to do” (interesting to see Steny’s display of fortitude now that a Dem is finally running the executive branch), but the voters tell every politician what to do (or should anyway), including him (something Hoyer seems to have forgotten, which I guess will happen considering that Hoyer was sent to D.C. along with The Sainted Ronnie R way back when). And what I believe the voters are telling Hoyer, along with the rest of Congress, is to shut up and toe the line for the new president, who deserves the same chance to be successful as the one you gave his predecessor, who ended up being hopelessly overmatched because he was never equipped for the job to begin with.

And I hope Hoyer got that down.

Trying To Restore Our Good Name

This AP story today tells us that…

Plans to close Guantanamo are not sitting well with the Sept. 11 victims’ relatives who sat stunned while two alleged terrorists declared they were proud of their role in the plot.

The U.S. military brought relatives of three Sept. 11 victims to Guantanamo to observe pretrial hearings in the case of five men charged in the plot who could get the death penalty if convicted.

It is a potentially momentous time for the military detention center. President-elect Barack Obama – whose inauguration is Tuesday – has said he will close it, and many observers and some officials here expect him to suspend the war crimes tribunals for accused terrorists and move the trials to the U.S.

The five invited relatives of 9/11 victims oppose such a move.

I realize that I don’t have the right to tell the relatives of those who died on September 11th how they should feel and think and what they should believe, but I would like to merely point out the following.

This story from last month tells us that…

…Two dozen family members of Sept. 11 victims signed a letter Wednesday saying they don’t believe in the fairness of the military trials of five men charged with orchestrating the terrorist attacks, and some suggested their opinions cost them attendance at the proceedings.

While the family members who attended this week’s proceedings at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba expressed support for the tribunals, they also said “that many of us do not believe these military commissions to be fair, in accordance with American values, or capable of achieving the justice that 9/11 family members and all Americans deserve,” according to the letter released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

And from here, we learn that…

In advance of Thursday’s arraignment of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (pictured) and others at Guantanamo Bay, the relatives of seven victims of the 9/11 attacks are charging that the military tribunals are “tainted by political influence.”

In a June 3 letter to Susan Crawford, the judge who serves as the convening authority over the commissions, the family members claim that the latest example of the system’s “politicization” was a secret invitation to attend the proceedings that allegedly was extended only to Deborah Burlingame, who lost her brother in 9/11 and has supported the Bush administration’s position on the military tribunals.

Burlingame was also a featured speaker at the last Republican National Convention.

Though I don’t know for certain (and, God willing, I never will) I would suspect that, if I were a friend or family member of a victim of a terrorist attack, I would want to see the perpetrators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law through entirely legal means that respected international treaties, conventions and protocols. To do anything less, in my opinion, would dishonor the memory of the victims (which is how I feel about Dubya’s “kangaroo courts” at GITMO).

Because They’re Not Going Away Soon Enough…

More Bushco scandals (from “Countdown” on Monday)…