Friday Mashup (11/27/09)

1) I don’t know if anyone else noticed that the New York Times was able to discover some typos on the menu for the state dinner the White House recently held for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and his wife, Gursharan Kaur (with CNN taking note here).

However, what would really impress me would be if they weren’t quite so brainless in their feature writing (here), to say nothing of acting as a propaganda conduit for global warming denialists (here).

2) Also, get a load of the latest from U.S. House Minority Leader John “Man Tan” Boehner here…

At every turn this year, Republicans have offered better, fiscally-responsible solutions to tackle the immediate challenges facing the American people, including an economic recovery plan that would have created twice the jobs at half the cost, a budget that would impose strict caps to limit federal spending on an annual basis, and the only health care bill that would cut the deficit and consistently reduce federal spending on health care over the next two decades.

When Boehner is referring to “fiscally-responsible solutions,” would he be talking about the budget alternative noted by Nate Silver here (the one with, like, no actual numbers in it)? You know, something containing all the worst ideas from right-wing “think tanks” (here)?

And when he’s talking about an alternative health care bill, is he referring to the one noted here, with “eight or nine ideas” posted on the RNC web site?

Yes, busting on Boehner in this way is like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel, but he makes the temptation irresistible when he continues to peddle such obvious nonsense.

3) And finally, former Dubya speechwriter Michael Gerson laments the demise of journalism today in the WaPo (here – hint; as far as Gerson is concerned, it’s the fault of those darned U.S. bloggers who mostly don’t report from war zones and cable TV).

Oh, and by the way, what exactly are the “lies” of Dan Rather to which Gerson refers, I wonder (here)?

Such pontifications are actually funny from someone like Gerson, who, as noted here, ignored a speech President Obama gave to evangelicals and then accused Obama of not reaching out to them.

And as noted here, Gerson said Obama should “come out strongly for policies reducing the number of abortions,” even though did just that. And this tells us how Gerson inflated his role in the development of his former boss’s AIDS initiative in Africa, otherwise known as PEPFAR, which, as I noted here, had strings attached all over the place.

Oh, and this discusses the phrase “pulling a Gerson” (linked to the post)…

“Gerson is a ‘planner,’ not a ‘plunger,’” a 2005 National Journal profile noted, “meaning that he makes a meticulous outline, which he consults during the writing process.” This is true, and equal care and intensity went into crafting the Gerson image. Colleagues were not in the outline, nor were the normal standards of discretion in White House speechwriting. People have a way of disappearing in Mike’s stories. The artful shaping of narrative and editing out of inconvenient detail was never confined to the speechwriting. (The phrase pulling a Gerson, as I recently heard it used around the West Wing, does not refer to graceful writing.) And though in (Gerson’s book) Heroic Conservatism (ugh!) Mike has doubtless offered a kind word or two for speechwriting colleagues, no man I have ever encountered was truer to the saying that, in Washington, one should never take friendship personally.

And as noted here, Dubya and his pals (including Gerson) “came into office determined to tightly control the flow of information,” which is the life blood of any decent journalist (a stretch in Gerson’s case, I know).

So the next time Gerson decides to go “tut-tut” over the “slow, sad death” of the profession to which he claims to be a member, he ought to take a good, long, hard look at himself in the mirror first before he ever decides again to waste our time with such sickeningly self-righteous drivel.

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.

Monday Mashup Part 1 (8/31/09)

I guess you can file this under a new category for this site called “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.”

With all of the back-and-forth from former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge about whether or not he was pressured by Bushco to mess around with the “color-coded alert” system (he admitted he was here, but more recently, he seemed to be “walking back” that one here), I realized that it was incumbent upon yours truly to be more aware of developments concerning this vital function of our government (and I feel much better about the fact that this is now under the control of Janet Napolitano versus Mike “City of Louisiana” Chertoff).

So, to what corporate media outlet should I venture to satisfy my thirst for knowledge? Why, Fix Noise of course!

And as I looked over their site’s special section on Homeland Security, I found the following:

As you can see, they are stuck in a pre-1/21/09 time warp.

And that reminds me of the quote that Jessica Lange, portraying the legendary country music singer Patsy Cline in “Sweet Dreams,” once uttered to her husband Charley Dick, played by Ed Harris: “Well, people in hell want ice water; that don’t mean that they get it.”

And speaking of the Bushes, Michael Barone wrote the following today at creators.com about the Kennedys (there’s a connection I think, and I’ll get to it; the title of Barone’s piece is “The End of America’s Experiment With Royalty”)…

Other political families — the Adamses, the Harrisons, the Tafts — produced multiple generations of national politicians but generated nothing like mass enthusiasm. The sons of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt set out on political careers but never got very far.

The Kennedy boys — John, Robert and Edward — were different. They won three elections to the House, 12 elections to the Senate and one to the presidency. From 1960 to 1980, they were major presences, active or off to the side, in every presidential contest.

…

The next generation of Kennedys has had mostly disappointing political careers. Joe Kennedy and Patrick Kennedy made it to Congress; Kathleen Townsend and Mark Shriver failed to do so; Maria Shriver made it to the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, but Townsend failed to do so in Annapolis; Caroline Kennedy will not follow her father and uncles in the Senate.

I suspect the royal status the Kennedys temporarily achieved in our democratic republic will seem bizarre to future generations. Perhaps it already does even for those of us who can remember the 1960s.

I realize that the whole “royalty” thing concerning the Kennedys is all “sooo sixties,” as Barone observes (as in the “Mad Men” era as opposed to the Woodstock era), but there are some who believe that there is still somewhat of a legend concerning another family that has lived in the presidential spotlight for twelve years, including the last eight. And it’s not as if Barone hasn’t done his part to perpetuate that “dynasty” also.

This tells us of Barone urging Dubya to appoint his brother Jeb as a “special envoy to the Americas” (with Barone channeling Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council for the Americas), and this tells us of Barone urging Florida governor Charlie Crist to appoint Jeb Bush as a senator to fill the seat vacated by Mel Martinez prior to a special election (at least Ted Kennedy won his seat in ‘62 in another special election without benefit of an appointment…I had some thoughts on Jeb Bush also here).

I wonder if the fact that Barone has taken it upon himself to act as the Jeb Bush Employment Agency “will seem bizarre to future generations” also?

And finally, this story tells us that Sen. John McCain…

…(said) his private comments about harsh interrogation methods were misrepresented by the Bush Administration in a recently released legal document intended to justify a six-day course of sleep deprivation for one CIA detainee in November 2007…

The newly declassified memo by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel mentions a secret briefing McCain and other members of Congress received sometime before Oct. 17, 2006. The memo says the lawmakers were told about six CIA interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation.

The memo recounts McCain’s reaction this way: “[S]everal Members of Congress, including the full memberships of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and Senator McCain, were briefed by General Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, on the six techniques that we discuss herein,” writes Steven G. Bradbury, a deputy assistant attorney general in the July 20, 2007, memo, which cites a CIA summary of the discussions. “In those classified and private conversations, none of the Members expressed the view that the CIA detention and interrogation program should be stopped, or that the techniques at issue were inappropriate.” (See TIME’s photos: “The (Mis)Adventures of the CIA.”)

A spokeswoman for McCain said that contrary to those claims, the Arizona Republican repeatedly raised objections in private meetings, including one with Hayden, about the use of sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique. “Senator McCain clearly made the case that he was opposed to unduly coercive techniques, especially when used in combination or taken too far – including sleep deprivation,” says Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for McCain.

It’s commendable that Sen. McCain voiced his objections to sleep deprivation as a “harsh interrogation method” (again, assuming his spokeswoman is telling us what really happened). However, as noted here from February ’08…

…Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a former prisoner of war, has spoken strongly in favor of implementing the Army Field Manual standard (for all intelligence agencies also…a standard that bans water boarding, by the way). When confronted today with the decision of whether to stick with his conscience or cave to the right wing, McCain chose to ditch his principles and instead vote(d) to preserve water boarding:

I realize our corporate media would collectively wet its metaphorical pants, as it were, as opposed to calling out this man on such inconsistencies (I’d give fluffyhead David Gregory a picture of our 7th president if he ever did that), so it is up to us filthy, unkempt liberal blogger types such as yours truly to do so.

McCain deserves our eternal thanks and gratitude for his sacrifice on behalf of our country. But that doesn’t mean that, when it comes to his votes in public service, the “hero” narrative should obscure some rather craven political calculation that ends up endangering our military, which would be more subject to the “harsh methods” we used on others in defiance of laws we signed ourselves years ago.

Playing “Taps” For The “Death Book”

I’m about a day or so late in the news cycle for this, but I wanted to comment on it anyway.

The New York Times reported the following yesterday (from here)…

Senator Arlen Specter, Democrat of Pennsylvania, called for hearings to investigate a guide used by the government to counsel veterans with critical or terminal illnesses.

On “Fox News Sunday,” H. James Towey (pictured with you-know-who), the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President George W. Bush, said the guide seemed to encourage people to “hurry up and die.”

The booklet, “Your Life, Your Choices,” asks people to consider whether life would be worth living if, for example, they were in severe pain, relied on a feeding tube or a breathing machine, lived in a nursing home or imposed “a severe financial burden” on family members.

In addition, the booklet asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” It then explains that people have different ideas of what it means to be a vegetable or to “pull the plug.”

In a bulletin last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs recommended the booklet as a tool to help veterans with “advance care planning.”

Tammy Duckworth, an assistant secretary of veterans affairs, said it was being revised.

But Mr. Towey said, “The document is so fundamentally flawed that the V.A. ought to throw it out.”

The document noted in the story isn’t the only thing that’s “flawed,” by the way; as Media Matters tells us here, the Times doesn’t even bother to report that one of the reasons why Towey is up in arms over the guide is because he’s selling a competing booklet.

And what of the “death book,” anyway (God, first “death panels” and now this!)? Once more, I give you Media Matters (here)…

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace repeatedly cropped quotes from a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) document to falsely suggest that the Obama administration is pressuring veterans to end their lives prematurely and to accuse Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth of lying about it. In fact, contrary to Wallace’s false assertions, the document he referred to does not require doctors to direct veterans to what conservatives have labeled the “Death Book for Veterans.”

Here are three things to keep in mind:

The “Your Life, Your Choices” book is just one of other books on this subject that the VA permits veterans and their families to consult for end-of-life planning; it doesn’t require anyone to use only this book.

Here is what the book actually says about assisted suicide (from David Weigel of The Washington Independent)

Can I specify that I want assisted suicide in my directive?

No. Assisted suicide is currently illegal. However, even if it becomes legal, the person making the request would have to be competent and able to change their mind at the time of the suicide. Advanced directives only go into effect when you are no longer competent to make decisions.

(Gee, that doesn’t sound like “angel of death” stuff to me – what a shame J.D. Mullane is on vacation this week and he’s missing all this fun.)

As Jed L. notes in a linked post to Weigel’s article (and as VA Secretary Duckworth tried in vain to explain to Fox propagandist Wallace), Bushco, not the Obama Administration, decided to include the guidebook in the VA handbook.

We also learn that Robert Pearlman, M.D., M.P.H., is listed as the document’s lead author. He is chief of ethics evaluation at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care (though he was one of six authors who contributed).

And let us not forget that Towey himself, as a member of the prior ruling cabal, has other issues to answer for also (snidely noting here that “liberals…measure compassion only by tax dollars” – what a creep.)

As Bill Berkowitz told us here in 2005…

(Besides the Iraq war) the president’s faith-based initiative — the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda — is also a combination of fabrications, faith, and fantasy. Despite concrete data, the Bush administration insisted that faith-based organizations would provide social services to the poor and addicted more effectively than secular programs. No data existed four years ago, and little more than anecdotal evidence exists today.

And by the way, “Democrat” Arlen Specter can avoid wasting precious time and resources investigating what happened with this guidebook, which to me looks like the mountain hatched from the proverbial molehill. If it will help, I’ll settle this matter for him.

Number 43 made a promise to a core constituency that he didn’t care if he honored or not. So he ended up doing so in a way that rewarded one of his friends. Next, the inevitable outcry ensued (a bit manufactured in this case) because the result didn’t achieve its intended goal, wasted taxpayer dollars, offended the previously mentioned core constituency, or any or all of the above.

Lather, rinse, repeat…

Resurrecting The Ghost Of “Commander Codpiece”

I give you Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the New York Times here today (on Obama giving a speech in Phoenix about increasing our troop strength in Afghanistan; I’ll debate the wisdom of such a move another time)…

As a commander in chief who has never served in the armed forces, Mr. Obama is still working to establish his bona fides with the military. His predecessor, George W. Bush, typically received wildly enthusiastic receptions from military audiences; Mr. Obama’s speech was interrupted only occasionally by polite applause.

As an occupant of An Oval Office who never left Texas during the Vietnam War – actually, there were periods when he was unaccounted for during his stateside service, as noted here (and whose presidential campaign still managed the “God damn, were the people who voted for him morons, or what?” feat of maligning an actual war hero on his way to another term in office) – our 43rd president was a virtuoso when it came to exploiting our military for political gain (or, as noted here)…

We have a commander-in-chief who does very well when he is unscripted, unrehearsed and engaging with soldiers. But too often those who handle his performances try to turn the American fighting man and woman into a political prop for the scenery.

And by the way, a sympathetic reaction to Bush isn’t “news” anyway when you consider the following, as noted here.

Also, I wonder if Warren L. Henthorn and John Scripsick would agree with Stolberg’s sympathetic treatment towards Obama’s predecessor; you can learn how these men are from here, and why they deserve our sympathy, respect and eternal gratitude.

In closing, I sincerely hope the next time Stolberg or one of her corporate media brethren decide to invoke Obama’s predecessor and his faux military “cred,” they come to their senses instead. Doing so on this occasion was repulsive enough – to continue it in the future would dishonor the sacrifice of those who have fought, suffered and died for our freedom.

More War Revisionism From The Murdoch Street Journal

Leave it to Uncle Rupert’s conservative house organ to use the occasion of Robert McNamara’s death to sputter itself into a rage at “(McNamara’s) former liberal allies for refusing to turn against the Vietnam War as early as they did,” even though, in this editorial, the Journal admits that “only later as the war dragged on did these liberals lose their nerve, and they never forgave McNamara for fighting on — even years later after he finally agreed they were right.”

Yes, you can argue that the Vietnam War split the “left” in this country, with those such as Senator Henry Jackson supporting it, and others, most notably George McGovern, opposing it (along with the “new left” borne of the Civil Rights movement; Dr. Martin Luther King most definitely opposed the war). Also, President John F Kennedy (for whom McNamara served as Defense Secretary, and Lyndon Johnson later), when interviewed in September 1963, opposed sending more troops (I cannot access the YouTube video at the moment).

The fact of the matter, though, as noted here, is that our involvement in Vietnam really began in 1950, when President Harry Truman authorized $15 million in military aid for the French whose outposts in North Vietnam were attacked that year; his successor, President Dwight Eisenhower, greatly increased military aid during his presidency, including training for the new South Vietnamese Army.

As I said, I will acknowledge that some liberals supported the war until about 1965, but to imply that conservatives did not is patently absurd.

And of course, since we’re talking about the Journal, you can rest assured that they won’t miss this opportunity to fluff Commander Codpiece and his determination to “stay the course” in Iraq as a contrast, crediting him solely for whatever successes have transpired in that country, failing to acknowledge of course that the surge, by itself, would have been fruitless without the benefit of the Sunni Awakening councils and the ethnic cleansing that has been totally ignored by our corporate media.

Also, concerning the composition of President Kennedy’s military advisors (including McNamara), I think Errol Morris (whose film “The Fog of War” prominently featured McNamara) had some interesting insights here (and believe me, there were no liberals in this bunch)…

Mr. McNamara became defense secretary in 1961. The Joint Chiefs were hawks. This is clear in reading the transcripts of the Cuban missile crisis; the generals speak to John F. Kennedy with derision, contempt and anger. When Mr. McNamara took office he discovered secret Pentagon plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.

He worried that the Joint Chiefs wanted nuclear war, and he was determined not to allow that to happen. From ’63 to about ’67, we had first-strike capacity and nuclear superiority against the Soviet Union. (In the words of George C. Scott in “Dr. Strangelove,” I’m not saying we wouldn’t have got our “hair mussed.” But we would have destroyed them.) After Kennedy’s death, he served that central role of keeping the Joint Chiefs in check. If true, he becomes not the villain of American history, but something quite different.

And what about the escalation of the Vietnam War? Recently, the taped conversations between President Lyndon Johnson and his advisers have been made public. Listening to the president and Mr. McNamara, it appears that the pressure for escalation did not come from Mr. McNamara, but from Johnson. Mr. McNamara was not an enthusiast for this war. But charged with the responsibility for carrying it out, he argued for it.

And after Johnson’s term ended and Richard Nixon’s began, we saw “Tricky Dick” and Henry Kissinger, then his assistant for National Security Affairs, concoct their scheme to secretly bomb Cambodia; Nixon told the country during the 1968 election that he planned to bring “peace with honor” to Vietnam, though in fact this tactic ended up extending the war for seven more years, and it also led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in that country – the genocidal slaughter was documented in “The Killing Fields.”

So basically, you cannot assign blame or praise for our experience in Vietnam and Southeast Asia to any one political party or ideology; there is blame enough to go around.

Often I find myself laughing at the bald-faced partisanship of the Journal’s editorials. On this occasion, however, I find myself cringing in abject disgust over their twisted interpretation of not just one war in Vietnam, but the second one in Iraq, from which we are still trying to extricate ourselves due to the willful, stupid intransigence of another president from Texas.

I Would Now Say That The Honeymoon Is Over

OK, to begin, I’ll say up front that I support President Obama. I have, I do, and I will. In the matter of the 2008 election, if the 2000 version of John McCain had run, it actually would have been interesting. But the 2008 version ran instead, trying to suck up to all of the typical Republican constituencies. And then he selected Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin as his running mate, dontcha know. And the economy tanked. And it became more and more obvious to me who was, resoundingly, more qualified for the job.

Yes, I know this has been covered over and over, but please humor me a bit here, OK?

So then we have the election and the aftermath, including the swearing-in and the parties. And the Lilly Ledbetter Act becomes law, as does the stimulus, followed by lifting the restriction on federal funding of stem cell research put into place by Dubya, SCHIP is passed, and he gives the recent Cairo speech…a lot of good stuff, to my way of thinking.

So what exactly is the problem? Well…

He signed a credit card consumer protections bill that won approval through a provision allowing loaded guns in our national parks, for starters (here).

He flip-flopped on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” here (yes, I understand his point that the bill signed by Clinton was written by Congress, but don’t say here that you plan to end it and then equivocate, especially when individuals such as Colin Powell have called for “reevaluating” it).

He has defended Dubya’s programs of torture, kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, government secrecy, and executive branch dominance over the other branches of government by using the Bush “state secrets” provision, as noted here (basically, all we have is Obama’s word that he won’t engage in the same garbage as his predecessor).

For some incomprehensible reason, he defended the Defense of Marriage Act in a recent legal brief as noted here by Americablog and the Human Rights Campaign (more here).

And to top it all off, we have this, which tells us the following…

NEW YORK The Obama administration is blocking access to the names of visitors to the White House, according to MSNBC.com — which recently requested the information. The Web site contends the reasoning is similar to Bush administration arguments that a president doesn’t have to reveal his visitors.

You may now consider your humble narrator be officially pissed off at our chief executive.

And by the way, given what I said yesterday about Randall Terry here, it might be a good idea to start enforcing the FACE law (yes, I know Scott Roeder’s craziness definitely predated Obama, but the incidents of Roeder gluing Tiller’s clinic doors shut – a clear FACE violation – occurred on the watch of Obama and AG Eric Holder also).

Also, I would like to reiterate what Bill Maher said here in the way of Obama “taking a page from his predecessor.” Use reconciliation on health care if the votes aren’t there, Mr. President, and if the Repugs stall your nominees like Dawn Johnsen and David Hamilton in response, then scream loud and long about it.

Given the fact that, in the past, Dems generally have shown all the spine of a bowl of warm vermicelli in response to relentless right-wing attacks, I for one would call that change I can believe in.

Update 6/17/09: A nice step in the right direction here… (Oops, looks like I updated too soon, based on this – relocation assistance?).

Obama’s Faith Inclusiveness Versus Dubya’s “Deity”

There are a lot of ways that President Obama is an improvement over his predecessor, but one pretty obvious measure is how he uses references to faith in his speeches (may be a bit of a silly preoccupation for Eamon Javers at Drudgico here, but a point is a point, as they say)…

As president, Barack Obama has mentioned Jesus Christ in a number of high-profile public speeches — something his predecessor George W. Bush rarely did in such settings, even though Bush’s Christian faith was at the core of his political identity.

(As I and others have pointed out, Dubya actions in no way reflected someone who “talked the talk” when it comes to religion. However, this is an old fight, and he’s out of public life at long last, so I won’t rehash it for the moment.)

Javers continues…

In his speech Thursday in Cairo, Obama told the crowd that he is a Christian and mentioned the Islamic story of Isra, in which Moses, Jesus and Mohammed joined in prayer.

At the University of Notre Dame on May 17, Obama talked about the good works he’d seen done by Christian community groups in Chicago. “I found myself drawn — not just to work with the church but to be in the church,” Obama said. “It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.”

And a month before that, Obama mentioned Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount at Georgetown University to make the case for his economic policies. Obama retold the story of two men, one who built his house on a pile of sand and the other who built his on a rock: “We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand,” Obama said. “We must build our house upon a rock.”

Regardless of what you think of Obama and his governance so far, you have to admit that such references are the type you would expect from someone accomplished in the literary world and who has the ability to influence opinion as Obama does; those who ridicule him claim that he is beholden to the teleprompter and almost grudgingly acknowledge his spoken gifts, but I don’t think a lot of people realize that Obama is a terrific writer also (I’m currently reading, “The Audacity Of Hope,” by the way).

Now let’s compare that with Commander Codpiece, who, in his religious references, said that God told him He wanted Dubya to be president here, that God told him to invade Iraq here, and, in an anecdote at least as bizarre as the first two, told former French president Jacques Chirac here that the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog (from the Book of Revelation, noting an Old Testament prophecy) were at work in the Middle East and must be defeated.

(Cue the “X Files” theme music here, boys and girls…)

As long as I’m talking about our current president, though, I should note also that I, like more than a few other people, would like to see him move a bit more on repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” as noted here, but part of the reason for the foot-dragging, as Time reporter Mark Thompson tells us, is as follows…

…the trouble is that the law was passed by Congress and, if Obama decided to go around the legislature, he would face political blowback. The current law allows gays to serve, so long as they keep their sexual orientation secret. The legislation means that a majority of the 535 members of Congress is going to have to vote to undo the ban — and that will have its political fallout. Obama is plainly taking his cue from the 1993 fiasco, which hurt Clinton’s relationship with conservative members of Congress, both Democratic and Republican, and with many in uniform.

Rightly or wrongly, I think that’s a pretty thorough analysis. And though it’s cold comfort I realize, ask yourself if repealing DADT would even be on the agenda for a (shudder) President McCain and Vice President Just Plan Folks Sarah Palin, Dontcha Know?

Also, in matters more secular than what I noted earlier, I should point out that Obama is also distinctly different from his predecessor in that he has thus far been more deferential to Congress in recognition of our constitutional separation of powers (well, usually anyway, but sometimes…).

Update: Would it be too trite to say that Gaffney “doesn’t have a prayer” here?

“Doughy Pantload” Jonah’s “Out Of Gas” Again

Jonah Goldberg at the NRO plugs a couple of columns on the G.M. bankruptcy here (by David Brooks and someone named Paul Ingrassia).

And in doing so, he tells us the following…

Read either of them and then ask yourself whether the bureaucracy at GM could be even half as bad as most of the bureaucracies in the federal government, which have never — ever — been subjected to real competition and all that entails.

So much stupid, so little time…

I’ll assume that by “competition,” Goldberg means privatization of government under prior presidential administrations.

And under former President Clinton, this tells us that he reduced the federal work force by approximately 230,000, saved $118 billion, and eliminated 16,000 pages of government regulations.

His successor, on the other hand, federalized K-12 education in this country under No Child Left Behind; concocted a Medicare prescription drug benefit that rewarded his benefactors in the health care biz at the expense of seniors; and, ultimately, added $345 billion to the budget in his first term and $287 in his second (all of this is noted here – I definitely don’t agree with the orientation of the writer, I should add, but I think he makes some valid points).

To be fair, though, I should note that, according to here, “Under President George W. Bush, annual spending on contracts rose to $423 billion in 2006 from $208 billion in 2000, according to the Obama budget unveiled this week” (and concerning Iraq, as noted here, the result was predictable).

And by the way, given the sorry financial straits of the newspaper business, it’s beyond hilarious to read BoBo preaching to another industry that it should “heal thyself” while his own suffers from the effects of overly inflated estimates of its assets; an ideological bent in its content that, while pleasing to its owners, is hopelessly out of kilter to its dwindling readership; and a complete and total inability to retool its business model to accommodate the dominance of online readership over its traditional print product (though I’ll admit that the Times has been smarter than most companies in its adjustments, as opposed to the “amateur hour” on display here).

More Housing Fairy Tales From Former President “Bubble Boy”

So how exactly did everything go for Dubya last night in Michigan (as a follow up to this earlier post)?

Well (from this AP/WaPo story)…

About eight people protested Bush’s appearance outside the venue, carrying signs that called him a murderer and a traitor.

God bless them for their efforts. And what exactly did Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History have to say?

He talked about the economy, blaming “a lack of responsible regulation” in the lending industry for the recession and said that the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., or Freddie Mac, shouldn’t have engaged in certain financial practices.

“I don’t want to sound like a self-serving guy, but we did try to rein them in,” Bush said.

Oh really?

I think this post does a really great job of explaining the “cause and effect” behind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley atrocity signed into law by President Clinton (with Daily Kos poster RachelMO quite rightly noting that the Repugs had enough votes to override a Clinton veto), which ended up creating a demand for mortgage-backed securities.

To feed that demand, President 43 and his Republican playmates did their best to loosen restrictions on home ownership through the so-called American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003 (subsequent to making riskier loan products available to minority and low income buyers), and the Zero-Down Payment Initiative in 2004, which “(eliminated) the statutory requirement of a minimum three percent down payment for FHA-insured single-family mortgages for first-time homebuyers.”

“Rein them in” my ass, you fraud!

So where are we now in this mess? Well, as the New York Times tells us here (h/t Atrios)…

More defaults by unemployed homeowners could shunt more houses onto an already saturated market, economists said, dragging prices down farther.

“We’re still caught in this vicious cycle,” said Patrick Newport, an economist at IHS Global Insight. “These numbers were horrible, and they’re going to get worse. This problem’s going to be with us for a while.”

And what exactly does Dubya miss now that he’s no longer taking up space in An Oval Office?

Flying on Air Force One, eating meals prepared by the White House kitchen staff and drawing inspiration from his encounters with U.S. military personnel were among things former President George W. Bush missed since leaving office, he said Thursday.

So basically, he misses the trappings of power, and that’s about it.

Figures.