A Catalogue Of “Nothing”

This is embarrassing, even for Fix Noise.

And in response, I give you the reality-based point of view here (and that’s only as far as the end of April and doesn’t include this).

There is room for intelligent discussion about how Obama is proceeding in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other places, but of course “Clusterfox” will never be interested in intelligent discussion.

Misplaced Praise For A Traitor To Peace

I’ll admit that it’s not easy to post about the Middle East, which is why I generally stay away from it, but I felt compelled to say something based on this story, which in part tells us the following…

Thousands of Palestinians turned out Wednesday for a rally here to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the death of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and to show support for his successor, President Mahmoud Abbas, who recently expressed an intention to retire.

…

The rally took place in the grounds of the Mukata, the presidential headquarters in this West Bank city where Arafat took ill in 2004. He died in a Paris hospital, but his body was flown back and buried in the compound amid frenzied scenes of adoration and chaos.

I don’t have an issue with Abbas, who will never escape Arafat’s shadow largely because the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization allowed terrorism to flourish on his watch, to the point where Hamas basically calls the shots in that area of the world. And yes, I’m completely aware of the fact that Israeli intransigence on the Palestinians had a lot to do with Arafat’s ascent.

However, Arafat was, at best, a flawed deliverer of legitimacy (one of the few times I actually agreed with Dubya on anything was when he said Arafat had “failed as a leader” in 2004, though that was hypocritical considering our slavish subservience to Israel under Dubya’s “administration”). And the only reason he won the Nobel Prize along with the late Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres of Israel was because it would have been bad manners to exclude him.

And I think the following is noteworthy about Arafat (from here)…

In August 2002, the Israeli Military Intelligence Chief alleged that Arafat’s personal wealth was in the range of USD $1.3 billion,[92]. In 2003 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted an audit of the PNA and stated that Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account controlled by Arafat and the PNA Chief Economic Financial adviser. However, the IMF did not claim that there were any improprieties, and it specifically stated that most of the funds had been used to invest in Palestinian assets, both internally and abroad.[93][94]

However in 2003, a team of American accountants–hired by Arafat’s own finance ministry–began examining Arafat’s finances; this team reached a different conclusion. The team claimed that part of the Palestinian leader’s wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion, with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the US and the Cayman Islands. The head of the investigation stated that “although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public.”[95]

Although Arafat lived a modest lifestyle, Dennis Ross, former Middle East negotiator for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, stated that Arafat’s “walking-around money” financed a vast patronage system known as neopatrimonialism. According to Salam Fayyad—a former World Bank official whom Arafat appointed Finance Minister of the PNA in 2002—Arafat’s commodity monopolies could accurately be seen as gouging his own people, “especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral.” Fayyad claims that Arafat used $20 million from public funds to pay the leadership of the PNA security forces (the Preventive Security Service) alone.[95]

Fuad Shubaki, former financial aide to Arafat, told the Israeli security service Shin Bet that Arafat used several million dollars of aid money to buy weapons and support militant groups.[96] An investigation by the European Union into claims that their funds were misused by the Palestinian Authority found no evidence that funds were diverted to finance terrorist activities.[97]

Also, as noted here…

Arafat, too, must take his share of the blame for the failure of the peace process. Time and again, he failed to make the bold moves that might have broken the logjam. It was never a viable option for the PLO to confront the rejectionists Hamas and Islamic Jihad militarily — that would have meant a full-scale civil war — but he could have marginalized them if he had been a better leader. Unwilling to either rule out the military option or embrace it, he was a master tactician who seemed never capable of delivering the bold strategic stroke. (In that sense, he resembled his ancient nemesis, Ariel Sharon, a brilliant field general who lacks a larger vision.) Danny Rubinstein, the Haaretz correspondent who has covered the Palestinians for years, noted on Thursday that Arafat could not resist the siren song of the Palestinian street: If it called for violence, he delivered violence. “This was his weak side. This is how it came out,” Rubinstein says. “He always felt it necessary to speak to his people such that they would continue to embrace him, to esteem him, to idolize him, and, most importantly, to obey him.”

And Gary Kamiya of Salon.com also tells us the following…

At the end of his life, although he still held all effective Palestinian power in his hands, Arafat had come to serve a purely symbolic function. That function was sentimentally useful: Arafat represented the last hope for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees around the world, still holding their yellowing deeds and keys to houses in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem to which they will never return. But practically, it was an encumbrance. He was a statue, a myth, and his larger-than-life stature blocked a new, more pragmatic generation of Palestinian leaders from emerging. Those leaders will make the same demands Arafat did — a contiguous state in most of the West Bank, a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, shared sovereignty over the holy sites, some fair resolution of the refugee question that does not spell the end of Israel. But perhaps they will actually be able to achieve them.

I must tell you that I can think of better tributes.

It’s “Iran-A-Muck Monday” With The Mittster!

In case anyone had forgotten about former Repug presidential hopeful and former Governor “Penumbra Of Angst” (here), a certain Willard Mitt Romney decided to let us know he’s still around (here)…

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Mitt Romney has a message for the Obama administration: Stop talking to Iran. Period.

“The Iranian leadership is the greatest immediate threat to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union, and before that, Nazi Germany,” Romney said in a speech Monday to the pro-Israel group AIPAC at their national summit in San Diego, according to excerpts provided to CNN.

Funny, but I would consider al Qaeda to be “the greatest immediate threat to the world,” but considering that the above analysis came from a guy who said “it’s not worth heaven and earth” to try and capture bin Laden (here), I can’t say that I’m surprised.

And I would say that Romney has no room to criticize anyone on Iran, considering that, as noted here, Romney’s one-time employer and the company he founded has links to recent Iranian business deals…

Romney joined Boston-based Bain & Co., a management consulting firm, in 1978 and worked there until 1984. He was CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm, from 1984 to 1999, despite a two-year return as Bain & Co.’s chief executive officer from 1991 to 1992.

Bain & Co. Italy, described in company literature as “the Italian branch of Bain & Co.,” received a $2.3 million contract from the National Iranian Oil Co., in September 2004. Its task was to develop a master plan so NIOC — the state oil company of Iran — could become one of the world’s top oil companies, according to Iranian and U.S. news accounts of the deal.

Bain Capital, the venture capital firm that Romney started and made him a multimillionaire, teamed up with the Haier Group, a Chinese appliance maker that has a factory in Iran, in an unsuccessful 2005 buyout effort.

Also, this September 2006 story tells us that, when Romney was governor of that liberal Gomorrah Massachusetts (wink), he denied any security from his state to Mohammed Khatami, former Iranian president and a legitimate moderate who was visiting to speak at Harvard.

Now, while I do not cut Iran any slack because it is a run by a regime of criminals, I would say that it still is incumbent upon us to look for ways to initiate some kind of a dialogue with them, however slight the excuse may be; this news story tells us of a terrorist attack on Iran, quite likely originating from Pakistan, something you could definitely consider “chickens coming home to roost” given Iran’s support of Hamas. However, I still think this is an opportunity for us to remind Iran that, even though they sponsor terrorism, they have something to gain from “cleaning up their act,” especially when they face the threat from violence that other countries face.

But of course, Romney has other thoughts, being the good little Repug that he is…

“The notion that Hamas and violent jihadists are motivated by ’shared interests’ and ‘common goals’ is naïve in the extreme and dangerous to the entire free world,”

If The Mittster really believes that, though, then doesn’t that invalidate his Now And Forever You Godless Commie Lu-bu-ruul And Just Because That Kenyan American-Pretend Pre-zee-dint O’Yours Is In Charge Don’t Think We Ain’t Comin’ Back in 2010 Global War On Terra! Terra! Terra!?

Of course, compared to whatever latest scribblings happen to appear on Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin’s Facebook page on this subject, such sentiments from Romney are positively statesman-like for his party, however wrong they may be (and if that isn’t a pathetic commentary, I don’t know what is).

Some Monday “Byko” Blather on Carter and Race

Stu (“I’m Thinking Another 9/11 Would Help America,” here) Bykofsky really should have just gulped down a fistful of Xanax and gone over to lie down in a corner instead of spitting out his utter dreck of a column today, but he concocted his idiotic screed anyway.

See, “Byko” is in a lather over President Carter’s recent comment that the anti-Obama sentiment in this country is race-based, something which I think is pretty evident based on this.

So he thusly piled on (I could take time to refute all of it, but this sampling is pretty indicative – and by the way, he makes it sound like Carter and Muammar Qadhafi were buds, but it was Dubya who signed an executive order restoring the Libyan government’s immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing all of the pending compensation cases in the US, not Carter, as noted here – also, if there’s one person Carter would not be friends with, it is Fidel Castro, since the latter played the former like a fiddle in the matter of the Mariel Boat Lift)…

(Carter’s) remark paralleled the equally hair-trigger opinion of the Philadelphians who hung the “racist” tag on anyone who objected to the Eagles’ hiring of Michael Vick.

Uh, I objected to the Eagles’ signing of Vick (here), and I didn’t get any comments branding me a racist (and I most definitely support President Carter in this matter).

Also…

In his latest ramble, Old Mushmouth said the “overwhelming portion” of those loudly opposing President Obama are racists.

He hasn’t created so many waves since he was in a waterborne battle with an enraged swamp rabbit.

…

In reality, there’s a racial strain in most national discussions involving Obama, but it is irrational to think r-a-c-e is animating all, or even most, of the animosity.

See the prior post on Noel Sheppard for proof that Carter is right, “Byko” (and by the way, I don’t know what the hell “Byko” is talking about with that comment about a “racial strain” that somehow isn’t “animating…the animosity”; “Byko” also introduces more faux equivalency between those who opposed Clinton over a blow job and those who opposed Dubya for lying us into war with an enemy that had nothing to do with 9/11, expanding our country’s policy of rendition beyond all reason or adherence to the law, trashing the environment and civil liberties, staffing his administration with hacks and flunkies in charge of government agencies, acting as if he actually cared about those “values voters” his party plays for fools every four years, etc.)…

Also…

Predictably, anyone disagreeing with Carter was immediately tarred as a racist. That’s what MSNBC’s semi-rational ranter Keith Olbermann bayed last Wednesday. If you diss Carter, he suggested, you are a racist and a right-wing nutjob.

From this transcript (and I hate to admit that “Byko” is partly correct, even though Olbermann was dead-on, but “Byko” left out the rant of a certain Flush Limbore)…

OLBERMANN: Carter and courage: The former president elaborates on his comments about racism being at the core of some of the rage against the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: There is an inherent feeling among many people in this country that an African-American ought not to be president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: And he gets the “all too predictable” reactionary blowback from the racists he‘s talking about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO HOST: Jimmy Carter is the nation‘s hemorrhoid folks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Well, I got to defer to him here, the nation‘s (BLEEP) hole would know about the nation‘s hemorrhoid.

Oh, and by the way, Byko, when you decide to actually provide meaningful, factual information to support your ridiculous claim that that “individual rights (are) being usurped by a federal government growing like kudzu,” let me know, OK?

Meanwhile, I’ll breathlessly await word on how much money Philadelphia Newspapers lost this week, or how their brilliant plan to have one group of rich Philadelphians headed by Bruce Toll bail out another group of rich Philadelphians headed by Bruce Toll is progressing.

Bolton’s Bombast Over Robinson’s Reward

A lot of right-wing umbrage has been generated by the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former President of Ireland Mary Robinson (she also served as the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights). And much of it was presented in John “Blow ‘Em Up” Bolton’s Op-Ed in the Murdoch Street Journal on Monday…

Barack Obama’s decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson has generated unexpected but emotionally charged opposition. Appointed by then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as high commissioner for human rights in 1997-2002, Ms. Robinson had a controversial but ineffective tenure. (Previously, she was president of Ireland, a ceremonial position.)

To begin, I know it’s a little hypocritical for me to say this because I seldom referred to Dubya as “President Bush,” but Barack Obama does happen to be the 44th President of the United States, and I call Bolton’s refusal to acknowledge that at the beginning “two wrongs not making a right.”

Also, this Wikipedia article tells us more about what Robinson did in her “ceremonial” position as president of Ireland…

She invited groups not normally invited to presidential residences to visit her in Áras an Uachtaráin; from the Christian Brothers, a large religious order who ran schools throughout Ireland but had never had its leaders invited to the Áras, to G.L.E.N., the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network. She visited Irish nuns and priests abroad, Irish famine relief charities, attended international sports events, met the Pope and, to the fury of the People’s Republic of China, met Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama). She famously put a special symbolic light in her kitchen window in Áras an Uachtaráin which was visible to the public as it overlooked the principal public view of the building, as a sign of remembering Irish emigrants around the world. (Placing a light in a darkened window to guide the way of strangers was an old Irish folk custom.) Robinson’s symbolic light became an acclaimed symbol of an Ireland thinking about its sons and daughters around the world. Famously, she visited Rwanda where she brought world attention to the suffering in that state in the aftermath of its civil war. After her visit, she spoke at a press conference, where she became visibly emotional. As a lawyer trained to be rational, she was furious at her emotion, but it moved everyone who saw it. One media critic who had slated her presidential ideas in 1990, journalist and Sunday Tribune editor Vincent Browne passed her a note at the end of the press conference saying simply “you were magnificent.”[citation needed]

Browne’s comments matched the attitudes of Irish people on Robinson’s achievements as president between 1990 and 1997. By half way through her term of office her popularity rating reached an unheard of 93%.[12]

In one of her roles as president, the signing into laws of Bills passed by the Oireachtas she was called upon to sign two very significant Bills that she had fought for throughout her political career. A Bill to fully liberalise the law on the availability of contraceptives, and a law fully decriminalising homosexuality and unlike Britain and much of the world at the time, providing for a fully equal age of consent, treating heterosexuals and LGBT people alike.

Bolton also blames Robinson for her “central organizing role as secretary general of the 2001 ‘World Conference Against Racism’ in Durban, South Africa. Instead of concentrating on its purported objectives, Durban was virulently anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and at least implicitly anti-American.”

Really? As Wikipedia notes here…

In the end, the Conference delegates voted to reject the language that implicitly accused Israel of racism, and the document actually published contained no such language.[10]

Several countries were unhappy with the final text’s approach to the subject, but all for different reasons. Syria and Iran were unhappy because their demands for the language about racism and Israel had been rejected by the Conference, the latter continuing its insistence that Israel was a racist state. Australia was unhappy with the process, observing that “far too much of the time at the conference [had been] consumed by bitter divisive exchanges on issues which have done nothing to advance the cause of combating racism”. Canada was also unhappy.[10]

The language of the final text was carefully drafted for balance. The word “diaspora” is used four times, and solely to refer to the African Diaspora. The document is at pains to main a cohesive identity for everyone of African heritage as a victim of slavery, even including those who may have more European than African ancestors. The “victim” or “victims” of racism and slavery (the two words occurring 90 times in the document) are defined in only the most general geographic terms. The word “Jewish” is only used once, alongside “Muslim” and “Arab”, and “anti-Semitism” is only used twice, once alongside its assumed counterpart of “Islamophobia” and once alongside “anti-Arabism”. The difficulty that this generates is that it is politically impossible to act when the 219 calls for action in the Programme are couched in such generalities that only the “countless human beings” that the document explicitly talks of can be identified.[11]

Am I going to tell you that I’m a fan of the U.N. Human Rights Commission? No. But I think it’s ridiculous to blame Robinson for the intransigence of some of its member nations (besides, the first Durban Conference ended on September 8, 2001, and what transpired three days later pretty much made its recommendations moot).

Bolton also tells us the following…

During the Clinton administration’s (and NATO’s) air campaign against Serbia because of its assault on Kosovo, for instance, she opined that “civilian casualties are human rights victims.” But her real objection was not to civilian casualties but to the bombing itself, saying “NATO remains the sole judge of what is or is not acceptable to bomb,” which she did not mean as a compliment.

In fact, Ms. Robinson wanted U.N. control over NATO’s actions…

Maybe Robinson wanted the U.N. to have a say on the Kosovo bombing for the following reason (as noted here)…

NATO then helped establish the KFOR, a NATO-led force under a United Nations mandate that operated the military mission in Kosovo. In August–September 2001, the alliance also mounted Operation Essential Harvest, a mission disarming ethnic Albanian militias in the Republic of Macedonia.[21]

So yeah, I think it would have been a good thing for NATO to coordinate with the Kosovo Force (operating with the U.N.’s blessing, as noted) on bombing decisions (hmm, what word describes my reaction that Bolton didn’t think of that, given that he was our former U.N. ambassador? Shocking? Incomprehensible? Truly, the mind boggles).

It should also be noted that Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League criticized Robinson’s Medal of Freedom Award here as follows…

Ms. Robinson has been quoted as saying, “On the Palestinian side, they are the victims, etc. On the Israeli side, they feel they are the victims, in some measure (“Democracy Now,” Pacifica Radio, Feb. 25, 2009). Because she has not moved away from her anti-Israel bias, she is not an “agent of change” and is undeserving of America’s highest civilian honor.

Foxman is referencing this program hosted by Amy Goodman, in which Robinson also said the following…

And there is a need, in the context of the Middle East, to have an understanding of the narrative, which is completely different on both sides. On the Palestinian side, they are the victims, etc. On the Israeli side, they feel they are the victims, in some measure. And there needs to be an ability to transcend that and set the course for addressing the deep issues that divide.

I was in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza in early November, just before Gaza was completely closed off. We were looking at the role of women and strengthening their ability to be part of the voice. And I met some extraordinary Palestinian and Israeli women, and I hope that they will be able to link with (Middle East Special Envoy) George Mitchell in what he’s doing.

…

I was in Gaza as High Commissioner for Human Rights eight years before. Going back—first of all, the way in which the West Bank itself has been divided up, by the new settlements, which are, you know, very provocative and in many cases illegal; by roads that Palestinians can’t go on, but they have to find ways around; and by the wall—but when I went to Gaza, to be with people who were under siege for eighteen months, where there was a truce, which at that stage was due for possible renewal, but there had been no dividend. When we were in Northern Ireland and the IRA started to come into some kind of process, we encouraged them by having some kind of a dividend, some kind of a change in circumstances. There was none in Gaza.

I met poor farming women whose land had been bulldozed so they couldn’t farm. And they said, “We learned embroidery, but we’ve no thread. We learned to make candles, but we’ve no wax.” There was no activity. There was not enough food for families, not enough healthcare. We heard terrible stories about pregnant women dying at the border. And I saw—because I spent two hours going in and going out, I saw very sick people being treated like dirt. You know, you don’t treat people like that. It’s very dehumanizing. These young conscripts on the Israeli side do not treat the people going in and out as human beings. They treat them as potential terrible terrorists. And that’s the image. So we need to break all of that. And I think George Mitchell has the capacity to reach beyond and to start to make us aware that this is a human situation that has to be addressed.

I personally think that, even though Robinson didn’t say much about Hamas in the Goodman interview, she is clear headed enough to realize that nobody, including George Mitchell with all of his skill and experience, is going to change anything without Hamas deciding that it cares more about a political solution than it does about terrorism (and for good measure, Robinson’s award was supported by an Israeli human rights group, as noted here).

I think Mary Robinson is a thoroughly deserving recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award previously politicized by Bolton’s former boss who had no hesitation about awarding it to his cronies who brought us war without end in Iraq and presided over the worst foreign-based terrorist attack on our soil.

(Also, please note that I made it through this entire post without a reference to that song by Simon and Garfunkel).

Thursday Repug Nonsense Roundup

So much for Dubya owing Obama his “silence” (here)…

“There are a lot of ways to remedy the situation without nationalizing health care,” Mr. Bush said. “I worry about encouraging the government to replace the private sector when it comes to providing insurance for health care.”

As noted here…

While he was governor of Texas, that state ranked next to last “in the percentage of children with health insurance and about 1.4 million children in Texas were uninsured.”

He supported expansion of SCHIP when running for re-election in 2004, then opposed it after winning a second term.

When he finally did decide to add $5 billion to SCHIP funding, it would have resulted in about 840,000 kids losing coverage, whereas the bipartisan congressional alternative provided coverage to 10 million kids.

“Replace the private sector”…what a nitwit!

We also have the following from California Repug congressman (and former Reagan speechwriter) Dana Rohrabacher on the matter of the Iranian election (here)…

Well I think that Mr. Obama, if he continues to have these types of attitudes, we’re going to see things get very bad, very quickly. Already the North Koreans have challenged him and realized that he’s a cream puff, if that is what he is indeed going to be as a President.… [N]ow if the Mullahs in Iran are permitted to just roll over opposition something like Tiananmen square (I fixed Rohrabacher’s misspelling), we will have missed a great opportunity.

Gee, maybe Obama should’ve traded arms for hostages with Iran, like Dana R.’s old boss.

And if Obama is a “creampuff,” I don’t know what that makes Rohrabacher for aiding Afghan fighters in the ‘80s who would later become the Taliban, along with that bin Laden guy (noted here).

And speaking of the Iranian election, it seems that the Repugs actually allege a kinship of sorts with the protestors, claiming to be an “oppressed minority,” twittering to that effect to all who will care to read (here).

Please.

It should be noted that, back when they were the majority party essentially from 2000-2006, one of the tools they used to ramrod their agenda through Congress was somewhat ironically titled “reconciliation,” which, as noted here…

…is an optional procedure that can be included in the annual Congressional budget resolution process.

Inclusion in the budget does not mean reconciliation will definitely be used; it merely leaves the option on the table.

The main purpose of budget reconciliation is to provide Congress the ability to change current law in order to align revenue and spending levels with the policies of the budget resolution.

I say it’s a bit ironic because, in effect, it means that the dreaded “60 votes needed for passage” in the Senate do not apply; a straight majority vote on whatever the affected piece of legislation happens to be is sufficient.

And though, as The Gavel states, it is to be used primarily for budget matters, it was abused to pass the notorious tax cuts of the early part of this decade, which have a lot to do with our current economic mess, noted here (along with Judd Gregg’s tactic of using it to open the ANWR for drilling).

And by the way, if you want to read some funny stuff in response to U.S. House Rep Pete Hoekstra’s “tweet” in particular, check this out (h/t Atrios).

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?

Pletka Poses North Korea Nuke Nonsense

In case anyone out there still wonders how it could be that those considered to be knowledgeable by the insular Beltway punditocracy can be granted a forum to spout their drivel over and over even though they have been shown up as consistently wrong at every turn, I offer up the case of the AEI’s Danielle Pletka.

In today’s Washington Post, she tells us the following (from here, in an opinion piece with the charming title of “Negotiating For The Other Side”)…

…the Clinton administration and that of George W. Bush fell into the same negotiating trap with North Korea. The Clinton team was so wedded to the prospect of a nuclear-free North Korea that the president and secretary of state were willing to ignore intelligence indicating that Pyongyang was cheating on its agreement. When evidence surfaced that North Korea was diverting fuel-oil shipments to military industries in contravention of the Agreed Framework, Robert Gallucci, the agreement’s negotiator, blamed the Pentagon for having insisted on such restrictions. The Bush administration was little better. Indeed, Bush’s North Korea envoy, Christopher Hill, came to personify negotiator’s Stockholm syndrome, reportedly demanding that intelligence regarding North Korean noncompliance with its denuclearization commitments be vetted through him and cutting off the flow of information to diplomats with contrarian views on the wisdom of his approach to Pyongyang.

I wish I could verify what Pletka said about Gallucci, but despite much Googling, I cannot. However, regarding the matter of cheating on the Agreed Framework, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times tells us the following (from here, and corroborated by Gallucci here in the 14th comment)…

It is true that North Korea MAY HAVE cheated by trying to set up a second path toward nuclear weapons, involving enriching uranium. We know that North Korea imported some equipment that would have been used for enriching uranium, and when confronted in the fall of 2002, North Korea seemed to admit that it had something going on. But we don’t know if there was ever a formal program launched, and there’s zero evidence that a weapon was actually made. The intelligence community believes it wasn’t. So, yes, North Korea probably cheated on the agreement, but not in a serious way that produced a weapon (and the U.S. didn’t fully implement the agreement, either).

But the George W. Bush administration abandoned the Agreed Framework, and North Korea then pulled out its plutonium fuel rods and made about six bombs. If there was a uranium program, it still hasn’t produced any weapons.

So the upshot was that North Korea produced 1-2 weapons in the George H.W. Bush administration, 0 in the eight years of Clinton, and about 6 in the eight years of George W. Bush. That makes the Clinton policy of negotiation with North Korea look pretty successful, and the hard-line policies of Bush 43 horrific.

And by the way, on the matter of Hill “demanding that intelligence regarding North Korean noncompliance with its denuclearization commitments be vetted through him and cutting off the flow of information to diplomats with contrarian views” (assuming this is not merely Pletka’s spin and it can actually be believed), I think it should be noted that Hill was continually undercut by “Deadeye Dick” Cheney, as noted here, and was probably trying to head off his interference in particular.

Pletka continues…

Too often U.S. negotiators are diplomatic gamblers who, in a quest for progress or a place in the history books, weaken American national security in the hope that their next throw of the dice will bring success. Some negotiators have shown themselves willing to shade the truth to Congress; others have politicized intelligence. Proponents of the negotiations game argue that entangling adversaries in a process buys time and security. But as North Korea’s most recent nuclear test proves, the time that negotiations buy helps only our adversaries.

So far beyond a joke to hear Pletka say that “negotiators” have been known to “shade the truth” to Congress and have “politicized intelligence,” since she, for the most part, was a cheerleader for a presidential regime who did these dark deeds like no other.

But this is typical for Pletka, a hard-core neocon who fronted for Iraqi National Congress con man Ahmed Chalabi, cut her “teeth,” as it were, working for Jesse Helms (as noted here), and has been a torture cheerleader, among her various other misdeeds (with more of her delusional behavior on display here).

On Hidden Bombs, An Overdue Obama Chore

This tells us the following…

SAID JABAR, Iraq — Homemade bombs go off almost every day in Iraq , usually targeting military and police convoys in cities such as Baghdad and Mosul . It’s been suspected for years that insurgents harvest at least some of their explosives from the contaminated soil in places such as Said Jabar.

U.S. military officials estimated in 2007 that 15 percent of the charges for improvised explosive devices — the ubiquitous homemade bombs used to attack American forces — came from land mines and other unexploded munitions.

So Officials in the Ministry of Environment and at companies that receive foreign aid to clear mines ask why the military waited until December to ban clearing as a way to halt the trafficking.

Alaa Abul Majeed , who runs the government-licensed de-mining company in Basra with funds from the United Nations Development Program, charged that regional military staffers had exaggerated the trafficking concerns in hopes of getting a cut from the international aid budget. The commanders in Baghdad go along because they don’t want to seem soft on insurgents, he said.

The trouble, Majeed said, is “all the international donors are thinking of pulling out, because for five months they’ve been getting reports that say ‘zero mines cleared.’ “

The Maliki government in action, my fellow prisoners…

I realize there’s only so much influence we have on matters internal to Iraq like this, but somehow I think we can bring more than a little pressure to bear on this if we desired. And one way to do that would be to practice what we preach a bit more.

As noted here, the U.S. retains the use of land mines and, under Dubya, abrogated its commitment to sign the land mine treaty by 2006, a commitment made by President Clinton in 1997 (and as noted here, the U.S. also refused to sign a ban on cluster munitions passed last year, even though we have “essentially obeyed” all the elements of the treaty).

Making speeches in Cairo to try and reach out to people who may already be our enemies or could oppose us one day is nice. But telling your audience that we will do our part to rid the world of these monstrous devices (thereby putting the onus on our enemies, to say nothing of doing more to protect our service people) is even better.

Rethinking A Mission

I’ll probably be shutting down for the upcoming holiday, and I’ll plan to get back to this next week. In the meantime, here’s some thought-provoking video from Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films who recently visited Afghanistan (more here).