Gyroscope

Bush supporters, like terminal-stage Nixon-ites, can imply that it is only the political class who objects to Bush, and that “beyond the beltway,” far “out in the heartland” people are still patriotic and love their president.

Sorry, no sale. SurveyUSA reports the grim news. In Kansas Bush’s approval rating is a beautiful 38% against a disapproval of 60%. Among those over 55 it is 37%. Among self-identified moderates it is 28%

But here is the statistic that announces the doom of the entire Bush regime. Among Kansans who own a gun his approval is 48% against a disapproval of 50%. That’s right, Bush can’t even carry gun owners in Kansas. That’s sad. That’s the end.

So who does support Bush? Well he gets 64% among Republicans and 71% among those who think global warming is a hoax. No comment.

Posted by John Nordin at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As some are finally beginning to see, George Bush does indeed have a plan to end his involvement in the Iraq war: he’s going to let his successor deal with it.

You can see that in the constantly vague pronouncements about an ever shifting objective for ending the war: “victory” (over what? who will surrender?) “staying the course” (what is the course?) and so on. Objectives that have no measurable component other than the useful quality of always being in the future.

But the clearest evidence for the stalling tactic is that now the “surge” is being spun out to last longer and longer. It was supposed to be over by summer, remember? Well, it turns out it hasn’t even really begun yet. Oh no, it will be months until we can begin to fairly assess how it works. Months that take us closer to the time bell running out the current administration.

The administration and its water-carriers have been effective in coming up with reasons for why criticism of the war is out of bounds. The cry of “treason” and of “defeat-o-crats” have been used, but now, with the surge, they have a whole new set of excuses. To criticize them now is “premature” – no, the four years of disaster are but prelude, this time its really going to work and you have to be quiet until it does. And of course, the surge has ‘changed everything’ so all the reasons and arguments you had about Iraq last year have to be discarded else you be accused of being out of date.

But lets call this strategy what it is: spineless, gutless, self-obsessed morally degenerate opportunism that thinks it better that a few hundred young American men and women and a few thousand Iraqi’s die than to have to face up to ending the war. In order to cling to temporary political survival, the Republicans think it just fine to go on blowing up a nation. There are few words equal to describing this immorality.

Bush and his minions have it figured out: a Democrat takes over in 2008, ends the war. In the short run, more chaos. Fellow travelers in the press suddenly take an interest in Iraq civilian casualties, a topic they have not much noted in the last four years. Many sad stories of abandoned Iraqi army units that were, amazingly, just on the verge of becoming effective. Republicans jump up and down yelling “cut and run.” Pundit hacks write gravely of the Democratic inability to possess the needed tough-mindedness to handle the adult decisions of national security.

And of course, all that aided and abetted by the ongoing inability of Democrats to formulate a coherent argument and an effective media campaign.

In other words, as bankrupt as the Bush strategy is for Iraq, it just might work for the Republicans.

Posted by John Nordin at 06:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A great movie, go see it.

While watching it, I had the most curious reaction. I found myself with a distinct longing to be in that world. A horrible, ridiculous feeling, but eventually I discovered its origin. What I longed for was a world in which there was at last the clarity to see that we were in a fight of liberty against fascism.

In the world we live in now, in the United States in 2007, it is still quite possible to believe that it is business as usual, that we can still do ordinary life, that the stock market will go up, if not now, then soon. We do have camps now, we do have militarization of civil life, we do have people made to disappear, but most of us ignore it and can ignore it. We have a president who has asserted the right to do whatever he wants, and most of us ignore it, or make fun of him, but no one is resisting him.

And I also longed for that: the resistance. There is no resistance to join, none. The political wing in congress is flaccid, the activist wing is obsessed with conspiracy theories, the religious wing is self-absorbed and the intellectual wing spends its time finding ways to expel those less pure than themselves. The people quietly withdraw their support from the regime, but we have no leaders. We don’t have leaders ahead of the people, and we don’t even have leaders following the people.

And for people with age and experience, the other times like now keep flashing back into our heads. We had this sort of president once before, at the tail end of the first war of imperialist quagmire, and at that time we first couldn’t believe a president would lie, and then we were outraged to discover he did. And then, his own party disowned him and he went.

Now, we have a similar president, as similar in imperialist purpose as he is different in his inadequate intelligence. Instead of a brilliantly evil consort to pull the strings we have shoes and a dress. Now we know this leader lies, expect him to lie and shrug when he does. We have insulated ourselves from outrage, from righteous indignation, from all feelings unconnected to the joy of purchasing and consuming. And like feeling, we are insulated from thoughts, insulated so we will not connect one fact to the next and see what is happening. Or, at any rate, most of us are like that, but some are not. Some, the receptacles of our unfelt feeling, have too much feeling. For the fanatics are on the rise, mirroring in their explicit rejection of reason the majority’s insulation from it. We see that fanaticism in the societies of our official enemies, but can’t see it in our own society, our own religion.

And so, you see, we didn’t bounce back from the first quagmire, we didn’t renounce anything, we didn’t learn, we didn’t say “never again”, we didn’t polish up the weak spots in the Constitution, we did nothing. This president will go, likely to be replaced by a different emptiness with a different marketing campaign, but not by anyone we need.

And those of us with years and history know that this movie, or some variation on it, is likely our future. We know societies crumble, we see societies around the world turning to barbarism and conflict and we feel ours turning away from the Enlightenment, turning away from reason, turning away from democracy, from civility, from hope. Suddenly, we feel connected to Germans in 1932, to ancestors in Europe when the lights went out at the beginning of the millennium of darkness.

Perhaps God will purge us, with rising temperatures and species out of control and plagues and flood and fire. Perhaps God will remove us with mutations that terminate us or the hope of children. Perhaps it will be something we can’t imagine, something we did, and permitted, and encouraged, and made money from, and then blamed on God. It’s most likely to take a long time.

In the movie, the pregnant mother finds no room, and no inn, and has the child without even a manger of straw. In the movie, the mother of the savior and the man who isn’t the father flee to a place more mythical than Egypt. And the man who has no biological connection protects and guides until he can do so no longer, and then departs from the story, a story to be continued in the child.

In the movie, you see, there was something worth dying for. A child that can make soldiers drop to their knees and remember the image of God within them. But we have nothing. And so, the life within the movie has its appeal.

Posted by John Nordin at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kurt Schumacher, speaking in the Reichstag (German parliament) on February 23, 1932, referred to National Socialism (the Nazi’s) as “a continuous appeal to the inner swine in human beings,” unique in German history in its success in “ceaselessly mobilizing human stupidity.”

Quoted in Tony Judt, Postwar, p. 268 (material between the quoted phrases is from Judt).

The more things change ....

Doesn't this remind you of how Rove and the Republicans operate? Is Bush Hitler? Or are we the Germans, with our williness to accept a decline in democratic freedoms for no reason? There are more parallells between the Democratic party in 2006 and the ineffective Weimar politicians of the 30s than one would like.

Posted by John Nordin at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey, there is one Democrat with a backbone after all! Check out Tim Ryan schooling Bush here. Also check out “unable to govern” and “Tim Ryan tells it like it is”

Posted by John Nordin at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"A glass half full - on the Titanic"

That's the subtitle of Carl Robichaud's piece in the Spring 2006 World Policy Journal that reminds us that there is another part of the War on Whatever and that we're loosing that one also.

Afghanistan is coming apart again, an insurrection is growing (as are poppies) and the Talaban are making a comeback.

I'm sure the Bush will blame this on Clinton also.

Posted by John Nordin at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let’s remind ourselves what Secretary of Defense, Donald Rmsfeld actually said at both the VFW and the American Legion. First some words from the VFW speech:

We're really fighting the first war of the 21st century, the first war that's been fought in the new media realities with bloggers and 24-hour talk radio and Internet and e-mails and video cameras, digital cameras. Things speed around the world so rapidly, truth generally takes a long time to catch up with untruth.

As our forces strive to protect civilians, the enemy uses civilians as shields. As our troops strive to obey the laws of warfare, the enemy uses those laws against us. And as our troops are held to the standards of mere perfection, the enemy is held to no standard at all. And while some at home argue for tossing in the towel, the enemy is waiting and hoping that we will do just that.

At the American Legion he said:

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

There was a strange innocence about the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator's reaction in September of 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed: “Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided!”

And it's a time when Amnesty International refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay -- which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare -- as "the gulag of our times." It’s inexcusable. (Applause.)

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what's wrong with the world. (Applause.)

The struggle we are in -- the consequences are too severe -- the struggle too important to have the luxury of returning to that old mentality of “Blame America First.”

The rhetorical move here, as BushCo often do, is to confuse themselves with America. Criticize the current administration, and you are criticizing America. Further, Rumsfeld puts the blame on low-ranking troops (“in every army, there are occasional bad actors, the ones who dominate the headlines today, who don't live up to the standards of the oath and of our country.”) for his own mistakes. It is Rmsfeld who put the troops there, gave them a confused strategy, told them to fight an insurgency with conventional tactics.

And then, of course, he equates people who disagree with him to appeasers.

Olbermann replied:

...it credits those same transient occupants, our employees, with a total omniscience, a total omniscience which neither commonsense nor this administration‘s track record, at home or abroad, suggest they deserve it.

that about what Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this, this is a democracy, still, sometimes just barely and as such, all voices count, not just his.

But to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance and its own hubris. Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages to the entire fog of fear which continues to envelopes our nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their cronies have inadvertently or intentionally profited and benefited, both personally and politically.
And yet he can stand up in public and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just the receipt for the emperor new clothes.

Aptly, he reversed the appeasement analogy, pointing out that it was the government back in the 30s that was wrong, as the government is wrong today. And he wisely closed with timeless words from Edward R. Murrow:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty” he said in 1954, “We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not disended from fearful men, not from men who fear to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. "

It took a lot of courage for Olbermann to rebut so strongly Rumsfeld, a courage Howard Dean just couldn’t quite match earlier in the show. And it courage for his bosses to allow him six minutes to stand up for freedom.

Keith Olbermann, American Hero.

Posted by John Nordin at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Der Spiegel On-Line reports how well the Bush administration is doing at isolating Syria as a rouge regime. (excerpted)

The yellow Hezbollah flag has been raised all over Damascus -- flying from cars, draped over balconies and plastered on the sides of buildings all over the city. Images of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah are likewise omnipresent: tens of thousands of posters and placards depicting the Hezbollah leader have flooded the city.

Young men download Nasrallah's sermons as ring tones for their cell phones, and even Christians light candles for the Shiite leader in church.

an expert close to the Syrian Foreign Ministry who asked not to be identified. "Why should we help?" he asks. "Let the West head for its own doom thanks to its policies -- that's exactly what's happening now."

it looks right now as if the regime in Damascus could emerge from the current crisis as a winner. Syria has already established itself as an influential regional power. And for the first time since the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, an official representative of a European government has travelled to Damascus. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos met with President Assad.
Syria could once more increase its influence in Lebanon too, following the forced withdrawal of its troops in the aftermath of Hariri's death. The anti-Syrian government in Beirut has been weakened and Syria's ally Hezbollah has been strengthened massively, at least ideologically.

Ha’aretz points out the stunning success of noble forces in degrading the slimy terrorists in Lebanon (excerpted)

The large number and the location of the casualties that the Israel Defense Forces sustained Wednesday indicate that the army does not yet control the narrow strip along the border, although this stage of the ground operation was supposed to have been completed already.

Although the army had conquered the town, Hezbollah men were hiding in underground bunkers well camouflaged from the outside. The bunkers had been stocked with large quantities of food, enough to last for weeks, and ammunition, including antitank missiles and, in several cases, short-range rockets.

The bunkers are connected to electricity and, according to one report, are air conditioned. When the fighting dies down, Hezbollah fighters emerge from the bunkers and set up ambushes for IDF soldiers and armored vehicles.

The Council on Foreign Relations (weekly email newsletter) points out what is happening elsewhere while Bush is reforming the Middle East

This summer, fighters loyal to a group of Islamic courts rolled into Mogadishu, routing the warlords who had served as power brokers in the capital since Somalia's last stable government collapsed in 1991. The emerging fundamentalist leadership in the violence-plagued African nation has raised U.S. fears that Somalia could become a haven for terrorists much like Afghanistan was.

And, Billmon alerts us to the news that all Americans are totally united and determined, focused intently ever since 9/11 to sign up for whatever the Dear Leader wishes us to do.

Some 30 percent of Americans cannot say in what year the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington took place, according to a poll published in the Washington Post newspaper.

And then of course, there was the stunning domestic endorsement of Bush in Connecticut as reported by Daily Kos

In one corner, you had a bunch of unpaid volunteers, Internet rabble-rousers, and an inexperienced politician whose highest post had been County Selectman.

In the other, you had the three-time Senator, former vice-presidential candidate, visible party statesman, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, the other popular CT senator Dodd, most of Organized Labor, the women's groups and the environmental groups, most of traditional Democratic party support, paid lobbyist support, paid armies of GOTV staff, the slick ad money, the top DLC consultants, and a 3 to 1 budget gap.
I'm sorry. That's not David vs. Goliath. This isn't even the NBA champions versus a rec league team.That's more like an ant vs. my shoe.

And the shoe lost.

Yes, its just so fitting that the supporters of Bush label their opponents as the defeat-o-crats; while Bush goes from success to success.

Posted by John Nordin at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Bush isn't Hitler. He would be if he applied himself."
-- Margaret Cho

" Bush is not Hitler. For one thing, Hitler was a decorated, frontline combat veteran. Also, in the election that brought him to power in 1933, Hitler got more votes than the other candidates.”
- Bill Maher

"Bush isn't Hitler. For one thing, Hitler was an effective and charismatic public speaker."
-- John Nordin

Posted by John Nordin at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I read that Jan. 25th headline in the New York Times, I confess I read it as “White House Declines to Provide Storm Troopers.” What ever could I have been thinking?

Yes, it is true, apparently, the White House is so frustrating the investigation of the bad intelligence that suggested that Katrina did not have a weapon of mass destruction, that even Sen. Joe Lieberman, who seldom finds a bad word to say about Bush, is upset.

And what could possibly be the reason for this? We don’t want hurricanes to know what we know? We’re afraid that if hurricanes know how we fight them that they will change their tactics? Congress authorized all presidential action when it passed the bill for the weather service?

Continue reading "White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers" »

Posted by John Nordin at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)