My '10 Election Predictions

Continuing my biennial tradition of making a mockery of the democratic process by treating it as a sporting event to be wagered upon I've made my predictions for tomorrows midterm elections. The Republicans need to gain 39 seats in the House of Representatives to take control of that body and I have no doubt that they will get them. In fact, I'm predicting they'll take 50-60 with no more than 75. They also need to gain 10 seats in the Senate to take control of that body as well but I just don't see that happening. I'm predicting that they'll take 6-8 with a high of 9, leaving Democrats with a slim majority.

Despite delirious prognostications about Democrats getting "crushed" tomorrow I think that this will be a net positive for President Obama, whom regular readers know I like much more than his party as a whole, going into the 2012 elections. These past two years have been rough ones for Americans but I think Obama has done a fairly good job playing the hand he was dealt coming into office, despite pussified Democrats, obstructionist Republicans, Bush's tanking economy, Bush's two unfunded wars and the myriad of other albatrosses hanging from his neck. Now the Republicans will have two years to propose something, anything substantive that will help get America back on its feet and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has already stated the central plank of their bold new strategy:

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

That's their plan: politics over governance. No serious proposals to reinvigorate the economy or reduce the debt or deficits, just a party-wide retrenchment and digging in of heels with a constant refrain of tax cuts (which is hardly a serious proposal based on the massive deficits we're dealing with). You see, there are only two ways to reduce government deficits: increase revenues (raising taxes) or reduce spending, and since they wouldn't even consider the possibility of the former if Fort Knox was on fire that leaves the latter. But what have they proposed cutting?

As I've said, nothing substantial or specific, just vague platitudes about reducing spending and eliminating waste. 75% of our federal budget is used to pay for only three things: Social Security, Medicare and military spending; everything else, everything else, makes up the other 25%. Any serious proposal to reduce our deficits and steer us back towards fiscal solvency must address the fact that cuts have to be made in those three areas. And even though cuts to these areas will be hard to make and less than popular with voters, any proposals by either party that do not do this should not be taken seriously. And what has the latest proposed spending cut by the so-called party of fiscal conservatism been? The 1.5% of NPR's funding that they get from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: about three million dollars. Our national debt is around thirteen and a half trillion dollars, about four million times that.

"So how does losing the House help Obama?", I hear you asking. Well, if the Republicans win the House and are actually serious about reducing deficits and making spending cuts then they will compromise and work with Obama's bipartisan deficit commission to shore up the economy: win for Obama and more importantly, win for Americans (and many of those Americans will be voting in 2012). If however they do what I expect and continue to try to derail everything he proposes whilst simultaneously proposing to repeal health care and financial reforms that are popular with Americans and even possibly shut down the government, I think it will become fairly clear to voters that Republicans are more interested in regaining power than in trying to help the country: win for Obama and more importantly, huge loss for Americans (and many of those Americans will be voting in 2012).

The president inherited a full plate when he came into office and he needed a strong party that controlled both houses of congress to have his back as he tried to institute his ambitious agenda for America. Unfortunately for him and that agenda, he's had to make due with the Democrats, who to their credit and despite all the shit I talk about them have done a lot of things right over the past two years. But they've also done a lot of things wrong and that, combined with a recessed economy, high unemployment and allowing the Republicans to consistently control the narrative in Washington, is why they're going to lose a substantial number of seats in tomorrows midterms.

But those losses come with a silver lining: in the minds of the voters Republicans will finally be forced to own part of the economy Bush left on his desk two years ago and if the only solution they have for the next two years is still merely "NO!" then they should enjoy tomorrows victory while it lasts because they're gonna have a hell of a time running a presidential candidate on that nihilistic platform. Voters will have two choices when they enter their voting booths: one party that irresponsibly spends your tax dollars like hell and another party that irresponsibly spends your tax dollars like hell whilst simultaneously and hypocritically swearing up and down that they do not. The main difference between them at this point is that the first party has an actual adult as their leader. Please make sure you vote tomorrow everyone.

Maher's New Rules: Barry Whitehouse

Last night Bill Maher laid out why people need to stop their whining and remember everything President Obama has accomplished thus far when they go into the voting booth in November:


Things haven't gone as smoothly as many would have liked but these are tough times and I believe that we're better off with Obama than we would have been without him. I still can't stand the Democratic party but in a two party system with these choices I don't consider it much of a choice at all. I realize that my perspective is somewhat skewed leftward but I still think the majority of honest intelligent Americans would agree with me on this. November will be rough but I don't think it will necessarily be as bad as many are predicting. Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Bolton For President?

Chris Matthews can hardly contain his laughter at the idea that former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton might make a run for the presidency in 2012:


Bolton is a far right ideologue so Matthews is right to scoff at the idea that he could have any kind of shot at the presidency but he ignores the elephant... I mean, walrus in the room: Bolton's never gonna live in the White House as long as he keeps sporting that 'stache. Americans haven't elected a president with facial hair in 100 years and I don't see it happening anytime soon. Hell, Jon Stewart couldn't even keep his goatee for more than a couple of weeks and he's not even in politics. It's a sad fact that being too tall, too fat, too bald, too different looking automatically disqualifies anyone from that office. Democracy can be really stupid sometimes.

(via)

What Else Is Near Ground Zero?

New Yorker Daryl Lang takes some photos of other structures and businesses in his neighborhood, including strip clubs, bars, McDonalds and curbside souvenir hockers, located the same distance from the Ground Zero site as the proposed Muslim community center:

What’s my point? A month ago, I wrote about my support for a group of Muslim New Yorkers—whom I consider my neighbors—and their right to put a religious building on a piece of private property in Lower Manhattan. Since then, the debate over the Park51 community center, inaccurately nicknamed the “Ground Zero Mosque,” has jumped from talk radio to mainstream conversation, and turned nasty in the process. Sarah Palin wrote that, “it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground.”

Look at the photos. This neighborhood is not hallowed. The people who live and work here are not obsessed with 9/11. The blocks around Ground Zero are like every other hard-working neighborhood in New York, where Muslims are just another thread of the city fabric.

At this point the only argument against this project is fear, specifically fear of Muslims, and that’s a bigoted, cowardly and completely indefensible position.

I'm glad that Sarah Palin was able to put aside her disdain for big city liberal elitists long enough to tell them how to run their own town (for their own good, of course). As far as the outrage over the proposed community center located two and a half blocks away from the World Trade Center site being too close I still have three questions that no right-winger can or will answer: 1) How many blocks would then be far enough away to show proper respect for the victims on 9/11? 2) What system or formula did you use to arrive at that number? 3) Why would being even one block closer than the number you chose be so much worse? The reason these questions can't be answered is because this isn't about proximity to Ground Zero or respect for those victims, it's about not liking Muslims and conflating religious tolerance with national weakness to score cheap political points in an election year.

TDS: I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill

What he said:

American Power And Nanny Statism

So it seems that my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has once again declared his ignorance opposition to cannabis via California's Proposition 19, a ballot initiative that would legalize individual amounts of cannabis here in the Golden State, in his newest post "Oakland Pot Factory Sham is Shame of a Nation":

After the budget and jobs, drug decriminalization's likely the most important issue on the ballot in November's elections, and Oakland's at the forefront of the fight for sanity. (Note here that I'm always amused at JBW's childish arguments about getting the "nanny state" out of our lives, even more hilarious as he's down with Obama's uber-nanny nationalized socialism in every other area of the economy — but more on that later.) It turns out LAT has a piece on the "Walmartization" of Oakland's "medical" marijuana industry, and get a load out of that picture at the screencap. Looks like a bunch brothas from de 'hood be cruisin' down for some phat sweet-stick smokas, yo!
It's a scam, obviously... Unbelievable, really. But that's what the nihilist left wants in today's America.

Ignoring the fact that Don seemingly lost his own fight for sanity years ago, I'm always similarly amused at his own personal reefer madness when it comes to the issue of adults deciding for themselves what they can and can not put into their own bodies. Recall that I wrote my post "American Power And Hypocrisy" over a year ago as a direct rebuttal to Don's empty declaration at the time that cannabis is somehow inherently evil and he has yet to even attempt to refute me. Instead he prefers to deploy devastating rhetoric like calling people who disagree with him "losers" for doing so. Ouch.

But let's quickly unpack this latest post, shall we? First, the slang: as always it's as embarrassing as it is hilarious. Is it possible that being unhip is a chronic condition? This guy makes Michael Steele look like Jay-Z. Next, the hyperbole: notice that supporting President Obama in certain policy areas automatically means that I'm "down with Obama's uber-nanny nationalized socialism in every other area of the economy", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Apparently my desire for every American to have access to affordable health care is a much more oppressive policy position to take than is Don's own desire for every American adult who uses cannabis to be arrested, fined and imprisoned as a result.

That's just where we disagree about the role of government, I guess: I believe that the purpose of the government is to do for the people what they cannot individually do for themselves while Don believes that purpose is to protect people from themselves by punishing private personal behaviour that he finds distasteful. This is also why Don believes that adults should be arrested for frequenting prostitutes, that the government has the right to listen in to our phone conversations and monitor our email and even disappear American citizens terror suspects obvious terrorists who require no legal protections off of American streets and torture them to death overseas, all in the name of protecting the American people from those who would torture us overseas.

You see, neocons fear many dangers in the world today and they have no qualms about ceding a vast swathe of their personal liberties to a powerful government in order to feel all protected and safe in their beds at night. This is how Don can at times claim to be a libertarian out of one side of his mouth whilst simultaneously calling for the imprisonment of consenting adults participating in victimless crimes out of the other. Cannabis legalization in California obviously isn't going to destroy society and we could actually really use the additional tax revenue that it would generate (although from looking at the polls I doubt that Prop. 19 will pass this November but perhaps I'm wrong on that count) but Don can't afford to take that chance. His fear requires governmental nanny statism to protect him and the rest of us from anything and everything that scares him, our own liberties and freedoms be damned. That's the type of "free" society that cowards like Don would create with American power.

[Update: Don answers the above post by not answering at all:

Heh ...

Yo, JBW, 'nuff said:

Yeah, that's what I thought. Intellectual coward.]

Electoral Sour Grapes Of The Day

Found at my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas' site American Power, just for the laughs. Now obviously the items on this list are mostly the product of fevered neocon dreams and callous fear-mongering but it was the declaration "59 Million Americans Didn't Vote for This" that struck me. Even if this were a list of Obama's political ambitions, who the fuck cares what those 59 million people voted for? They lost! Yet we're told to believe that this is how democracy is now supposed to work: the side that loses the election gets to set the agenda for the next four years (although to be fair, Obama and the Democrats have caved on a number of issues only to get a "bi-partisan" middle finger from Republicans time and again).

Well I'm one of the 69 million people who voted for Obama and and I think I speak for most of us when I say that we're quite happy to let him continue running the country. Here's a reminder for everyone else:

Picture Of The Day

England is trying to choose a new Prime Minister today. This is how you vote:

Voters arrive at the Hare and Hounds pub which is being used as a polling station on May 6, 2010 in Corsham, England. Vote early. Vote often. Vote drunk!

So we fought for and won our independence from these guys a couple hundred years ago so I could vote in a Catholic church while they get to vote in their pubs. Somehow it lessens the victory.

[Update: Andrew Sullivan adds the following about Britain's electoral rules:

Yes, you can vote drunk and you can bring your dog with you into the polling booth. You are also fully entitled to scrawl on your ballot terms like "Fuck The System!" What a civilized place.

Have I mentioned that they get to vote in their pubs? Civilized, indeed.]

[Update II: One of his readers responds:

So those lucky bastards in Merry Ole England can vote drunk? At a pub, no less? While we poor unlucky bastards here in Indiana (who voted on Tuesday) can’t even BUY alcohol on election day

Alcohol is served in restaurants and bars on Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. and from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. on Sundays.

Alcoholic beverages can be purchased from private retail package stores, and beer and wine can be bought in grocery stores, convenience stores, and drug stores. No alcohol is sold on Christmas Day and Election Day.”

If you don't need a drink on both Christmas Day and Election Day you obviously haven't been living in America lately.]

Chart Of The Day

Sarah Palin's political action committee's map "targeting" House Democrats who voted to pass health care reform legislation, coupled with the tweet "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" Now I'm not saying that Palin wants these people to literally be shot for voting the way they did, just that it's an irresponsible (I'd also call it tone deaf but I suspect that her people know what they're doing here) metaphor to use for this issue when congressmen and women are receiving actual death threats. How is this supposed to improve the discourse?

(via)

[Update: "'Take up your arms’ means voting,” -Sarah Palin. Sure, it's the first connection I make with that phrase. Again, irresponsible.

(via)]

The American Right And The Denial Of Science

I had FOX News on in the background while I was putting my house in order earlier today when I heard an anchor trying to make the point that global warming doesn't exist because of the record snow falls we're having in the American Northeast right now, and to make his point he had set a copy of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth outside in Baltimore and was following the progress of the storm by how buried the book became over an hour long broadcast. You can imagine how surprised I was to learn that a scientific theory can be so easily refuted by simply showing that a literal interpretation of its name isn't what's happening on any one spot on the planet at any one time. This got me thinking: what other scientific theories could I refute with such methods?

Well, it turns out that pretty much anything can be disproved in this manner. It seems that atoms don't actually exist because I looked at some ancient Greek scrolls and all I could see was some old crinkly paper; Democritus was obviously a lying shill tucked securely in the back pocket of Big Indivisibility. Next I proved that gravity doesn't exist by tying a bunch of helium balloons to a copy of Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and watched as it slowly floated away; indisputable, in that there was nobody else there to dispute my conclusions. And to prove that the theory of evolution never happened I meticulously thumbed through all of my family photo albums. Not only did I not come across any monkeys but I didn't even see any "transitional" relatives, and just to make sure that the theory had been thoroughly debunked I had a monkey take a crap on a copy of Darwin's On the Origin of Species; checkmate, all of you well-educated scientific experts and elitists!

This is the mindset that is inevitably produced when a society, and especially one major political party, treats education and knowledge as if they were some kind of con or scam whilst simultaneously holding up ignorance and superstition as badges of pride. I know that it's antithetical to the philosophy of a democracy in a republic and that I probably gain few friends by saying this but I still think that everyone should have to pass a test of minimal knowledge and intelligence to be able to vote in this country's elections. Our future advancements in science and education should not be subjected to the whims of philistinism and incuriousness. If believing this makes me an elitist, then it's a label that I'll wear proudly.

[Update: The Democratic Strategist apparently agrees with me:

The problem is that more severe winter weather tends to confirm rather than contradict climate change theory. Warmer overall temperatures produce moisture, which in winter tends to produce snow. Climate scientists have long predicted more turbulent winter weather as a result of climate change. And by the way, last month was the world's warmest January on record.

This won't keep conservatives from taking cheap shots at anyone who wants to deal with climate change, but it's worth knowing that this particular attack line is particularly cynical and wrong-minded.

The show that followed the anchor I mentioned previously was Glenn Beck's. It featured him making incredulous faces and loudly scoffing as he watched a video of an MSNBC anchor reading the first of the two paragraphs quoted above. Then rather than dispute these statements he instead proceeded to draw a thermometer circling back on itself on his chalkboard as if it were a mercury-filled Ouroboros. This is how one of the Right's leading voices claims to debate and understand basic science. Again, all I ask is for minimal knowledge and intelligence from our voting base; I don't think that's such a high bar to set for ourselves as a society.

(via)]

Left vs Right: A Chart Of Extremes

Click the chart to enlarge. It's a fairly comprehensive comparison although being a self-described Libertarian-Socialist I personally don't subscribe to the popular perception that everyone in the United States is either totally on the left or on the right of the political spectrum. I agree with several of the tenets on the conservative end of the spectrum yet most of their core values seem way too extreme and anti-intellectual for me while I agree with most liberal values although several of their core principles strike me as extremely weak and ineffectual. Which I suppose goes a long way towards explaining why I belong to neither major political party.

(via)

Picture Of The Day

Constitutional hipsters. These people were into the Bill of Rights back before it was cool. They probably carry muskets too but of course they do it ironically.

(via)

Should The Ends Justify The Means?

Per my post yesterday about the lies of Sarah Palin and others concerning so-called "death panels" essentially killing the end-of-life provision in President Obama's health care reform legislation regular reader Truth101 left the following comment:

I've been a low level hack since I was 13 JBW. One recurring theme to winning elections in my view is that lies and distortion win more than they lose.

I can't go into it here but the ones I worked on that lost, most of them we ran positive campaigns.

I wouldn't lose any sleep if the DNC or Move On or something else decided to make the scumbags that lie about health care pay. Fighting the good fight isn't doing any good against these assholes. Losing this with dignity is not going to insure 47 million people without and the millions more that will be added as business decides it can't afford the expense.

I don't know how much experience you or your readers have with politicing and working elections. But this my friend is "nut cutting time."

I regret if I your opinion of me has been diminished.

First and foremost, let me say that I've known Truth101 online for some time now and despite his occasional lapses of decorum (you know of which I speak, amigo) I can say unequivocally that he's a real stand up guy. And I recognize the compulsion to fight dirty when dirty is the only way the other side will fight. Regardless, I have to say that this line of reasoning takes me down a road that I am somewhat loath to travel upon.

To address T101's query about my own political experience, I only made phone calls to voters in other states from my home on behalf of Barack Obama last year (in Northern California it seemed like it would do more good than walking precincts) but two years before that I was a paid staffer on a federal congressional campaign. The reason I bring it up now is because at one point the campaign manager (also a stand up guy, as far as I knew him personally) wanted to engage in some rather nefarious tactics against the Republican incumbent and trust me: This guy deserved it and much more. But my boss (we referred to him as a "boy scout" because he was so straight-laced) wouldn't have it. He felt that we should be able to win the fight based on the issues and their merits, and we ultimately did. I'm very proud to say that he's now my congressman, having been reelected last year and I couldn't wish for a better or more honest human being to be working within the House of Representatives on my behalf.

So I understand T101's compulsion to fight fire with fire, or dirt with dirt if you will. And I'm not so naive to think that the ends do not justify the means in certain cases. My real concerns arise when that philosophy becomes the working strategy for the majority of situations. Now, do I think that Obama and his Democratic cohorts should take the figurative gloves off and start ramming health care reform legislation through the House and Senate, regardless of Republican obstructionism? Absogoddamnlutely. This man was elected with what can only be described as a real mandate for change and if the opposition party can't accept that then I say steamroll over them and count the flattened corpses at your leisure. That's fucking democracy. We put up with it for eight long and agonizing years. It's time for the righteous side to chalk a few up in the win column.

But having said all that, do I think that we should use lies and deception to insure our side wins the debate, in essence scaring the American public into endorsing our vision? No, we don't need to and we should not. We've won two consecutive national elections, both rather decisively. We don't need to lie or obfuscate the truth to ram our legislation home, we just need to flex the legislative muscle we've built up over the last four years while also disregarding the whining and dithering of the political pussies we've picked up along the way. And yes, I said pussies. Every hemming and hawing Democrat, every Johnny-come-lately fiscally conservative Blue Dog, every spineless poll-following career politician on our side of the aisle needs to either throw down with the good of the American people or decide that they want to go it alone because there shouldn't be a third political option for these weasels.

Now I don't know if President Obama will follow the strategy I've just laid out. Aside from the fact that he rarely calls me for my advice, he seems like he genuinely cares about this whole "bipartisan" thing although I hope the last couple of months of rabid Republican obstructionism has at least somewhat cured him of that apparent weakness. It has also become glaringly obvious at this point that the political right in this country is not at all interested in any type of compromise whatsoever, and I am now of the opinion that we should no longer even give them the time of day as far as that's concerned. They've had ample chance to work things out in a civilized manner and the time for engaging in that course of action has long since passed.

I only hope that at the end of these proceedings we can still in some way come together as a unified and civil society. I've been on the losing end of the political policy debate before and I can say unequivocally that it definitely sucks mucho ass on a personal level, but that's the system we have and I still think that in the end it's a pretty damn good one. If the other side continues to fail to recognize this then I honestly don't know how we should proceed from this point but if selling our souls for a victory is the only way to ever win I have to say that I'm not sure how much longer I can continue to play this game. I'm all for the good of the American people but if this is how we're going to win the fight from now on I fear that the majority of good men will henceforth opt out of the political process altogether. It's sad but it's also unfortunately the truth.

Picture Of The Day

I knew the Jonas Brothers had to be involved in this in some way. They rock out to freedom!

Protesting One Third Of The Axis

The Daily Dish points to a new dispatch up at the pro-Iranian protester site Tehran Dispatch:

I remember September 11, 2001. I remember watching TV all day worried and sad. I remember holding candlelight vigils with my friends for the victims. Then George W. Bush went on to declare us as one of the “Axis of Evil.” I remember asking myself, “Why?” Not a single one of the terrorists was Iranian, and I wondered why he didn’t bother to make a distinction between the government and the people. In fact, in all of the Middle East I don’t think there is a more pro-American nation than Iran, but no one made such a distinction. Consequently, the Iranian people were viewed with an aura of suspicion in every airport and embassy around the world for the rest of the Bush administration.

But all of that unfounded negative stereotyping came to an end when, in the aftermath of the elections, the nation stood up to the manipulative authorities and separated its account from that of the government. We shattered the stereotype with the amateur photos and videos taken with our own mobile phones. We captured the true picture of the Iranian nation and relayed it to the world, a picture of a young and highly educated nation yearning to be free.

George W. Bush's view of foreign policy was as simplistic as it was short-sighted. His shoot from the hip, "You're either with us or against us" reactionary statements made great soundbites for your average puffed-chest American jingoist but they also played right into the rhetorical hands of our savvier enemies. Bush saw change through an authoritarian lens, believing that the only way democracy could be spread was to have it imposed upon a resistant populace by a superior military force. President Obama has obviously and correctly taken a more measured, long-term approach to the current situation in Iran despite the growing cacophony from his critics on the right. He more than any other U.S. president in recent history understands the power of grassroots movements, of people standing up and demanding the change that they desire rather than being told what that change should be and how to achieve it.

And what would these hysterical chicken-hawks on the right have him do anyway? Sanction Iran even more? That's impossible, as we completely cut them off economically decades ago. Send in diplomatic officials or even U.S. troops to try to oversee the recount process and quell the violence against the protesters? That's naive, as such a move would just validate Ahmadinejad's thus far false claims of U.S. interference and after spending years in Iraq and Afghanistan we have nowhere near the number of troops necessary to do so with any effectiveness. Just go with the old standby plan for Middle Eastern countries and drop some bombs on their heads? That's supremely ironic, as the neoconservatives who are now upbraiding him for his supposed inaction in helping the protesters were the same people relentlessly calling for Bush to do just that to these same Iranian citizens before he left office last year.

Obama's wait and see attitude is just the right posture to take at this time in the face of Iranian uncertainty. The major players on both sides of this current situation were the same instigators of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and both sides are now using the same tactics from that same play book, and they both know this very well. It is a waiting game at this point and the worst thing the United States could do would be for our president to cockily swagger into the middle of this delicate detente and destabilize the situation without having any clue as to what kind of damage that would cause to either side. Obama knows this and it is his patience and even-handedness that we as a nation should be emulating at this moment. The era of cowboy diplomacy for the United States is now thankfully at an end, and in my opinion not a minute too soon.

Something Someone Else Said

"There is nothing here to vindicate the neocons. Their dreams of democracy flourishing around the world are shared by most Americans and many more people generally. This is not what distinguishes neocons from the rest of us--it is one of the things we have in common. What distinguishes neocons is their authoritarianism, their belief that the common good is something that can and should forcefully be imposed by a strong ruler, ruling class, or government--a point you rightly acknowledge in your post. I therefore don't see how there is any irony here at all. Democracy and freedom are not neoconservative ideas--they do not get to own those concepts. The neoconservative idea is about how to get there, and in this singular distinguishing aspect they have been proven wrong over and over again, leaving disaster upon disaster in their wake.

Once again, this comes back to an issue of respect for the dignity of others.

One thing that keeps coming up in the commentaries on Iran is the observation that, in demanding that the Iranian people accept an election result that is so obviously false, Khamenei is insulting the intelligence, and thus the integrity, of his people. Or as Rami Khoury puts it in the piece you linked to, human beings...do not like being treated like idiots by their own government, and resist the process when it takes place."

This is precisely what was so infuriating about the last 8 years, starting with the disputed election, right on to the very bitter end. Time and again, the neocons who led our country asked the American people, and the world, to accept things that were obviously false (Saddam was an imminent threat to the U.S., WMD or no WMD), obviously illegal (neither Geneva Conventions nor FISA applied to GWoT), or obviously evil (torture), thereby insulting the intelligence and the integrity of the American people.

This is not coincidence--the two are related. The top-down approach, which is at the core of both neoconservatism and tyranny, is fundamentally, or at least invariably, at odds with human dignity. In this important sense, the neocons' hearts are not in the right place at all, even if their dreams about freedom are dreams we all share. But freedom itself is not enough--justice and equality are essential, and tend to be disregarded by neocons, who routinely attack efforts to further justice and equality as threats to (their own) freedom." -A Daily Dish reader, refuting Sullivan's take on the implications of the current Iranian election protests as they relate to the neoconservative worldview.

Perfectly expressed. I post quotes like this one because there is no way I could have said this any better. Now let the right-wing cries of Bush Derangement Syndrome predictably commence in 3, 2, 1...

Something Someone Else Said

"The error in 1956 was on the part of Radio Free Europe, in holding out to Hungarian resisters the false hope that the West would or could intervene on their behalf. It would be similarly cruel and immoral to give Iranian demonstrators the false idea that we in the democratic world can offer them anything more than our sympathy. We can’t. We will not invade Iran, and nothing else we do will have much of an effect on the behavior of a regime fighting to retain its hold on power. The demonstrators in Iran must know that they have to win the struggle for a fair election on their own, and must be prepared to face the consequences of failure. And they do know this. That is precisely what makes them so courageous. It would be stupid and irresponsible of the US to use their struggle as an occasion for ineffectual rhetorical grandstanding, and fortunately President Obama, unlike our last President, seems able to resist the temptation." -Matt Steinglass, Accumulating Peripherals

(via)

Masked Men And Fascism In Iran

Videos like this one of jack-booted policemen beating a defenseless young man with truncheons in Iran today are hard to watch but they should not be ignored:


A Daily Dish reader translates:

It's very hard to understand, but what I can make of it:

They are shouting at him, "This is what's done to the scum (arazel)", "what else have you done", "Will you do it again?" and shouting at crowd, "watch this".

Towards the end they order the young man, "stand up", so that they can beat him again.

And Sullivan quotes Orwell:

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.

I still think that it's too early to tell how much, if at all, this public outcry will change things in Iran but this blog is firmly on the side of the protesters. The human spirit doesn't always win out against oppressive regimes but when it does it's because of brave people like this.

[Update: It turns out that this video is not from the current protests but rather from two years ago. I apologize for stating otherwise but from everything I've seen and read I'd say that it is still very indicative of what is now happening in the streets of Iran. It also shows that the Iranian people have been subject to this kind of thuggery for quite a while.]

[Update II: Glenn Greenwald makes a good point about how the images from these protests should be affecting the American right:

Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on their country -- actions which would result in the slaughter of many of those very same Iranian People. During the presidential campaign, John McCain infamously sang about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-ing Iran. The Wall St. Journal published a war screed from Commentary's Norman Podhoretz entitled "The Case for Bombing Iran," and following that, Podhoretz said in an interview that he "hopes and prays" that the U.S. "bombs the Iranians." John Bolton and Joe Lieberman advocated the same bombing campaign, while Bill Kristol -- with typical prescience -- hopefully suggested that Bush might bomb Iran if Obama were elected. Rudy Giuliani actually said he would be open to a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran in order to stop their nuclear program.

Imagine how many of the people protesting this week would be dead if any of these bombing advocates had their way -- just as those who paraded around (and still parade around) under the banner of Liberating the Iraqi People caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of them, at least. Hopefully, one of the principal benefits of the turmoil in Iran is that it humanizes whoever the latest Enemy is. Advocating a so-called "attack on Iran" or "bombing Iran" in fact means slaughtering huge numbers of the very same people who are on the streets of Tehran inspiring so many -- obliterating their homes and workplaces, destroying their communities, shattering the infrastructure of their society and their lives. The same is true every time we start mulling the prospect of attacking and bombing another country as though it's some abstract decision in a video game.

Putting a human face on the people we call our enemies is something President Obama has been trying to do since the beginning of his presidency but to many right-wingers empathy equals weakness, and is therefore useless to America. Can you imagine what things would be like right now if John McCain and Sarah Palin had been elected last year? One shudders.]

Picture Of The Day

Not being a Democrat I'll admit that I'm no advocate of one-party rule but I have to say that seeing the obstructionist card being erased from the Senate is a welcome sight, especially with my man Al Franken waiting in the wings up in Minnesota. Here's hoping that the Democratic Party doesn't eventually fuck it all up. Keep 'em crossed.

(via)

Something Someone Else Said

"...I freely concede that in an open and free society, with the dangers inherent in Jihadist terror, in an age of mass destruction, there will almost certainly come a time when we will have to endure serious human and physical damage. Unless we get much smarter or get really lucky, this will happen. It only takes a handful of people in a vast country with relatively open borders to do enormous damage, as we found out on 9/11. And they didn't even have WMDs. If Jihadists really want to murder us (and they do) and if weapons of mass destruction get into their hands (and what are the odds against that at some point in our lifetimes?) then we will have to endure what the British endured in the Blitz and the Germans endured in Dresden and the Japanese endured in Hiroshima.

And if we do not have the Constitution on the other side of it, the victory will be theirs'. Yes: that's what America means - freedom, not total security. Man up and face it, like the first Americans did. Believe in our system as powerfully as they believe in theirs'." -Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish

Freedom, not total security. This is why it's shameful that Americans are now debating how much torture we're willing to allow our government to commit in order to ensure our way of life, because for 226 years that way of life was defined by the lack of such heinous acts. We must not allow fear to twist us into the very monsters that want our deaths. America has always been, and can still be again, better than that.