Guns 'n' whiskey

The great state of Tennessee, which used to be known as the three states of Tennessee before a dentist from Mississippi became governor and thought the state should at least pretend to be more unified, is giving us a law that can only be described as, well, the dumbest law ever devised by a state legislature. Looking at it, I can only conclude that the state legislators of Tennessee are complete morons who hid behind the door the day the brains were given out.

But what can you actually expect from the state that probably leads the country in meth labs per capita? I was in Tennessee recently and had the misfortune of having to purchase some behind the counter allergy medicine, the kind that has a banned substance used in concocting methamphetine. In order to buy said medicine, one must show the behind the counter staff your ID and sign a form that says you will abide by some part of the U.S. code that presumably deals with what you intend to do with a banned substance.

"This is the part where I swear I won't use it to make meth, right?" I said to the nice lady behind the counter, who promptly looked at me like I'd just insulted her favorite nephew, which, given the propensity of meth labs in the state, I may well have.

This isn't the first time, of course, that Tennessee has given us something of a dubious nature. The state's given us three presidents, although none of them were actually born there. There was that son of a bitch Andy Jackson, a war "hero" who launched the native southeasterners on what became known as the Trail of Tears. He had a particularly strong hatred for the natives.

There was the uneducated tailor Andrew Johnson, picked by Abe Lincoln as his vice president in an unsuccessful bid to coddle the South. Johnson, I suppose, you could call the accidental president, coming to the office as he did via the assassination of his predecessor. Johnson's chief claim to fame is botching Reconstruction so badly that we still haven't recovered from it.

And then there's James K. Polk. I have no idea who he was or what he did, but given Tennessee's track record with presidents, it was likely nothing to write home about. It's probably a good thing that the Supreme Court stole the election from Al Gore.

It's not that I don't appreciate the state of Tennessee, mind you. There have been some good things to come from there. Gore, for example. He's done more as a private citizen to get things moving on the environmental disaster we're living in than he probably could have done as president having to fight the idiots who make up Congress, who, after all, are just a few steps above state legislators. Or, in the case of congresscritters like Michelle Bachman, a few steps below.

And there's Dolly Parton. She's funny, can actually sing and write songs, is fairly liberal and has done more for the incredibly poor people of her native Sevier County on her own than the state ever even thought of doing. She may look fake, but she is as real as they come.

And then there's ... um ... I'm sure there's something else. It's a very beautiful state. But I've gone on long enough and not even told you what the Incredibly Stupid Law does.

It allows people to go into bars with guns.

I know. I mean, I watched Deadwood. I have no desire whatsoever to live it.

Now, to be fair, the law does allow individual bars to "opt out" by posting a sign saying they don't allow guns, which I think the legislators added in because somebody told them it might be unconstitutional to force private businesses to allow people to bring guns.

But seriously, for what unimaginable reason did these guys think it was a good idea to mix alcohol and guns? Were they worried about a terrorist attack on the local Last Chance Saloon and thought, hey, if the citizens are armed, they can put down that problem right there. Or maybe Tennessee has a problem with shootings in bars the way other states have at schools.

Y'gotta admit. It is an awfully stupid law. But on the other hand, maybe it's not such a bad idea after all. Who's going to be going into a bar with a gun? Stupid people, that's who. And if they get a little intoxicated and then get into some ridiculous altercation with somebody, whose loss is it really -- besides their families -- if they shoot each other to death? Now, given that drunks probably can't shoot straight, some innocent bystanders will probably get hurt. But they're probably packin too and it was just happenstance that they weren't the ones in the fight that time.

So why not make it a national law? Why should Tennessee have all the fun? Congress could style it The Stupid People Eradication Act of 2009, and we'd all be a lot happier and safer because of it.

Just imagine if murdering extremists Scott Roeder, James von Brunn and Abdulhakim Muhammad Bledsoe had run into one another at a bar with that law in effect. Roeder and von Brunn woulda probably shot Bledsoe just on principle right away, then Roeder and von Brunn would get into a fight over whether providing abortions is worse than being black or Jewish, and eventually they would pull out their guns, fire, and they'd both be dead. In a matter of moments, three fewer terrorists on the loose.

And three more Americans who did nothing wrong would still be alive.

I'm not sure what the Tennessee legislature hopes to accomplish with this law, but I think, if applied correctly, it could seriously reduce the problems caused by insufficient or corrupted brain activity.

And who wouldn't want that?


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Right to health care

Since my recent foray into market forecast at News Writer's Guide to the Market was such a spectacular failure -- I consistently predicted doom and gloom even as the markets rose and rose -- I thought perhaps it might be time to wade into another arena about which I know next to nothing, although even that's a far sight better than an awful lot of Americans these days.

And just for the record -- despite the pundits' deep sighs of relief and fresh new predictions that we're climbing out of the economic hole 30 years of conservative government dug us into -- I still think there's a lot more nastiness yet to come. This is a fake out. Reminds me of when I went to see Jessica Lange as country music crossover star Patsy Cline in that movie -- Sweet Dreams. I would go see Jessica Lange in anything, then and now.

Patsy Cline, as we all know (well, those of us old enough) died in a plane crash in Tennessee. In the movie, Patsy and her friends are on board that plane when the engines quit. Oh no, theatre-goers thought. This is it. Sweet dreams. But after a few heart-stopping minutes, the pilot gets the engines going again. Everyone on board the plane breathes again. Everyone in the audience breathes again. And then the plane slams into the side of a mountain.

Pretty stupid of us, really. We all knew the fucking plane was gonna hit the mountain, because we were all Patsy Cline fans and we knew what happened. But when those engines started again, we had some kind of amnesia. Like we forgot it was a movie, and we thought, hey, Patsy survives, even though we knew damn well she didn't. When the plane hit the mountain, the gasp in the audience was audible. Very audible.

Thus it is with the economy. We all know what's gonna happen, but we've been lulled by the start-up of the engines, not realizing we've lost too much altitude and we're gonna hit the fucking mountain.

But what do I know? I'm no economist, and I've been wrong for months on this.

So the other issue I'd like to tackle is health care. Yes. An insurmountable mountain on its own, I'm likely to need a bigger plane and maybe two pilots to maneuver this one.

Here's what I know about health care: In the United States, if you gots the bucks, you gots the care. If you don't, welcome to the emergency room.

So here's the deal. The president wants to put a public option for health care insurance on the table to cover those folks whose employers don't provide it, who don't have employers or who can't afford private insurance.

The big objection from the president's opponents, as best as I can see, is that it might work.

Yes, public health care could become so successful at lowering premiums and providing quality care that it would hurt the private insurers.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me the private insurers are most of the problem now. Let's hurt them.

The objectors also worry that under a public option, health care might be rationed and some unnamed, faceless bureaucrat who's never seen the patient will decide how to handle the case.

Excuse me, but for those of us with insurance, isn't that how it's handled now? I think they call it "managed care." Manage this, fuckers. And besides, that would never happen to them, because they're all fucking millionaires. They get what they want, when they want it.

And that's a lie anyway. The objectors like to malign the Canadian system, but has anybody noticed a stream of Canadians fleeing to the United States because they can't get the open heart surgery they need? I didn't think so.


But the insurance companies -- and the pharmaceutical companies -- have the politicans sewn up rather well, so what we end up getting in the way of health care reform won't be much of a reform. It may look different, but the results won't change -- the rich folks will still be able to buy what they want, nameless, faceless bureaucrats will still determine when the rest of us are sick enough to get that coverage and there'll still be a helluva lotta people waiting in the ER waiting room because of a sore throat.

Unless ... unless ... Congress somehow gets the idea that there might be consequences to leaving the status quo. Not sure where they might come across that idea ... maybe ... nah. Y'all don't want to bombard them with calls and letters. And if you lose, as you probably will, you'll have to make good on your threats, and you know what a pain in the ass that is.

But progressive folk are lining up Democratic opposition to the war suplemental bill. Last time I saw a count, they had 11 of the 28 Democrats they needed to stop it. It's gonna be close, but it could work. They already got the Lieberman-Graham amendment barring the release of any more torture photos dropped. Success may be closer than we think.

I have far too many friends who are one major medical bill away from bankruptcy, and that just shouldn't be. Conservatives are wrong when they say that it shouldn't be government's job to take care of the health care of its citizens. I say what could be more right?

And please, don't even get me started on the socialist bullshit. What the hell do they think Medicaid is? Ohhh riiiiight. They'd like to ditch that too. Compassionate conservative my ass.

The Declaration of Independence says that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our inalienable rights. Universal health care coverage will help keep us all healthy. And that means we keep those rights.

Unless, of course, the conservatives really do believe that only some of us deserve those rights.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Sunday morning paganism

So a cheating ex-House Speaker and a fundamentalist preacher former governor walked into an evangelical church ...

No, seriously. They did. Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee went to church together. OK, it was a political forum held at a church. But they went together. Talk about your odd couples.

I dunno about you, but Newt Gingrich as a leading religious figure I never saw coming. Newt and morality don't belong in the same sentence, although I just did it right there.

By the way, that's Newt's lesbian half-sister Candace up there. I couldn't bear to see Newt or Mike in that spot. I once took Candace to a baseball game. She almost caught a foul ball.

And what is this obsession my colleagues have with this guy anyway? He's a bitter, nasty politician who won his first congressional race by pummeling Democrat Virginia Shapard, a married mother of two, with campaign ads like

Newt will take his family to Washington and keep them together; Virginia will go to Washington and leave her husband and children in the care of a nanny!

Right after winning the race, of course, he served his wife with divorce papers. While she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. I think he wanted to marry the staffer he'd been screwing or something. What a swell guy.

And some kind of expert? Other than being a former House Speaker and all around pig, Newt Gingrich is known for being a "historian" who writes books speculating that the Confederate army won major battles they actually lost during the Civil War.

Just for the record, if you'd really like some speculation about the Confederacy winning that war and what might have happened on this continent in that event, try Harry Turtledove's alternate history The Great War series, which begins with the idea that the Confederates won the Civil War and carries that scenario through the middle of the 20th Century, detailing the very bloody (alternate) history that might have occurred and the horrors that might have been unleashed. Quite unlike Newt's little fantasies where the South wins and all is well after that.

Again, Newt and Mike -- too much. That's Harry Turtledove.

But I digress, as I often do with too little coffee.

So Newt and Mike walk into a political forum at Rock Church in Hampton Roads, Virginia, where Huckabee says that the California Supreme Court decision upholding Proposition 8 is "a miracle from God's hands" akin to the Americans' victory over the British in the Revolutionary War and Newt says

I am not a citizen of the world. I am a citizen of the United States because only in the United States does citizenship start with our creator.

...

I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history. We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism.

Holy shit. I guess socialism just wasn't bad enough. But now we're all pagans. And damn, I didn't know that it took "our creator" to make us citizens of the United States. I thought IT WAS BEING BORN HERE OR NATURALIZED.

But hey, that's why the right has a little credibility problem. They go on and on about patriotism and the Constitution and what not, but they ignore it when it comes to dredging for votes.

And how nice they're still dredging at the bottom of a leaky barrel.

But let's get back to this pagan thing. Like, what's wrong with being a pagan, I mean, other than not being Christian? The word itself is one of those Latin roots words -- paganus, which I think meant rural bumpkin or something. Right wing, evangelical Christians, though -- the kind that Newt and Mike were patronizing on Friday -- take it much further these days and generally use it to mean "not us." They sometimes make allowances for Judaism -- because of that whole Armageddon thing -- and used to make allowances for Islam, before the recent unpleasantness. I'm not sure that Muslims aren't now lumped into the pagan category. Or maybe they're just labeled "terrorists."

I'm sorry he didn't say "heathen," though. I used to refer to myself as a pagan, before "neopaganism," whatever the hell that is, got all popular among the Not Christian crowd. Now I prefer heathen. It's the same word, really, heathen being an Old English translation of paganus. But there's something much more unseemly about heathen. And I'm nothing if not unseemly.

Much the same as I was peculiarly attracted to the word "queer" in my second grade spelling book. I guess the spelling book people were oblivious to uses of the word other than how they defined it, which was "odd" and, oddly enough, "peculiar."

I guess you could call me a queer heathen.

Actually, you can call me whatever you damn well please. One thing I've learned in all my years -- well, actually in the last few months -- is that the only definition of me that matters is the one I have. So you can call me queer, call me heathen, call me pagan, call me batshit insane if you want, but it really doesn't matter. Says more about you than it does about me, unless, of course, you actually call me what I am. And then it still says more about you, that you actually get it.

But please. Don't call me a Republican. That'll really piss me off. It'll prove you're stupid, and I have a real problem with stupid people.

Which, of course, brings us back to Newt and Mike and going to church on Friday. Ollie North spoke at that little event too, which was called "Rediscovering God in America." I guess lying and cheating and breaking the law is OK by God in America, although I'm also guessing that it would not be OK by God in America if someone from the Not Christian crowd did it. Or someone, like, say, the president, who is perceived as being Not Christian by the extremist Christian crowd.

Not that I'm implying anybody is a hypocrite or anything. I'm just sayin.

I lay it out the way I see it. You decide whether it's bullshit.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor


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Pay attention

As a rule, I really quite enjoy learning new things. It keeps me on my toes and serves as a solid reminder that despite outward appearances, I really don't know everything.

Most of the time, the new things learned register little more than a check mark in the box beside "Well, I did not know that, but now I do." But I learned something last week that I still can't quite wrap my mind around.

Seems there are significant numbers of my colleagues who have no fucking clue what the right wing extremist radio and television hosts are actually saying.

I know. How could they not know? Mostly it appears that my very busy colleagues just don't have the time to keep up with the specifics of what's being said on the airwaves. More importantly, though, is what they tell me about how they set their priorities regarding what they pay attention to and what they ignore.

They don't have the time, they say, for the fringes. And those right-wing bloviator dudes, they're the fringes.

Coulda knocked me over with a feather, I'm tellin' ya. So let me get this straight. My beloved colleagues are so busy parsing what it means for the president and the first lady to take a date night and run up to New York for a show that they don't know that the talkers are poisoning the air waves with the most vile and ugly shit since, well, the presidential campaign. And apparently my collagues missed all that nastiness for the very same reason.

They think it's coming from the fringes, and therefore should be ignored.

What my colleagues seem to have overlooked is that the radical right -- the doctor killers, the gay bashers, the anti-immigrant crowd -- has taken over mainstream conservatism. They're not the fringe anymore, but my studious colleagues are still mired back in the 70s or 80s when the whackos were still considered whackos by all sides.

And that, my friends, is why we all know that Scott Roeder was an isolated individual acting completely on his own. Just like all the other right-wing idealogues who have taken their leaders' rants to heart over the years and taken a gun or explosives to take care of the situation.

"But how many times has that happened recently?" one colleague asked. They mean, of course, that violence has only rarely burst through the thin membrane that keeps it contained, and they're right about that. For now.

But if they're not paying attention to the Glenn Becks and the Lou Dobbses and the Bill O'Reillys and the Sean Hannitys and the Rush Limbaughs and the Michael Savages and the Michelle Malkins and the Ann Coulters, then they're missing something crucial. They did not just suddenly snap one day.

Theses guys who go shoot up a liberal Christian church one day because they don't like liberals aren't acting in a vacuum. They're acting on the what they've been told by their spiritual leaders about the vile, un-American and anti-Christian ways of the liberal. What choice do they have if they believe that they are right, absolutely right, and are backed by none other than god on this one?

See Cartoons by Cartoon by Pat Bagley - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

But my colleagues, they're waiting for proof, solid evidence that when a right-wing extremist kills a doctor who provides abortions it was anything other than he was a disturbed individual who just went over the edge one day.

They might make a half-assed attempt to figure out what made the guy "snap," but the second they find something -- he lost his food stamps, his wife filed for divorce, he got in a fender-bender with a car bearing an Obama sticker -- that search is over. They found their reason.

My colleagues don't look at the atmosphere these people are breathing every day of their lives. These extremist attitudes would die off if they were truly isolated. They thrive on reinforcement from like-minded individuals -- particularly pronouncements from on high, coupled with a political leadership that won't challenge the bullshit and often participates in it.

We heard this same shit during the campaign, when my colleagues, deathly afraid of looking at their own participation in the creating a toxic atmosphere, signed on for the "both sides are doing it" campaign regarding the incredibly racist anti-Obama rallies that McCain-Palin rallies. And yes, there are some losers on the left who play those stupid games. But until I hear the liberals are stockpiling weapons and ammunition, stalking Operation Rescue employees and harassing them with images of women who died because they were not allowed to have an abortion and assassinating Randall Terry, then that argument has no standing here because there is no comparison.

I still don't know what to do about my ill-informed colleagues. Sadly, I guess it's just gonna take more violent death to bring them around.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Conspiracy to commit terrorism

America suffered a terrorist attack on Sunday. One man, the target of the terrorist assassination, was killed.

Oh, don't expect my colleagues to report it that way, because that ain't gonna happen. In fact they're gonna go along with cops.

At this time we feel this is an act of an isolated individual.

And that, my friends, is -- say it with me -- bullshit.

Wichita police also think they "the right person arrested" for the assassination of George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who provided abortions -- and, more crucial to this story -- late term abortions. Not late term "oh my god I really don't want to have a baby" abortions, mind you, but late term "this baby is going to be born with a serious defect and continuing the pregnancy putsthe mother's life at risk" abortions.

Since police think that Scott Roeder is the right person, let's just assume that he is. After all, they caught him in the car identified by witnesses at Tiller's church where he was killed.

Oh, I didn't mention that the motherfucker went to the man's church and killed him there, where he was serving as an usher? What does that say about the killer?

So police caught Scott Roeder in the car witnesses identified. The car with the license plate number witnesses provided investigators. So, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and dispense with Mr. Roeder's constitutional right to presumption of innocence and go all Nancy Grace on him.

He's guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

And so is Bill O'Reilly.

Yeah, that Bill O'Reilly. Are there any others?

George Tiller was a special target for O'Reilly, who regularly called him Tiller the Baby Killer, and last mentioned the doctor on his show, the most-watched news show on cable television, on April 27. Gabriel Winant at Salon:

[T]he Fox bully repeatedly portrayed the doctor as a murderer on the loose, allowed to do whatever he wanted by corrupt and decadent authorities. . . O'Reilly's language describing Tiller, and accusing the state and its elites of complicity in his actions, could become extremely vivid. . . "No question Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands. But now so does Governor Sebelius. She is not fit to serve. Nor is any Kansas politician who supports Tiller's business of destruction. I wouldn't want to be these people if there is a Judgment Day. I just -- you know ... Kansas is a great state, but this is a disgrace upon everyone who lives in Kansas. Is it not?

But let's not blame all of this on Bill O'Reilly. He'd love that anyway. Then he can sit on his high horse, toss his hands in the air and claim his innocence because he's just a guy with a microphone.

Exactly.

But let's look beyond that. Roeder is supposedly a member of Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion outfit founded by Randall Terry and now run by Troy Newman, who found he had a hard time getting past all the private security guards and the armored car and the gated community that his ilk forced on Tiller. So instead, he targeted Tiller's employees, doing things like sending anonymous postcards to their neighbors with photographs of mangled fetuses, telling them their neighbor -- by name -- "participates in killing babies like these."

Newman issued a statement, of course, condemning the shooting and saying he hoped that the act of a deranged individual didn't cast a pall on the "peaceful" actions of Operation Rescue.

Yes. Peaceful.

And what of Randal Terry? He condemned the shooting too.

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

Did I mention that Operation Rescue is based in Kansas and that George Tiller was their Public Enemy No. 1? Must be a lot of celebrating going on at the office today. Guess they'll have to pick another target now and move their HQ.

Oh, and let's add former Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline, the anti-abortion activist who used his state office to harass Tiller legally. Kline lost in court.

Scott Roeder. He served two months of a 16 month sentence in prison after being caught with explosives in his car. And a military rifle, a gas mask, mask canisters, rifle and pistol ammunition and a sheath knife. He posted his feelings on Operation Rescue's Web site and others. He has been associated with the anti-government Freemen movement. His ex-wife said part of the reason for their divorce 12 years ago was his "radical views."

Radical views. That's what they are. Out there. Crazy. But right in line with the Republican Party. Why, just the other day the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, told CNN he was too busy to tell his fellow partiers to stop calling Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist, even though he disagreed with the tactic, because he was just too busy.

Look. I've got a big job to do dealing with 40 Senate Republicans and trying to advance the nation's agenda, and better things to do than be the speech police over people who have their views about a very important appointment.

Guess he hasn't really had time to tell folks to stop inciting violence either. Like Sunday's violence. Like the violence in Tennessee a year ago where another "isolated incident" saw James David Atkisson kill two people at a Unitarian Universalist Church because he didn't like liberals. Or loner Eric Robert Rudolph, who targeted family planning clinics, gay bars and the Olympics for his fury (Rev. Spitz, can you find me over here?) Or Timothy McVeigh, for that matter.

And then they wonder why the Department of Homeland Security would dare to issue a report on extremist right wing violence. I suspect the right wingers were really upset about that report because they knew that they, in fact, are the extremists and worried the rest of us might catch on.

They shouldn't be concerned. You and I, we already know. And my colleagues will treat this incident just like they've treated all the others so nobody else will make the connection.

But that's a connection we all need to make. The anger these folks harbor is just below the surface and breaking through. They lack the ability to handle such a strong force sanely. They believe they are justified in whatever they do. They have been poked and prodded repeatedly by their leaders, some of whom do their poking and prodding by turning away and ignoring the most egregious of the pokes and prods.

The "deranged individuals" who carry out these terrorist acts don't just snap one day. They've been pushed to this logical outcome for years.

Expect more of it.


And do your best to counter it. Tell the truth. Tell my colleagues to tell the truth. It's the only way we can break a millennia long habit of resorting to violence when we don't get our way. Those who resort to violence believe they have no other choice. But they do.

It's called acceptance. Hard concept, I know, for those who have no doubts in their righteousness.

For George Tiller and his family, it's too late. But there's still time for others. Make sure it's not too late for them.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Rundown of a nominee

Check this out. It's the last several tweets from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (isn't it a little creepy when creepy guys like Newt Gingrich use Twitter?).

Never mind the gas chamber and Baptist missionary family stuff. Look at this most recent one:

White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

White male idiot should shut the fuck up.

Losing to win

Sometimes, to lose is to win.

I say this because I’m secretly hoping that tomorrow, when the California Supreme Court releases its decision on same sex marriage, that we lose.

I know. Shocking for me to say, isn’t it? But it’s true. I hope the court lets Proposition 8 stand.

Go ahead, call me a traitor if you like. Not like that’s never happened before. But I have what I think are some pretty good reasons. Two of them, if you’re looking for details.

First, in the event of an adverse ruling, the same-sex marriage folks in California will do the same thing the Prop 8 people have done – they’ll put a ballot initiative up every year, over and over again, until it wins. And it will win. The river progress is with us on this. It’s only a matter of time. We’d just trade immediate gratification for – in my view – a more secure decision later.

Which brings me to reason No. 2. We’re dealing with some very unstable people here. A significant number of the anti-same-sex marriage crowd is not dealing with a full deck on this or very many other issues.

They sincerely believe that allowing gay men and lesbians to marry would be the end of civilization as we know it. In a way, they’re right – but they’re predicting a decline into depravity and wanton sin, while I’m seeing a more holistic society that fully values every member. Two completely different views that have absolutely nothing in common.

Because they see nothing good ever coming from same-sex marriage, they’re pretty much prepared to do anything they have to in order to prevent that from ever happening.

Anything.

If they lose, it won’t be because their proposition violated the California constitution. It’ll be because liberal activist judges nullified the will of the people. It will piss them off. A lot. It will make them crazier than they already are. Dave Neiwart at Orcinus:

And you can bet that right-wing True Believers across the country are going to be looking for targets to take out their frustration on. As I’ve written recently, they already think this government is not their own, and are moving into opposition to it. They really believe that the continued greatness of America is at stake, and they are the last line of defense against complete moral chaos. If this happens, God will withdraw his blessing from the US, and America will lose everything. They will not let that happen. Passing a gay marriage law in California -- the biggest and most influential state of all -- will be their Harper's Ferry, their Pearl Harbor. After that -- the deluge.

And there are more of them than you think. Not enough to win. But enough to inflict serious damage on this country – already reeling from the moral, legal and economic disaster that was the Bush administration.

And worse yet is the potential damage they could inflict on us. They don’t see us as human, not we gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered folk and not you “normal” folk who support us. We’re the enemy. We’re what’s keeping them from God’s kingdom. And God, that jealous, vengeful and spiteful deity, has no use for us.

We’re expendable.

The country is strong enough to withstand this demagoguery. It would suffer a blow, perhaps even a devastating one that brings us to our knees. But it won’t kill us as a country.

It could kill us as a people, as innocent humans doing nothing more than living our lives as we have a right to do.

So, I hope we lose. We don’t need to be in such a hurry, not at the price we could be forced to pay for victory. California is too big – it’s not Vermont, or New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut or Massachusetts. For the right wing to lose there push those among them already too close to the edge over that lip and into the abyss of complete insanity.

The potential for violence is undeniable. And frankly, I’d rather see us avoid a bloodbath and wait just a little longer. I know I’d feel safer. And I'd feel better about the rest of you, too.

We'll win this one. If not now, later, but it will happen. I'd just like to see us do it with no loss of life.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Progressive globalization

It's nearly the end of another long weekend -- at least for some of you. Me, there are no holidays in the news biz. I'm lucky to have weekends off from the daily grind of the newsroom. So I'll be heading back there tomorrow, where the latest installment of We Love the Troops Day will finally be winding down.

Now don't get me wrong. I certainly support our troops -- where they serve honorably, ethically and morally, as I suspect most are.

But there are, as we've been told, a few "bad apples" in the bunch who stink up the place and cast a really bad pall on everybody else. And that goes for some of the lower ranked troops they command as well.

Ha. You thought I was talking about the non-coms, didncha? I certainly coulda been. We've seen plenty of Article 31 hearings and courts martial -- some of which actually ended in convictions but most of which let the accused off with little more than a slap on the wrist, if anything -- and even a murder trial for a former soldier now convicted of raping and killing an Iraqi teenaged girl and killing most of her family.

But nah. I'm much more concerned about the guys who give the orders, who set the tone for the troops who fight and work under them. No, I'm not letting the little guys off either -- a soldier has a duty to question illegal orders. But the real culprits, the ones who never seem to suffer the consequences of their actions, are the officers. The high ranking officers, and their civilian masters.

Take Abu Ghraib, for example. And handful of bad apple soldiers were convicted, and a couple of officers got minor disciplinary actions. Except for the general in command of Abu Ghraib at the time, one Janis Karpinski. You will notice that she is not the typical male general. However, a typical male general -- Geoff Miller, who set the tone at Guantanamo before coming to Abu Ghraib -- was working the interrogations at the notorious prison. But it was Karpinski who got busted.

Miller? The guy who trained soldiers in torture techniques retired a major general. To be fair, Congress delayed his retirement because they thought he wasn't completely truthful with them about torture, but they eventually relented. If GW were still president, he'd probably get a Medal of Freedom. As it was, he did get a Distinguished Service Medal.

Karpinski was forced to retire as a colonel although she told the truth. How convenient to have a woman scapegoat available.

And the civilians. Well, we already know that not even Barack Obama is gonna hold their feet to the fire. He's letting the Dick and Liz show set the tone, and it's working like a charm. Americans are absolutely convinced now that torture is a pretty bad thing, but it's necessary to keep America safe from the evil Muslims. I mean terrorists.

Meanwhile, our friendly neighborhood Congressional Democrats are busy doing what they do best -- fuck up the best chance of having an actual liberal government with liberal policies and liberal outcomes that serve the greater good rather than do good for the greater wealth of this country.

And the Republicans. Oh my god, the Republicans. They seem to get more out of sync with the universe every day, while my colleagues fall all over themselves to make sure their every utterance is broadcast to the world as if it were the words of someone who actually understands the world, you know, like, Gandhi or somebody.

And yet ... and yet ... for all the surface sameness we're seeing these first few months of the Obama presidency -- and there is quite a bit -- there's quite a bit different as well. Hell, just having a Democrat in office makes it quite a bit different from the last eight years. And really, do you think Darth Cheney would have come out from whatever dark hole he lives in and put himself all over our televisions if he weren't worried that Obama was gonna fuck up everything he worked so hard for? Hell no, he wouldn't.

But the biggest difference isn't playing out on television. It's not even on the radio or in the newspapers. You see a little of it at some of the Big Blogs, but those places are so infected with the virus of popularity now that they, too, have lost touch with the common ground.

But places like this, well, this is the common ground. I've spent the last several days preparing for A World of Progress' upcoming redesign (oops, Publisher Lady, was I not sposed to mention that yet?), and as part of that I've actually had a look at just about every post on the site, from calls to action to personal stories to hints on making a compost pile to political rants.

And in each and every post I found the same thing -- a yearning to learn, to improve, to help others along this long and difficult path. To progress beyond both the petty and the personal and to redefine the way we look at globalization, heretofore viewed as some nefarious plot for the wealthy to secure their hold on us by both the right and the left.

But that's just the obvious part, carried out by obvious people in pursuit of their obvious enrichment. The real acts of globalization are taking place right here, where an American man living in Mumbai reads a post by a journalist in one of the media capitals of the United States and wants to publish it in an online magazine he writes for published by a woman in the Appalachian Mountains.

That worked out pretty well, so soon the journalist is fully on board, along with an historian with degrees in U.S. and Middle Eastern history, a lesbian on the West Coast, an environmentalist in Texas and a whole bunch of contributors who make A World of Progress one of the most exciting spots on this thing we call Internet.

I knew that, but going through the whole history of the place really made it very, very clear. And I'm not just saying that to curry favor with the boss. The puppy, well, that's another matter altogether.

I like it here so much, in fact, that I'll soon be shutting down my other blogs and posting exclusively here. OK, I'm already posting exclusively here, but soon I'll shut down the other blogs.

But my point, and I do have one, is that it is our leaders who set the tone, who make it clear what's acceptable and not acceptable, who point out the direction we underlings -- no matter how much peer level we actually have -- should be moving.

That's certainly true at dank Iraqi prisons where generals teach torture and walk away with their rank intact. And it's true in places like this where the right people come together at the right time to create something unique and powerful.

Either way, the troops get the message and respond accordingly. The difference plays out across the globe, for better or worse.

But here, unlike at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and who knows how many secret facilities around the world, the good guys win. And when we do, the world benefits.



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Remember 9/11, Cheney style

Sheesh. I go away for a few days and y’all let all hell break loose. Can’t a News Writer catch a little break around here?

But no. I come back to find out that Darth Cheney’s ratings are on the rise? What the????

OK, so it’s still only 37 percent of Americans with a favorable view of the former vice president, who spent the last eight years hidden away in some undisclosed location but whom we now cannot seem to be rid of.

Meanwhile, GW, who never missed a chance to smirk at a camera, is nowhere to be seen. I repeat, WTF? And the Republican Party can’t get its shit together.

The Republican National Committee, which I think is still led by Michael Steele, seems almost irrelevant, while Rush, Newt and Cheney are all over the place calling for Nancy Pelosi’s resignation and claiming that torture is a good thing.

That, of course, is the basis for Cheney’s popularity rising -- he’s attracting the attention of the bloodthirsty on the right, the ones he and GW worked their magic on for eight years, scaring the bejesus out of ‘em so that now they’re absolutely petrified that the pansy-assed liberals in charge are gonna sell us all out to the terrorists.

It’s the same reason that Fox “News” has seen its ratings skyrocket since a liberal black guy became president. That’s pretty damn scary to certain segments of our population.

So anyway, Cheney was out there Thursday using that old tactic that worked so well for so many years for the GOP -- insert “9/11” every 14th or 15th word, just like Rudy Giuliani -- in a speech that could only be called preaching to the converted, the very conservative American Enterprise Institute.

When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support. And when he faults or mischaracterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer. The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our President’s understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.

What that means is that as long as Obama agrees with what we did, he’s on the right track and we’ll support him. But it’s the same old same old if he disagrees -- after all, we all know that the previous administration never ever ever made a mistake. Except I think for boasting about smoking Osama bin Laden out of his cave. Yeah, that didn’t turn out so good.

It's the Cheney battle cry: Remember 9/11! But that's kinda like the Texan battle cry Remember the Alamo, which was also based on a fanciful retelling of the truth.

And the rest of Cheney’s speech is just more of the same, accusing Democrats of “distorting the truth” and therefore being “in no position to lecture anyone about ‘values.’” We prevented attacks and saved lives by torturing people and spying on Americans with illegal wiretaps, we had “universal support back then” because everybody knew what was at stake, blah blah blah.

Well, no. Everybody knew what the Bush administration told them, which, we now know, was a stack of lies. The justification for illegally torturing and spying on people is that “we saved lives,” but that’s not exactly true either, as plenty of other people have pointed out.

But old Darth, he just keeps on going, just like he kept making that non-existent connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda way back when. Kinda like publishing photographs of them using the same gesture side by side.

And we do know this, if nothing else: When somebody keeps repeating the same shit day after day, and my colleagues keep reporting as if it actually means something, then the people who already believe the bullshit have no reason to think and those who might be unsure have no choice to consider that the lies are actually truth.

They are not.

The whole Nancy Pelosi thing -- please. What a blatant distraction, but then, some of our fellow citizens have not been known for their ability to see through obfuscation.

And on it goes. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again -- if Nancy Pelosi knew we were torturing people and did nothing, then she is culpable. But now is not the time to be arguing that part of the story. Now we need to get to the bottom of what we did, to understand that what we did was morally, ethically and legally wrong and then to punish first those who actively made it happen. After that, we can get to what member of what committee may or may not have been briefed on waterboarding.

And besides, where Pelosi’s concerned, the GOP has been after her for years. I’m not quite sure why they’re so afraid of her, except that she is a woman and she is right behind Joe Biden -- and before that Cheney himself -- in line for the presidency, but they are absolutely terrified of the California congresswoman.

Meanwhile, Cheney -- who appeared to be salivating on the idea of a fresh terrorist attack on the United States, which could then be blamed on Obama and all thought of that August 2001 daily briefing saying that bin Laden wanted to attack the United States and might use airliners to do it could be done away with forever.

And the Rush-Newt-Cheney cabal keeps pushing the horrible idea of actually imprisoning suspected terrorists -- most of whom are not terrorists -- in the United States and trying them in American courts. And some of them actually have the nerve to say that they don’t want them tried in American courts because then they’d have constitutional rights. Hello? Isn’t that what this country was founded on? But that doesn’t really count if your Muslim, I mean a terrorist, I guess.

Obama, also speaking on Thursday, saw things a different way.

After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era - that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out. Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that - too often - our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us - Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens - fell silent. In other words, we went off course.

On the Guantanamo debate, the president was just as clear.

Now, over the last several weeks, we have seen a return of the politicization of these issues that have characterized the last several years. I understand that these problems arouse passions and concerns. They should. We are confronting some of the most complicated questions that a democracy can face. But I have no interest in spending our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years. I want to solve these problems, and I want to solve them together as Americans. And we will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue. Listening to the recent debate, I've heard words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them; words that have more to do with politics than protecting our country.

So, here's the choice: Follow Cheney, and return to the fearful days of the Bush administration, where bogeys are around every corner and your neighbor could be a Muslim, I mean, terrorist.

Or, stick with Obama. Yeah, so he’s going back to the military commissions -- but do you really believe those commissions under Obama would be conducted with the same disregard for the rule of law as they were under Bush-Cheney? Um, no.

All right then. Here’s the deal. Don’t let my colleagues continue to act as if Darth Cheney has anything new to say. Well, yeah, for him it is new since he never said much before, but what he’s saying is the same crap they force-fed us after they failed to protect us on 9/11. Don’t let ‘em do it again.Don’t let my colleagues help them. Challenge them. Often. Loudly.

And never, ever back down. That’s how we win. That’s how we keep the real forces of darkness away.

AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!


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Enough with Nancy Pelosi

My colleagues are at it again, and by that I mean they are salivating over Republican talking points and ignoring the real issues.

This week's diversion, of course, is the dizzying discussion of what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it, as if that actually matters. Whether Pelosi, or any other member of Congress knew or did not know about what the Bush administration was doing in the name of the American people but behind our backs is irrelevant.

What matters is what the Bush administration did and why did they hide it.

The second part of that is easily answered. They hid it because they knew it was wrong. They knew it was torture, and they knew it was wrong. Period. End of story. Despite my beloved colleagues game attempts to convince you otherwise, there is no gray area here. The "ticking bomb" scenario only happens on "24." So let me say this again.

Torture is wrong. The Bush administration tortured people in our names. Torture is wrong. Always.

So please. Let's shut up about what the CIA did or did not tell Nancy Pelosi in 2002. Let's talk about what the United States was doing to detainees in 2002. And 2003. And 2004. All the way up until George W. Bush left office. Maybe longer.

Let's talk about how many of the detainees who underwent torture -- and torture goes far beyond waterboarding -- were actually "terrorists" at all. And how many of them came to hate the United States after their treatment at the hands of U.S. interrogators.

And let's talk about how the vice president's office desperately wanted some connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and it didn't really matter if it was true or not. They only wanted to be able to say they had "intelligence" connecting them. What they didn't say, though, was that the "intelligence" was wrung out of detainees under torture. What would you tell an interrogator if you were waterboarded 83 times in a month? 183 times?

Let's talk about an administration that bent the Constitution to its will and wants it to stay that way so that no one will know the extent to which they undermined the very foundation of this country.

And let's launch an investigation of these things. An independent investigation that can look into everything -- including what Nancy Pelosi knew or didn't know, what she objected to or didn't object to.

But most of all, let's stop this insane game of speculation, coming up with document after document, each one appearing to contradict the one before -- but all of them being a very vague and incomplete record of a shadowy and hidden policy.

Nancy Pelosi isn't the problem here, and yet my colleagues have spent countless hours discussing her, and virtually no hours discussing why there's even a question about her role at all.

It's time to stop. Now.

It's time to stop being afraid, time to own up to what's been done by us and to us.

Time to stop pretending to be a moral giant among nations and actually become one.

Time to say the word "torture" and look it square in the face, to acknowledge that this is what we did.

Until we do, recovery from the disaster of the last eight years will elude us. This point is key. It is the very symbol of the depravity that follows when a nation's leadership believes the law does not apply to them, no matter how "great" that nation believes itself to be.

We must put it behind us. But before we do, we have to take it all in, embrace what we did, as distasteful as that is. Only then can we truly let it go and move on.

To do otherwise is to condemn ourselves to follow this destructive path again.

Enough with the distractions. Nancy Pelosi is not the issue. Nancy Pelosi is just a shiny object the Republicans are dangling in front of our ADHD eyes. And we, my colleagues and I, are jumping after it like a cat after a moth. Even if we catch it, the victory will be insubstantial because we've ignored the real issue.

Torture. That's the real issue -- the only one that matters in this discussion.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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