Tannishblog

The right is bad-mouthing special prosecutors in the wake of the Scooter Libby ruling. As example, they drag out the corpse of Bill Clinton’s saga to compare unfavorably against Scooter.

We obviously cannot know whether the feckless Clinton would have acted more vigorously abroad had he not gone to sleep every night that year thinking about how to escape from the legal consequences of his own tawdry conduct and lies, and been thinking instead about how to protect the country from its enemies.

The assumption is that outing a covert operator who went on record against administration policy is in protection of our fragile, beleaguered nation.

But that’s the warm-up. Then they invoke the fear response.

Now, unlike in the 1990’s, we are at war.

A war of our own making. Funny how that detail is overlooked. The meat of the article is how rogue prosecutors should be under the authority of the executive branch.

To begin with, both cases featured the familiar phenomenon of runaway special counsels. Although the independent-counsel statute under which Clinton was endlessly investigated and ended in his impeachment has expired, it was a recipe for mischief. By vesting executive authority in a prosecutor not subject to the control of the executive branch, Congress had created a constitutional anomaly, one with unintended and destructive effects that plagued Democratic and Republican administrations alike. True, Fitzgerald’s appointment was the result of Attorney General John Ashcroft’s self-recusal, and he was endowed with a different set of powers from those granted to Kenneth Starr, but he operated every bit like a one-case prosecutor, effectively unchecked by line-authority in the executive branch.

It amazes me how some Americans believe that Authoritarianism is an appropriate modality for a modern Democratic Republic. Give it another quarter-century and the children of these people would vote for totalitarianism. The irony is how that would be the last free choice they would ever make. Three words apply: Checks and Balances.

Here’s another slice of steak:

In retrospect, it is clear that the Clinton case, despite the President’s obviously perjured statements, should not have been permitted to move forward. Indeed, as Posner has also argued, the Supreme Court erred grievously when it ruled in 1997, unanimously, to allow a sitting President to be caught up in civil litigation involving sex.

20-20 hindsight. To say "We shouldn’t have" cannot excuse the fact that you did. Ask any parent of a hung-over teenager the morning after prom. The Clinton "scandal" was a political firing squad whose only purpose was to hijack the American government. It worked. But while the Republican congress feasted on the sanctity of presidential impeachment proceedings, devaluing the institution in the process, Americans like you and me were losing health care, education funding, social security benefits and jobs. But that wasn’t important at the time, nor has it been important since.

Back to Poor Scooter:

We do not yet know what the price tag will be for the Libby distraction, just as we do not know if his conviction will be tossed out on appeal or result in a presidential pardon.

So, one man’s justice is another man’s distraction - interesting. Bill Clinton’s sexual discretion was a crime of magnitude wherein he put the nation at greater risk of terrorists and killed thousands of soldiers and half a million foreign nationalists all the while bankrupting the nation through deceit, mismanagement, graft, and profiteering. Scooter Libby, by contrast, just lied to protect a vice president that had trouble keeping his Johnson zipped up.

Wait - did I get that backward?

The right wing blogophiles have been having fun dissing Al Gore and his supposed energy-gluttony. One goes as far as to compare Gore’s Tennessee mansion with George Bush’s four bedroom Texas ranch, as if apples and cucumbers have anything in common. The talk is about double standards and how Al’s a hypocrite. Try as I might, I cannot find a reference to the hypocrisy of a whole administration for four years of beating dissenters over the head with "Support the Troops" while ignoring the needs of wounded soldiers in VA hospitals. Can you?

The denizens of Right Blogistan are slamming the man, Hollywood’s latest fling, because he’s the darling of the Left Coast. They cannot slam his massage. Even the head-in-sand diehards are grudgingly and grumpily conceding that the weather has been uppity. So, the only thing left is to discredit the dude who has the gumption of forcing them to look where they don’t want to.

Is anyone you know Autistic? CNN reports over half a million adults are living with Autism in the United States. That number will increase as more children with the condition reach maturity. The Center for Disease control estimates that one child in 150 is affected.

None of us can imagine what it’s like. Thanks to YouTube, one adult with Autism has reached out to the world. Through her video "In My Language,", Amanda Baggs describes with elegance what its like to live in a world created for others - a stranger in a strange land, to borrow from Robert Heinlen. Also, she was featured on the "Anderson Cooper 360" show in CNN. The resulting interview, questions provided by audience members, allows the curious a peek into different mentality.

Q: There are three persons with autism in my family. How do you think an island, populated only by autistic persons such as yourself, would function?
Lawrence Decker, Floyd, Virginia

BAGGS: I don’t know. I don’t think I would want to live on an island with people of only one neurological configuration, no matter what it was.

A different neurological configuration: Is it a disease, or is it a mutation? That depends on your viewpoint. If you are in the majority in viewing the current state of humanity as paradigm, then any aberration is distasteful. Labeling an altered mental state a disease is facile, but is it accurate? Amanda clearly would argue to the contrary. As intimated by her video is it us who pay be deficient. Not versed in the science, I take the idea of mutation from my wife who, as a school social worker, has the opportunity to work first hand with Autistic children. In her efforts to do the best social work she can, she’s read up on the subject and tested theories in the kids she knows.

Autism is on the rise. As there’s no known "cure," and given the numbers of people involved, it may soon become as common as deafness, blindness, or any other "affliction." I hesitate to call Autism a disease, although it may bring on a lack of ease in unaffected people, and I ponder the possibility of a "cure." It may very well be like trying to cure a man of ethnicity.

What if autism is proven to be a mutation? What if there comes a day where there may be enough Autistics to become a voting bloc? How would the mainstream react? Greg Bear has written his take on similar issues, although he was careful not to stomp on real science by using Autism in his book: Darwin’s Children. I realize this is speculative fiction, but Sci Fi has been right before. It might be that humanity can learn learn from an altered state of reality. Most Autistics are non-violent, in the conventional sense. That’s a good start.

Thanks to ddjango, writing at at Sinsquanon's Journal, I learn two things: first, On February 6, 2007 Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced in the US House H.R. 808 [PDF], which would establish a cabinet-level US Department of Peace and Nonviolence; second, The Peace Alliance Campaign to Establish a US Department of Peace has been recently formed. From the web site:

Department of Peace. There is currently a bill before the U.S. House of Representatives (HR 808). This landmark measure will augment our current problem-solving options, providing practical, nonviolent solutions to the problems of domestic and international conflict.

Domestically, the Department of Peace will develop policies and allocate resources to effectively reduce the levels of domestic and gang violence, child abuse, and various other forms of societal discord. Internationally, the Department will advise the President and Congress on the most sophisticated ideas and techniques regarding peace-creation among nations. Learn more…

What a beautifully ludicrous idea! I say that because, as is quoted in ddjango's article:

Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

— Hermann Göring

Especially considering the Bush administration's propensity toward ignoring informed council and enforcing the will of POTUS upon all. My inner-Christian, despite all the medication he's on, sometimes causes me to ponder if GWB is the anti-Christ. I'm not the only one, either.

But peace, however unlikely, is an option. Governments have been overturned before, and will be again. Hold on: I'm not advocating violent reform in the name of peace. That would be waging war to produce peace, which in which the United Stated is already involved. But putting peace on the negotiating table, giving it the legitimacy it deserves, is a great start…

What's that I hear, a growing rumbling from the political right? Those who would argue the methods and tactics of Iraqis: how twisted and violent they are; how they would just destroy America one terrorist attack at a time if we change course; are spouting well-established, yet unsubstantiated innuendo. How can anyone be so sure peace won't work it it is never attempted? I submit that the naysayers may be correct, to not discuss all options - especially peaceful resolutions - is to Danse Macabre at the Apocalypso Rag Ball.

While people are killing each other across the globe (what else is new?), famine, AIDS and more warfare in Africa, Mudslides in Jakarta, and all the other wonderful happening on this beautiful Earth, my fellow Chicagoans are stoked about the Super Bowl. (phew! What a sentence.) I guess it’s a matter of priorities…

Meanwhile, today’s headline is - brace yourself - yet another study on climate change and its causes. You’re sitting down, right? he culprit is… humanity! I know you were surprised by that one. CNN headlines a study by French climatologists (is that a word?) placing the blame squarely on everyone’s heads.

"The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the 20-page report.

Human-caused warming and rises in sea-level "would continue for centuries" because the process has already started, "even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized," said the 20-page report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Wait! It get better…

[A] 2001 report projected a sea level rise of up to 35 inches.

Many scientists had warned that this was being too cautious and said sea level rise could be closer to 3 to 5 feet because of ice sheet melt.

But despite losing on that battle, scientists said the report is strong.

"There’s no question that the powerful language is intimately linked to the more powerful science," said one of the study’s many co-authors, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, who spoke by phone from Canada. He said the report was based on science that is rock-solid, peer-reviewed, conservative and consensus.

"It’s very conservative. Scientists by their nature are skeptics."

So what exactly are these skeptics implying must be done?

"What you’re trying to do is get the whole planet under the proverbial tent in how to deal with this, not just the rich countries," Mahlman said Thursday. "I think we’re in a different kind of game now."

[…]

On the war front, a different report illuminates the difference between theory and practice as applied to training Iraq’s "military." Games are being played here, too, and the US of A doesn’t have an updated playbook. Via TPM Muckraker, McClatchy Washington Bureau kindly explains how those pesky Al-Sadr insurgents train their people - with US help. Regarding the Iraqi government’s finest:

"Half of them are JAM. They’ll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night," said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia’s Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. "People (in America) think it’s bad, but that we control the city. That’s not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It’s hostile territory."

These people aren’t stupid. Infiltrate your enemy, get issues their weapons, learn tactics and inside information of strategic significance, then join the other side. Brilliant! Why didn’t the US forces countermand this technique? Political pressure upon the generals.

In hindsight, many American officers said there was too much pressure to give Iraqi army units their own areas of operation, a process that left Iraqi soldiers outmanned, outgunned and easy targets for infiltration and coercion.

"There was a decision … that was probably made prematurely," said Lt. Col. Eric Schacht, a 42-year-old battalion commander in east Baghdad from Glen Mills, Pa. "I think we jumped the gun a little bit."

Al-Sadr’s militia has taken advantage of the chaos.

Iraqi soldiers, for example, often were pushed into the field by Iraqi commanders who didn’t give them adequate food, clothing or shelter, said Etienne, a 1st Infantry Division platoon leader.

Etienne was on patrol one day when he saw Iraqi soldiers eating fresh vegetables and meat. The afternoon before, the same soldiers had complained that they had only scraps of food left. Who’d brought them their meal? It had come courtesy of Muqtada al-Sadr.

OH, the games people play!

I feel the need to say something snarky about "Winning hearts and minds." Give me a minute, it’ll come to me…

The NY Times reminds us of basic math, unimaginable sums and mistaken priorities, as it remarks on the cost of the Iraqi Quagmire. Read: What $1.2 Trillion Buy? I’m reminded how America is borrowing money from the rest of the world, how impossible it will be to pay back, how long that is likely to take, and what a good idea it might be to teach our children Cantonese or Mandarin.

My friend and blogging antithesis, Leucanthemum, has set me off again. In her latest column for her town newspaper, repeated here, she compares the Iraqi War with the Chicago Bears. Let that sink in a moment.

She’s referring to the media’s coverage of President Bush’s flip-flop on the status of the war; from "Absolutely, we’re winning," to "We’re not winning and we’re not losing." (As if the latter comment makes any sense. My father used to talk like that: "I may not always be right, but I’m never wrong." Say What?)

My favorite blogging flower defends the whole debacle, as usual. She’s consistent. But to compare a war to a football game leaves much to ponder. First, football, as all team sports and competitions, are highly stylized battles. That’s their appeal. That such events are entertainment to the masses and by extension huge business enterprises says mush about the un-evolved nature of human tendencies (see yesterday’s posting.) In may ways we’re still approach live much like Neanderthals.

Second, her comparison of a war where, I remind her, people are being killed, to a sporting event shows a great flaw in any person still foolish enough to support this tragedy - the dehumanization and trivialization of systemized, politically sanctioned murder.

Not to flippantly compare a war  with football games, but it seems to me, our troops have a hugely loyal fan base, and a history of mostly winning, even when they’re statistical underdogs.

Oh, but you are.

It’s still midseason, not even at playoffs, yet.   Of course we’re not winning, right now.  But that doesn’t mean we won’t, as long as we don’t do something Chicago-sports-stupid,  like giving up and coming home before the season is over.

The popular eighties band the Police sang about "Too many cameras and not enough food," and that mentality is exemplified by the war-is-spectator-sport crowd. They would rather see blood and destruction than a more evolved attitude of, say, rebuilding Iraq without losing billions of earmarked dollars in the process. I remember Hockey games were more popular with blood on the ice. While the home crowd is cheering, people in Iraq are dying. While we bolster support for a lagging team whose fans are slipping away, collateral damage is leveling cities, destroying families, exacerbating a cultural hatred that needed no help, destroying the lives and future of children both in Iraq and at home when they learn their beloved parents are not coming home.

This is not a sport, people!

I had a friend recently comment on how he always wished the Federal Government ran more like a business. "That’s why I voted for Ross Perot both times," he said.

Umm, yeah…

Yesterday’s post at FinancialSense.com illuminated my friend’s wishes. It seems that the General Accounting Office in Washington slid a little note under the door of the White House. This 172 page report, entitled the Financial Report of the United Stated Government. The news is bleak. The chief comptroller of the GAO is back pedaling in a separate missive. Read Financial Sense’s take, it paints a great picture.

Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the U.S. government’s total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation’s total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000.

As this long-term fiscal imbalance continues to grow, the retirement of the “baby boom” generation is closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement under Social Security in 2008.

Given these and other factors, it seems clear that the nation’s current fiscal path is unsustainable and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the nation’s large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance.

I guess the Government does run like a business. ENRON! But unlike any corporation, there is no Federal program waiting to bail out the affected parties. Most likely when we start bouncing checks to creditors like China, whole sections of America will be forfeit. Let’s all brush up on our Mandarin. Looks like we’ll need it.

I know. It’s a week before the November midterm elections, and You’ve just about had it with the negativity spewing from both sides. Me, too. But I have to share this, coming to me from the Linky& Dinky newsletter, originating at Hightower Lowdown: The August 2006 Poster highlighting the changes wrought my our Most Memorable President.

It’s a PDF. Save it. Email it to any fence-sitters you know. If there are any. Print it out and leave it in the break room at work. No one will know it was you…

Remember Pat Tillman? He was the NFL safety from the Arizona Cardinals who, along with his brother, decided to honor the memories of those killed on 9/11 by quitting his covetous job and joining the Army. I’m sure they was glad to have him. He and his brother Kevin became Army Rangers and were shipped off first to Iraq, then to Afghanistan where Pat died.

The true peculiarity of his story starts there. The Army reported the circumstances of his death to his family and to the nation: he was killed while storming a position along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Read what the world was told in April, 2004:

Tillman, 27, was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, based at Fort Lewis, Wash. The battalion was involved in Operation Mountain Storm in southeastern Afghanistan, part of the U.S. campaign against fighters of the al-Qaida terror network and the former Taliban government along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, military officials told NBC News.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Matthew Beevers said Saturday that Tillman was killed Thursday night in a firefight at about 7 p.m. on a road near Sperah, about 25 miles southwest of a U.S. base at Khost.

After coming under fire, Tillman’s patrol got out of their vehicles and gave chase, moving toward the spot of the ambush. Beevers said the fighting was “sustained” and lasted 15-20 minutes.

A sad story, right? But he’s a hero, now, and America honors its heroes. The media played it up as a testament to the honor and courage of America for all to see.

But the Army lied. By December of 2004, after several months of inquiry, the Army was forced to rescind their original story and tell another one: Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire.

It ended on a stony ridge in fading light. Spec. Pat Tillman lay dying behind a boulder. A young fellow U.S. Army Ranger stretched prone beside him, praying quietly as tracer bullets poured in.

"Cease fire! Friendlies!" Tillman cried out.

Smoke drifted from a signal grenade Tillman had detonated minutes before in a desperate bid to show his platoon members they were shooting the wrong men. The firing had stopped. Tillman had stood up, chattering in relief. Then the machine gun bursts erupted again.

"I could hear the pain in his voice," recalled the young Ranger days later to Army investigators. Tillman kept calling out that he was a friendly, and he shouted, "I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" His comrade recalled: "He said this over and over again until he stopped."

Steve Coll, of the Washington Post, writes a superb eulogy in the above article. He honors the memory of  Pat Tillman and honors the bravery and commitment of our troops on the ground while exposing the lies of our military machine who, it would seem, does neither. It make one wonder how many other lies have been told about the Oil Wars that we’ve not heard about? My father used to tell me: Once a person lies to you, you can never trust them again.

Pat’s birthday is November 6 - the day before the election. Coincidence or Fate? I guess the election’s outcome will decide this question as well as others. Last Thursday, TrughDig.com posted an article from Kevin Tillman who also enlisted and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that Kevin is discharged, he is free to speak his mind. I don’t think he’ll be backing the Republicans this time around:

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after.  It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military.  He spoke about the risks with signing the papers.  How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people.  How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition.  How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out. 

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Please read on. Here is a voice in anguish at the real cost of war. Here is a brave soldier awakening to the horror, the cost of war, weighing this against the romance of ideology perpetrated by our administration and our media. Here is a man who - more than the rest of us - has earned the right to speak out against the terrible state our nation is in. Right here is a National Tragedy. One of many.

That Pat Tillman was already a celebrity was a boon to America. Otherwise his story would fall into the same pit of obscurity that thousands of others have landed. Without his celebrity, we wouldn’t have know the length our military will go to cover it’s own ass, to the detriment of the families who sacrifice its children to feed the war machine. To the detriment of average American powerless to affect change.

Remember Pat Tillman. Honor his memory and the suffering of his family and the thousands of other families suffering from loss or having to adapt to a returned soldier hideously damaged in service to an uncaring ideology. Remember all this as you vote on November 7. May it give you wisdom.