Interesting story

Long story short; 16 members of a National Guard group were ordered to take trucks and drive contaminated jet fuel to somewhere; because the fuel was contaminated with diesal it was unusable. The convey would be largely unprotected, the trucks were old, and the soldiers figured they had about a 75% chance of getting attacked by insurgents. So they refused to go. They were under arrest for a day and now the incident is being covered up.

The story is here at Salon. I hate to admit this but I'm really not sure how to react to this. On the one hand, I can't think that the idea of optional orders is good for army discipline. On the other hand, I wouldn't have wanted to go either, certainly not if the mission was so much of a waste of time.

What do you think?

Holy Toledo

Here's a picture from Toledo.



For my conservative readers, I regret to tell you this isn't the start of "Operation Round Up All The Liberals Once And For All." While I assume that is still in the works, this is actually in response to some freelance patriots who took it upon themselves to attack the Headquarters of the Democratic Party in Toledo. Maybe they were Protest Warriors or a splinter group.

The Lucas County Democratic Headquarters was burglarized overnight, and three computers, including the party's main system, were stolen.

The computers contained highly sensitive information, including the party's financial information, names and personal phone numbers of hundreds of party members, candidates, and volunteers.

The computers also stored e-mails from candidates that included discussion about campaign strategy.

Seems like there was another campaign burglary that upset the political balance once upon a time. Thank goodness the Republicans are the party of law and order and won't tolerate these kinds of shenanigans.

Round the Horn Part 1, In Which Numbering Becomes Infinite

You know the score by now. Here we go.

blogAmy has a very thoughtful article on what remember September 11 means, or what a post 9/11 mentality means.

All Facts and Opinion has a pretty solid take on Michael Moore and the President's father.

And Then . . . has some pretty good news for Senator Kerry on the debate was perceived.

Steve Gilliard's News Blog also has a good analysis of the debate and how President Bush looks at unemployment.

Rooks Rant also has some comments on the debate and the three faces of President Bush.

Pen-Elayne on the Web also has a question about the Debate, God's Mouth and President Bush's Earpiece.

Chris "Lefty" Brown has a great line on President Bushs jobs creation program.

Mercury X23s Fantabalous Blog has a great suggestion for a Halloween costume involving a beloved space alien and a beloved revolutionary figure.

Collective Sigh has an interesting perspective on the whole Swift Boat Vet controversy.

Rubber Hose has a story about the deaths of sea turtles and the deaths of American Soldiers in Iraq and the relative importance of each.

Fatboy Slim's new album, Palookaville is very good. Not really germaine but felt like saying it. See you later.

Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

I like Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. They are tasty. And I applaud some of the changes of pace Reeses has thrown my way with the limited edition cups. I enjoyed the inside out Peanut Butter Cup. I like the White Chocolate Peanut butter cup. And now Reeses has introduced a new flavor of Peanut Butter Cup.



First of all isn't saying it's Extra Smooth and Creamy a lot like saying "It's just like our product, only better?" Why not make it that way all the time?

Secondly, out of a blind taste test, two out of the three people I imposed it on thought that the regular peanut butter cup was in fact the special "extra smooth and creamy one." That's not a large enough sample to mean much, but it's means something. Sort of.

Adding it up

Thomas Friedman has a very good editorial today at the New York Times.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear the president and vice president slamming John Kerry for saying that he hopes America can eventually get back to a place where "terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don't know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives.

. . . That's why Mr. Kerry was actually touching something many Americans are worried about - that this war on terrorism is transforming us and our society, when it was supposed to be about uprooting the terrorists and transforming their societies.

He's not wrong. More and more this war seems to have taken on totemistic significance in Republican rhetoric. September 11th changed everything we are told again and again, and, coincidently enough, it changed everything in such a way as to invalidate liberalism forever. Or so we are told.

Anyway it's a good article.

Debate Analysis

Here at Make Me a Commentator!!! we promise the most intense debate analysis ever as we literally go word by word to tell you what the candidates said and what they meant. We are using the transcript from the New York Times, so let's dive right in.

The first question was to President Kerry and was as follows.

Senator, I want to set the stage for this discussion by asking the question that I think hangs over all of our politics today and is probably on the minds of many people watching this debate tonight. And that is will our children and grandchildren ever live in a world as safe and secure as the world in which we grew up?

The first word in Kerry's response was "Well" which was frankly a terrible choice. Well doesn't convey a presidential timber, and it reminds one of well, wells, like the one Bart fell in, in that one Simpsons episode with Sting. "Well" can be used on occasion effectively, but in this case I think it didn't convey the sort of presidential material we've come to expect from Senator Kerry.

Senator Kerry improved vastly with his second word which was "first." First of course calls to mind the idea that Senator Kerry came in "first" in the first debate, and his hopes that he'll come in "first" in November. I don't think Senator Kerry could say "First" enough, really.

But inevitably, Senator Kerry falls prey to the third word syndrome, selecting the tiny word "of." There's nothing wrong with a workmanlike word like "of" in everyday speech, but I think America expects more out of a Potential President. Compare the humble word "of" to "flamingo" or to "supermodel." Which words get your pulse pulsing? I don't think it's "of." Admittedly it might be hard to work "flamingo" into an answer to that question, but as President Bush often says, being President is about hard choices and hard work and various other hard things.

His fourth word was "all," completing the phrase "first of all." In this he partially redeems himself for the use of the word "of." As part of a phrase it's far less odious. Still I think we have to ask ourselves; is "first of all" really better than "first" by itself? What if he had created some phrase, conveying the same idea but containing the word "cherry-red?" There's just a sense that more could have been done at this point.

Now Kerry hits one out of the park with his next word, "Bob." This may not have occurred to you, but there are literally dozens of guys around the United States named "Bob." Each one of them felt for a moment that Senator Kerry was talking directly to them. Perhaps an answer composed entirely of common names might have served the Senator well.

I am going to continue working on this analysis and will post it as soon as I finish, which should be somewhere about 2034.

Debate Responses

1. Just heard President Bush suggest that Senator Kerry wants to follow a law enforcement policy, while he wants to use all the tools in our arsenal. Frankly it shouldn't come as any surprise that I think it's President Bush who doesn't want to use certain tools, notably the diplomatic corps and the international law enforcement agencies.

2. And here I was just going to go get a flu shot, and the President says that I shouldn't. Oh well.

3. Like watching Kerry laughing as President Bush repeats the lie about 98 tax increases. Kerry didn't get a chance to reply. Here's the truth from Factcheck.Org.

Of the 98 votes for "tax increases," 43 were cast on budget measures that only set targets and don't actually legislate tax increases. Often, several votes are counted regarding a single tax bill.

The ad also strives to blame Kerry for raising taxes on the "middle class" and says "There's what Kerry says and then there's what Kerry does." But a close look shows the votes cited in this ad are in fact fairly consistent with Kerry's promise only to raise taxes on those making over $200,000 a year.

4. This is a pretty contentious debate; they don't look like they like each other at all. I also get the impression that this moderator is trying pretty hard to avoid the charge of "liberal bias."

Waiting for the President or Someone Like Him

Continuing our theme of the ease in which the President acknowledges mistakes, we point you to this "online debate" between Senator John Kerry, Private Citizen Ralph Nader, and President George W. Bush at Slashdot. If you flip down to number 11, you see this interesting question.

When is it appropriate for a leader to change their opinion? Both sides have been accused of flip-flopping on important issues - President Bush on establishing the Dept. of Homeland Security and steel tariffs, Senator Kerry on the Iraq war. But changing opinion due to thoughtful reconsideration ought not to be derided as flip-flopping. Tell us about a time when you had an honest change of opinion on a topic of national importance.

I will admit that none of them answered the question directly, but the President's answer is particularly enlightening, and I will reprint it in its entirety.

President Bush declined to answer this question. - Editor

The Past

Here's a famous quotation.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Here is a quotation from an article on last Friday's Presidential Debate.

For me, the defining moment of this match was the last question of the evening, directed to the President. The questioner asked: "President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it." The question clearly struck a raw nerve, you could see it in the way his eyes narrowed into paper cuts. Bush huffed about accepting the verdict of historians, which is just another way of saying, "as I see things now, I'm perfect". He even balefully accused the questioner of having veiled motive, of trying to trap him into some admission about Iraq saying, "That's really what you're ? when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, "Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?" And the answer is, "Absolutely not." It was the right decision."

But I think the questioner was actually trying to induce the President into a moment of more general introspection on his own character. Eventually he reluctantly mentioned that he'd made appointments that were mistakes, which is to say, the mistakes were yet again external; the products of being disappointed by lesser men he has no control over. Any guesses that those appointments he had in mind were the people who disagreed with him (Richard Clarke? Paul O'Neill?). In short, it seems he thinks his only mistake was in appointing a choice few people who thought that he could be mistaken.

Here is another quote.

"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." - William Faulkner

Enjoy tonight's debate if you are so inclined.

Should Presidents Lie?

Why should we care about the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq? Because that was the rationale presented to American for invading Iraq. They have such spun a myriad of other explanations from grandiose plans to remake the Middle East, to such fantasies as the Flypaper Strategy, to the trivia of Saddam Hussein gaming the Oil for Food program (trivia compared to Weapons of Mass Destruction, at an rate).

There is pretty strong evidence that that wasn't the real reason; that many elements in the government knew that the WMDs claims were overblown, but that this was the rationale most likely to be accepted. Like many actions, the war in Iraq was probably motivated by a number of factors, predominately a desire to remake the Middle East and thus limit the problems (a laudable goal, but one that seems to be moving further away right now, rather than closer).

Eric Alterman at the Nation discusses this problem in an article at the Nation entitled "When Presidents Lie."

Joseph Cropsey, a close friend and colleague of Strauss's at the University of Chicago, as well as the editor of his work, explains that in Straussian thought, a degree of public deception is considered absolutely necessary. "That people in government have to be discreet in what they say publicly is so obvious--'If I tell you the truth I can't but help the enemy.'"

However high-minded, the argument does not really convince. With few exceptions, Presidents lie largely not for the reasons above but for reasons of political convenience. The decisions to lie were bred of a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the practice of American democracy. American Presidents have no choice but to practice the diplomacy of Great Power politics, but American citizens have rarely if ever been asked to understand the world in those terms.

The White House lied because they believe that if they told the truth, we wouldn't support them in what they wanted to do. They might have been right; we have no way of knowing now

Alterman goes on to explore the effect of these deceptions on our ability to act as wise citizens and voters.

Nuisance

OK, first question, is there anybody out there who thinks, barring the Second Coming, we are going to totally eliminate all terrorists? If you do please post in the comments section. Now bear in mind I'm not asking you to argue with the premise of my question; I'm simply asking if you think we can eliminate all terrorists?

If you do think that we can eliminate all terrorists I would ask you to consider the following. Terrorism is a tactic not an organizational characteristic. Other than a few psychos, most people don't join a terrorist organization to become terrorists. They join a terrorist organization to promote their political agenda (say freeing the Palestinians or protecting the unborn) and then select terrorism as a tactic to further that agenda. How do you win a war against a tactic?

This is all related to a comment Senator Kerry made last week, that I'm sure you've all heard.

We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.

Tony Blankley takes on this comment and puts it in the context of the intra-organization fights in the Bush Administration. Specifically the CIA and the State Department are treasonous dogs for disagree with President Bush. Basically, Kerry is expressing the State Department and CIA's opinion, and they are all wrong.

The problem is nuance. The metaphor of a war against terrorism is so powerful that it's hard to abandon or even minimize. So when Kerry talks about fighting Terrorism using all the weapons in our arsenal (including military options, but also including diplomatic tools and law enforcement agencies), Blankley sees that as weakness, and believes that such a procedure would lead to total capitulation.

At the minimum such a policy would tend to drive us to withdraw from the world as instructed by bin Laden or his successors. Certainly we would abandon Israel. Probably we would abandon the Middle East oil fields to the control by the terrorist regime. Doubtlessly we would have to pay tribute (foreign aid) to beneficiaries designated by the terrorists in "compensation for our past abuses." We might well try to tamp down the export of our Hollywood, MTV culture to appease the terrorist's sensitivities. Perhaps we would have to offer special dispensations to Islamic Americans.

Yep. I suggest you try to line this future up along side Senator Kerry's performance at the debates. See if he sounds this weak.

But of course this is what the Republicans want the election to be about. It can't be about President Bush's performance because there isn't much there to praise (even his supporters admit that while his programs are definitely going to pay off, they haven't yet. The election can't be about the real John Kerry. So it has to be about a caricature of John Kerry.

More on the "L" Word

Reading Robert Scheer's latest article, who's covering the same ground as Robert Novak, albeit from a completely different perspective.

I like liberals. They gave us the five-day workweek; ended child labor; invented unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare; and led us, despite fierce opposition from "America First" pseudo-patriots on the political right, to victory over fascism in World War II. Liberals also ended racial segregation and gave women the vote.

But when Bush used the L-word in the second presidential debate, Kerry did not defend that proud progressive tradition. Nor did I expect him to. Kerry is one of those New Democrats who rejects the "liberal" label that I find so honorable. After all, Kerry, as he bragged in the debate, voted for the atrocious 1996 welfare reform bill, which has contributed to the 4 million additional people, mostly children, pushed below the poverty line during Bush's tenure.

The problem is that "New" Democrats have won and won big; most notably in Bill Clinton but elsewhere as well. It's hard to argue with success.

The Scarlet Letter

This is Robert Novak's pithy metaphor for a label he asserts that Senator Kerry is trying desperately to avoid. In other words, L is for Liberal.

It seems like a lifetime since July 1991 when Sen. Kerry declared: "I'm a liberal, and proud of it." Thirteen years later, the L-word is forbidden language for Kerry. He is attempting what only Bill Clinton among recent Democratic candidates has accomplished: covering left-of-center policies with a facade of moderation.

It's kind of funny how after decades of conservatives trying every way they know how to demonize liberals ("Even fanatical Muslim terrorists don't hate America like liberals do." - Ann Coulter), some liberals are now uncomfortable being described as liberal.

For that reason I wish John Kerry would accept and dignify the label liberal. Several years ago the Republican Party put up Barry Goldwater, a presidential candidate who was unabashedly conservative. This came after a period of Liberalism triumphant. Liberalism had desegregated the South and was beginning to grapple with all sorts of problems facing America. Conservatives hadn't been demonized per se, but they'd done a bit of demonizing of themselves (particularly Southern Democratic Conservatives like Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus). Still Goldwater ran on a staunch Conservative platform and lost. But he reinvigorated the Conservative movement, leading to the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

We are going to need that kind of a turnaround on the liberal side sometime. Still, this year, I'd rather have Senator Kerry defeat President Bush. You can see that as a abdication of principles if you like. Principles won't bring back people that President Bush sends off on his military adventures and they won't feed people hurt by his economic policies. Perhaps if there is going to be a change in how people look at the word liberal, it has to come from the ground floor.

Secrets of Make me a Commentator!!! revealed!

Not that this should come as a huge surprise. I have a 15 minutes till lunch; and I haven't read anything I want to write on. I want another post, but don't want to do a ton of work finding an article and critiquing it. What do I do?

Pull up Paul Krugman's latest article, praise his impressive writing, lift a quote, and call it a day. Easy.

His latest article concerns the Bush administrations ability to willfully ignore what doesn't fit their gameplan.

How did the occupation of Iraq go so wrong? (The security situation has deteriorated to the point where there are no safe places: a bomb was discovered on Tuesday in front of a popular restaurant inside the Green Zone.)

The insulation of officials from reality is central to the story. They wanted to believe Ahmad Chalabi's promises that we'd be welcomed with flowers; nobody could tell them different. They wanted to believe - months after everyone outside the administration realized that we were facing a large, dangerous insurgency and needed more troops - that the attackers were a handful of foreign terrorists and Baathist dead-enders; nobody could tell them different.

. . . The point is that in the real world, as opposed to the political world, ignorance isn't strength. A leader who has the political power to pretend that he's infallible, and uses that power to avoid ever admitting mistakes, eventually makes mistakes so large that they can't be covered up. And that's what's happening to Mr. Bush.

That is one value of the debates; it exposes these contradictions. In effect, President Bush and Senator Kerry are presenting two different realities, and it is up to the voters to decide which one seems more realistic.

Liberals Just Don't Understand.

Laura Ingraham covers, in her latest article, a number of things Presidential Candidate John Kerry and we liberals just don't understand.

Apparently John Kerry and Liberals don't believe that this is a dangerous world. John Kerry doesn't realize that most nations of the world are going to act in their own self interest. He doesn't understand that we can't trust other nations to protect us.

Of course, anybody who watched the debates realizes that this is all poppycock. This is a sad attempt to reinvigorate the caricature of Senator Kerry that the Republicans have spent many months trying to create. The thing about caricatures is that they have to have some bearing in reality for them to really work.

She also criticizes Senator Kerry's line about a global test. For reference here is that section of the first Presidential debate.

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

Conservatives like to pretend this is some sort of amazing contradiction. "You say that you won't cede power, but then demand that such power be subject to some sort of global test?"

It's more of a matter of cause and effect. If we had found weapons of Mass Destruction in Baghdad or if we had found proof that Saddam was directly working with Terrorists than President Bush could present those facts to the world. Instead the opposite has happened. And American prestige and trustworthiness will take a hit.

The question isn't whether or not President Bush or President Kerry should have the power to protect the United States; they should. The question is how should that power and authority be used. Consider the following parable.

Johnny and Jimmy sat on the porch admiring Johnny's new gun. Jimmy said excitedly "That sure is a neat gun Jimmy."

Johnny smiled and said, "Yep, and thank goodness we live in a country where I'm allowed to have a gun."

Jimmy agreed. "Yep, the right to have a gun is something we totally agree on!"

Then Johnny took his gun, and standing on his porch shot out the Widow McIckleson's windows. Jimmy looked horrified. "You shouldn't do that Johnny."

Johnny looked indignent "What are you talking about? I have a right to have a gun, which means I have a right to shoot it."

Jimmy said, "Well, yeah, sure you have the right to defend yourself with your gun, but that don't mean you can shoot it any time you like, Johnny. The whole town's gonna be mighty pissed at you for shooting out the Widow McIckleson's windows."

Johnny grumbled a moment and said, "You can't impose some sort of . . . town test on my right to shoot my gun. That's the same as saying I can't have a gun at all."

Jimmy replied, "Well you can have your gun, but you can't use it like that without getting everybody mad at you; better to save your gun for times when you need to actually protect yourself. And shooting squirrels."

To reiterate, the President has the right to defend America when the time comes; but he shouldn't use that power unwisely. Oh, and please don't take that parable too literally.

Ms. Ingraham also has this crowd pleasing line in her article. "They [meaning Senator Kerry and other liberals] trust anti-American voices around the world more than they trust the American people." Kind of funny when you consider Thomas Sowells article last week wherein he shows just how much conservatives trust the American People to vote. But in all honesty I don't know what this means. Certainly I'd rather President Bush trusted me more than the U.N., but President Bush makes it clear that he doesn't govern by looking at polls (this may or may not actually be true, but he says it a lot) or following public opinion. So I just don't know how much they actually trust us either.

New Quote

As previously posted, new quote and new quotes page. Enjoy!