Last Day of Content Challenge, and I have nothing to say

I am sure as hell not going to listen to, watch (hah, couldn't watch anyway, no tv!), or think about that thing tonight that everyone is obsessing about. I suppose tomorrow I'll have to read the transcript, try not to puke, and say something about it.

Max and I are going through a pro-New Zealand phase again. We should post a little 'Emigration Threat Advisory' indicator on the blog. For a few months we've been at Low or Guarded, but now we're probably at Elevated. Unlike the Homeland Security Threat Advisory, ours actually does dip below yellow. LIke the Homeland Security Threat Advisory, however, ours moves mostly for political reasons.

Fine, there was my one mildly amusing thought for the day. I am getting into bed with my Cosmo Dogood's Urban Almanac and my New Yorker.

I, at least, will not have to go to sleep with that man's voice in my head.

Al Gore

From Altercation to Suburban Guerilla to Sideshow to you, an Al Gore brush-with-fame story (not especially interesting, really), and its moral (priceless):

I do wonder how stupid our press corps must be to think that George Bush is the guy to have a beer with, and Al Gore is wooden and bland. I was a dumbass twenty year old, but these people seem so unable to recognize commitment to service as opposed to commitment to power.

We are not tilting at windmills

I'm not sure who decided that the Kerry-led filibuster had to be called quixotic. I'd suspect it was a Republican talking point if I believed that the Republicans would ever put out talking points involving the word "quixotic". Have you ever been to the GOP website and seen how their action alerts are full of bold type, underlining, and all caps? No, don't go now, it's vomit-inducing.

In any case, whatever it was, it was not quixotic. Don Quixote was delusional. He tilted at windmills because he thought they were giants. The ordinary world was too complex and not romantic enough for him. He wanted simplicity and dreamed up a world in which he could pursue his pure and noble ideals unburdened by reality.

I suppose what people mean when they say Kerry's filibuster attempt was quixotic is that because they believed it was doomed to fail, it was entirely unrealistic. Actually, what most people meant was that Kerry, in a cheap publicity stunt, used the quixotic idealism of the netroots to launch a filibuster he knew was doomed to fail, without any regard for the harm he might do to the Dems in the process.

Well, the filibuster failed. I don't know Kerry's reasons for taking on the cause. Time will tell if he's had a genuine change of heart and injection of courage, or wanted netroots cred for 2008.

But our quest was not quixotic.* What we see before us are not windmills. We are not delusional, foolishly idealistic, or simple-minded. We do not shun complexity. It is just this: We see.

We are watching as our nation turns to fascism. We try to stop it any way we can. Sometimes our letters and our phone calls seem to make a difference (remember Sinclair Broadcasting?). And sometimes, we put our hearts into something, like a filibuster, and we lose the fight. Whatever was said about the fight beforehand, it was not doomed to fail. It was not a minor issue. Alito, like everything else this President has done, will be, I do not doubt, a disaster for our country. (And if he is not, then I will eat my words, with gratitude. Who would be pleased to be right about such a thing?)

My first reaction to the cloture vote results (73 for, 25 against) was disappointment. Our side lost. Again. Why do we suck so much? There's that terrible feeling of letdown, which is actually just our testosterone levels sinking. That's biology. We were the losers, so next time we should be good little socially subordinate citizens and not challenge the biggest baddest monkeys around.

That's what our brains think is going on, and that's why we feel the way we do right now. But our brains are wrong.

"We" are not "the Democrats". The Democratic Party is the only instrument that we have, right now, to stand up for us in Congress. It's not much. It's rusty. It's got a broken handle. It's not even made to do what we want it to do. It malfunctions. It's held together with duct tape and gum. We didn't make it, we don't have the instructions, there's no warranty, and the manufacturer is unhelpful. But it's all we have to use in that arena, so we do our best with it. It's a lot like javascript, come to think of it. Whatever we manage to get done using the DNC -- or any elected person with a D after their name -- is gravy. We managed to get a single Senator to say the word filibuster? Gravy. We got 25 Senators to vote to filibuster? Double-plus gravy. We lost, you say? "We" didn't lose anything -- last I checked, we had nothing to lose. I daresay not a single person reading this post cast a vote on the Senate floor today, or ever will.

It's not that I believe that we shouldn't bother to try to get politicians to do our will. We ought to believe we can get them to do our will, just as we ought to believe that we can get javascript code to do our will. But when they don't, or do so only partially, or crash and burn, we don't need to fall with them. We are not The Party. We are not even The Netroots.

We are just people who see.

You can tell us and tell us that the giants we see are really only windmills, that things are not as bad as they seem, but we know better. You can say we're not torturing people, not spying on innocents, not bombing civilians, not destroying the earth or the constitution, but we know better. It's a burden to see these things. It is such an enormous burden, and it is so ugly, what we see, and so hopeless, and everything we do seems so pathetically doomed to failure, that it is a miracle that we bother to continue to see.

We are not tilting at windmills. We are riding a skinny horse, yes, and we carry a rusty sword. But the giant is real, and that makes what we do the very antithesis of quixotic. It makes it noble. Let the alpha monkeys gibber and gloat. Let the timid ones shake their fingers at us for the foolish risk we took. We've lost nothing. We had nothing to begin with. We fight not because we have the power to win, but because acting on the truth has a power in itself. It is how we disenthrall ourselves, day after day, so that we can help our fellow citizens to do the same.

Our fellow citizens are dreaming. They are under a terrible enchantment, and they need us now to wake them up.

*Running Ed Kennedy for President and Barney Frank as veep -- now, that would be quixotic.

Advertising to Children

I used to read Andrew Sullivan. He's great on torture. Then I stopped reading him, cuz he was so annoying on other things. Today, I added him back to my newsreader. And what do I find? He's currently on a kick making fun of an organization called Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, because they would like companies not to advertise to children. He is annoyed they are trying to take away his Lucky Charms.

What an asshole. We don't have TV, so Ari isn't exposed to television ads at all, except for the very rare times he sees them at other peoples' houses. We don't buy him any toy-branded products (Thomas, SpongeBob, Bob The Builder, etc.), and we do not purchase junk food. We are, in short, Stalinists when it comes to protecting Ari (and ourselves) from commercial culture. This is extremely difficult to do, however, especially since commercial culture has so heavily invaded previously non-commercial spaces. The Boston Science Museum is running a Star Wars exhibit; the Children's Museum had a Clifford exhibit and I think has now moved on to Dora the Explorer. All the PBS shows for children are heavily cross-marketed, with characters appearing on toothpaste, underpants, cheap toys, and junk food snacks. More and more public schools are selling advertising space on school grounds. Many public schools show Channel One television, with advertisements.

Television, especially, is a profoundly powerful medium. Advertising to adults, who have experience with it, and understand, at least intellectual, the difference between reality and fantasy, between advertisements and content, is very successful. Advertising to children takes advantage of them, and as far as I am concerned, it is entirely pernicious.

I don't know that the appropriate response to this is legislative or legal -- except in the case of advertisements in public schools, which should be absolutely illegal; most of our over-consumption troubles will go away after peak oil. I think our consumer culture is destructive, degrading, and, because it is wasteful, ultimately immoral. I've responded by turning away from it as much as I can. I am happy with that choice, because I don't mind people thinking I'm kind of a Stalinist, but very few people are comfortable being that out of the mainstream, so I'm not surprised or irritated that organizations are attempting to call greater attention to the problems of advertising to children. For those of us with kids, combating consumer culture is a profoundly moral issue, and not just a question of a 'nanny state'.

There ought to be some way that lefties who are disgusted by mainstream American culture (consumerism, selfishness, wastefulness, careerism, pointless violence and vulgarity) could unite with righties who are also disgusted with it. But, as I've remarked before, many of those righties think I'm going to hell, so it's a little hard to connect.

Anyway, so Sullivan wins the "Shortest Time on My Newsreader" award.

Michael Kinsley on Kick The Democrat

in WaPo

It seems to be time once again to play Kick the Democrats. Everyone can play, including Democrats. The rules are simple. When Republicans lose elections, it is because they didn't get enough votes. When Democrats lose elections, it is because they have lost their principles and lost their way. Or they have kept their principles, which is an even worse mistake.

They represent no one who is not actually waiting in line for a latte at a Starbucks within 150 yards of the east or west coastline. They are mired in trivial lifestyle issues like, oh, abortion and gay rights and Americans killing and dying in Iraq, while the Republicans serve up meat and potatoes for real Americans like privatizing Social Security and making damned sure the government knows who is Googling whom in this great country.

Just repeat these formulas until a Democrat has been sent into frenzies of self-flagellation or reduced to tears.

This reminds me of a great Michael Moore (oh wait, I'm not supposed to reference him, that makes me a terrorist, right?) essay just after the 2004 election, "It's Time To Stop Being Hit." Actually, the important part of the essay was an extended quote from another essay by someone named Mel Giles:

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the ‘new’ language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, "Why did they beat me?"

And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.

They will tell you: Every single day.

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

As victims we can't stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can't seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.

Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won't; we will never be worthy).

And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See the Democrats cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.

How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.

First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don't do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don't do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less if you don't resist and fight back.

Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 57 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you've learned, and that you aren't going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 57 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it's better than the abuse.

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 57 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don't know how.

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: Stop responding to the abuser.

Don't let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he'll win, not because he's right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it fail-proof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, "loose,” irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Dear internets...

Today has been a crapalicious day, and I am glad it is over.

Here is where I beg:

Please go visit Democrats.com for their filibuster to-do list.
Please call some senators.
Please tell your friends to do the same.

Here is where I whine:

Ari drove us crazy all day long. He was in a vile mood, and could not tell us why. I have a lot of sympathy for people in inexplicable vile moods, since I often am as well, but still. It was really, really difficult.

Also, I had a terrible migraine. It was a lovely sunny day out and I had to keep all the blinds closed so my brain didn't leak out my ears.

Also, I'm making my garden plans for this year. This is incredibly difficult, time-consuming, and confusing. I honestly don't know how farmers do it. I have to figure out what soil amendments I needed for 4 different garden locations, and how much of each thing I would need. I have to order seeds, first checking on my refrigerated inventory of seeds left over from last year and ones that I saved. When ordering, I have to make sure to get vegetable varieties that are appropriate to the particular conditions I will grow them in, try to guess which plant diseases I'll see so that I can order varieties that are resistant to those, try to order varieties that mature at different times so that we will be supplied with fresh produce throughout the summer, decide how many seedlings I'll need of each plant, and when, and when I should therefore start seeds indoors for later transplanting to the gardens. I have to figure out what compost crops and green manures to grow, and where, and what legume inoculant I need for them. I just ordered some blueberry and cranberry bushes, and I have to lower my soil ph so they'll grow, move other plants around so there's space for them, and dig holes so that I can put them in the ground when they arrive. I have to decide where I'll plant each vegetable (taking into account their need for sun, support, water, and space, as well as where I planted things last year) which beds I'll double-dig and plant intensively, what I'll use to mulch, and how I'll water everything. In practice, I'll end up with a vague, half-assed plan that I won't follow very well, but it's only my third year gardening, and it's not easy. Any plan is better than no plan, and I guess I'll get the hang of it eventually. At least I know all the things I need to think about, even if I'm not very good at actually thinking about them. So -- I feel stupid and clumsy and exhausted from garden-think.

I have a pile of medical bills and "Explanation of Benefits" forms that I have to sift through and figure out how to deal with.

My head hurts.

Here is where I sign off for the night.

Good Night, Internets. And Good Luck.

killing democracy from the inside out

There's an infuriating and depressing article in the New York Times about a top climate scientist at NASA who's complaining about being muzzled by the Administration for trying to warn about global warming. The papers have been reporting this kind of thing for the last several years, and the scientific community is utterly fed up with the Administration, and still they keep on doing it.

They don't know much about building democracy, those guys, but they sure know how to destroy it:
harass and intimidate honest civil servants, drive them and their expertise out of government, leaving only corrupt and inept political appointees;
deny and distort scientific findings so frequently and so deeply that the population eventually comes to mistrust science entirely, and with science, the idea of facts;
paving the way for all truthiness, all the time.

Democracies need infrastructure. They need honest and competent people to serve in government in a non-partisan way. They need voting systems that work. They need transparency and accountability. They need facts.

Destroy these things, and you don't have to burn the constitution, proclaim a coup, or crown yourself emperor. You're done. And the people will be left wondering how it happened, with only a million little news articles like this one to show us.

Hell Yeah, We're Obstructing

Should Democrats filibuster Alito? Is John Kerry tilting at windmills, running for President, in league with Republicans, suicidal, or courageous though a bit tardier than we would have liked?

The blogosphere and the MSM are aflutter with discussions of what the proposed filibuster means for Kerry, for Dems, for Republicans, for the base, for swing voters, for everything.

This is okay. Let us make room for both "responsible" and "irresponsible" dissent, unlike some people we know.

If you can't decide whether to call your Senator to support a filibuster, or are pissed at Kerry, or mad at Dems in general, or think it's too little too late, or hate the way Republicans seem to be sitting back and laughing their asses off as the Democratic caucus fights over whether to have a filibuster, here are some thoughts for you:

We should have this filibuster. According to well-placed sources, we WILL have this filibuster.

1. But Amy, the Republicans are laughing at us. They think this filibuster is a great idea, and so therefore it must suck.


When was the last time Republicans acted scared about a single thing the Democrats did? It's a fakeout, guys. According to Republicans, there is nothing Democrats can do that will turn out to be good for Democrats politically, or good for the country. Do we expect them to say "Oh dear, we really hope that the Democrats don't filibuster..."? What the Republicans say is relevant for how Dems counter their message, but not for decisions about what policies or people Democrats support.


2. Kerry is a loser for not organizing the filibuster a month ago, and then for announcing it from Switzerland. He's just pandering to the base, and trying to be all heroic.


This is ridiculous. A month ago, were we calling our Senators daily insisting that they filibuster? No, we were gorging on Christmas cookies and waiting for the UPS guy to bring our Amazon orders. Kerry's choice to lead a filibuster is a direct result of our activism. He changed his mind because of us. (Well, more specifically, me. But I'll share the credit ;-) If we turn on him for doing what we begged him to do, because he didn't do it early enough, well, what incentive will he have to listen to us in the future? He is not pandering, he is listening to the base, and we should applaud him for that. He may win big politically speaking for the choice, but he may also lose big. He's taking a risk. And that's a damn good thing.

As for Switzerland, can it. The man was there on Senate business.


3. The filibuster will be a failure, and then we'll look weak and pathetic.


Dems already look weak and pathetic; a failed filibuster may only make that a little bit worse, but it won't make it orders of magnitude worse.


4. A filibuster, successful or not, will distract from the stronger issues we have that might actually take the President down: NSA spying and the Abramoff scandal.
   
   The point of filibustering Alito is that all of these things are related. The President is abusing power, and the Congress has been paid off to keep letting him do so. Alito was chosen not just for his anti-abortion views but more importantly, for his view of executive power. The President expects cases about his abuse of power to come before the Supreme Court for years, and he wants the court to rule in his favor, not in Congress's favor, and not in the people's favor. We need to prevent Alito from getting on the court so that we have a chance of relying on the court to help curb his behavior.
   
   The fight is the same fight, the goal is the same goal: to show the President that he does not have all the power he thinks he has, that he cannot run roughshod over Congress. We move ahead on all fronts. It's the corruption, and the lying, and the incompetence, and the assertion of power, and the secrecy. It's the whole package of government gone wrong, and it's all related.



5. But Amy, they'll use the NUCLEAR OPTION!
   
   Maybe. And maybe not. If Dems are unwilling to use the filibuster, however, we may as well let them take it away.



6. But the Gang of 14 said the filibuster could only be used in extraordinary circumstances.
   
   First, I would argue that these are extraordinary circumstances. Alito supports a dictatorship view of presidential powers; we have just discovered that the President has been breaking the 4th amendment, without apology. Whatever Alito's qualifications, this makes him a disaster for the court right now.
   
   Second, who made the Gang of 14 the rulers of Congress? They didn't ask me what I thought about the whole deal.



7. If we block Alito, he'll only nominate someone worse, or just as bad.
   
   Probably. And we can block them too. We can filibuster till the midterms, and we can filibuster for another two years after that, if we need to. Sandra Day is not dead, and the Supreme Court could survive with only 8 members if it needed to. It sometimes has to do that anyway, because various Justices need to recuse themselves on specific cases. (Except Scalia, who never ever needs to recuse himself.) Getting someone onto the Supreme Court is not an urgent priority for our nation. It is only an urgent priority for the President and his supporters.



8. Voters won't like it.
   
   The majority of American voters don't think much about the Supreme Court, and they don't much care about it. Whether Sandra Day O'Connor gets to retire and when, whether the court has to operate with only 8 Justices instead of 9 -- it's just not that important to them.



9. They'll call us Obstructionist.
   
   To which we shall respond; Hell Yeah, we're obstructing. This President needs to be obstructed. Everything he touches turns to shit. Every program he introduces is crap. The wars he starts, the laws he breaks, the people he supports, the lies he tells -- all that needs to be obstructed, every day and in every way.
   
   Until we can get rid of this Administration and its supporters in the Congress, all we can do is obstruct. We should not collaborate with their destruction of our country.
   
   Obstruction is our greatest duty now.

So please support John Kerry in the filibuster. Call, email, and fax your Senators this weekend and, especially, on Monday morning, to tell them to support the filibuster. If they're Republicans, call, email and fax to tell them not to vote for the nuclear option. See SaveTheCourt.org for more info on what to do.

I feel like vomiting

What a noble war we are running over there:

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

Can't you just smell the democracy?

Please note that the AP article states that the woman they locked up had three children, including her six-month-old, and that they held her for two days, because they were annoyed her husband wasn't at home when they came to arrest him.

Can we please leave now?

Does our country even deserve what freedom we have left?

NYTimes reports on a wiretapping poll:

In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported e-mail and telephone monitoring directed at "Americans that the government is suspicious of;" they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed at "ordinary Americans."

The details:

"In the poll, 70 percent of respondents said they would not be willing to support governmental monitoring of the communications of "ordinary Americans"; 68 percent said they would be willing to support such monitoring of "Americans the government is suspicious of.""

So 40% of those polled cannot imagine that the government might, now or some time in the future, be suspicious of ordinary Americans. Alternately, those people have a very limited sense of what constitutes being an "ordinary American." I suspect people like me and you don't count.

Tom Friedman's State of the Union

I am here to tell you that if we don't move away from our dependence on oil and shift to renewable fuels, it will change our way of life for the worse — and soon — much, much more than communism ever could have. Making this transition is the calling of our era.

Why? First, we are in a war with a violent strain of Middle East Islam that is indirectly financed by our consumption of oil. Second, with millions of Indians and Chinese buying cars and homes as they join the great global middle class, we must quickly move away from burning fossil fuels or we're going to create enough global warming to melt the North Pole. Because of that, green cars, homes, offices, appliances, designs and renewable energies will be the biggest growth industry of the 21st century. If we don't dominate that industry, China, India, Japan or Europe surely will.

But to lead, we must impose the highest energy-efficiency standards on our own automakers and other industries so we force them to be the most innovative. I want to inspire girls and boys across America to study math, science and engineering to help our nation achieve green energy independence. President Kennedy said, Let's put a man on the Moon. I say, Let's make oil obsolete.

It would have been nice if he'd seen the light a little bit earlier, but better late than never. Yes, paywall.

Oh, pathetic.

Not to sound like a "god helps people who help themselves" anti-government freak, but this post on HuffPo is just really pathetic. This woman's power went out, and she's at a total fucking loss:

Meanwhile in my suburban reality we lost the power.

One of my kids ran to me and said, “The lights are out…” (They were) A while later another asked “ Man, does that mean the Internet’s down too??” (It was). It gradually became colder and colder (no heat). Floor to ceiling windows (perfect for this former-summer home) meant that the heat plummeted from 67 degrees to 47 in a matter of hours. We couldn’t cook (we have a gas burner, but we don’t smoke, so no matches). We couldn’t shower, well; we had no water at all (the pump needs electricity) so that meant one toilet flush only (quickly wasted) and no phone (we have the kind that require power). I went to the basement to check on something (the bunny rabbit actually) where, despite the darkness, I saw we now had a large wading pool 5 inches deep where were had once had a laundry and rec. room.

Cold, hungry and dying for a pee, we decided to leave, but, due to an uncharacteristic burst of efficiency a few days earlier, we could not open our brand new mechanized garage door. Luckily, our fantasy of a deer proof fence and electric gates (to protect our foliage) had not materialized. Cold, dirty and discouraged the six of us plus our dogs traipsed out on foot, leaving the bunny, the fish and the cat to guard our home.

One of the kids moaned “I feel like a refugee”. I thought well not really dear and then, well yes, sort of, after all, our town had just opened a shelter for the first time ever.

How could you possibly have a household without MATCHES?! How could you not have at least one phone in the house that didn't need electricity to work? Are you aware that you can actually pee in the toilet even if you can't flush it? Or that you can pee in a pot and throw it out the back door? That if your water supply runs on an electric pump, you should really be sure to have extra water available, and maybe a generator? That you could tack blankets over your floor-to-ceiling windows to conserve heat? Or have you not got any spare blankets?

I suppose this poor woman will happen upon this post via Technorati and feel miserable and attacked, but my god -- four kids and no idea about how to deal with a power outage? May I suggest she do some reading at FEMA's website, which, despite Brownie, is still chock-full of important information on dealing with emergencies?

Operation Filito Update

I have written some nasty letters to my Senators in the past few years. I wrote a very nasty one to John Kerry after he conceded the 2004 elections, complaining that he conceded too soon and had betrayed the trust and work of his supporters:

Don't talk to me of ending these partisan wars. We should not hope for such a thing -- for our dissent at last to be silenced by the strong and steadfast certainty of our great leader, in the name of unity and civility. This presidency has been a disaster, and will continue to be so. You could have said that last week, and you didn't. You told me a bedtime story....The activists all tell me to write my Senator, to tell my Senator to be strong and stand up to this Administration. And what am I to do? The time for that has come and gone, and my Senator, he blinked.

Last week I wrote letters insisting they impeach:

If you do not believe your job to be superfluous, then you must act. I am not interested in hearing the excuses of my elected representatives about why the President cannot be impeached. You serve The People, not the President. You serve me. I am not so afraid of terrorists that I am willing to give up my power and duty as a citizen to say “Enough is enough.” No more torture, no more renditions, no more spying on peace groups. No more holding innocent people or guilty people without charge. No more breaking the law just because the law is inconvenient. I will not stand for it. I do not stand for it.

I've called their offices every day for the last week about the Alito nomination, insisting they join the filibuster, congratulating them on joining the filibuster (this, before a filibuster had actually been planned), warning them that I would never give them money or vote for them again if they didn't join the filibuster, begging them to join the filibuster.

Yesterday Kerry announced that he would lead a filibuster. Kennedy offered his support. So I'd like to publicly thank my Senators for coming through for me. And yes, I'd like to say that I feel personally responsible for them choosing to do so. I'm sure it's delusional to feel that way, but I do.

Digby has a great post up this morning about how important it us for us to back Kerry up on this, to show him we support him, even if we end up losing, even if he can't muster the numbers he needs:

John Kerry stepped up today. Apparently, that isn't enough for some. He is still a "loser" in their eyes and is to be shunned. He didn't do it soon enough. Or he didn't do it right. Or he is nothing but a political opportunist. I'm beginning to think that some Democrats have gotten attached to their vision of Democrats as losers so they won't be emotionally shattered anymore. That's understandable. It's painful to get beaten. But, the rank and file need to step up too and be willing to lose and not hate ourselves or our leaders for it. How we lose on issues like this makes the difference for the future.

Sustaining a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee is a huge undertaking with the numbers we have. (Read Kos' Reality Check on this.) It's worth doing anyway because it's important to stand up for principles. We can "lose well" by beginning to make a case to the American people that we believe in something other than splitting the difference. And we might just pull it off. Either way, we make the country (and the media) see that there are lines that we won't cross.

But the way some people are acting, if we now lose this one it will be seen by the grassroots as just another example of Democratic fecklessness, even Kerry's fecklessness, which is self-defeating and unfair. If we carp when our elected politicans take risks just as we carp when they don't take risks, they have no motivation to listen to us at all.

Kerry and Kennedy stepped up today. They aren't going down without a fight. This is worth doing and if we lose it, we should reward them and those who stood with them with our gratitude and support not another round of complaints about how they are a bunch of losers.

Go vote in this stupid CNN poll and give Kerry some props for doing something out of conviction. This isn't a big winner for him and he didn't have to do it. We need to let our politicans know we have their back when they take a stand.

Hear, hear.

Kerry Is Leading A Filibuster!

IF he can round up the 41 votes he needs to prevent cloture. Get this -- some Dems are willing to vote No but will NOT support a filibuster. Democrats.com has the info on who to call and where to tell them they can shove it if they don't filibuster this guy.

And I would just like to note that this morning I called both my Senators again, and I left a message for Kerry in which I begged, really and truly begged, him to filibuster. So I take complete credit for Kerry's decision. Did you call Kerry too? Then I guess you can have some credit also.

I sound all hysterical and BUY V1AGRA NOWWW!!! - ish, but I don't care. I groveled on the phone to a Senator this morning, and this afternoon he did what I asked. Clap, little children, clap!

What I'm Being Active About Right Now, and How You Too Can Be

Alito

is the most time-sensitive issue. The Post notes that, confident Alito will go through, the Bush administration has re-submitted another nominee previously filibustered to death, a guy named Brett Kavanaugh: "The Senate Judiciary Committee's eight Democrats complained last year that Kavanaugh took several months to answer their written questions about his qualifications. Other Democrats have noted that Kavanaugh, 40, has limited courtroom experience and helped independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr pursue the Monica S. Lewinsky case during the Clinton presidency." The New York Times' editorial opinion on Alito states "A filibuster is a radical tool. It's easy to see why Democrats are frightened of it. But from our perspective, there are some things far more frightening. One of them is Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court."

SO CALL YOUR GODDAMN SENATORS. Tell them you'll never give them any money again if they don't join the filibuster. And check out SaveTheCourt.org for more ideas on what to do. Today, people, TODAY!

Impeachment

is getting bigger press these days. Some right-wing mag said the Bushies are preparing for impeachment proceedings. Knight-Ridder says more and more people are openly discussing impeachment. A new Zogby poll puts support for impeachment at 52%, based on the illegal wiretapping. Jane Smiley warns that if the Bushies are preparing for impeachment, we should be careful not to impeach and lose the battle: "I am certain that they are planning to endure the impeachment process asap, so that when the Congress votes along party lines, as with Alito, they can say that the "failure to impeach" constitutes a "renewed mandate". Democrats and progressives, beware! My bet is he can't be impeached twice, no matter what the high crimes and misdemeanors are. No gambit is too outrageous for Rove, Bush, and Cheney, and they certainly have a plan to use impeachment to consolidate their power." This would be a reasonable argument, except that they'll probably manage to consolidate their power whatever we do, so we may as well go down kicking and screaming."

See my links here on ways you too can support impeachment. I am plastering little "IMPEACH" stickers all over our neighborhood, in addition to the usual write-call-tell your friends routine.


Torture

See my torture resources here. Think the torture thing was settled with the McCain Amendment? Think again. (Don't know what the McCain Amendment was? Shame on you. Pay a little bit more attention!)


Al Gore For President

2008 is still a long way off, but there's lots we can do now to start supporting the guy. Here are two websites for Gore supporters;

Al Gore 2008 Support Center
Al Gore 2008

Here is a Draft Gore petition.

Be sure to check out my Al Gore Love-A-Thon posts to read more about how great Al Gore is.

Contempt of Congress

Wow. Bush's top mine safety guy WALKED OUT of a Senate hearing today after an hour, saying he was really busy and had some stuff to do. Arlen Specter asked him to stay and keep answering questions, but no, the guy was busy.

If the Dems cancel their Alito filibuster

Which, mind you, I'm not saying they will, because I'm pretty sure it's already a done deal, and I've even heard a totally unconfirmed rumor that Bush plans to nominate Marty Lederman instead, but just say they did decide to cancel it -- I agree with Orcinus :

I broke my longstanding policy of not donating money to political parties last fall when the folks from the DNC called and asked for money to help gird them for the upcoming fights over judicial seats. I was assured that indeed they would fight to keep right-wing extremists off the Supreme Court.

And now, faced with a clear-cut extremist (and dissembler) who is about to not only overturn the right to obtain an abortion, but also to pave the path for an imperial executive branch with limitless powers ... nothing.

I'm not terribly inclined, as my readers know, to use profanity in my posts. But if the Democratic Party wants any more of my money, they can just go fuck themselves.

Corporate Life

Is the enemy of the modern family, writes Laura at 11D:

My husband came home last Friday night and announced that his boss wants him to start carrying around a Blackberry. He also said that Steve wasn’t being a team player, because he didn’t go drinking with his co-workers on Friday nights.

Let me get this straight. He’s gone from the house for 60 hours per week. He sees his kids for an hour per day. And now he’s supposed to be checking his e-mail, while he watches his kid’s soccer game. The people that he spends 10 hours a day with are making him spend more time in the evening with them, so they can do jello shots and pat each other on the back for closing all those deals. As he’s pounding shots and head butting the other guys, the kids and I are supposed to amuse ourselves.

After I processed this information, I arranged the words, words shit, fuck and damn, in all sorts of unique combinations.

Lucky for Laura, her husband's company may be a bit late for jumping on the Blackberry bandwagon. (Max says "whatever you might think about Blackberrys as a cultural phenomenon, that patent suit is ridiculous." Yes. But if Max ever showed up with a Blackberry I would run it over with the car.)

You would think that those of us on left and right who think that families are important could unite to do something about this problem. For many years, I have thought that the very best thing that we could do for families would be to mandate several more weeks' vacation time each year. Not a complicated policy, just a simple and obvious one: families need time to spend together.

oof, I would like to say something else about this, but a freshly bathed child is shrieking in my ear. "I want press apple button!"

Quick, say something! Anything!

Oh dear. King of Zembla is plugging me this week, due, I believe, to a comment I left about Covert Truthiness Op Filito. So now I may get some actual readers, and must write something so incisive and interesting that they will add me to their feed reader. I have exactly 20 minutes to do it, as then I must get lunch, bathe, and go off to see The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

Also, my own blogroll is pathetically tiny and needs to be updated. (Dear husband: any interest in signing us up for blogrolling or something like that?) Also, I am preoccupied with events at my cooperative supermarket, at which I have been doing 'member work' in exchange for a 10 or 20 percent discount on groceries. The co-op, quite unexpectedly, announced that its member work program was ending on January 31st, apparently for vague legal reasons involving, of course, liability. This is a huge blow to all of the member workers. The regular member discount is negligible (2%) and prices at the co-op are, frankly, higher than at the local Whole Foods. Member work made groceries more affordable and made me feel part of and invested in an established community of people who cared about healthy, organic, local food. Working alongside regular employees of the co-op was also a great experience for me, since they were people I would otherwise have very little contact with. When legal liability concerns result in the destruction of valuable community links, it's pretty depressing.

In New Zealand, they have an accident compensation program that covers all accidents in the country, even those of visitors. People therefore are not allowed to sue for damages from accidents. This makes the country an amazingly relaxed place to travel in and live in, because people aren't always obsessing about how they could get sued. When we were in New Zealand last march, we were allowed to bring Ari into a workshop where they were using things like blowtorches to restore steam engines. We crawled up into the cabin of a steam engine and felt the engine box, which was still warm from the engine having been used the day before. They just let us come right in and see what they were doing. It was amazing, and it would never, ever happen here. I would also like to note that New Zealand was just rated the number one country for meeting key environmental goals. For those of you just joining us here at Biscuit, we may move to New Zealand, which is why we often talk about it.

I keep meaning to write a post about that Environics research that Garance Franke-Ruta wrote about in The American Prospect recently. But what I want to say somehow doesn't come out right, it's just bouncing around vaguely in my head. Something about values and Democrats.

Speaking of values and Democrats, if they abandon their plans to filibuster Alito, I think I may have to say phooey on them and find a third party to support. I mean, if not now, then FUCKING WHEN???? If the Republicans want to go nuclear, let them go nuclear. According to the President, Congress's power is pretty much completely illusory in any case, so it's not like you have much to lose. Make your stand, guys, or resign your damn seats and stop lending legitimacy to this corrupt administration.

I have some ideas about a minimalist third party platform, focused on the essentials of reviving Congress's power, full public financing of election campaigns, reigning in the executive, civil liberties, and serious attention to the environment and global warming. I'm willing to call a truce on almost anything else, I think, so we can put in place the minimum requirements for resurrecting our democracy. But that, too, will be for another post.

I have read that the State of the Union will be all about how great health savings accounts are, and I would just like to say that we have a health savings account (because otherwise we couldn't really afford to buy our health insurance, as we don't get any employee coverage) and it is the suckiest idea ever invented. I can't even be completely certain that it saves us any money, because it's too complicated to figure out. It adds far too much accounting and paperwork to my life, complicates getting the insurance to pay anything at all, and, as far as I'm concerned, primarily functions to enrich the banks that manage the accounts (for a fee, of course).

Finally, why would Maureen Dowd (yeah, paywall, so sue me - hah!) say this: "As the White House drives its truckload of lies around the country, it becomes ever clearer that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore are just not the right people to respond to the administration's national security scare-a-thon." Um, what is wrong with this sentence? Which of these people are not like the other ones? Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, and Kerry are all serving in Congress, so they are, in some sense, collaborators. Gore (did I mention that I love Al Gore!?) is not serving in Congress. He is telling us the truth. He is not up there thinking of abandoning plans to filibuster Alito (though I'd like to point out, that I have it on good authority that, however many Democratic Senators are dithering about it and however many newspaper headlines insist that Alito Seems Assured of a Seat on High Court, the Alito filibuster is unstoppable. Be sure to call your Senators and tell them so.).

Okay, Internets, that is all. I must go see some talking beavers now.

For those of us who used to play way too much "Zork" or "Adventure" on our computers

here's a Presidential version

Operation Filito

I called both my senators this morning and got their 'opinion voicemail' lines. (They are all swamped with calls, I think.) I left messages that I was very glad to hear the Democrats were going to filibuster and that the Senator was going to take part. Today and tomorrow are the days we have to complete the truthiness op. Don't let facts get in the way!

Operation Filito

I called both my senators this morning and got their 'opinion voicemail' lines. (They are all swamped with calls, I think.) I left messages that I was very glad to hear the Democrats were going to filibuster and that the Senator was going to take part. Today and tomorrow are the days we have to complete the truthiness op. Don't let facts get in the way!

Probable Cause

Dear Internets, Today I wrote a letter to Al Gore (shorter version: "Dear Al, I love you, please save us from this hideous nightmare or else I will move to New Zealand"), called Kerry and Kennedy to tell them to join the filibuster, called Barney Frank's office to tell him how great it is that he's sponsoring a bill for total public funding of congressional elections, and sent letters to Kerry, Kennedy, and Frank asking them to please impeach the president. (In case they don't have time to read the letters, I sealed them with little "Impeach" stickers). This took up my whole morning. In the afternoon some friends came over to ogle the grain mill and knead some bread dough. Then I made dinner. While I was making dinner Ari decided to refrain from informing us about an ongoing pooping operation in his big boy underpants. I did not have probable cause to obtain a warrant, and, unlike some people, I don't think that instituting a search based on a "reasonable belief" is constitutional. Eventually, a puddle of pee-pee on the floor constituted probable cause.

Okay, I'm stretching a bit to relate the NSA spying stuff to our adventures in potty-training. So we cleaned the kid up, I finished making dinner, we ate, I put him to bed, we spent an hour tracking down some invoice stuff so we could confirm a 1099-misc, and now here I am, wishing someone else would just show up and write this damn post about the spies and the spying spiers who spy on us. The Admin is on a big media push to prove that they are just super-dooper trying to protect us from the bad men, that they're totally legal, and useful, and they aren't spying on anyone you give a shit about anyway, so shut the hell up. But get this:

General Hayden defended the program's constitutionality. He said the lower, "reasonable belief" standard conformed to the wording of the Fourth Amendment, asserting that it does not mention probable cause, but instead forbids "unreasonable" searches and seizures.

"The constitutional standard is reasonable," he said. "I am convinced that we are lawful, because what it is we're doing is reasonable," he said.

The Fourth Amendment, however, reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Ah, I see. They think if they don't issue warrants, they don't have to have probable cause, that they just have to not be unreasonable. Um, that's an interesting interpretation, but I'm not sure it's an 'originalist' one.

Actually, it was so unbelievable to me that Hayden would mis-cite the 4th Amendment that I went back to the transcript of the press conference itself. (Pity me, I found the link off a Powerline post...) Here's the context:

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use --

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But the --

GEN. HAYDEN: That's what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But does it not say probable --

GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says --

QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard --

GEN. HAYDEN: -- unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "we reasonably believe"; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, "we have probable cause." And so what many people believe -- and I'd like you to respond to this -- is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place in probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order. Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.

I love this: "I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable." I think everyone who is arrested should start using this line. "But officer, it's perfectly reasonable!".

Covert Truthiness Operation Filito: Update

I called my senators today and told them I hoped they were planning to join the filibuster.
Tomorrow I will call and tell them how pleased I was to hear that they will join the filibuster.
Our strategy is working!

Call, call, call. Assume the filibuster is happening and tell everyone how awesome that is.

Always remember: the Republicans think they can create reality by getting the news media to talk about how they will obviously win. So, we kept hearing that Alito was certain to be confirmed. Except, he is not certain to be confirmed.

I have it on very good authority that he is certain to be filibustered and that Bush may actually have to withdraw his nomination. But only if you -- yes, you -- participate in this very important truthiness op.

Social Democrats in Portugal

Confusingly, the main right-wing party in Portugal is the Partido Social Democrata (Social Democratic Party). The Portuguese have just elected their first right-wing president since the overthrow of the dictatorship in the mid-1970s.

Love-A-Thon: Al Gore on the use of fear in politics

February, 2004

Fear drives out reason.

It suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction.

It also requires us to pay more attention to the new discoveries about the way fear affects our brains...

The root word for democracy - "demos" - meant the masses of common people, who were an object of fear in the minds of many of our country's founders.

What they wanted was an orderly society in which property would be safe from arbitrary confiscation (remember the Revolutionary War was in significant measure about taxation).

What they believed was that a too pure democracy would expose that society to the ungoverned passions of what today we call "the street:" of people with little to lose, whose angers could be all too easily aroused by demagogues (note the root, again) and turned against those with wealth.

So the Constitution of which we are so proud is really an effort - based at least as much on fear as on hope -- to compromise and balance out the conflicting agendas of two kinds of Americans:

those who already have achieved material success, and those who aspire to it: those who are happy with the status quo, and those who can only accept the status quo if it is the jumping off place to something better for themselves.

That tension can never be fully resolved, and it is perfectly clear at the present moment in the profoundly differing agendas of our two major parties.

Neither has the fear that underlies these differences gone away, however well it may be camouflaged.

Somewhere along the line, the Republican Party became merely the name plate for the radical right in this country.

The radical right is, in fact,

a coalition of those who fear other Americans:

as agents of treason;

as agents of confiscatory government;

as agents of immorality.

This fear gives the modern Republican Party its well-noted cohesiveness and its equally well-noted practice of jugular politics.

Even in power, the modern Republican Party feels itself to be surrounded by hostility: beginning with government itself, which they present as an enemy; extending to those in the opposition party; and ultimately, on to that portion of the country whose views and hopes are represented by it - that is to say, to virtually, half the nation.

Under these circumstances, it is natural - perhaps tragic in the classical sense - but nonetheless natural - for the modern Republican Party to be especially proficient in the use of fear as a technique for obtaining and holding power.

This phenomenon was clear under both President's Reagan and Bush Sr., except softened to an extent by the personalities of both men.

Under our current President Bush, however, the machinery of fear is right out in the open, operating at full throttle.

Fear and anxiety have always been a part of life and always will be.

Fear is ubiquitous and universal, in every human society, a normal part of the human condition.

But we have always defined progress by our success in managing through our fears.

Christopher Columbus... Lewis and Clark... the Wright Brothers... and Neil Amstrong - all found success by challenging the unknown and overcoming fear with courage and a keen sense of proportion that helped them overcome real fears without being distracted by distorted and illusory fears.

As with individuals, nations succeed or fail - and define their essential character - by the way they challenge the unknown and cope with fear.

And much depends upon the quality of their leadership.

If their leaders exploit their fears and use them to herd people in directions they might not otherwise choose, then fear itself can quickly become a self- perpetuating and free-wheeling force that drains national will and weakens national character, diverting attention from real threats deserving of healthy and appropriate concern, and sowing confusion about the essential choices that every nation must constantly make about its future.

Leadership means inspiring us to manage through our fears.

Demagoguery means exploiting our fears for political gain.

[...]

The night before that election, 33 years and 3 months ago, Senator Ed Muskie of Maine spoke on national television for the Democrats and said,

"There are only two kinds of politics. They are not radical and reactionary, or conservative and liberal. Or even Democrat and Republican. There are only the politics of fear and the politics of trust.

"One says: You are encircled by monstrous dangers.

Give us power over your freedom so we may protect you.

"The other says: The world is a baffling and hazardous place, but it can be shaped to the will of men. ...(C)ast your vote for trust ...in the ancient traditions of this home for freedom...."

Love-a-thon: Al Gore on Abu Ghraib, May 2004

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

[...]

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

[...]

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America - it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

[...]

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Admistration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

[...]

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course.

[...]

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility."

Gore made these statements in May of 2004. A year and a half later, we have not stopped the torture. The torture goes on. And people continue to justify it.

We hold the power, and we bear the responsibility, and we continue to fail. We are all of us torturers. Or nation has sold its soul for an illusory safety, for an illusory dominance. We have not held this President accountable. Will we?

Amy's Al Gore Love-a-thon continues: Al Gore on Global Warming

the whole speech is here: (bold is mine)

Winston Churchill, when the storm was gathering on continental Europe, provided warnings of what was at stake. And he said this about the government then in power in England - which wasn't sure that the threat was real, he said, "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent." He continued, "The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."

Ladies and gentlemen, the warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences. Churchill also said this, and he directed it at the people of his country who were looking for any way to avoid having to really confront the threat that he was warning of and asking them to prepare for. He said that he understood why there was a natural desire to deny the reality of the situation and to search for vain hope that it wasn't really as serious as some claimed it was. He said they should know the truth. And after the appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, he sad, "This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year - unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we rise again and take our stand for freedom."

It is time now for us to recover our moral health in America and stand again to rise for freedom, demand accountability for poor decisions, missed judgments, lack of planning, lack of preparation, and willful denial of the obvious truth about serious and imminent threats that are facing the American people.

Abraham Lincoln said, "The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."

We must disenthrall ourselves with the sound-and-light show that has diverted the attentions of our great democracy from the important issues and challenges of our day. We must disenthrall ourselves from the Michael Jackson trial and the Aruba search and the latest sequential obsession with celebrity trials or whatever relative triviality dominates the conversation of democracy instead of making room for us as free American citizens to talk with one another about our true situation, and then save our country. We must resist those wrong lessons.

[....]

This is a moral moment. This is not ultimately about any scientific debate or political dialogue. Ultimately it is about who we are as human beings. It is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations. To rise to this new occasion. To see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the unprecedented response that is now called for. To disenthrall ourselves, to shed the illusions that have been our accomplices in ignoring the warnings that were clearly given, and hearing the ones that are clearly given now.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. And Lincoln said at another moment of supreme challenge that the question facing the people of the United States of America ultimately was whether or not this government, conceived in liberty, dedicated to freedom, of the people, by the people, and for the people - or any government so conceived - would perish from this earth.

There is another side to this moral challenge. Where there is vision, the people prosper and flourish, and the natural world recovers, and our communities recover. The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need, more are being developed, and as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait, we have every thing we need - save perhaps political will. And in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource.

Alito filibuster update

Please call your Senators (even if you already have - do it again!) to tell them that since you've heard that this filibuster is totally unstoppable, you're going to jump on the bandwagon and support them.

Honestly. Just call up and say you were thrilled to hear that the Senate dems are going to filibuster Alito, and you are backing them 100%. If the staff person claims not to have heard the filibuster is on, just repeat that that's what you heard, and you are pleased as punch to see your Senator involved.

It will be a covert truthiness operation.

Spies

Michael Isikoff has a short article in Newsweek about the CIFA spy program. One interesting tidbit, relevant to us lowly bloggers:

Arkin says a close reading of internal CIFA documents suggests the agency may be expanding its Internet monitoring, and wants to be as surreptitious as possible. CIFA has contracted to buy "identity masking" software that would allow the agency to create phony Web identities and let them appear to be located in foreign countries, according to a copy of the contract with Computer Sciences Corp. (The firm declined to comment.)

Does this mean nobody from Lapland is really reading our blog? Can I try to attract CIFA readers to artificially boost my hit count?

Dear CIFA: I am planning a HUGE protest that will put whatever military institution is most convenient to me at dire risk of having signs waved at it. There may even be a candlelight vigil involved. I will attack military recruiters with paper airplanes and bring my child to pester them to read The Cat in the Hat, over and over. We will shout "IMPEACH", "IMPEACH" over and over. Please check back often for details. Love, Amy

On Vichy Democrats

By the way, Max has registered his objection to the term Vichy Democrats. The Vichy people were a bunch of reactionaries who were, in general, perfectly happy to help out the Nazis, is what he says. [Max, feel free to add your own historical explanation.] Dems today are not that.

What would be a better term, then?

Karl Rove

Mr. Rove gave a speech yesterday. Unfortunately I only have a transcript of his remarks "as prepared". One hesitates to call such a document a transcript, but there you are. The newspeople do seem to be reporting that he actually read from his prepared remarks, at least.

The interesting thing about Rove's speech is not what he said (elections will be about terrorism, judges, and taxes. Mostly about terrorism) but how he said it.

He has stepped back from calling opponents of the President unpatriotic. He has turned to the language of "public debate".

Our opponents are our fellow citizens, not our enemies. Honorable people can have honest political differences. And we should strive for civility and intellectual integrity in our debates.

At the same time, Democrats and Republicans have deep differences about our nation, where it is going, and what needs to be done to make it stronger, better, and safer. Those differences should be debated this year - openly, publicly, passionately."

[...]

Let me be as clear as I can: President Bush believes if al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree. This is an issue worthy of a public debate.

At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security. Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview - and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong - deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.

[...]

We welcome a fair-minded and high-minded debate about the purpose and meaning of the courts in our lives. Our arguments will carry the day because the force and logic and wisdom of the Founders are on our side.

Now, it's absurd for someone like Rove to call for a "fair-minded and high-minded debate". He has no credibility to suggest such a thing, and never will. But I think it's good that he feels required to say it.

Recall his words from June 2005:

Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said: we must understand our enemies. Conservatives see the United States as a great nation engaged in a noble cause; liberals see the United States and they see … Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia.

Has there been a more revealing moment this year than when Democratic Senator Richard Durbin, speaking on the Senate floor, compared what Americans had done to prisoners in our control at Guantanamo Bay with what was done by Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot - three of the most brutal and malevolent figures in the 20th century?

Let me put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts to the region the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America's men and women in uniform in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.

It is not much of a victory, but it is something: Karl Rove is afraid to call us unpatriotic. We do not turn a tide, but nor do we protest in vain.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled "J"s.

Indictment

Hey, what's Fitzgerald up to these days? Maybe we could get another Fitzmas to brighten up our spring? I would like to see Karl Rove spend some time in the slammer.

Here's Fitzgerald on Libby at the press conference:

This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.

I will say this: Mr. Libby is presumed innocent. He would not be guilty unless and until a jury of 12 people came back and returned a verdict saying so.

But if what we allege in the indictment is true, then what is charged is a very, very serious crime that will vindicate the public interest in finding out what happened here.

[...]

If you're doing a national security investigation, if you're trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven -- because remember there's a presumption of innocence -- but if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.

And I'd say this: I think people might not understand this. We, as prosecutors and FBI agents, have to deal with false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury all the time. The Department of Justice charges those statutes all the time.

When I was in New York working as a prosecutor, we brought those cases because we realized that the truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.

In Philadelphia, where Jack works, they prosecute false statements and obstruction of justice.

When I got to Chicago, I knew the people before me had prosecuted false statements, obstruction and perjury cases.

And we do it all the time. And if a truck driver pays a bribe or someone else does something where they go into a grand jury afterward and lie about it, they get indicted all the time.

Any notion that anyone might have that there's a different standard for a high official, that this is somehow singling out obstruction of justice and perjury, is upside down.

If these facts are true, if we were to walk away from this and not charge obstruction of justice and perjury, we might as well just hand in our jobs. Because our jobs, the criminal justice system, is to make sure people tell us the truth. And when it's a high-level official and a very sensitive investigation, it is a very, very serious matter that no one should take lightly.

Coming attractions

And now, I am done with "I".

Next up: J. Judges, Justice Department, Jews, Jelly.

Votes? Ideas for other J's to be covered?

Idiot Box

RJ voted for an entry on the Idiot Box before I give up on the "I"s and move, belatedly, to J. Since RJ was the only voter, he wins.

This is what I want to say about your televisions, oh readers: please, please, just stop watching them!

There are some good shows out there. And these days, they are for sale, ad-free, at iTunes, or, if you can wait a year, they'll come out on DVD. (We just watched LOST on DVD. Very good show. Now we are stuck waiting a full year for season two to come out and resolve the incredible cliffhanging season one finale, but that's another story).

The news you can get from the web. The really important stuff that you want to see from the TV you can watch on the web. You won't miss much, I promise, if you don't watch television. We survive. (Someone asked me a couple weeks ago what we did in the evenings if we didn't have a television. "Well," I said, "Max plays the violin, and we play with our kid, and we read, and I write on this blog..." But you really don't need me spouting all holier-than-thou crap about how we are making such great use of our time without television. The internets can be a pretty massive time-suck too.)

The argument I want to make against the television today is a political one, and it has to do with something Al Gore (did I mention I'd really like him to be our president) said on Monday and has said before, in greater depth, elsewhere:

It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?

On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"

[...]

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.

In fact there was a time when America's public discourse was consistently much more vivid, focused and clear. Our Founders, probably the most literate generation in all of history, used words with astonishing precision and believed in the Rule of Reason.

Their faith in the viability of Representative Democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry. But they placed particular emphasis on insuring that the public could be well- informed. And they took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas in order to ensure the free-flow of knowledge.

The values that Americans had brought from Europe to the New World had grown out of the sudden explosion of literacy and knowledge after Gutenberg's disruptive invention broke up the stagnant medieval information monopoly and triggered the Reformation, Humanism, and the Enlightenment and enshrined a new sovereign: the "Rule of Reason."

Indeed, the self-governing republic they had the audacity to establish was later named by the historian Henry Steele Commager as "the Empire of Reason."

Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others -- but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press.

Their world was dominated by the printed word. Just as the proverbial fish doesn't know it lives in water, the United States in its first half century knew nothing but the world of print: the Bible, Thomas Paine's fiery call to revolution, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution , our laws, the Congressional Record, newspapers and books.

[...]

Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the television networks mimicked the nation's leading newspapers by faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar.

But all the while, television's share of the total audience for news and information continued to grow -- and its lead over newsprint continued to expand. And then one day, a smart young political consultant turned to an older elected official and succinctly described a new reality in America's public discourse: "If it's not on television, it doesn't exist."

But some extremely important elements of American Democracy have been pushed to the sidelines . And the most prominent casualty has been the "marketplace of ideas" that was so beloved and so carefully protected by our Founders. It effectively no longer exists.

It is not that we no longer share ideas with one another about public matters; of course we do. But the "Public Forum" in which our Founders searched for general agreement and applied the Rule of Reason has been grossly distorted and "restructured" beyond all recognition.

And here is my point: it is the destruction of that marketplace of ideas that accounts for the "strangeness" that now continually haunts our efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation.

[...]

Consider the rules by which our present "public forum" now operates, and how different they are from the forum our Founders knew. Instead of the easy and free access individuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.

Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers.

Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens.

Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.

The number of cables connecting to homes is limited in each community and usually forms a natural monopoly. The broadcast and satellite spectrum is likewise a scarce and limited resource controlled by a few. The production of programming has been centralized and has usually required a massive capital investment. So for these and other reasons, an ever-smaller number of large corporations control virtually all of the television programming in America.

Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.

So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television's domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information network in all of American television.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

[...]

Our democracy has been hollowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially created. Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."

Like you, I recoil at Lippman's cynical dismissal of America's gift to human history. But in order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum and create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the Rule of Reason. We must, for example, stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth.

Democracy depends upon the conversation of ordinary citizens about ideas. Television obliterates that conversation. Video not only killed the radio star, it has killed our democracy.

There may be no solution to this problem. Gore goes on to say:

Make no mistake, full-motion video is what makes television such a powerful medium. Our brains - like the brains of all vertebrates - are hard-wired to immediately notice sudden movement in our field of vision. We not only notice, we are compelled to look. When our evolutionary predecessors gathered on the African savanna a million years ago and the leaves next to them moved, the ones who didn't look are not our ancestors. The ones who did look passed on to us the genetic trait that neuroscientists call "the establishing reflex." And that is the brain syndrome activated by television continuously - sometimes as frequently as once per second. That is the reason why the industry phrase, "glue eyeballs to the screen," is actually more than a glib and idle boast. It is also a major part of the reason why Americans watch the TV screen an average of four and a half hours a day.

Gore expresses some hope that streaming video on the internet will help alleviate the barriers to entry problem that afflicts television's 'marketplace of ideas'. Perhaps, but it's also true that video, however arresting, is not a good medium for engaging in conversation and making reasoned arguments. For one thing, it is remarkably difficult to produce watch-able video. Greater democratic access to the means of distribution for video would do nothing, example, to help me, an ordinary citizen, participate more effectively in a video marketplace of ideas. I do not have the time or the skill to produce a video explaining why President Bush should be impeached, for example. For another thing, video does not encourage the exercise of reasoning, logic, and consideration. It's too immediate. It acts too directly on the emotions. Conversations in writing enforce a distance between ideas and the evolutionary quirks of human neurology. They're not 'natural'. It is more difficult to be manipulated by words on a page than by images on a screen. Not impossible, of course, but more difficult.

If we intend to resurrect our democracy or to give birth to a new one, we would be wise to quiet the din of propaganda and manipulation and bloviating experts and advertising and entertainment and irrelevancies that come from our televisions. I have no illusions that we can convince all of America to do this. But that is no excuse not to do it ourselves. We must turn off our TVs, and we must write to one another. We must remember how to have ideas, and how to talk about them. We must reject the sudden movement, the excitement, the action of those glowing boxes, that spectacle that paralyzes our minds and bodies.Somebody must remember how to think, for we will need that, I believe, for whatever the future will bring.