Are We Really This Dumb?

Fred Crane died today, at the age of 90.  He was the actor who played the role of Brent Tarleton in the 1939 classic, "Gone With The Wind."  His character is remembered primarily for speaking the first lines of the film, "What do we care if we were expelled from college, Scarlett?  The war is going to start any day now, so we'd have left college anyhow."

I've often remembered that line as I've winced over George Bush's many gaffes and policy blunders.  Bush was a shining example of the "Gentleman's C" at Yale.  Having gained entry thanks to his legacy status (his father and grandfather were both Elis), he obviously didn't feel pressed to exert himself in the classroom.  As the family name opened doors in New Haven for W., so would they open doors in the world of business and politics to follow.

And now we're presented with John McCain as a candidate for president.  McCain's father and grandfather were both admirals in the U.S. Navy and, like Bush, he cashed in on his legacy status and followed them to the Naval Academy.  I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he, also like Bush, didn't exactly apply himself to his studies -- he finished ranked 894th in his class of 899 cadets.  Like President Bush, McCain is comfortable with his academic performance, capable of  joking about it on the campaign trail. 

Which is fine, I suppose.  History is certainly replete with examples of men and women who have gone on to great successes after indifferent academic careers.  But what's troubling is the thin, sneering veneer of condescension that the Republicans use so predictably every four years to smear their opponent as an elitist intellectual, as if being smart is a bad thing.  Troubling, not so much because they do it, but rather, that it works.  

I've been watching for some time now, and I'm pretty sure America is getting stupider.  Presidential politics aside, the lowest common denominator grows lower and commoner by the year.  In 2007, a study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 averaged two hours a day watching TV and only seven minutes each day reading.  In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans read a single book voluntarily, down from a whopping 59 percent in 1992.  

Television is not exempt.  Always the cotton candy of popular media, today's prime-time fare has regressed to where it's positively drool-inducing.  "Your Show of Shows" "The Honeymooners" and "All In The Family" -- all smart, topical and popular shows of previous generations -- have been replaced by the current hits, "American Idol" "Deal Or No Deal" and "24" -- all dumb, fantastical and, yes, wildly popular.

And cinema's no better.  It has now completely surrendered to an audience still dreaming of obtaining their first driver's license.  Now, this is not scientific.  I'd research the exact numbers but it's too painful -- like watching Larry Bird steal Isiah Thomas' inbounds pass for the seven millionth time.  But, basically, a third of all tickets in this country are sold to films made by Pixar, a third are sold to variations of a romantic comedy starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey (or, if they're busy, Cameron Diaz and . . . oh, pick one), and a third are sold to Batman and other movies based on comic books.

The last type is the worst.  Not because comics are inherently inferior to bubble gum romance or Disney on steroids.  The problem is, somewhere along the road these superhero movies started to be taken seriously.  And not just as works of art but as socio-political statements.  

"The Dark Knight," the latest, and most commercially successful, installment in the Batman franchise, has sold around a half a billion dollars in tickets to date.  It has been been written about ad nauseum -- reviewed and deconstructed in every magazine, newspaper and blog this side of the Wall Street Journal.

Oops, scratch that.  The Wall Street Journal did, indeed weigh in.  On July 25th, Andrew Klavan wrote the single most preposterous review I have ever read.  It's not that he makes the comparison between Batman and George Bush, or "The Dark Knight" and the war on terror.  Those are obvious metaphors that even the director, Christopher Nolan, cryptically concedes were intentional.  

But Klavan goes off the deep end when he argues that the film should be a call to arms for conservative artists in their battle against the left-wing "realism."  He says,

"Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth?  Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "200," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight."

and,

"Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic.  Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex.  They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms."

and,

"The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love."

and finally,

"As Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gorden says of the hated and hunted Batman, 'He has to run away -- because we have to chase him.'

"That's real moral complexity."

No, that's really dumb.  It's why we've lost over 4,000 men and women in Iraq.  It's why in Britain, our closest ally left in the world, 35 percent of the people now consider us a "force for evil."  (That's not Iran or Iraq, folks, that's frigging ENGLAND.)  It's why offshore drilling for oil is even a campaign issue.

America likes to keep it simple, stupid.  At the Saddleback Forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked Barack Obama if evil exists and, if so, should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it or defeat it?  Obama gave one of his typically nuanced answers, metaphorically conceding that he wasn't God and that evil would always exist.  The best we can hope to do is act as soldiers in the battle against it and confront it with humility, as often evil has been perpetrated in the name of confronting it.  That's a nice, subtle way of injecting the atrocities of the Bush administration's war -- Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Extreme Renditions, Black Site Prisons -- into the conversation without getting down on the ground and rolling around in the mud.  It was classic Obama, love it or hate it.

When his turn to answer came, John McCain replied, steely-eyed, "Defeat it," and promised to pursue bin Laden to "the gates of hell."   The crowd went crazy.

It was like being at the theatre, watching "The Dark Knight."  The Joker would pull some strings and the entire Gotham police department would rush to his proposed target, only to discover he was playing them.  At which point, they'd pivot and rush, en masse, to the next potential catastrophe.  It reminded me of nothing so much as a soccer game among eight year-olds.

  

And it made me tired.  My problem with "The Dark Knight" wasn't conservative vs. liberal.  My problem was that, ultimately, it was dumb.  It was often incoherent and it went on way too long.  After awhile, the explosions and special effects lost their ability to shock and awe.  I became unwilling, finally, to suspend my disbelief.  I spent the last half-hour waiting for the credits to appear.

Come to think of it, it did resemble the Bush administration after all.

So that's where we're at.  Batman's our foreign policy model and another cowboy's running for president.  Are we getting dumber?  Stay tuned. 

Tough Love

On Friday, we threw another birthday party for America.  She turned 232.  Not old, by imperial standards, but no longer a fresh-faced ingenue, either.  She's a fully matured woman now, still capable of turning heads but she looks her best wearing makeup and heels with the lights down low.

New York City's celebration seemed pretty sedate, at least by Big Apple standards.  Certainly there was little of the spectacle of the two great July 4th's of my lifetime -- 1976's bicentennial, with it's tall ships sailing up the Hudson as New York prepared to host its first Democratic Convention in 52 years and celebrate their economic recovery from the previous year's near-bankruptcy, and 1986, when the Statue of Liberty turned 100 and Presidents Reagan and Mitterrand partied all weekend with the help of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, 30,000 vessels in New York Harbor and the largest fireworks display in American history.

No, it rained this year, fittingly.  Not that precipitation was necessary to dampen the country's patriotic fervor.  It's been a tough twenty-first century so far here in WORSP (that would be the World's Only Remaining Super-Power).  As George Bush's reign of error inches towards a close, we have less for which to be thankful with each passing day.  

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on, although little notice is taken anymore.  Mention of American casualties is rare and Iraqi casualties rarer.  Pictures of our fallen soldiers are non-existent.  Half-hearted arguments fizzle here and there, like a sparkler discarded at a picnic, as to whether the surge is actually working, but they're more for the sake of appearances than anything else.  $100 fill-ups at the pump and a 5.5% unemployment rate have slowly and methodically sapped the country of the will to protest a war seen only on HBO and paid for by borrowing against our children's futures.  Even the government we installed in Iraq is sick of us.  Prime Minister al-Maliki presented us this week with a gift-wrapped demand to leave, the sooner the better, and the Bush/McCain response was, "No thanks, we're good."

General Antonio Tagube, the messenger whom Bush sent to investigate the reported atrocities at Abu Ghraib and then promptly fired when Tagube informed him there was gambling taking place in the casino, made a noisy comeback as Independence Day approached.  He hooked up with the Physicians for Human Rights on their report detailing the torture of prisoners by the American army and declared, "There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.  The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account."  What's that you say?  War crimes?  It brought us halfway out of our Barcaloungers, where we were depressively trying to nap away the summer.  But the concept of an entire administration being guilty to some degree of war crimes was too much for us to get our heads around so we filed it under "left-wing crazy," right next to the image of Dennis Kucinich reading articles of impeachment into the record of the House of Representatives.  (The idea that Congress in its present construct would, or could, actually impeach a corrupt president is laughable.  Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, admits she "would probably advocate" impeachment -- if she were not in the House.  But, as it is, "the question of impeachment is something that would divide the country."  There's some leadership for you.)  So the Bush/Cheney train continues inexorably on down the tracks, running out the clock until they return to the private sector and cash in the chips they've been amassing for these past eight years.  And our fitful  slumber continued.

Former Deputy Associate Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Jason Burnett, accused Vice President Cheney's staff of editing congressional testimony on the threats of global warming.  Seems the veep wasn't happy with the conclusions drawn that climate change has human health consequences.  "I'm not interested in pointing fingers at any individual," Burnett said, but (he might as well have added), "the guy I'm thinking of has a battery in his chest and I think he lives in a bunker."  To which we yawned.  That kind of penny-ante corruption barely survives a full news cycle these days.

I know it's the 4th of July.  I know it's a time to profess love of country, greatest experiment mankind has ever seen, blah, blah, blah.  Trouble is, it's hard to perform on demand.  And I'm just not feeling it.

To borrow a time-worn analogy, if America was a woman with whom I was involved, our relationship would be on the rocks.  She's like this big, beautiful, rich and powerful woman you brought home to meet the parents a couple of decades ago.  She may have had a few skeletons rattling around the back of her closet -- genocide, slavery, sexism -- and your parents warned you to keep your eyes open, but you went ahead and took the plunge.  She was just so damned sexy and she took care of you, besides.  The toys kept rolling in and you continued trading up for better apartments.  Sure, she drank a little too much and she could be a bit on the loud side.  People whispered behind your backs that she was pushy.  But you ignored them and concentrated on her good qualities.  She could be generous to a fault when she was so inclined, she always did her best to help you get ahead and, most of all, she was never boring. 

But the relationship is troubled.  As the years pass, it becomes more and more difficult to excuse her acting out.  Finally, you wake up one morning after dragging her out of a party she had crashed after too many cocktails where she insulted the host, got in a fight with the guest of honor and refused to leave when asked.  You look at her, passed out next to you in your king-size waterbed; all puffy and bloated, her greying roots showing beneath her dye job, skin  dried and wrinkled from too many borrowed cigarettes and too much Caribbean sun.  And you realize, as you watch her sleep those last few moments before she opens her bloodshot eyes, hung over and mad at the world, that maybe you don't love her all that much anymore. 

When you try to explain the situation to friends they ask, "Why don't you leave her?"  And the truth is, maybe you should.  But, when push comes to shove, you just can't bring yourself to walk out the door.  Let's face it, you're no spring chicken yourself.  All of your friends are her friends.  They'd probably choose her and you'd be left to grow old, without the benefit of grace or company.  The apartment is nice -- could you really go back to a studio in one of the boroughs after three bedrooms and a roof-top pool in Soho?  Plus the sex is still good once in a while.  Damned good.  And she can still make your heart sing when she smiles that smile she saves for only you.  So you stay, promising yourself there are better days ahead.

That's pretty much how I feel about America these days.  When someone says, "Love it or leave it," I'm forced to admit that I probably should, but I probably won't.  Italy's a long way away and they don't play baseball.

So, I roll over, give her a kiss and say, "Happy anniversary, dear."

The Truth About The Surge

"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders . . . to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds . . .  (and) . . .  we are mired in a stalemate that could only be ended by negotiation, not victory."

That's not a quotation from Barack Obama.  Or even Dennis Kucinich.  

Walter Cronkite said it during the CBS news broadcast of February 27, 1968 in response to the Tet Offensive launched by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces on January 30th.  Although the communists sustained immense casualties over the eventual nine-month campaign (some 75-85,000 troops were killed in action), the 6,328 allied forces killed proved more than the American public was willing to stomach.  Cronkite, the "most trusted man in America," was as responsible as anyone for the public's ultimate rejection of the government's Vietnam policy.

On February 28th, the day following Cronkite's proclamation, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara resigned.  Back in Saigon, Generals Westmoreland and Wheeler determined that an additional 400,000 U.S. troops would be required to effectively respond to the communist surge.  This would necessitate the mobilization of the military's reserve forces -- a total commitment to the conflict in Vietnam.  Critics argued that it would only result in an uptick in communist forces and an increasingly bloody stalemate on the ground.  Clark Clifford, the new Secretary of Defense, as well as Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow -- all former hawks on the war -- advised President Lyndon Johnson to pursue a policy of disengagement.  On March 31st, Johnson announced a halt to the bombing and his decision not to run for a second term of office.

Cronkite's words could just as easily have been applied to the current war in Iraq.  The American people were hoodwinked into supporting our neoconservative administration's hubristic determination to spread democracy and American influence in the region through the administration's fear-mongering, exaggerations and outright lies.  The forged "uranium from Africa" document,  the fabricated "senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda," Iraq's phantom possession of chemical and biological weapons -- all strategies to deceive the public into backing the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Unlike Lyndon Johnson, however, George W. Bush has never wavered in his conviction.  In January of 2007, when the war was at its nadir, he proposed a surge of 20-30,000 troops to his own council of wise men, the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  They opposed the increase, with the outgoing head of Central Command, General Abizaid insisting that adding troops was not the answer.  

So who was right?

Well, let's crunch the numbers.  The current confirmed death total of U.S. forces for the Iraq War is 4,104.  In 2003, there were 486 troops  killed in action.  In 2004, the number rose to 849.  2005 - 846.  2006 - 822.  Bush announced the surge in January of 2007.  The death count for the entire year was 902.  So far this year, 201 American soldiers have died.  30,000 U.S. men and women have been wounded in Iraq -- 7,200 of them since the troop surge began to work its magic.  On Tuesday, a bomb in a Sadr City district council building blew up two American soldiers and three civilians working for the army.  Oh, and six Iraqis also died in the blast, if that does anything for you.  On Monday, a security guard assigned to an Iraqi politician opened fire on a group of American soldiers, killing two of them.

If this surge is a success, I'd hate to see Bush and Senator Surge himself, John McCain's standards for failure.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure any such measures exist.  The New York Times details a Government Accountability Office report released Monday claiming "the American plan for a stable Iraq lacks a strategic framework that meshes with the administration's goals, is falling out of touch with the realities on the ground and contains serious flaws in its operational guidelines."  It further claims that the administration "broadly overstates gains in some categories, including the readiness of the Iraqi Army, electricity production and how much money Iraq is spending on its reconstruction."  Any decline in daily attacks rests not on improved Iraqi security performance and a developing political system, but on "the American troop increase, a shaky cease-fire declared by militias loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and an American-led program to pay former insurgents to help keep the peace."

In other words, when the administration tells us, "the surge is working - just look at the statistics," they're cooking the books.  According to Bush, the surge had two goals:  to give the new Iraqi government breathing space to promote sectarian reconciliation and to provide security throughout the country by putting an end to sectarian violence.  Judging by the events of the week to date, as well as the 1,103 troops killed since Bush over-ruled his generals, can anyone really believe the surge is succeeding?  Or that McCain's vision of some type of long-term presence on Iraqi soil is a good idea for our national security interests?

David Brooks does, for one.  His Tuesday column in the New York Times trumpets the surge's success and its opponents resultant lesson in humility.  He lists their stages of denial as the surge has played out:

"First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good.  Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement.  Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress.  Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home."

As if any of this "skipping" could hold a candle to the world-record long jump required to clear the canyon dug by Bush, Cheney and the rest of their cabal's collection of fairy tales and prevarications they spun to justify their intentions.  Brooks is apparently untroubled by the reality that we have spent 4,104 American lives in blood and over $548 billion in treasure to date in pursuit of the neocon ideal of what would be, in effect, an Iraqi protectorate from which we can keep our hand on the oil pump.  He is an apologist for a morally rancid policy that makes no more sense now than it did last January.  Or than it did in the spring of 1968 when, during the height of the Tet Offensive, Clark Clifford wondered:

"How do we avoid creating the feeling that we are pounding troops down a rathole?"

You do it by getting the hell out.  

November seems a long way off.  Especially to those kids who'll be enjoying the surge's success in the meantime.

Bush: Corrupt or Inept?

Distracted by the fun of watching the Obama/Clinton steel cage, death match in North Carolina this week, I almost missed the opportunity to celebrate the five-year anniversary of "Mission Accomplished."  Five years ago Thursday, George Bush dressed up as a fighter pilot and had a real one set him down on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.  All decked out in his costume, he paraded in front of the assembled crew and press, like a kid getting ready for Halloween, and then stood in front of the now infamous banner and told the nation, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

Anniversaries being a time to take stock, it seems like a good chance to take a break from the Democratic primaries and remember some of the Bush administration's greatest hits.  All good parties need a game.  Pin the Tail On the Donkey's fun, but I hardly think a donkey would be welcome at a Republican affair.  Truth or Consequences is always a crowd-pleaser but it might take too long to explain the rules to the guests -- the Bush administration has taken precious little notice of either concept.  Something along those lines, though . . . how  about Verdict: Corrupt or Inept?  The game is simple.  We'll look at a few of the administration's signature disasters and choose whether each was a result of outright corruption or simple ineptitude.  Ready?  

We've really got to start with the Iraq War, being as it's pretty much the inspiration for the whole game.  To review:  After toppling the Taliban, we pivoted our focus from Afghanistan towards Iraq in order to remove Saddam, thereby allowing bin Laden to head for the hills of Pakistan and disappear down a cave.  Depending upon whom you believe, Cheney or Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz or Feith ordered L. Paul Bremer to disband the Iraqi army, loosing a quarter of a million pissed-off, out-of-work young men into the countryside.  We went after these insurgents with helicopters, bombs and missiles, with scant regard for "collateral damage," a euphemistic term for the innocent civilians killed in our determination to present them with the gift of democracy.  That number, by the way, has just passed 90,000 for those of you keeping score.  We misread the role of Iran in Iraqi Shiite politics, assuming their "interference" was negligible.  To the contrary, Iran is providing arms and training multiple insurgent factions and their regional influence continues to grow, along with their nuclear potential.  Rumsfeld's determination to do the job on the cheap lead the administration to ignore the advice of Army chief of staff General Shinseki, who testified that several hundred thousand troops would be required to stabilize Iraq.  Shinseki was forced into retirement, years passed, thousands died and Bush eventually ordered a surge in American forces.  The list is virtually endless, but I'm getting a headache and this is supposed to be a party, so let's put Iraq to bed.  VERDICT--INEPT

Speaking of taking stock, the New York Times reported yesterday on the study that the Department of Education released of Bush's $6 billion Reading First initiative, which he insisted be included in the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001.  The report stated, "Reading First did not improve students' reading comprehension."  Grover Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, concluded that the program, "doesn't end up helping children read."  To be fair, Reading First does still have its supporters, including Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.  The relative merits of the program in its current form are debatable.  What is not, however, is that it has been headed by hacks who have used their positions to feather the nests of specific publishers at the expense of the students' best interests.  Chris Doherty, the Reading First director, was forced to resign in 2006 when the conflict of interests became public.  He referred in emails to backers of alternative curriculums as "dirtbags" who were "trying to crash our party."  Sen. Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Senate education committee, accused the administration of putting, "cronyism first and the reading skills of our children last."  VERDICT-- (too close to call, really) CORRUPT and INEPT

Also this week, Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration, which handles billions of dollars in federal contracts, was forced to resign.  Not only did she allegedly use her position to steer government business towards friends, she is also accused of violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from taking action that could influence an election.  A Karl Rove deputy gave a meeting at GSA in which he identified specific Democrats the Republican Party was targeting for defeat in 2008 as well as Republicans whom they deemed vulnerable.  Doan has been quoted as asking him at the meeting how her agency could be used to "help our candidates."  VERDICT--CORRUPT

When Dick Cheney became Vice President in 2000, he left his position as CEO of Halliburton, Co., one of the largest oil-service companies in the world.  He cashed in over $30 million in company stock at the time.  Halliburtonwatch.org details the chronology of the company's truly meteoric rise to their current monopolistic position as contractors to the Iraq War.  Halliburton split its time in the 90's between making billions hand-over-fist and paying comparatively piddling fines levied against them for stock fraud and over-billing practices.  In 2001, Halliburton subsidiary KBR secured a ten-year deal with the Pentagon with no cost ceiling to provide support services to the Army.  Cheney claimed in 2003 he had, "no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years."  Well, except for the $150,000 per year in deferred compensation the company was paying him at the time and the 433,333 shares of unexercised stock options he still owned.  The longer this war goes on, the richer Halliburton gets and the more those Cheney stock options are worth.  VERDICT--CORRUPT

George Bush's Department of Justice, headed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, chose Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 2006, to dismiss eight U.S. attorneys without apparent cause.  They were replaced by hand-picked interim appointees.  Several of the fired attorneys claimed they were being pressured to direct, or not direct, their prosecutions in a partisan manner.  A U.S. attorney's job is to police politicians.  When the DOJ tells them who, and how, to investigate, the public trust has been breached.  On August 27, 2007, after months of stonewalling, Gonzales finally resigned amid accusations of perjury in his testimony before Congress.  VERDICT--There's more than a whiff of INEPT here, but, to be fair, Gonzales brought that with him when he took over the DOJ.  His qualifications were always suspect.  CORRUPT

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Monday, August, 29, 2005.  President Bush was on vacation at the time and decided to go ahead with his plans to fly to Phoenix and help John McCain celebrate his birthday.  By the time they got around to cutting the cake, the levees in New Orleans had been breached and the 9th ward was under 6-8 feet of water.  Louisiana Governor Blanco pleaded, "Mr. President, we need your help.  We need everything you've got."  Bush went to bed.  The next day, he visited the El Mirage Country Club in Cucamonga, California, as part of a drug-benefits tour, missing that day's video conference on Katrina.  Mass looting was taking place in New Orleans.  Exhausted police were being used to control the looters instead of engaging in search and rescue.  Bush was pictured playing guitar with country singer Mark Willis before returning to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the final night of his vacation.  On Wednesday, two full days after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Bush flew over the region in Air Force One to assess the damage.  By now, FEMA staff was reporting that people were dying at the Superdome.  Ex-commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, Michael Brown headed to New Orleans in his new position as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  Five of his top eight FEMA officials had also come to their current jobs with virtually no disaster experience.  The top three FEMA officials all had ties to the Bush 2000 presidential campaign or the White House advance operation.  This crack staff was responsible for an inadequate evacuation plan and a relief effort woefully short on planning, supplies, manpower and communication.  A 2006 Republican House select committee investigated the government's response to Katrina and concluded that the response to, "Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare . . ."  They judged Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff "detached" and Michael Brown "clueless."  VERDICT:  CORRUPT (in that FEMA staffing at the highest levels was yet another of the egregious examples of the Bush administration's proclivity for blatant cronyism) and INEPT

Well, that's all the time we have for our game today.  Join us next week when we'll cover classics like Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Abu Ghraib, Pre-911 Intelligence Failures and the skewed/suppressed scientific research at NIH, HHS, FDA and the EPA.  

For now, we'll just say, "Happy Anniversary, Mr. President."  Loved the fighter pilot costume.

And now, back to the wrestling in North Carolina.

Just Say No To A Boycott

I'm thinking about visiting Lake George, in upstate New York, this summer.  To do so, I will have to pass through the state capitol of Albany.  Home of the New York State Assembly which just rejected Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan for New York City.  It was a lousy, cowardly move on the legislature's part and they need to be held accountable.  

For my part, I intend to boycott the lunch counter of the Miss Albany Diner on my way through the city.  I'll pack a sandwich instead.  I was inspired to act by the growing clamor against participation in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, highlighted by Hillary Clinton's call yesterday for President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies in protest of China's miserable record on human rights.  

The theory goes that, if China wants to be treated like a big-time, international power, they need to clean up their act and start respecting the rights of their own citizens, as well as Tibetans and Sudanese and anyone else they've dissed over the past six months.  In other words, they need to meet our human rights standards before we will legitimize their government with our presence at the party they're planning.

You've got to be kidding.  That deafening silence you hear coming out of the White House is Bush and his lackeys trying to come up with a response that won't bring down the house over at the United Nations.  Laugh?  It would be greeted like the stateroom scene from "Night At The Opera."  

America demanding respect for civil rights and calling for a government to take responsibility for it's actions?  America, with her history of supporting Somoza in Nicaragua, Mobutu in Zaire, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, who killed 1.5 million in Cambodia, Amin in Uganda, Batista in Cuba, Botha in South Africa, the Duvaliers, who slaughtered 40,000 in Haiti, Doe in Liberia, Franco in Spain, Diehm in South Vietnam, and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, our best friend in the region despite his regime which hangs onto power through the use of torture, amputation and public hangings.  Who punishes female adultry with death by stoning.  That America?

America who financed Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, Trujillo, Suharto and the Shah of Iran?  Who greased the wheels for Ford, GM and Studebaker to sell trucks to Franco's Spain and ITT to provide the phone and radio systems for Nazi Germany?  That America?

The America that brought the world the images of Abu Ghraib, the stories of wrongful detention and torture in Guantanamo Bay and the secret prisons we've set up in Thailand, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe to deal with the really tough nuts to crack?  Well, not to deal with them so much as to disappear them.  

The America that stands with Iran and the Congo as countries who execute juveniles and the mentally ill?  That openly mocked the ideals set forth in her own Constitution by passing the Patriot Act, thereby giving the government the right to spy on its own citizens without demonstrating probable cause?  That responded ( with positively glacial alacrity) to Hurricane Katrina's ravaging of the citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with police brutality, racial profiling and discrimination?  

The America who showed her respect for the international community and her sense of responsibility for producing 36% of the world's greenhouse emissions while only representing 4.6% of the global population by opting out of the Kyoto Protocol immediately upon George Bush taking office?  Thereby proudly joining Kazakhstan as the only two nations not to ratify the treaty.  That America?

And finally, the America that invaded Iraq to exterminate a tinhorn dictator and settle a family debt and is still there, thousands of lives and millions of refugees and trillions in treasure later?  

Is that really the resume we're supposed to bring with us to the table when we sit down with the Chinese and lecture them on human rights?

George Bush probably doesn't think so.  Tough to sell, globally, that is.  We need to think smaller.  The Opening Ceremonies might be a little awkward.  There was a story in the Times Online a few weeks ago that just might fit the bill.  It seems the US athletes are planning to bring their own food to Beijing, rather than risk trusting the local cuisine.  The Chinese aren't pleased but they're finding it hard to defend their home-cooking, given all the recent public health scares they've endured.  

Yeah, that's right.  It's an Olympic food boycott, similar in many ways to the protest I've planned for my Albany visit.  I think Dana Perino needs to clip that article and trot it right into the Oval Office for the president to see.  Give him something to hang his cowboy hat on here.  

Because, for once, I'm with the administration.  We're in no position to make a big deal out of this human rights thing.