Progressive World Review

The rationalizations for the Iraq war have been a moving target from its inception.  First Bush claimed a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, next, they were a threat to national security with their weapons of mass destruction and “mushroom clouds over New York City,” and when those justifications were shown to be without merit it became bringing democracy to the Iraqi people.

As time went by each rational for war fell by the wayside and more and more Americans turned against the war until being anti-war was no longer a “fringe” position, a clear majority of Americans turned against the war and wanted the U.S. to extricate itself from Iraq.  So why then do we remain?  The answer is, in part, because admitting failure is not in Bush’s playbook.  In some people denial is so strong that the more the evidence turns against them, the stronger their resolve becomes.  Bush, as well as Cheney who was likely the driving factor behind the war, are just such men.  But what was even more important than the denial however, is that the stakes are so high.  It’s important to understand that to men like Bush, the lies that were told and the manipulation of public opinion were just tools to be utilized to achieve the intended goal, and that goal was to gain a foothold in the Middle East.

Aside from all the talk of bringing peace to the region, the reality was that it was always about the oil.  According to the foreign policy “experts” of the neocon think tank, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), Iraq was the key.  Topple Hussein and bring “democracy” (read: pro American government), to Iraq and it would blossom throughout the Middle East thus guaranteeing the U.S. of a reliable source of oil to fuel its money making capitalist machine.  They can’t come out and say that because that would be to admit that thousands of young Americans will have died in order to line the pocket of the wealthy so the rationalizations continue even though, by now, we all know they’re false.

Which is why the latest from the McCain camp was so revealing.  The final rationalization for staying in Iraq was that we’ll go when they want us to go, a sentiment that McCain has agreed with.  From the Think Progress website,

QUESTION: Let me give you a hypothetical, senator. What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there? I understand it’s a hypothetical, but it’s at least possible.

McCAIN: Well, if that scenario evolves, then I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because - if it was an elected government of Iraq - and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people. (emphasis original)

Well, they want us to go.  In an unambiguous statement, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has come out in favor of Barack Obama’s 16 month plan to withdraw from Iraq.  From another Think Progress post,

In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.” […] (emphasis original)

But just as all of the other rationalizations have proven to be false, so it would appear is the last one.  This is what a senior McCain official had to say,

In response to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s clear statement in support of a 16-month redeployment from Iraq, a senior McCain official tells Marc Ambinder “[V]oters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders.”

So it wasn’t about 9/11, it wasn’t about national security and it certainly wasn’t about the Iraqi people.  It’s time to end the charade and get out of Iraq as soon as is practicably possible.

–Paul Wilden

Think Progress ran a story today highlighting Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) habit of obstructing Senate legislation.  According to the article, Coburn currently has holds on 80 Senate bills. 

On Monday, the Wonk Room reported on Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) stubborn insistence that the bipartisan President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief bill (PEPFAR) include a wasteful earmark mandating that “55 percent of the money go to treatment programs.” Speaking on the Senate floor, Coburn suggested that his insistence on restoring the mandate saved the PEPFAR program.
…
But Coburn is no hero. Far from it. In his three years in the senate, Coburn has earned the reputation of “a fly in the soup,” abusing the senate’s hold privilege - a technique which allows senators to “object to bringing a bill or nomination to the floor for consideration” - to prevent “the Senate leadership” from bringing matters to a vote.
…
Currently, “Coburn has holds on about 80 bills” which are “non-controversial, bipartisan bills that he just doesn’t like.”

A hold is a little known parliamentary procedure that allows a Senator to prevent a bill from coming up for a vote, ostensibly to prevent legislation from being rushed through before allowing everyone a chance to thoroughly examine it but is frequently used to hold up votes on legislation that is seen as objectionable.

What is so disturbing about this, beyond the obvious, is how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has allowed a member of the minority party to exercise so many holds while simultaneously refusing to honor a hold from a member of his own party.  Late last year, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) tried to place a hold on the FISA bill that was working its way through Congress only to have Reid block his attempt, (h/t Glenn Greenwald)

Russ Feingold, today, on the effects of Harry Reid’s pro-administration dirty work:

This morning, the Senate starts debating legislation to expand the government’s surveillance powers.

Unfortunately, the bill we are going to be considering is the one reported out by the Senate Intelligence Committee in October, S. 2248. It did not have to be this way. Thirteen Senators joined me last week in asking the Majority Leader to instead bring up a bill that includes the changes approved by the Judiciary Committee last month. . . .

By choosing the Intelligence Committee bill over the Judiciary product, Senator Reid has made things much tougher for those of us who think the courts — not Congress — should decide whether the companies deserve immunity. He’s also made it an uphill struggle of those of us who want more court oversight of the broad new surveillance powers included in the bill. . . .

We have a big fight on our hands, and unfortunately, the deck is now stacked against us. (emphasis original)

All of this stems from Reid’s refusal to honor the “hold” placed on that bill by Chris Dodd, who has been in the Senate for 24 years. In fairness, though, there are some Senators whose “holds” are treated with great reverence by Reid. (emphasis added)

Begging the question: which side is Reid on?  The answer to that goes beyond traditional partisan politics.  While there is no doubt there are very real differences between Democrats and Republicans, both parties belong to the firmly entrenched Washington beltway political class making their similarities even more significant than their differences.

–Paul Wilden

When the shocking pictures from Abu Ghraib surfaced, high ranking officials in both the military and the administration tried to contain the damage by claiming the abuses were the result of just a few individuals that had run amok and were not indicative of our treatment of detainees in general.  President Bush even proclaimed to the country, “We do not torture.”  And the only convictions to come out of the scandal were of low ranking soldiers while the conviction of the only officer was eventually overturned. 

However, as time went by, a different picture began to emerge.  Reports of similar abuses were coming out of different detention centers such as Guantánamo, stories of rendition, the whisking away of detainees to foreign countries like Egypt, where torture is tolerated, were heard and finally, the torture memos, legal justifications for abandoning the Geneva Conventions and employing “enhanced interrogation” techniques were revealed.

It became clearer and clearer that these abuses were the result of high level policy decisions rather than just a matter of a few rouge individuals acting on their own so when Jane Mayer’s new book was released, The Dark Side, detailing the systemic abuses of detainees, many of whom are most certainly innocent of any wrongdoing, it came as little surprise.  I have yet to read the book but reviews and interviews with Mayer are enlightening, not so much for any new information revealed but because her book is more of a comprehensive compilation of the whole story.  From a Washington Post article which includes a transcript from a question and answer session hosted by the Post’s online Book World Live,

Recast as a series of indictments, the story Mayer tells goes like this: Since embarking upon its global war on terror, the United States has blatantly disregarded the Geneva Conventions. It has imprisoned suspects, including U.S. citizens, without charge, holding them indefinitely and denying them due process. It has created an American gulag in which thousands of detainees, including many innocent of any wrongdoing, have been subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation. It has delivered suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign torturers. Under the guise of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ it has succeeded, in Mayer’s words, in ‘making torture the official law of the land in all but name.’ Further, it has done all these things as a direct result of policy decisions made at the highest levels of government.”

As Mayer has conclusively demonstrated, we do indeed torture.  And while the results of these “enhanced interrogations” are classified so we don’t really know exactly what came out of them, according to Mayer, probably not much,

Tampa, Fla.: Just how much actionable intelligence has been gathered as a result of torture?

Jane Mayer: FBI agents who are expert in Islamic terrorism have told me that the CIA’s program of “enhanced” techniques yielded little to nothing - but then - there is some institutional rivalry to consider here. A former top CIA officer who worked closely with George Tenet, however, told me very candidly that, “Ninety percent of what we got was crap.”

In fact, while listening to an interview on NPR, Mayer revealed that most of the interrogation techniques used came from a military program designed to teach soldiers how to resist Soviet torture techniques.  The remarkable aspect here is that the Soviets were much more interested in extracting false confessions to be used for propaganda purposes rather than to obtain any useful information.  Our government’s use of torture was clearly in the hope of getting good information so it would seem that this is as much a story of abject incompetence as well as moral repugnance.

What may be the most disturbing part of all this, other than the torture itself is the complicity of those that you would hope would at least attempt to stop these kinds of activities.  While there’s little doubt that these plans were hatched by the more radical elements in the Republican Party, certain key Democrats have been aware of this almost from the beginning.  That’s disturbing in its own right, but even more so when you consider that Democratic knowledge of torture programs may very well prevent the perpetrators of these crimes from ever being held accountable,

New York, N.Y.: In your interview with Harper’s yesterday, you said that this about why war crimes prosecutions are unlikely: “An additional complicating factor is that key members of Congress sanctioned this program, so many of those who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised.”

What did you mean by that? Who specifically is compromised ” who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised” — Nancy Pelosi, Jane Harman, Jay Rockefeller? — and how are they “compromised”?

washingtonpost.com: Six Questions for Jane Mayer, Author of The Dark Side (Harpers.org)

Jane Mayer: The ranking members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees were briefed dozens of times about the CIA’s interrogation and detention program over the past seven years - so any member who has held one of those posts has arguably been complicit. Some say they tried to object, internally. But either because of the threat of violating national security, or, because of the fear of the political price of dissent, these figures in both parties would find it very hard at this point to point the finger at the White House, without also implicating themselves. (emphasis added)

So there we have it.  Once considered the moral beacon of the world we have now sunk to the depths of depravity once reserved for the worst nations on earth by employing the despicable and illegal techniques of torture.  This would still be deplorable even if it had worked but it didn’t work and as many in the military will tell you, it can’t work.  Useful information is rarely if ever obtained because its victims will simply tell you what they want to hear.

But beyond the moral arguments against torture it’s important to note that the victims are not just those individuals subjected to such inhumanity, nor are they limited to those who lose their own humanity by employing such tactics, the fact is, the whole country loses.  It’s no coincidence that the same administration that has encouraged the use of torture also feels no compunction against spying on its own citizens because once you consider yourself above the law, once you decide that the ends justify the means, literally anything goes.  What moral, ethical or legal limit could there be on someone who’s willing to resort to torture or has no qualms against violating the Constitution, the very same document they’ve sworn to protect?

–Paul Wilden

In a recent column, Jonah Goldberg lectures Barack Obama on his “patriotism problem.”  As he sees it Obama’s “problem” goes far deeper than lapel pins,

He sees an America in which the cup is half-empty. Is his America the same one most Americans think of as they wave flags and celebrate the Fourth of July?

But is that what patriotism really is, an unflagging, cup half full, optimism?  I have nothing against optimism but what does that have to do with patriotism?  To some, patriotism means the desire to make your country the best it can be but to Goldberg, beyond minor policy changes we needn’t concern ourselves with that,

Definitions of patriotism proliferate, but in the American context patriotism must involve not only devotion to American texts (something that distinguishes our patriotism from European nationalism) but also an abiding belief in the inherent and enduring goodness of the American nation. We might need to change this or that policy or law, fix this or that problem, but at the end of the day the patriotic American believes that America is fundamentally good as it is. (emphasis added)

No doubt this sounds reasonable to many but what this really describes is group think or herd mentality.  To Goldberg, patriotism means believing his country is superior to all others for no other reason than he was born in it.  He doesn’t explicitly state America’s superiority in his article but is there any doubt to his opinion?  If asked “are there any other countries in the world today that are better than America?” would you expect his answer to be “yes,” regardless of whatever the truth might be?

What if your country isn’t “fundamentally good” or what if your country has lost its way and no longer abides by the principles it once did?  The definition Goldberg offers could be applied by the citizens of any country and no doubt is but what if it isn’t true?  This is clearly the case with many nations around the world.  How many women for example would like to live in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan where women are second class citizens?  Apparently Goldberg doesn’t realize that there are “patriots” just like him living in those countries who feel the same about their country as he does about his.

The problem with the Jonah Goldberg notion of patriotism is not only does he consider issues such as slavery, civil rights or women’s suffrage to be essentially minor issues that don’t actually reflect on the “inherent and enduring goodness of the American nation,” his kind only sees these as problems after the fact, if ever, but never while the nation is actually going through them.  Years from now it’ll be common knowledge that we’re experiencing an extreme low point in this country, the Iraq war, suspension of habeas corpus, torture, warrantless spying on Americans, all of these, with the possible exception of the first, go completely counter to the ideals this country was founded on.  There is simply no way the Founding Fathers would agree with any of it regardless of the justification because these were overarching principles that are just too important to ignore.  But it’s “patriots” like Goldberg who do just that because their “abiding belief in the inherent and enduring goodness of the American nation” blinds them to the reality virtually every time.

Rather than “hating America” as many are so often accused, only those who are willing to face reality and demand that their country live up to its promise can consider themselves American patriots while the Goldbergs are merely members of the American herd.

–Paul Wilden

Wasting no time, the ACLU has filed a law suit over the new FISA legislation.  While the primary complaints from civil libertarians are that the new law clearly violates the fourth amendment by allowing illegal, warrantless searches, as well as defying the rule of law by giving telecoms legal immunity without even knowing exactly what they’ve been up to, the ACLU has used as grounds for their suit, the fact that eavesdropping without warrants or any oversight at all, potentially violates privileged communications such as phone calls and emails between attorneys and clients,

The case was filed on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose ability to perform their work - which relies on confidential communications - will be greatly compromised by the new law.

Additionally, the ACLU is calling for all proceedings pertaining to the scope or constitutionality of FISA be open to public scrutiny,

In a separate filing, the ACLU asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to ensure that any proceedings relating to the scope, meaning or constitutionality of the new law be open to the public to the extent possible. The ACLU also asked the secret court to allow it to file a brief and participate in oral arguments, to order the government to file a public version of its briefs addressing the law’s constitutionality, and to publish any judicial decision that is ultimately issued.

Glenn Greenwald raised two particularly salient points that have been mostly overlooked while the discussion has focused mostly around the very important telecom immunity aspects.  First, the new law goes beyond simply legalizing Bush’s blatantly illegal spying on Americans, it actually allows for spying on Americans not even suspected of engaging in terrorists activities or any criminal behavior at all,

In the podcast, Jaffer details exactly what warrantless surveillance powers the new FISA bill vests in the President, along with the reasons they are so pernicious. He underscores the extraordinary fact that the surveillance program implemented by Congress yesterday does not merely authorize most of the President’s so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” that gave rise to this scandal in the first place, but is actually much broader in scope even than that lawless program, because there is not even any requirement in the new FISA law that the “target” of the surveillance have any connection whatsoever to Terrorism, nor is there any requirement that the Government believe the “target” is an agent of a foreign power or terrorist organization, or even guilty of any wrongdoing at all. (emphasis original)

This is extraordinary.  The whole point of FISA in the first place was to stop the kind of abusive surveillance that we’ve discovered has already occurred.  This isn’t some kind of abstract concept we’re talking about, we know the government has engaged in unconstitutional activities in the past and FISA was enacted to prevent future occurrences.  For example, the government conducted extensive espionage operations against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wiretapping his phones and bugging his hotel rooms and this is a man that could hardly be considered a terrorist or even subversive considering we celebrate his birthday as a national holiday. 

The whole point of our system of checks and balances is that government is not to be trusted without oversight.  History is replete with examples of unchecked government power resulting in tyranny including examples from our own not too distant history.  Can anyone honestly say that the Founding Fathers would agree to this level of unchecked power?

The second point Greenwald brings up is just how disingenuous defenders of the new legislation are when they claim that this is all much ado about nothing.  The fact is; nobody knows what the real affect of this law will be because nobody knows exactly what Bush has been up to, nobody except a handful of Senators who are legally required to remain silent,

The most overlooked fact in the entire FISA debate — the aspect of it that renders incoherent the case in favor of the new FISA law or even those who dismiss its significance — is that virtually nobody knows what the spying program they’re immunizing entailed and towards what ends it was used — i.e., whether it was abused for improper purposes. Even those who acknowledge that the warrantless spying program was illegal like to assert that it was implemented for benign and proper counter-terrorism purposes (see Kevin Drum making that claim here) — but they have absolutely no idea whether that is true. None. Zero. To assert that is simply to make assertions with no basis whatsoever.

There has been no Congressional investigation into the NSA program — meaning an effort to compel the Bush administration to turn over to Congress information about who was subjected to the illegal, warrantless spying and towards what purposes. Back in March, 2006, even the Senate Intelligence Committee — the core function of which is “to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States” — voted along party lines against conducting hearings into the NSA spying program. (emphasis original)

This is the state of affairs today.  Our government is supposed to be transparent, citizens are supposed to know what’s going on or how else can they be expected to make informed decisions about who they want representing them?  Yet our political class, the so called “experts” are ready to trust the government with virtually unchecked power without having any idea of what’s really been happening.  It’s impossible to overstate just how un-American this attitude is.  This is authoritarianism at its finest, just trust the government to do the right thing and always act in our best interests with little or no checks on their power.  And it’s this same crowd that usually complains about how we’re turning into a welfare state, how we shouldn’t expect government to “take care of us,” and yet we’re supposed to allow government to peek into our most private communications and just trust them not to abuse this authority.  Simply astounding.

This is what Russ Feingold, one of the Senators that does know what Bush has been up to, had to say about FISA, (h/t Glenn Greenwald) (emphasis original)

I sit on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and I am one of the few members of this body who has been fully briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program. And, based on what I know, I can promise that if more information is declassified about the program in the future, as is likely to happen either due to the Inspector General report, the election of a new President, or simply the passage of time, members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation. I am also familiar with the collection activities that have been conducted under the Protect America Act and will continue under this bill. I invite any of my colleagues who wish to know more about those activities to come speak to me in a classified setting. Publicly, all I can say is that I have serious concerns about how those activities may have impacted the civil liberties of Americans. If we grant these new powers to the government and the effects become known to the American people, we will realize what a mistake it was, of that I am sure.

Needless to say that it’s imperative the ACLU’s efforts are not in vain.  Don’t look for anything to change if the Democrats take the oval office in the next election.  It’s the Democrats who are responsible for this travesty along with the explicit approval of the Democratic candidate for president.

–Paul Wilden

In an ironic twist of fate, a long time public servant was recently forced into early retirement for refusing to lower the flag to half-mast in honor of his state’s deceased senator, Jesse Helms,

This is in no way a political decision. I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain.

What makes this ironic is, the flag should be lowered, not in deference to a racist bigot but in memoriam to our Constitution which was dealt a serious blow today.

The controversial update to FISA was passed by the Senate today in a 69 to 28 vote.  Three amendments designed to mitigate some of the worst aspects of this bill were all defeated so the bill moves, intact, to a gleeful president eager to sign it into law.

Theoretically, when it’s discovered that the president has broken the law heads roll, especially when the law in question is as serious this.  Violating FISA was not only a felony; it violated the fourth amendment to the Constitution that prohibits unwarranted search and seizure.  When a president commits this level of lawlessness, impeachment is in order, especially given that we impeached a president for lying about an extra-marital affair, something that wasn’t anybodies business to begin with and had absolutely no effect on the American people, whereas Bush’s crimes were in direct violation of the Constitution and the rule of law in general.  So what are the consequences for this egregious breach of the public trust?  The oppositional controlled Congress passes legislation that not only legalizes his actions after the fact, they provide full, retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that helped Bush violate our rights.

Is it any wonder that Congresses approval ratings are even lower than the president’s,

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

It would be bad enough if this was simply another example of cowardice from the Democratic Party, but even worse, rather than passing this legislation to avoid accusations of being weak on terrorism, it seems that they actually agree with this bill.  The Republican brand is in the toilet, voters gave control of Congress to the Democrats in protest of the Republican style of governing, Democrats recently won three special elections in districts that normally go to Republicans, all of this demonstrates rather clearly that voters are no longer buying the Republican scare tactics so why then are the Democrats so eager to capitulate to Bush?  Fear may account for a small portion but with no real price to pay, (Democrats are poised to pick up Congressional seats rather than lose them), the only logical conclusion is that many Democrats actually wanted this bill to pass.  It’s not as if the tremendous grassroots opposition to this bill went unnoticed in the Senate.  This is what Chris Dodd, one of the most strident opponents, along with Russ Feingold, of this bill, (h/t Glenn Greenwald)

Lastly, I want to thank the thousands who joined with us in this fight around the country — those who took to the blogs, gathered signatures for online petitions and created a movement behind this issue. Men and women, young and old, who stood up, spoke out and gave us the strength to carry on this fight. Not one of them had to be involved, but each choose to become involved for one reason and one reason alone: Because they love their country. They remind us that the “silent encroachments of those in power” Madison spoke of can, in fact, be heard, if only we listen.

And for all those who have pinned their hopes on Obama to bring about change to Washington, Obama has proven yet again he’s a part of the problem rather than the solution.  Obama did vote in favor of the amendment that would have stripped telecom immunity from the bill but he did so with the certainty that it was going to fail anyway.  And if he was so genuinely opposed to this why then did he vote in favor of the bill’s passage.  And even more telling, prior to the vote on the bill, Obama voted in favor of cloture thus ending all debate on the floor and shutting down the possibility of a filibuster, a filibuster he once unambiguously pledged to support.  This is from an Obama spokesperson, (h/t Glenn Greenwald) (emphasis original)

To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.

As hopeless as it may seem, now is not the time to give up the fight.  The ACLU has vowed to bring this to the courts as soon as it’s signed into law and they’re soliciting signatures for a full page ad they’re planning to take out in protest.  Additionally, money is being collected to help challenge the Democratic candidates who have been so eager to trash our Constitution.  “Now is the time for all good men [and women] to come to the aid of the party [and the Constitution]” so please help support this cause, there may be none more important.

–Paul Wilden

In a recent column, David Brooks tries to make the case that the problem with conservatism and the Republican Party is that they’ve strayed from their roots and are more representative of the “country club” over “Sam’s Club.”  Citing a book entitled “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream” written by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam,

They open the book with a working-class view of recent American history. Douthat and Salam write admiringly about the New Deal. They mention Roosevelt’s economic policies, but they also emphasize the New Deal’s intense social conservatism. Self-conscious maternalists like Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins ensured that New Deal programs were biased in favor of traditional two-parent families.

This passage is remarkable for two reasons.  First is the all too common trait of conservatives ignoring the obvious.  The New Deal represented exactly the kind of socialistic redistribution of wealth that conservative heroes like Ronald Reagan spent their lives trying to destroy.  One of the most popular and successful programs to come out of the New Deal was Social Security, but apparently Brooks and these two authors forgot that their latest messiah, George Bush, tried unsuccessfully to privatize and thereby dismantle this program.  Leading to the second point, which is the propensity of conservatives to claim as their own that which they cannot defeat.  The latest example of that being how Bush as well as some other GOP members took credit for the GI bill they tried so desperately to defeat.

It boggles the mind that anyone would try to link the New Deal with conservatism.  I don’t know anything about the Roosevelt’s “social conservatism,” whether it’s even true or if they really did make a concerted effort to bias the programs towards two-parent families but even if true, that would hardly make the New Deal a conservative program especially given that it’s universally reviled by conservatives.  Even today social programs are often geared towards families and children and back then, as Brooks points out, there weren’t nearly the number of divorces there are today, nor was there much in the way of single parenting and gays were pretty much completely in the closet so it’s hardly surprising that social programs favored “traditional two-parent families.”

As I mentioned, Brooks likes to point out that divorce used to be much less common,

In the 1950s, divorce rates were low and jobs were plentiful, but over the next few decades that broke down. The social revolutions of the 1960s and the economic revolution of the information age have emancipated the well-educated but left the Sam’s Club voters feeling insecure.

Trying to connect divorce to job loss is absolutely absurd.  As I’ve previously written, Stephanie Coontz’s essay, What We Really Miss About the 1950s points out that the social values, not to mention divorce laws at the time, that kept marriages together were a source of unhappiness for women,

Nostalgia for the 1950s is real and deserves to be taken seriously, but it usually shouldn’t be taken literally.  Even people who do pick the 1950s as the best decade generally end up saying, once they start discussing their feelings in depth, that it’s not the family arrangements in and of themselves that they want to retrieve.  They don’t miss the way women used to be treated, they sure wouldn’t want to live with most of the fathers they knew in their neighborhoods, and “come to think of it” - I don’t know how many times I’ve recorded these exact words - “I communicate with my kids much better than my parents or grandparents did.”  When Judith Wallerstein recently interviewed 100 spouses in “happy” marriages, she found that only five “wanted a marriage like their parents.”  The husbands “consciously rejected the role models provided by their fathers.  The women said they could never be happy living as their mothers did.” (emphasis original)

And of course this had nothing to do with jobs, which were the result of the overall prosperity of the time due to the war having recently ended resulting in an enormous pent up demand with all the soldiers returning home.  Brooks is correct that the fifties were happy times but not for the reasons he thinks,

   Contrary to widespread belief, the 1950s was not an age of laissez-faire government and free market competition.  A major cause of the social mobility of young families in the 1950s was that federal assistance programs were much more generous and widespread than they are today.

     In the most ambitious and successful affirmative action program ever adopted in America, 40 percent of young men were eligible for veterans’ benefits, and these benefits were far more extensive than those available to Vietnam-era vets.  Financed in part by a federal income tax on the rich that went up to 87 percent and a corporate tax rate of 52 percent, such benefits provided quite a jump start for a generation of young families.  The GI bill paid most tuition costs for vets who attended college, doubling the percentage of college students from prewar levels.  At the other end of the life span, Social Security began to build up a significant safety net for the elderly, formerly the poorest segment of the population.  Starting in 1950, the federal government regularly mandated raises in the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation.  The minimum wage may have been only $1.40 as late as 1968, but a person who worked for that amount full-time, year-round, earned 118 percent of the poverty figure for a family of three.  By 1995, a full-time minimum-wage worker could earn only 72 percent of the poverty level.

     An important source of the economic expansion of the 1950s was that public works spending at all levels of government comprised nearly 20 percent of total expenditures in 1950, as compared to less than 7 percent in 1984.  Between 1950 and 1960, nonmilitary, nonresidential public construction rose by 58 percent.  Construction expenditures for new schools (in dollar amounts adjusted for inflation) rose by 72 percent; funding on sewers and waterworks rose by 46 percent.  Government paid 90 percent of the costs of building the new Interstate Highway System.  These programs opened up suburbia to growing numbers of middle-class Americans and created secure, well-paying jobs for blue-collar workers.

And in yet another astounding display of delusion, Brooks, like virtually all conservatives, tries to peg liberals as elitists and cites the “education gap” as the reason,

Gaps are opening between the educated and less educated. Working-class divorce rates remain high, while the mostly upper-middle-class parents of Ivy Leaguers have divorce rates of only 10 percent. Working-class kids are unlikely to complete college, affluent kids usually do.

Completely ignoring the record number of vets who used their GI benefits to fund a college education, which is exactly what the aforementioned GI bill that conservatives tried to defeat is trying to replicate.

I could go on and on but you get the point.  I’m certainly not going to try and defend every liberal program ever presented but the history is clear, liberals have always fought not only for equal rights for all Americans, gay, straight, black, white, single parent or not, liberals have also championed workers causes such as union representation, health care and the forty hour work week just to name a few.  That Republicans are the party of the working class is delusional to the extreme and only exists in Brook’s fevered imagination.

–Paul Wilden

The Senate is set to vote next week on, and most likely pass, an update to FISA that shreds the fourth amendment and is a slap in the face to the rule of law.  President Bush has been wantonly breaking the law by spying on American citizens without warrants or any oversight whatsoever since 9/11 at least.  And once this became public knowledge, instead of immediately commencing impeachment proceedings, Congress’ Constitutional duty, they’re poised to make Bush’s blatantly un-American activities legal.

Sold to voters as a “compromise,” Democrats instead have given in completely to Bush and the Republican’s demands.  And as if this wasn’t bad enough, Barack Obama, the candidate for “change,” has given his approval to this travesty.  This is from a statement posted on his website,

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn’t have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush’s abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration’s program of warrantless wiretapping.
…
But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year.

But on closer inspection, Obama’s reasons for supporting this bill don’t hold up.  First he claims that he’ll work to eliminate the provisions granting immunity to the telecoms, knowing full well it won’t succeed,

That’s why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

But is there any reason to trust his sincerity on this?  This is one of the two glaring faults with this bill, why support a bill with this kind of problem with it as if it’s a mere afterthought?  Granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms goes against everything this country stands for.  If they did nothing wrong then let them plead their case in a court of law but the reality is; they did break the law, they know it as do their defenders.  The “conventional wisdom” is that if the president asks for your cooperation, you give it, and the FISA extension essentially says the same thing, if the telecoms can demonstrate that they acted at the president’s request and were assured that the requests were legal then they’re off the hook.  But at the risk of repeating myself, this is precisely what our system of government was set up to prevent.  Immunity from the law because the president says it’s okay is virtually the same as the president writing his own laws, completely bypassing the checks and balances that are the hallmark of our government.  We all learned about checks and balances in school, how they exist to prevent the tyranny the Founding Fathers were all to well aware of, why then are we so eager to toss them aside.  The fact is, it’s ridiculous for Obama to support a bill that includes provisions that are clearly in contradiction with the founding principles of this country.  If that’s not a reason to reject a bill, exactly what is?

The other “compromise” that Obama cites as a reason to accept this legislation is that it is specifically stated that FISA will now be the exclusive means for the president to conduct warrantless spying.  This is absurd on two counts.  First, FISA already contained this exclusivity clause.  This is from a recent federal court ruling regarding FISA,

Of special relevance to the court’s present inquiry, Congress included in the FISA bill a declaration that the FISA regime, together with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 codified at chapter 119 of Title 18 of the United States Code, 18 USC §§ 2510-22 (”Title III”), were to be the “exclusive means” by which domestic electronic surveillance for national security purposes could be conducted. (emphasis added)

To cite something we already possess as a reason to accept a law that by his own admission “is far from perfect,” and that he “wouldn’t have drafted” himself represents either the height of ignorance or the depths of dishonesty, either way, hardly qualifies him as a defender of the Constitution.

The problem obviously goes far deeper than the lack of integrity of one candidate.  Indeed, even with Obama’s reversal over FISA he still is far and away the better choice for president over McCain.  No, the problem began with a president that has nothing but contempt for the rule of law, helped along by a rubber stamp Republican Party more concerned with power and loyalty to each other than they are to the Constitution.  And finally, an “opposition” party that hasn’t truly opposed anything that Bush has desired.

This is the State of the Union on the day we celebrate its birth, habeas corpus already a distant memory, torture, an accepted part of our culture, the rule of law all but abandoned and the fourth amendment to the Constitution declared null and void.

–Paul Wilden

Digby has an excellent post today that explains a lot about the behavior of the Democrats.  Following up on Glenn Greenwald’s post, ‘The baseless, and failed, “move to the center” cliché‘ where Greenwald lays bare the absurd notion that Democrats have to play follow the leader to the Republicans over “security” and “terrorism,”

In 2006, Rep. Johnson was challenged by a 31-year-old Democrat, Chris Murphy, who ran on a platform of, among other things, ending the Iraq War, opposing Bush policies on eavesdropping and torture, and rejecting what he called the “false choice between war and civil liberties.” Johnson outspent her Democratic challenger by a couple million dollars, and based her campaign on fear-mongering ads focusing on Murphy’s opposition to warrantless eavesdropping
…
The result? Johnson was crushed
…
Johnson’s final margin of defeat was 12 points. Despite continuing to represent a tough, split district, Rep. Murphy — as he runs for re-election for the first time — recently voted against passage of the FISA/telecom amnesty bill, obviously unafraid that such Terrorism fear-mongering works any longer.

That pattern has repeated itself over and over. In the 2006 midterm election, Karl Rove repeatedly made clear that the GOP strategy rested on making two National Security issues front and center in the midterm campaign: Democrats’ opposition to warrantless eavesdropping and their opposition to “enhanced interrogation techniques” against Terrorists. Not only did the Democrats swat away those tactics, taking away control of both houses of Congress in 2006, but more unusually, not a single Democratic incumbent in either the House or Senate — not one — lost an election. (emphasis original)

So why then, do the Democrats repeatedly capitulate to the Republicans?  “Conventional wisdom” has it that the Democrats need to distance themselves from their fringe base and “move to the center” in a bipartisan effort to “get Washington working” again.  But what moving to the center really means is giving in to the right.  The vast majority of Americans feel this country is moving in the wrong direction so how does it make any sense for Democrats to move at all to the right?  American voters have rejected Republican “values” and have handed over the reins of Congress to the Democrats, Bush’s approval ratings are at an all time low, clearly voters want change and yet with this mandate Democrats have yet to accomplish a single significant thing.  The war rolls on, impeachment is off the table, warrantless eavesdropping on Americans and retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecoms is poised to become law, the Democratically controlled Congress is hardly any different from the Republican one.  And that, as Digby points out, is essentially the point.

Once considered the party of the working class, Democrats have been successfully labeled as elitists by the Republicans.  It’s extraordinary that the party of the ultra rich has managed to sell themselves as the party of the people but that in fact, is what has happened, beginning with Nixon and reaching full force with Reagan. Democrats have been on the run ever since and in a desperate and self loathing attempt to reestablish themselves as “regular people” have managed to repudiate the liberal ideals that once defined them,

Repudiating liberalism is a symbolic gesture required of Democrats by the political establishment to prove that they are not elitists. And it goes beyond mere posturing on gay marriage or abortion. The national security challenge is always not to appear to be “an appeaser.” The way you prove that is by refusing to appease the Democratic base. The economic challenge is to walk very carefully on taxes because it “costs jobs” for the hard working man and the struggling businessman alike who are in this thing together against the liberal elites. The cultural challenge is to not appear to be too friendly to blacks or too unfriendly to socially conservative religion in order to prove that that you are not beholden to the “extremists.” The entire construct is based upon Democrats distancing themselves from their most ardent supporters (which is quite convenient for Republicans.)

What Democrats have completely failed to understand however, is while people may have bought into the Republican’s smoke and mirrors for a time, the complete failure of the Republicans to effectively lead this country has, momentarily at least, broken the spell.  Voters may not be jumping on the liberal bandwagon as yet but if the Democrats were to truly lead this country instead of playing into the Republican’s hands, Americans would give them the chance to prove that their vision for America can work.  That is if they still have the vision.

–Paul Wilden

I’ve written previously how foolish it is to count on any of the candidates from the two major political parties to bring about any real change in this country, and, as if on cue, Barack Obama has proven my point with his recent flip-flop on telecom immunity as a part of the FISA bill currently working its way through Congress.  At first, Obama vowed to support a Senate filibuster blocking attempts to pass a bill that includes immunity but this is what he had to say about the recently passed House version that does include immunity,

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives - and the liberty - of the American people.

The point is not to say that Obama is a liar or even that he’s no better than his Republican counter parts because he most certainly is.  A McCain presidency would be a disaster for this country, particularly after eight years of Bush, and should be avoided at all costs.  No, the point is that whatever kind of man Obama is, or any other Democrat for that matter, as a Democrat he is far to beholden to the current power structure that is tearing this country apart, the same power structure that involves us in war after war, none of which have served the American people or the people for which we were supposed to be fighting for.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans have the will or the opportunity to break from the corporate interests that actually run this country so that is why I want to bring your attention to a different sort of candidate, someone who knows what is wrong with Washington politics and has a genuine desire to change the status quo and make this country work for us the real Americans to whom this country really belongs.

Michael Meo is running for U.S. Congress from the 3rd District of Oregon, as the nominee of the Pacific Green Party.  Meo, who once spent two years in a federal penitentiary for refusing the Viet Nam draft, stands for the real American values of democracy, equality and human rights.  From his website,

I am a high-school math teacher who served two years in federal penitentiary in 1970-1972 for refusing the military draft during the Vietnam War. I am running for Congress on the Green Party platform. I am committed to a platform of real democracy, of equality for all not only before the law but also in their human rights.

We are pledged, Green Party members, to work for sustainable local economic activity, for a culture that celebrates contributions from all of its members, of whatever group, and that honors nonviolent solutions which include responsible behavior by government agents.

We propose replacing the rapacious exploitation of the resources of the planet and its human population with an intelligent accommodation by the optimal use of technology for the highest quality of life for all. At a minimum, that requires health care as a human right.

Additionally Meo takes an unequivocal stand on FISA unlike most of our current government servants.

I haven’t yet used this blog to endorse any candidates because I’m far more interested in starting the kind of real discussion needed to break this country away from its corporate manipulators and its minions in both the government and the media who have sold us out.  And this post isn’t intended as an endorsement either, particularly as I’ve only just recently learned of Meo’s candidacy.  What I want to demonstrate is that there truly are real alternatives to the same old politicians that are paraded before us, election after election and it’s my sincere desire that you’ll take a serious look at what Michael Meo has to say as well as all the candidates we have to choose from.

–Paul Wilden

In one short statement, House Majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) summed up the reason why we can’t count on the Democratic party to stand up for either the Constitution or the American people.  While Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) characterized the recent passage of FISA “a capitulation,” Hoyer has declared it a “victory”.  From the Politico,

In an interview with Politico on Monday, Hoyer called the FISA legislation a “significant victory” for the Democratic Party - one that neutralized an issue Republicans might have been able to use against Democrats in November while still, in his view, protecting the civil liberties of American citizens. (emphasis added)

This is precisely the problem that plagues the Democratic Party.  Instead of providing true leadership they insist on licking the boots of the Republicans in the hope that they won’t get beat up.  Even from a position of power they continue to let the Republicans frame the debate by allowing them to play the “security” card.  Never mind that the Republican brand is positioned somewhere lower than Enron’s and that Americans are fed up with the direction they’ve taken this country, still, the Democrats insist on doing these closed door deals that play to the Republican strength rather than stand up for America.

This was Hoyer’s reason for making this “victorious” deal,

Hoyer said that if House Democratic leaders failed to reach a FISA deal with the White House and GOP leaders, as many as “30 Blue Dogs and another 20 to 30 members” could have signed onto a Republican discharge petition calling for a floor vote on the Senate version of the FISA bill, which was even more anathema to House Democrats than what eventually passed.

Apparently it didn’t occur to Hoyer to stand up to these “Blue Dogs” and expose them for what they are, instead, Hoyer cuts a deal that is virtually indistinguishable from the Senate version he was so desperate to avoid and declares it a victory.

Hoyer said that House Democrats succeeded in dialing back some of the provisions contained in the earlier, Senate-passed version of the FISA legislation. While the Senate bill provided retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program, Hoyer noted that the House version mandates judicial review of the companies’ actions. Legal experts and congressional opponents argue that such review will ultimately be meaningless. (emphasis added)

So in fact, Hoyer won nothing, nothing except the hollow victory of taking bad legislation and calling it success.

This is exactly the kind of political maneuvering that Americans are so fed up with.  Even if conservative Democrats could have been successful in defeating an honest attempt at a FISA bill that makes sense, wouldn’t it be better to go down in glorious defeat rather than whimpering, meaningless victory?

–Paul Wilden

In a showdown between the Legislative and Executive branches, the House Judiciary committee is suing the Bush administration in an attempt to force the president’s chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, to comply with subpoenas requiring them to testify before Congress as well as turn over key documents concerning potential political meddling with the Justice Department.

This is the same scandal that resulted in the resignation of disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.  Gonzales was suspected of taking part in the firing of several federal prosecutors so they could be replaced with personnel loyal to Bush.  It’s not clear that anything illegal took place as federal prosecutors “serve at the pleasure of the president,” however; the Justice department is typically free from the partisan games normally played in Washington.  Moreover, if any obstruction took place through all of this, that could indeed be cause for legal action.

But the real issue is this; the American people deserve and are owed, a transparent government where all rules are followed.  Political gamesmanship belongs on the debate floor and not where the enforcement of our laws takes place.  And when Congress issues a subpoena, compliance should be considered mandatory regardless of political party.  That Bush and his minions consider themselves to be above the law is the defining characteristic of this administration and it is this, more than anything else that Bush has done, including lying to Congress to bring this country to war, that represents precisely the kind of tyranny that the Founding Fathers tried to spare us.  Bush’s presidency has been disastrous to this nation, his militant foreign policy, tax cuts that mostly benefit the rich, deregulation of the oil markets, all badly misguided policies but they are just the price we pay for electing such a man, the price of democracy.  But it is Bush’s lawlessness, his blatant disregard not only for the rule of law but for the very checks and balances that make our government work, that are actually threatening our democracy.

–Paul Wilden

It’s official, the deal has been struck and the hapless Democrats have caved in, for no discernible reason, on an update to FISA that gives Bush virtually everything he wanted, particularly immunity for the telecoms that broke the law when cooperating with the administration.  House Democrats are insisting the bill is a “compromise” but it is nothing of the sort.  This is what Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) had to say about the “compromise”,

The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President’s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity. And under this bill, the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power. Instead of cutting bad deals on both FISA and funding for the war in Iraq, Democrats should be standing up to the flawed and dangerous policies of this administration.

It’s really quite simple, if the telecoms didn’t break the law then they have nothing to worry about, and if they did, they need to be held accountable for their actions just as is expected of every other American.  The “compromise” merely states that if the president asserts that his requests for cooperation were within the law then the telecoms are off the hook.  But this goes against everything this country stands for.  Immunity from the law based just on the president’s say so is virtually the same as the president writing his own laws, completely bypassing the checks and balances that are the hallmark of our government.

Why the Democrats have folded so easily is something of a mystery.  Obviously they’re afraid of the Republicans accusing them of being soft on terrorism but they’re going to do that anyway.  Voters have made it very clear that they’ve had enough of the Republican’s lawless style of government, both in the 2006 midterm elections as well as in three recent special elections where Republicans lost their seats, so exactly what the Democrats are so afraid of isn’t clear.

Making matters worse Barack Obama has thrown his support for the “compromise” after having previously pledged to support Chris Dodd’s threatened Senate filibuster over this exact issue.  Here is Obama’s statement, (h/t Glenn Greenwald) (emphasis original)

Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. . . .

After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect America Act. . . It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives — and the liberty — of the American people.

The fact is, with some minor adjustments, the FISA we have been operating under has been perfectly fine, allowing the government to install wiretaps even before court authorization as long as they obtain the required warrants within 72 hours.

Obama is trying to win the White House on a platform of change but this statement is nothing more than the political gamesmanship that plagues Washington politics.  Much has been said of Obama’s recent flip-flop over taking public money for his campaign, but this is the flip-flop people should be focusing on.  I happen to agree with this statement from Glenn Greenwald,

There is a disturbing tendency on all sides to view Obama through a reductive Manichean lens — either he’s the embodiment of pure transformative Good who is going magically to cleanse our polity the minute he takes office, or he’s nothing other than a mindless, passive tool of the establishment whose pretty rhetoric masks a barren ambition for power and who is no better than McCain. Neither of those caricatures is remotely accurate, and a John McCain presidency would be an unmitigated disaster on every level.

But it’s critical to keep in mind that Obama is a politician and, like all people, is plagued by significant imperfections. He has largely entrenched himself in, and is dependent upon, the power structure he says he wants to undermine. Uncritical devotion to political leaders, including him, is destructive. Obama needs pressure, criticism, checks, and real scrutiny just like anyone else in power in order to keep him accountable, responsive, and faithful to the principles he claims are the ones driving him.

A John McCain presidency would be a disaster and Obama is the clear choice between the two candidates but it’s useless to expect any real change with Obama as president.

Elections are often characterized as “picking the lesser of two evils” but that’s an oversimplification that doesn’t apply here, Obama isn’t “evil” but he is far too dependent on the existing power structure to be an agent of change.

–Paul Wilden

In response to the astronomical price of gas that’s on everyone’s mind, Bush has started talking about repealing the ban on offshore drilling in places such as Florida,

First, we should expand American oil production by increasing access to the Outer Continental Shelf, or OCS. Experts believe that the OCS could produce about 18 billion barrels of oil. That would be enough to match America’s current oil production for almost ten years. The problem is that Congress has restricted access to key parts of the OCS since the early 1980s. Since then, advances in technology have made it possible to conduct oil exploration in the OCS that is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills. With these advances — and a dramatic increase in oil prices — congressional restrictions on OCS exploration have become outdated and counterproductive.

Republicans in Congress have proposed several promising bills that would lift the legislative ban on oil exploration in the OCS. I call on the House and the Senate to pass good legislation as soon as possible. This legislation should give the states the option of opening up OCS resources off their shores, provide a way for the federal government and states to share new leasing revenues, and ensure that our environment is protected. There’s also an executive prohibition on exploration in the OCS. When Congress lifts the legislative ban, I will lift the executive prohibition.

On the surface, this might seem like a reasonable plan, especially if the price of gas concerns you more than the possible environmental effects.  But in fact, this is a bad idea on a several levels.  First, as much as Bush would like to think there are no environmental risks, it’s impossible to guarantee that.  An oil spill off the coast of Florida would not only be damaging to the environment, it would devastate Florida’s tourist based economy.  That hasn’t stopped conservatives from extolling the safety of modern drilling.  That latest claim is how Katrina resulted in only minor oil spills.  From the website of Think Progress, (emphasis original)

In a Tuesday speech delivered before an audience of oil executives, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) pushed to overturn the federal ban on offshore oil drilling. McCain claimed drilling is so “safe” that “not even Hurricane Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.”

George Will: “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill.”

Wall Street Journal editorial: “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flattened terminals across the Gulf of Mexico but didn’t cause a single oil spill.”

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne: “When Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast where we have about 4,000 oil and gas platforms, 3,000 were in the direct line of the storms - the most significant storms we’ve seen ever - and 3,000 of those had to be shut down. We had no significant oil spill. The system worked.”

Fox News’ Dick Morris: “And by the way, the safety concerns, Hurricane Katrina didn’t cause any leakage or any spill in the Gulf of Mexico oil wells.”

The truth is, Katrina caused major damage and resulted in millions of gallons of oil spilled,

The truth is that Hurricane Katrina caused oil spillage so significant it was clearly visible from space. It also wreaked environmental havock near the scale of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson explains the disastrous extent of Katrina’s wreckage of Gulf oil facilities.

The risk of spills may decrease with technology but there still remains a significant risk of devastating damage, and for what?  Most experts agree that retrieving this oil would not only have a negligible effect on the price of gas, it would also take as seven to ten years to start actually pumping any of this oil.  Compounding the usual time it would take to access offshore oil is the lack of necessary equipment needed to get to it.  From a New York Times article written by Jad Mouawad and Martin Fackler,

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Mr. Bush called on Congress Wednesday to end a longstanding federal ban on offshore drilling and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, arguing that the steps were needed to lower gasoline prices and bolster national security. But even as oil trades at more than $135 a barrel - up from $68 a year ago - the world’s existing drill-ships are booked solid for the next five years. Some oil companies have been forced to postpone exploration while waiting for a drilling rig, executives and analysts said.

Demand is so high that shipbuilders, the biggest of whom are in Asia, have raised prices since last year by as much as $100 million a vessel to about half a billion dollars.

“The crunch on rigs is everywhere,” said Alberto Guimaraes, a senior executive at Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company that has discovered some of the most promising offshore oil but has been unable to get at it.

But aside from the potential environmental damage and the probability that offshore drilling is unlikely to bring the desired relief in gas prices, this plan would almost certainly delay the switch to the alternative energy sources we so desperately need.  Bush gives lip service to the long term goal of moving away from oil but ignores the diversion of resources needed to get the offshore oil.  Proponents of drilling in protected areas like to present their case as if there’s no cost involved, that it would bring temporary relief while we work on the long range solutions but it just doesn’t work like that.  Salon’s How the World Works blog aptly exposes this fallacy,

It could happen. It’s certainly not impossible. The reason Republicans — including the likes of Crist, a one-time opponent of offshore drilling who has performed a truly dazzling flip-flop pirouette on this issue — are jumping on the politics of offshore drilling is that there is a clear kernel of truth in their stance. There is more oil to be drilled in this world, and more supply will undoubtedly have some effect on prices. Even just the prospect of more supply will likely make a difference. So Bush and McCain’s hurtful accusation that Democrats are responsible for high gas prices is not entirely wrong.

So what’s the worst that could happen?

If we’re going to give Republicans the full benefit of the doubt, then it is only fair to offer the same treatment to Democrats. So let’s take their arguments at face value also. There will be oil spills off the coasts of Florida and California, fouling beaches, killing wildlife, and harming tourism. Unrestrained burning of fossil fuels will continue to raise global temperatures and contribute to rising sea levels and devastating extreme weather events. A plunge in the price of oil will derail the current pressing economic incentives to improve energy efficiency and channel investment into research and development of alternative energy technologies.

And ultimately, these new oil fields will be exhausted, and the whole cycle of rising prices and economic pain will begin all over again. Only this time around, our children, or our children’s children, will be in much worse shape than we are now. Environmental stresses will be higher, climate change will be further advanced, and there will be even less oil to go around. (Because, of course, while the U.S. is pumping to its heart’s content on its outer continental shelf, existing oil fields around the globe will continue to peter out.) Prices will rocket even higher than our current worst nightmares. We will have sacrificed precious decades in which we could have gotten a leg up in figuring out how to maintain properity in a carbon-constrained future. And those madmen and fools who counseled a quick-fix response to humanity’s biggest challenge will be excoriated as some of the stupidest, most criminal leaders in human history.

That’s all.

I’ll admit that the apparent glee that some environmentally minded people have shown over the rising cost of oil as irked me more than a little.  I know that as oil prices rise alternative sources of energy become more realistic but the pain that many Americans are experiencing, including myself, is very real.  Energy is one of those commodities that is vital not only to industry but to each and every person who has to find a way to get to work. 

The U.S. reached the peak oil point back in the seventies so we’re not going to drill our way out of this problem.  So whether it’s the high price of gas or the high temperatures of global warming, we need to put all of our efforts into real alternatives to oil now.

–Paul Wilden

Proving once again how spineless the Democrats can be, a “compromise” is in the works that will give Bush virtually everything he wants regarding FISA including retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that broke the law at the president’s bequest.  For awhile it looked as if the House Democrats were going to make a stand (Senate Democrats had already passed a bill with everything Bush wanted), but it appears now that the House will cave in to Bush’s desires and call it a compromise.  From The New York Times,

Senior Congressional officials said they hoped to seal an agreement early this week and quickly vote in the House and Senate on legislation that expired back in February, though the administration retained the authority to continue spying on terror suspects it already had in its sights. That power begins slipping later this summer.

The main sticking point between the House and Senate has been President Bush’s demand that phone companies that cooperated in the wiretapping program after the Sept. 11 attacks be given blanket immunity from legal action by customers who claim their rights were violated by warrantless surveillance. The Senate went along with the plan but the House balked.
…
After weeks of talks, lawmakers have worked out a deal that would allow federal courts to settle the question of whether the telecommunications companies should be protected because they were assured their participation was legal.
…
The question for the negotiators will be whether the final product is seen by Democrats opposed to the immunity for the phone companies as conceding too much or whether backers of warrantless surveillance will view the compromise as too weak. (emphasis added)

Apparently, if the telecoms were given the proper assurances by the government that their cooperation wouldn’t violate any laws then they’ll be off the hook.  This is completely absurd, the whole point of our system of government, of checks and balances, is that it’s never assumed that a particular action is legal simply because the government says so.  Furthermore, ignorance of the law has never been a valid excuse, not that the telecoms were ignorant of anything.  This is an excerpt from Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling when he refused to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms. (h/t Glenn Greenwald)

That the government isn’t simply to be trusted at face value is not only one of the cornerstones of our democracy, the reason for which is self-evident with the current administration.  From lying to start a war, to signing statements to illegal propaganda programs, George Bush has shown nothing but the utmost contempt for the rule of law.  This administration has been the poster child for why we have checks and balances to begin with and the Democrats, even though they control Congress, are willing to chuck it all, presumably in a misguided attempt to consolidate their power.  This is what Glenn Greenwald has to say regarding the wheelings and dealings of the House Democrats,

There are reports from very reliable sources that Hoyer, after engineering this “compromise” and ensuring it has enough votes to pass, will then vote against it so he can claim it’s not his fault (as will Pelosi). Worse, the Democratic leadership in the Senate (Reid and Durbin) have been saying that while they oppose the “compromise” and will vote against it, they will do nothing to impede its passage.

After eight years of lies and corruption from Bush and the Republicans, now more than ever, we need principled leadership from the opposition party(s) but instead, even with the Democrats virtually guaranteed of continued control over Congress, what do we get, the same style of corrupt, self-serving government we’ve come to expect from the Republican Party.  Is it any wonder that Congress has even lower approval ratings than Bush?

Clearly we have a long way to go to take back control of our country but as a start the so called compromise on FISA must be defeated.  Currently, donations are being accepted to facilitate this campaign and I urgently implore everyone to give what they can.

–Paul Wilden