Tag: George W. Bush

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Arresting George W. Bush

I know what you’re thinking: you can’t arrest the President of the United States!

Here’s my idea. I want to set up a camp on Manitoulin Island (that’s up there north of Tobermory, if you didn’t know where it was) with a bunch of cages and holding cells and guard dogs. Then I’ll get a couple of friends and go down to the White House and arrest George Bush and Tom Delay and John Ashcroft and Condoleeza Rice, and take them there and lock them all up.

If the Secret Service tries to stop us, we’ll inform them that George Bush is a threat to peace and good order and commerce and must be locked up.

If they ask what proof we have, we’ll tell them that we don’t need any proof. Do they really expect us to wait around for Bush to commit a nefarious act before locking him up? Not in today’s post-0303 world. I mean, March, 2003, the date of the invasion of Iraq.

If he wants to call his lawyer, we’ll inform him that, sorry, he doesn’t get access to a lawyer until we’re good and ready to let him have access to a lawyer.

If he says, what about my rights, we’ll laugh our heads off. Your what? Hoo haw! It’s all right for those pansy liberals like Ted Kennedy and John McCain to talk about rights– but we’re in a war. This is a war on our nation and our values. It is a war on common sense and good taste and my personal happiness. If I sit around and wait for pansy legislatures to provide me with the correct legal frame-work and documentation in order to proceed with arresting the most dangerous man in world…

And after they admit that we are fully vetted legally, and we get them up to Manitoulin Island and into the compound…. we bring out the water-boarding equipment and cattle prods and electrodes.

Honestly– I just want to hear what they have to say.

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“Strong Religious Beliefs”

“One of the things we’re playing with is having characters with strong religious beliefs included in some of our new shows,” Mr. Reilly added. “This would not be the premise of the show, but we could have a character who simply has this strong point of view.” NY Times, November 20, 2004

One of the most infuriating things about the political and cultural debate of the past few years is precisely this piece of bs elicited from the network executives on the subject of values on television, from an article that largely observes that even in the bible belt, people are watching dirty tv shows. Do as I say, not as I do.

All right. So, since Bush was elected with the support of the Christian Right, and they are getting all the media attention lately, and because they are a bunch of medieval cry-babies whose idea of pluralism is allowing Hindu and Moslem students to leave the classroom while the 10 Commandments are recited, let’s think about having a character on a tv show espouse “strong religious beliefs”. As if.

And if you think I’m picking on the Christians– I am a Christian.

Sounds to me that someone is buying into the preposterous evangelical myth that the media is controlled by radical liberal feminists, homosexuals, atheists, and socialists and, therefore, the Christians are entitled to some space for their views. If only!

If only there was a single character on any tv show that ever actually said anything like:

“Those fundamentalists like James Dobson and Jerry Falwell give me the creeps. How long before they start burning witches?” Or, “Why does the government allow advertising directed at children?” Or, “We’ve looked at all the evidence and questioned all the suspects, and we still have no clue as to who committed this murder. Should I beat someone up until he confesses?” Or, “He was a great soldier. He killed many people for his country.” Or, “Our kids are getting fat from eating at McDonald’s too often.”

The day we hear characters speak like that is the day I’d be delighted to hear a character say, “I think it would be wrong for you to have sex before you are legally married.”

I don’t object to values being discussed on tv. But I do object when narrow-minded right-wing bigots insist that they are the only people with “values”, as if people who voted Bush, and for his tax-cuts for the rich, have values, while those who voted for Kerry because he might actually do something to preserve the environment and protect endangered species, don’t have values.

The word “values” is being used, by conservative Christians, the way “quality” is now used by a lot of people. We want “quality television”. Which is, television with “values”. Right.

 

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Another Deadly Fearsome Mighty Horrifying Scary Frightening Enemy of America

Meet Mr. Purna Raj Bajracharya from Nepal.

Mr. Purna Raj Bajracharya is a Buddhist. We know that Buddhists are normally harmless, but not Mr. Bajracharya. Mr. Bajracharya was spotted in New York video-taping offices in which some FBI agents, under the every-watchful scrutiny of the relentless John Ashcroft, were determinedly rooting out every last vestige of terror activity in the U.S. Mr. Bajracharya claimed he was a tourist.

The other images on his video included a pizzeria.

The FBI immediately snatched up Mr. Bajracharya and locked him in a 9 foot by 6 foot cell for three months. The lights were kept on 24 hours a day. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches is the only possible explanation. Some prisoners in this detention centre in Brooklyn were stripped and beaten. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches.

And then. And then they realized that perhaps Mr. Bajracharya was a Buddhist from Nepal taking video of New York to show to his esteemed family back home.

So they put him into an orange jumpsuit, shackled his arms and legs, and hauled him off to the airport. Mr. Bajracharya begged to be allowed the dignity of wearing his own clothes. The FBI said no. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches– that’s why.

This is how we treat the innocent. Even the FBI admits that Mr. Bajracharya is innocent. It doesn’t matter. Under George Bush, the unthinkable is now not only acceptable, but required: the innocent can be locked up, abused, assaulted, and humiliated with complete impunity.

You don’t care, do you. Because you are white and middle class and you don’t have an accent. You are safe in America in 2004. Because you are not Mr. Bajracharya. Because you can sing your anthems, wave your flags, and march in your parades, with no shame for your government’s rank hypocrisy.

I am enraged at this treatment of an innocent man.  The FBI agents responsible should be fired and charged with abusing their authority and jailed  for at least 90 days in a 6 by 9 foot cell.

The FBI’s behavior is not merely outrageous.  It deserves the term “fucking outrageous” because it is.  It is emblematic of the monstrous failure of the current government to uphold the basic principles of decency and justice that make the world livable for most of us.

It’s hard to bring myself to even address the issue because it is so overwhelmingly obvious to me that you would think that any sane person would agree: if the FBI really insists on arresting people without the slightest grounds for suspicion, could they not at least treat them well until they have completed their investigations?

This treatment of Mr. Bajracharya is police brutality. It is abuse. It is oppression. It is the act of a police state. It is the ultimate expression of George W. Bush’s vision of Amerika. And I have yet to hear or read of a single Christian Bush supporter who feels that it is wrong or immoral to do it.

Added June 2006: where is the outcry from those who claim that the “Christian” Mr. Bush has “restored” ethics and integrity to government? How dare you claim you vote for Bush because he stands for Christian values, and then turn your back on Mr. Bajracharya?

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John Ashcroft Captures an Actual Terrorist!

John Ashcroft, Attorney-General of the United States, has announced many, many arrests of people he claims are terrorists. If you check into these stories, you will find that most–if not all– of these arrests are actually of individuals who are guilty of nothing more than being suspiciously Arabic.

But lo and behold, the top law enforcement officer of the United States of America has finally arrested a bona fide terrorist, a man with actual bombs, guns, remote-controlled detonators, and a load of cyanide. Yes, John Ashcroft has finally caught himself an actual living, breathing, sweating terrorist.

And you aren’t going to hear much about it.

Why? Because the terrorist’s name is William Krar. Not Arabic at all. And he is no associate of Osama Bin Laden. Mr. Krar is a good old-fashioned all-American White Supremacist. Where’s the fun in that?

Doesn’t fit the official White House narrative does it? Doesn’t play well to the heart-land, does it, which sometimes holds to it’s bruised bosom the heartless souls of patriots like Timothy McVeigh, who may have gone a little astray, but, after all, grasped the essential dialectic of our time. No no no– America’s enemies are out there, they are not us, they don’t look like us.

There are persistent rumors that a “olive-skinned” man was seen in the Ryder Truck with McVeigh the day of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Now Krar and his cyanide.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times reports that an FBI spokesman asked an industry group for help dealing with the top domestic threats today: eco-terrorists and animal rights activists.

Stirring, isn’t it? Osama Bin Laden and Heather Graham at the same fund-raiser.

It’s spin. You don’t hear about Krar because the Bush administration needs you to believe that we need to spend $200 billion demolishing a two-bit dictator in Iraq to feel safe. The Bush Administration doesn’t want you to believe that you might end up being safer if a well-managed domestic police force was doing it’s job properly instead of chasing illegal immigrants or pot-smokers.

Krugman also reports that John Ashcroft is using every government data base available to search for terrorists. Every data base except one: the one that contains information about people who applied for gun permits.

To use that information, Ashcroft believes, would be to violate Americans’ civil rights.

If you’ve stopped laughing by now at the idea that John Ashcroft cares about anybody’s civil rights, read on: it is utterly amazing that the press has little or no curiosity about these stories. It’s waiting for signs that Bush will lose the election, before lining up their potshots.

Then we will hear how they had always known that Ashcroft was just a little over the top.

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The Fog of McNamara

There is a remarkable moment in “Fog of War” when Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and architect of the Viet Nam War, states that the U.S. should never enter a war without the support and assistance of it’s allies.

Everybody knows that for all the window-dressing applied to the support of Great Britain and Poland and a few other states, the U.S. entered Iraq not only without the active support of most of its allies, but with their active opposition.

It’s a hard lesson to learn.

But then, the point of “Fog of War” is that every assumption has to be re-examined in the light of experience and new information. Robert McNamara has more experience than most. I’m not sure what he’d make of the Iraq war. He might observe that another piece of wisdom America should have learned by now is that when the reasons given for military action prove to be invalid, instead of finding new reasons, find new actions.

If Bush had said right from the beginning that the U.S. would now be the world’s marshal, patrolling countries near and far, saving citizens from the abusive practices of dictators and bullies, and building democracies where none existed before, we might be able to have an honest and interesting debate about how it should be done, and or even whether it should be done. We could talk about whether the United Nations should play a part, or not, and whether the U.S., like Gary Cooper, should walk down Main Street alone at High Noon,

[added 2023-05-16]

Well, screw McNamara, if he thinks that was the problem.  The problem was not that the U.S. did not have a plausible path to victory: the problem was that the U.S. had no business getting into those wars in the first place.  The problem was that the U.S. frequently intervened not on behalf of democratic, liberal political parties and leaders, but on behalf of authoritarian leaders who could be counted on to turn over their economies or raw goods to U.S. corporations.

 

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The Bipartisan Ugly

The ugly side of the issue: Well the issue is plain ugly, like race and gender politics. Bush knows it, and Kerry knows it, but that won’t prevent either of them from playing politics with it.

Watch for the classic Rove-Bush strategy of allowing the president to take the high-road– proclaiming himself a reasonable moderate who respects diversity– while unleashing proxy spokespersons to really sling the mud. Rove knows that if Bush caters too much to the right, he risks losing moderate voters. At the same time, he needs to slyly clue the extreme right in: he doesn’t mean what he says to a national audience– it’s all code

Does the right continue to believe that Bush can actually do something about abortion? Yes. Well, he can. He can appoint sympathetic judges to appeals courts and to the Supreme Court. Will the Supreme Court, then, ever outlaw abortion? In your dreams. .

Kerry will also have to speak in code. Publicly, he will probably oppose same-sex marriage. Privately, he will want his hard-core supporters to know he will be much kinder to gays than Bush.

It’s like a bunch of big, tough school kids standing around. And they see a little thug picking on an even smaller, unpopular kid mercilessly. The Democrat says, they shouldn’t pick on him. The Republican says, “oh– you a friend of his?” The Democrat says, “Who? Me? Are you kidding?”

Both these guys know that America would be much better served by a frank discussion of taxes, military policies, security, and energy, and the environment. But that doesn’t score many votes for Bush, so watch for the gay bashing to enter a fever pitch as the election campaigns reach their strides.

Check here for more information about Bush science.

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Same Sex Marriage

I don’t believe that even George Bush really supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Believe it or not– in spite of what I have said about George W. previously– he isn’t that stupid. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that his top advisor, Karl Rove, isn’t really that stupid.

Why? Good question.

It’s not hard to figure out why trying to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is a stupid idea, even if you do believe in the bible. The definition of marriage as a life-long union between one man and one woman is so clearly bound up with a religious doctrine and is so culturally and historically specific that large numbers of lawyers, judges, editorialists, and even some law-makers will eventually come to realize that it simply isn’t viable to enshrine the idea in the constitution. You have to start discussing the origins of that definition of marriage, it’s foundation in religious law (or do you want to try to argue that it is the product of “natural” law?), it’s claims of normativity (when more than 50% of heterosexual marriages fail in the U.S.) and what, exactly, it is that is so valuable about it. Is the purpose of marriage to have children? Explain that to childless couples.

You have to explain why divorce is permitted for trivial reasons, and why couples are allowed to live together common-law, if marriage is so sacred.

You have to explain the difference between common-law marriage and legal marriage. You have to start thinking about how the state tries to treat children from single-parent homes, and why.

I’m not saying that there isn’t anything valuable about the old fashioned heterosexual definition of marriage. Just that it would be very hard to prove that keeping marriage exclusively hetero-sexual would provide something to our society that is indispensable or irreplaceable. Unless you are James Dobson.

But James Dobson might have to come clean in a campaign like this. No, he won’t. You see, if Dobson ran for office, he would actually have to try to persuade a majority of voters that his politics are reasonable and wise. He would actually be accountable for his views. But in his best-selling books and tapes, Dobson can pontificate about all of society’s ills without ever being challenged or disputed.

Will John Kerry ever have an opportunity to ask George Bush if, since he feels that marriage should be the union of one man and one woman for life, he approves of divorce? Get him on the record. Let him explain why being in favor of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman doesn’t mean you don’t recognize that there are situations in which a divorce is desirable or allowable. See if his right-wing evangelical minions agree.

Still, you never know. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Texas legislature came out and declared that the earth was flat one of these days.

The problem is that the constitution is about the set of rules and principles that govern the way we, as individuals, associate with each other. It doesn’t tell you that the purpose of such associations is to seek salvation, or to experience sensual gratification, or some kind of higher consciousness. It leaves that to religion. The constitution wisely leaves to each of us the right to decide what the ultimate purpose of life is.

It is not for the state to define what the pursuit of happiness means. It is not for the state to define love or marriage or family or happiness. The purpose of the constitution is to keep you from being able to prevent me from seeking my own happiness according to my own beliefs, in so far as my pursuit of happiness does not impinge upon your pursuit of happiness.

We aren’t very big on the idea that the state should consciously promote moral virtue in it’s citizens. In other words, we want to promote orderliness and prosperity and justice, and any law that clearly advances those ideals will resonate with our existing laws and institutions. But any law that tries to tell us what happiness is, or should be, goes too far.

There is no constitutional logic that provides a rationale for banning gay marriage. It clearly is no skin off James Dobson’s, or anyone else’s, nose if a couple of guys or girls in New York want to share an apartment and sleep together and make each other beneficiaries of their life insurance policies. It really isn’t, no matter how many stupid things Dobson may say and how often he may say it.

I may not believe that people should be driving around in Hummers, but I can’t stop them. If they can pay for the gas, and if they abide by the rules of the road, they have the right to drive a Hummer. Some guy driving a Hummer does not infringe upon my right to drive a Toyota. (Let’s leave alone, for a moment, the argument that a Hummer uses up more resources belonging to everyone– like air– than most other vehicles.)

George Bush is going to have to try to argue that gay marriage somehow prevents me from driving my Toyota, in a manner of speaking. He’s going to have to argue that gay marriage somehow is going to prevent you from…. well, I can’t even imagine what they will argue gay marriage prevents you from do it. The truth is, he might as well blurt it out– he just doesn’t like it.

The truth is– and I think any in depth discussion of the issue will eventually elucidate it– that gay marriage doesn’t hurt anyone.

Unless. Unless you are going to argue that homosexuality is an unhealthy, abnormal lifestyle. But then, you don’t just need to ban gay marriage. You need to ban homosexuals.

And James Dobson and his cohorts might well say, well, what’s wrong with that idea? “When I grew up, we didn’t have homosexuals. Homosexual acts are still illegal in some states. It ought to stay that way.”

So, why not a constitutional amendment making it illegal to engage in homosexual acts?

Because then you would see how silly and unworkable it is.

Bush may be clueless about the implications of this issue, just as he seems clueless about the implications of just about every policy of this administration. (After Texas implemented an abstinence-only high school sex education system under then governor Bush, it’s rate of teen pregnancy slipped to the highest in the nation). But Karl Rove isn’t. He probably doesn’t care one whit whether the proposed amendment gets passed or not.

The truth is, that he is hoping to make use of some bigotry. He knows the Democrats would prefer not to oppose the amendment, because they know that Americans, by a ratio of 2 – 1 disapprove of gay marriage. And he knows that many Democrats are as ahead of the Republicans on this issue as Johnson, Kennedy, and the Supreme Court were ahead of the country on the issue of race in 1963.

How feeble does it sound, intellectually?  Try this:

“It should be an inalienable right, guaranteed by our Constitution, to live in a marriage-based society,” said Robert Knight, director of the Concerned Women for America’s Culture and Family Institute. “When you create counterfeit marriages and put them into the law, you’re undermining society’s most important safeguard against tyranny.

Actually, that doesn’t just sound feeble.  It sounds downright stupid.   A “marriage-based” society?  Sounds almost like “creationism”.  But you can see how the right is groping for some rationale for why they think their rights are infringed by the idea of same-sex unions, when clearly they are not.

Quote from Salon

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The Incomprehensible Scabrous Viciousness of Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter, bless her little heart, doesn’t want you to buy into a false patriotism.

You might be confused, you see. You might look at two men who are now fixed beside each other in the public mind– the two likely candidates for President of the United States– and you might sort of realize that one of them has actually served in war, and the other sends other young men to do the fighting, while giving the richest citizens of the United States of America a big fat pass on paying the costs of this war.

Well, look at him. Bush has the face of a pretty little frat boy who might have pulled a few strings to make sure he didn’t get sent into any danger over there in Viet Nam. John Kerry looks like Herman Munster. But he also looks like someone who has paid some dues.

It’s not a political thing. John McCain has obviously paid some dues. Clinton didn’t look like he paid any dues (but he was a pretty effective president). Bush Sr. paid dues. Reagan didn’t. Check out the chicken-hawks.

But Ann Coulter is concerned lest you actually think that a man who served in the air National Guard and probably had daddy pull strings to get him there so he never had to face enemy fire is somehow less courageous and heroic than someone who actually went to war for his country. This is the remarkable topsy-turvy world of Republican blonde bimbo columnists: Of course he is less courageous and heroic. Even a rational Republican should be able to admit that a man who actually served in war time has made a slightly greater sacrifice than someone who joined the weekend frolics of the Texas Air National Guard?

You might not like Kerry’s politics, but don’t be silly about the military record.

The only thing that is baffling to me is why the Republicans are missing a rather wonderful opportunity to show that they can occasionally rise above petty, vindictive, party politics and do something with class. Why not acknowledge Kerry’s honorable service? Why not praise him?

Instead, we have Ann Coulter actually trying to make it sound like George Bush wanted to serve in Viet Nam, but the war, unfortunately, ended before he could finish his National Guard duties. Ann– duh!– he was in the National Guard precisely so he could avoid Viet Nam. Hello!

And then, from the scurrilous, to the despicable:

Ann Coulter says, of Max Cleland:

Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place.

That’s pretty shameless. Max Cleland, unlike George Bush, went to Viet Nam to serve his country honorably. One day he picked up a grenade that he saw lying in the ground below a helicopter from which he had just disembarked. He thought it was his, and had fallen from his belt, and was therefore safe. It turned out to have belonged to someone else, and it was alive, and it blew up in his hands. He lost both arms and a leg.

Wow! Talk about hardball. All you can do is look at Ms. Coulter with astonishment, and wonder if the Democrats have the testicles to go up against people with such piercing, stiletto wits. Imagine that– attacking the war record of a paraplegic!

Will any patriotic Republicans have the character, courage, or integrity to stand up to Ann Coulter and put her in her place? (Ha ha.) She is attacking a war hero! She is dishonoring a veteran! Not bloody likely, of course, since most Republican leaders never served in any wars, and therefore don’t feel any real sense of obligation to those who did.

They are famously known as “chicken-hawks”.

Those who did– like John McCain and Chuck Hagel– have, in fact, made known their distaste for those who attack the patriotism of war veterans who happen to be political opponents.

And shouldn’t Ms. Coulter leave it to a few veterans to take up the issue of Max Cleland’s fitness for office, seeing as, obviously– I mean, as obvious as anything has ever been obvious– Ann Coulter never served and never will serve in any kind of military?

But then, Ann Coulter is a puff of air anyway, a blonde bimbo recruited by Republican fund-raisers to counter-act the image of the party as an old white boy’s club. See? It’s hip to be vindictive and scabrous.

I doubt we’ll soon see a Tom Delay talking action figure in a mini-skirt.

Order the Ann Coulter action figure doll! Now! Or else!

Well, hey, I thought it was a joke. There, at the bottom of her column, on www.townhall.com, is the ad for the Ann Coulter “Talking Action Figure”. You know it’s going to talk, of course.. What else does it do? Does it wear a uniform as Ann Coulter, obviously, never has and never will? Does it go out and visit people and interview them and research important issues? What? And confuse the issues?

This is classic. Ann Coulter, in a mini-skirt, attacking those racist liberals

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George W. Bush’s “What is ‘is’?”

I never heard Bush use the word “wrong” yet. Or “sorry”. Conservatives can be assholes at times, just as liberals can, but they are never more assholeish than in the rank hypocrisy of their horrible outrage that Bill Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky, while they blithely look the other way as Bush lies about Iraq.

Bush could argue that he was misinformed– so I would accept a simple “we were wrong” or “I was wrong” or “we were mistaken and we’ll try not to be mistaken the next time we talk you into invading a foreign country and killing 100,000 people”.

Not a chance. Bush acts as if he never claimed there were weapons of mass destruction, or that they were mere days away from deployment. He acts as if he never said that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. He acts as if his office never heaped scorn and ridicule upon those who believed that the UN inspection process was working reasonably well.

That is deceit. It is dishonest. It is as slimy as any “what is ‘is'” from the lips of Bill Clinton.

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Libya and Dubbya

Bush toots Libya as a model of how a bit of forthright action can impress other countries and achieve American foreign policy goals without further expenditures of men and materiel.

The trouble is, exactly what have we got from Libya? Libya says that they will no longer pursue weapons of mass destruction. Libya, however, is still under the rule of Muamar Qadhafi and his secret police and terror squads. Now, Bush is telling us, all is okay?

There is a problem, isn’t there? Bush said he was going to invade Iraq because it had weapons of mass destruction. They didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction, but that’s okay: we invaded because Saddam Hussein is a cruel tyrant with an appalling disregard for human rights. He imprisons and murders his own people. He has crushed all political opposition and thrown his political opponents into prison. He has suppressed a free press and he has destroyed his nation’s economy.

Just like Qadhafi.

Does anyone realize that Bush has been out-snookered by Qadhafi, who appears to be making a few smart movies. Qadhafi seems to have guessed that Bush doesn’t really care about democracy or human rights or torture or murder. Give Bush a public relations gift, announce that you are no longer pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and maybe he’ll leave you alone.

Bush, so far, has played along. Or is he really that dumb?

Is Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia paying attention? Some kind of public obeisance, especially in this election year, is certainly called for. Get the horn to Karl Rove and ask for a sample text and a knee pad. You have no idea of what you have to gain. Play hardball. Demand some trade concessions while you’re at it– this is an election year, dammit!

In January 2003, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights elected Libya to the rotating chairmanship.

This really is like putting a McDonald’s cook in charge of the Gourmet Diners Association. Is there something I don’t get about this process? Is there some strategic thinking here that I don’t understand, like giving the Olympics to China in 2008? Will Libya try to set an example for the world by releasing all their own prisoners of conscience?

Who is in charge of this? Someone should be sacked.

“Over the past three decades, Libya’s human rights record has been appalling. It has included the abduction, forced disappearance or assassination of political opponents; torture and mistreatment of detainees; and long-term detention without charge or trial or after grossly unfair trials.”  Human Rights Watch