Tim Griffin and the Caging List Scandal, or How I Learned To Start Worrying And Fear The GOP

Tim Griffin, aide to Karl Rove, had caging lists developed for swing states of voters who were thought to vote Democrat so that, in removing them, the GOP change the outcome of the election.

He emailed the actual caging lists to Karl on the RNC email server. ["missing email scandal"]

The caging lists were apparently brought to the Civil Rights Division, which had been packed with GOPbots who would not question them, and thousands of names were removed from voter rolls in swing states. What happened in this stage of the game will surely be uncovered as the investigation continues. ["political hiring scandal"]

To avoid being caught, the Attorney General removed 8 to 10 US Attorneys (in the swing states where caging lists were being used) who had demonstrated an unwillingness to "play ball" politcally and might get wind of these caging lists and prosecute. ["US Attorney Firings Scandal"]

One of their replacements was Tim Griffin. He did not have to go through Senate confirmation, and so could not be questioned under oath and have his caging list crime uncovered. He was then a US Attorney, the prosecution, and the only one who could prosecute him would be the Attorney General, who was certainly part of this conspiracy at the level of firing the USAs, if not in other areas as well. ["change to the Patriot Act Scandal"]

Greg Palast wrote about this in his book. Senator John Conyers has caught wind of the story and is openly investigating. When that news broke, Tim Griffin resigned and is in the wind.

This is a crime committed to change the outcome of an election and establish a permanent GOP majority, and a conspiracy to cover up that crime. It is also the best example of how all these disparate stories (which smelled bad on their own but didn't seem to go anywhere) added up to a system in which this conspiracy, and possibly others, were permitted to occur.

Don't promise me a rose garden

Presidential Candidates-- Now Hear This:

I don't need you to tell me what you're going to do in Iraq when you get into office two years from now.

There is really no way for anyone to say what they will do in two years.

In two years Iran might have gotten involved. Or Syria. Or China.

In two years the city of Baghdad might be entirely abandoned. Or nuked with a dirty bomb.

In two years, the number of displaced Iraqis turning up at the world's doorstep could equal the entire former population of the country.

In two years, terrorists could strike us, "poking the bear", as Rush Limbaugh would say, and feeding the public's bloodthirst...again.

In two years, the Iraqis may have finally found national unity in hunting down every American until we are run out of the country and the Fall of Baghdad rivals the drama of the Fall of Saigon.

My point is simply this: whatever you tell me you will do in Iraq, you're only reflecting what you might do under the current situation. No one can say, until January of 2009, what should really be done in Iraq under the next presidency, because without a crystal ball, there is no way to know what the situation will be then.

What I do need you to promise me is that you will not make the mistakes of this disastrous current administration.

Tell me you won't lie to me, or spy on me.

Tell me you won't abuse our troops, but that you will use them wisely, lovingly, and with care.

Tell me that you will stop and think before you act.

Tell me that you will put the good of the USA before the good of your party.

Tell me that you care less about permanent majorities than you do about permanent solutions.

Tell me that you care more about the truth than discrediting your critics.

Tell me you will take timely action, not time action to polical salesmanship.

Tell me you will talk to both our friends and our enemies, so that we may find a way to create peace and prosperity for all nations of the earth.

Tell me that you will never leave a family on a rooftop begging for help.

Tell me I don't have to worry about political payoffs and kickbacks and lobbyists and unethical behavior, because you are ethical and honest and you won't tolerate corruption.

Tell me you will promote science and reason so that we can trust government reports and so we have accurate information to move forward.

Tell me you will promote my expression of free speech and never try to silence or marginalize me, even if I disagree with you.

And even more than that, show me as best you can that these tales are not lies, but show me that you are honest, trustworthy, compassionate, fair, and thoughtful by how you run your campaign and how you conduct yourself.

If you do all of this, I will vote for you. And if you fail me, I will fight to impeach your ass. I will no longer stand idly by and watch my government fall into sin, death, and despair.

Don't promise me a rose garden, and you just might get The Rose Garden.

Why Mommy is a Progressive

I am a progressive. I believe in progress. I believe in elevating our society to something more than it was yesterday. To do that, we all have to work together. We have to make room for each other, and we have to help each other, so that the entity that is our society can grow and prosper.

Here in Austin a few years ago we were considering light rail public transportation (pre-9/11, so no talk about oil addictions, etc.). This makes a great example for this discussion.

What I, the progressive said: "This will make life easier for everyone in Austin, because it will allieviate some traffic problems as well as provide fast and easy transportation, especially to the downtown area. And it is a great step forward in modernity for our city, catching us up to other great cities. And personally, I prefer trains as public transporation because they are more reliable for getting you where you want to be, on time. Buses have to contend with city traffic, and so you can't rely on them as much."

What the conservatives said: "Only the taxes of the rich will pay for it, and only the poor will ride it! That's not fair! Why should we pay for something we're never going to use?"

And they killed it. [Now, how the conservatives killed it, that's another story, involving AM radio flooding the airwaves not just here, but in a lot of other Texas cities like Houston to make Austin's light rail a cause celebre. I suspect there's a reason that it was the conservative side that ended up with the powerful ability to control the message, think as one, and march in lockstep, but if you're interested in that, follow the link.] Oh, eventually 9/11 happened, and eventually the world began to shift, and eventually light rail came up again and this time we got it. (Building it will be another matter, don't look for light rail here any time soon.)

But let's go back to the debate. I wanted light rail so that we all could do better. Yes, that applies to me, the worker bee, bag lunch in my lap, getting on the train to go answer some CEO's phone. But it applies to my boss, too. Not only could he take the train if his Mercedes broke down (should he deign to do so, which according to the conservative side, he never would), but more importantly to him-- I, his employee, will be on time to work thanks to the train. Now, if you were a boss, and you were relying on 100 factory workers to show up to run your factory, wouldn't you want them there on time? (Or there at all, instead of taking the day off because of car trouble?) When I managed a call center, the hardest part of my day was the beginning of the call shift, when I had to herd cats to get everyone there. Some people I had to go get in my own car because theirs had died or their ride bailed out on them or whatever. If that worry had been lifted from my employees, and by extension me, we could have progressed to more important concerns.

Furthermore, where do the conservatives get off implying they are the only ones who pay taxes? Sure, Worker Bee is paying a lot less in total dollars than CEO, but WB is still paying taxes (taxes that put a bigger dent in his bottom line than the CEO's does), and shouldn't Mr. and Mrs. Bee get something to make their lives better too?

I'm sure Jesus wasn't talking about taxes and light rail when he said, "What you neglect to do for the least of these, you neglect to do for me," but I can't think of a better lesson. What you do with your tax dollars for the least of your fellow man (whether you're talking Austinites or Americans or Humans) you do for the good of all of us. Light rail helps us get to your jobs on time. Health care solutions mean increased productivity and less sick days. Even a program to help the poor with their heating bills might mean that your cleaning lady doesn't come to work after not having slept for a week and fighting off pneumonia because she didn't have adequate heat. Proper public education means that the interview you have this morning has every chance of being someone you can hire. If you want a happy city or a happy country where everyone is humming along and doing their part, then you have to help with that. You have to help by bringing PROGRESS to your community, no matter if you have money or not. If you do have money, help pay for some programs for the less fortunate (i.e., your employees). If you don't have money, pull your weight and contribute to our society with what you have, your hands and your heart.

That's why "Mommy is a Progressive". *

But, you might still be asking, why doesn't Mommy--ahem, that is, Little Miss Patriot (who BTW is someone's Mommy) call herself Liberal?

First, there's the whole dirty word thing. Somewhere along the way, "liberal" became synonymous with "dirty hippie". (Don't get me wrong, I love dirty hippies! But I'm not going to vote for one for President.) And secondly, if we're assuming semantics matter, my perception of being "liberal" is that you want to just give away the store to everyone. In our light rail example, that might be, "Not only should we have light rail, but it should be free to anyone who wants to ride it! And we should give the poor a tax credit so that Mr. Worker Bee doesn't have to pay one dime towards it!"

Sadly, arguing semantics has been denegrated just like being a liberal has. But words really mean something to me. So let's recap this little semantic argument before we go.

• Progressive = progress for all members of the community;
  
• Conservative = holding back on progress in the community in order to protect the assets of the rich;
  
• Liberal = sharing everyone's assets so that we live in Eutopia and can do whatever we want regardless of whether it means real progress or not.

Want to argue with me? Please, do so! There's that blue shiny comment link, just begging you to hit it. Go on, hit it!


*There's a sweet children's book called "Why Mommy is a Democrat", I'm totally stealing that!

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

UPDATE: Walter Shapiro has an interesting piece on this topic in Salon called "Hillary the Prudent". (You'll have to watch a short ad before accessing Salon.)

I've had a few different opinions on the electability of Senator Hillary Clinton. Mainly it came down to this: I can't vote for her because my parents won't vote for her. That is to say, there are a great number of people in this country who hate the Clintons (individually and separately) on a gut visceral level wherein despite the voter himself swinging left, he still can't stomach a Clinton. My folks are like that; as they return to the center after a brief but eye-opening affair with the right, primed to vote Democratic in '08, they still become enraged when even the name Clinton is mentioned. (Update, 6/07: Not anymore. I asked mom and she just sounded tired. She didn't seem to have anything for or against Hillary, so long as all this Bush crap stops and H doesn't bring her own. Also, I heard recently the phrase "The Clinton psychodrama" as in, we don't want to have to live through their personal psychodrama again. This may replace the old I-want-to-vomit reaction.)

But lately I've been coming around to a far worse realization about Hillary: she's snarky. And she has a chip on her shoulder, combined with a get-out-of-my-way leadership style. And no matter how brilliant each political move she makes may be, it makes me like her less and less.

I think our culture respects the Political Shark. We respect the sort of guy or gal who, unlike most of us, can read keenly the landscape (in this case, national politics) and, like some of those really great moments in The West Wing, can bob and weave and jab and be the one left standing. Even those of us who can't stand Karl Rove still respect his Pol Sharkness. And men and women who can't swim with the PSharks drown, like John Kerry. I once heard someone say, "If Kerry can't face down Rove, what chance would he stand against the terrorists?", a sentiment that shows that while we want Mr. Smith to Go to Washington, we want him to be a PShark when he gets there. Rohm Emmanuel gives me the same feeling, like a shark gliding through the water. I don't have any reason to think he's anything but nice and has anything but our best interests at heart, but I know a PShark when I see one, and this one is hunting.

And despite Howard Dean getting smacked for yelling, we actually like the Mr. Smiths that are angry. We like Jack Cafferty and Lou Dobbs and Keith Olbermann and Randi Rhodes because they are pissed, and so are we. We can't do much, but they can feel our anger and use it to make changes. And so we root for those who run for public office because they are angry, because they feel the country is being hijacked and run off into a ditch, and because they are angry at those people who used their PSharkness to hack and slash their way to power and then used that power to let a city drown and a nation collapse into civil war.

Hillary is certainly a Political Shark. And she got to be that in the most earnest and respectable way possible: she got beaten up time and time again by the PSharks until she learned the ropes. They call that "paying your dues" and I'd say she's done that.

And she has a chip on her shoulder "bigger'n Dallas" as we say here, also earned honestly: the GOP PShark Machine went after her and her husband viciously for years, nearly destroying her marriage*, trying to bring down a Presidency, trashing the successes of the Clinton Administration to the point that the things the CA had done well, like the budget surplus and a strong, sleek FEMA and going after Osama Bin Laden were completely abandoned as if they had scarlet fever germs and were to be burned to protect the family. (Have you read The Velveteen Rabbit?) And you see how well that all turned out for the country. So she is pissed off, and I don't blame her for that, she certainly earned those stripes the hard way too.

Lastly, she strikes me as no-nonsense, something else she's earned the hard way. I imagine after what she went through with her husband, it's natural for her to get real clear and real down-to-business real quick. "No more BS, no more pretending everything is fine, it is what it is and I'm not going to gild it, I'm just going to fix it, so get out of my way and hand me that wrench."

There is nothing wrong with Mrs. Clinton being all of these things in one person, a Political Shark with a chip on her shoulder and a Lance-Armstrong-esque determination. If she had emerged on the national stage as this person, with all of these traits (let's say they were learned over many years in a state congress or as the DA for a major city, but off the national press radar), we might champion her. We might say, "Wow, she's got the whole package, I think she can kick the crap out of the GOP in '08. Why, it almost seems like a shame that the GOP has weakened themselves, when we finally have such a good fighter on our side."

The problem for me is this: I saw it happen. Like sausage, you don't want to see a Political Shark get made. I remember everything from the demure black headband and the cookie comment to standing on a dais with Newt Gingrich championing something I can't remember. (Actually, that cookie comment, to the effect of "I'm no Tammy Wynette who will just stand by her man," makes a perfect example when compared to how she ended up doing just that after it all went to hell.) I remember her dutifully voting for the use of force resolution because Hillary the PShark had determined This Is A Good Year For Laying Low & Not Being Controversial. Come to think of it, the Newt Gingrich bipartisan stuff looks a lot like This Is A Good Time To Show I Can Work With Them. I remember her rightfully accusing a Right Wing Conspiracy of relentlessly attacking her husband, and even though she was right and we knew it, she came off paranoid and delusional. I remember her being torn apart by wolves over her health care plan in 1992, and how shocked she looked, but not as shocked as when her cracking marriage was exploded all over the national press.

Whenever I try to relate a string of details like that, I can't help but support her. Because she did learn from all these horrendously difficult challenges and rather than running away, she adapted and grew and developed all the skills she lacked when she first appeared on the national stage. I'm not saying that anything she's done is wrong or illegitimate (in this post, I reserve the right to criticize her as the campaign wears on, of course) or that any of it isn't understandable.

But she makes me very uncomfortable. I find her prickly and conniving and even when a campaign move is arguably a good one, like her "dialogue" with the people of America rather than a "campaign", and her little town meeting tour, I just want to throw up. It all seems so contrived and hokey. Does she really think we're that stupid? That we would think that her sudden publicity stunts are anything other than campaign trail moments? Why hadn't she talked to us before, if she cares what we think so much?

Yes, she has been working faithfully in the Senate for the citizens of New York for 8 years, and yes, she should get points for that. (One thing I don't like about Obama is that he ran for a six-year job as Senator and is leaving to campaign nationally after just two years, which I think shows a lack of commitment to ones constituency that Clinton had the good sense to avoid by staying in, laying low, working very hard, and improving her street cred with other Senators and Congresspeople.) And I'm a Texan, as a NY Senator she didn't really need to talk to me, I guess. But you know, even as I watched her do the very right thing, no question, I felt like I could see right through it all. I was watching her get ready for 2008, and every Gingrich photo op cemented my feelings even more.

So no, I'm not endorsing Hillary-- yet. If she's the last PShark Dem left standing, well, I guess I'll have to because I don't trust the GOP farther than my flabby matronly arms could throw them. And I would be psyched to vote for a female president. But if you ask me what I think of her, I have to say, she gives me the willies and I don't think I'm going to get over that.

I should probably make this a separate post, but let me just quickly throw something in about our black(?) and female candidates: Everyone keeps asking if we're "ready" for either one. I would say, yes, yes, and hell yes. If we can credit the GOP for nothing else, members like Condi Rice and Colin Powell have put the issues to bed that being black or a woman would hamper one in any way. On the other hand, the fact that we've never had a Jew, a Muslim, a black, or a woman as President sort of speaks for itself (and others definitely think it speaks volumes). I think the real question behind this "can we handle it" question is: What's really going to happen on election day? Will Americans get behind Obama only to find the racists in our country come out of the woodwork-- like the anti-gays did in 2004 especially-- and in sheer numbers of voters block the Black? They say that Hurricane Katrina lifted the rock and found the squirming racism underneath, does that mean that there is a secret underlying racism at the heart of our voters that would rear its ugly head on Election Day?

Same thing but less so for a woman. The last time that we had a woman in the national race, Geraldine Ferraro, there was a lot of talk about PMS and other "hysterical" traits a woman surely has that would keep her from being an effective leader. Do you, they asked, want a sobbing PMS-er with her hand on the nuclear button? But those arguments have been debunked in the intervening 20 years, and like I say, there is no better example than Condi Rice, who has been both our National Security Advisor and our Secretary of State, which means that she had her hand on that proverbial button even more so than a VP would, and she has been wrong. Haha, I couldn't resist. What I mean to say is she has been cool and collected and accomplished, and where she has been ineffective at her job it has had more to do with being a part of this distastrous GOP than with being a woman. I don't think we can ever ask those stupid questions about women again, all we have to do is silently point to a pic of Dr. Rice-- or Madeline Allbright if you prefer, or Speaker Pelosi or Senator Clinton herself. And of course we could also point to all the women in all the other areas of society, from astronauts (murderous diaper-wearers aside) to presidents of Harvard. I think that question is put to bed.

Not that we don't have equally good examples of African-Americans-- hello, Dr. Rice, again. But as I said, this is really the question of "Will a previously unknown but dominant sentiment of racism and/or antifeminism scuttle the election at the last minute?" And I believe that if such a thing were to happen, it would more likely be about race than about gender. I think that there is more vestigal racism left in our national character than misogyny, at least when it comes to national elections.

The answer to the question, "Are we ready for an African-American or a woman President?" is a resounding yes, and polls show the public is way out in front of this issue to the point that it wonders why on earth Wolf Blitzer is asking it.

But the answer to the real question, "Will racism and/or antifeminism rear up and keep a black or female candidate out of the White House?" is more subtle. I think that it is far less likely that it would keep Hillary out of office than it would Barrack. If there is a secret malicious sentiment out there in the heart of the voting public, I suspect that it is racist against African-Americans more so than antifeminist against female candidates. But I just can't predict what will actually happen. We don't like to admit that there is still racism in this country, so we talk like it isn't there, but it might still be deep down, enough to keep Sen. Obama from being elected. I don't think that we'll know the answer to that question until it finally plays out once and for all.

UPDATE 6/11/07: I have gotten more and more like Yosemite Sam, throwing my hat and stomping on it and yelling, "Ooh, that varmit!" at the lack of leadership, especially in the Congress. The tide of public opinion has turned, it doesn't put you that far out on a limb to call for impeachment, etc. I know, that's the House and this "Senator" can't actually call for the i-word, but she can lead, dammit, and all she does is have crappy "dialogues" and make stupid parody videos! So today I got an email from her campaign the subject of which was, "Help Me Make A Video for Hillary" and I freakin' lost it. Here is what I wrote back:

YOU need MY help? Puh-leeze!

Quit screwing around and call for impeachment. You are a leader in the Senate who never leads. You are in the position to take action that will go down in the history books and instead you have jumped whole hog into the campaign like we don't have issues TODAY that SENATORS could help alleviate NOW.

The rest of this, videos and whatnot, is just crap! People are dying and MY OWN FAMILY MEMBERS are oversees being shot at and blown up. Worse than all of this is the Constitutional crisis we are careening into while the worst crooks in history fracture our military and wipe their ass with the Constitution.

And this morning I get an email from you with the subject "Help Make Hillary's Next Video"?!?!?!?!?!

GO TO HELL!!!!!

Sincerely,
Jill Swanson
no longer your supporter

As you can see, I was a bit upset. And then I went over to her blog and posted it there. I really shouldn't email people while I'm having my first caffeine jolt. Nevertheless, if you agree with me, then let's find another candidate and get behind him.

*Don't write me about this: no one is to blame for Bill's cheating other than Bill. I know what "sins" and whose violated their vows-- or as much as one can know about these things. However, to have your personal pain played out all over the national media because you're both being drug through the mud by your enemies puts even more strain on the marriage itself, and I think it was the GOP's aim to get them to separate or divorce while in office, so I definitely believe they were trying to destroy the marriage itself. A fine distinction, but worth noting.

The War on Terror

This is apropos of nothing-- I've just held this one in long enough. What I don't write here rattles around in my brain until I can't stand the clattering.

A "war on terror" is like a war on crime. Or a war on murder. Beyond the usual deterences of incarceration and the death penalty, even if you could remove most causes of why humans murder each other-- poverty, desperation, gangs, drugs, etc.-- even if you achieve amazing Star-Trek-like advances in humanity, there will still be some housewife who gets tired of her husband's complaining and beans him with the frying pan, or a blues musician who gets stabbed in a pool hall over a woman. (You'd be surprised how often that shows up in bios of blues musicians.) You can never eradicate murder.

And you can never eradicate the threat of terrorism. And the threat, the fear, is what terrorism is largely about. You could beat Al-Qaeda, you could win over the hearts and minds of the entire Middle East, they could sing and dance in the streets shouting, "Life to America!" and there is still the possibility that someone could plant a bomb somewhere. He doesn't like the Olympics or the WTO, he is the Unibomber or Tim McVeigh, he's got a sick kid in Cuba and hijacks a plane. Or he's the one Middle East denizen who isn't dancing. You can't eradicate terrorism.

We started this "War" business back in the day, I think with Nixon's War on Drugs (and look how that turned out), as a sort of catchy slogan to encapsulate an idea-- if we take the Greatest Generation and apply them to a problem like we did with WWII, they could save the day. So let's say it this way, it's a war on drugs, that will inspire you as a community to pull together and make a huge difference. (Is this true? I'm no historian, but it has a beat and I can dance to it. Truthiness, man, dig it.) Then all these other "wars" started showing up, using the word either to inspire ("war on poverty") or to warn ("war on the middle class").

This was so much a part of our lexicon that when the Pres told us we weren't just going to go after Al-Qaeda and the perpetrators and supporters of the 9/11 attacks, but that we were going to have an all-out war on terror, people didn't seem to bat an eyelash. In fact, a lot of progressive voices are now shouting that Iraq is a diversion from the War On Terror as if that were a sacrosanct idea.

But it was never clarified if this was a marketing slogan or an actual war. I suspect a lot of us, and our Congressmen, thought that it referred to the over-arching strategy of "getting" (through law enforcement and detention/interroagtion ala 24) all these people who were trying to get us. To call it something as vague as a war on "terror", this idea is not limiting the response to just one group, Al-Qaeda, and then not having the teeth to get to any other group or persons who had similar goals. OK, fine.

Then there was the "use of force"-- ok, fine on that too, I mean, if you've tracked down your suspect you can't just be expected to knock politely, you might have to kick the door in like good ol' Jack Bauer. And you might have to go into another country and clean house if its own government can't control it and keep it from being run by a terrorist group, like Afghanistan. OK, fine.

But then one day we-- I should say I, since I speak only for myself, but I speak of what I feel was a group realization-- woke up to discover that the "war on terror" was an actual war, using the full resources (and more) of our actual military, and that the use of force actually gave the Executive the power to just go around and start invading countries on the flimsiest of excuses.

And yet, while we learned the war on terror was being treated like a real war, it remains simply a slogan. What does it really mean? How can you defeat terror? (Other than the Zen-like answer, "To refuse to be afraid.") How can you assure me, once we've "won", that no one will ever be a suicide bomber again? It doesn't have to be for this reason, it could be because blue is the new black. And if we can't do that, how can you tell me we've won?

We not only need a sensible approach to dealing with the Middle East and what Lou Dobbs calls "radical Islamic terrorism", I think it can only start by getting rid of the BS "Clean Air Act"-esque language that defines our so-called "War on Terror".

UPDATE: Since I wrote this, Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio has gone off on the same idea, and John Edwards has been saying the WOT is a "bumper sticker slogan"... Thanks for reading LMP, guys! And remember, you heard it here first...

All Hell is Breaking Loose, Part II.

Previously on "All Hell Is Breaking Loose":

Muslims are divided into Sunni and Shi'a, which is similar to the differences between Catholics and Protestants in Christianity. They generally don't like each other and think that the other side is worshipping all wrong.

Muslims are spread all over the world, but some countries are dominate in one or the other sect of Islam. Needless to say, countries that identify with one side are going to back up that side. To compare this to the familiar, Protestant countries like England and Catholic countries like Spain might feel the need to take sides in a Catholic/Protestant conflict. Catholic countries like Mexico, while an ocean away, might feel a camaraderie with their Catholic brethren in Ireland even though culturally they have little in common.

So, who's who? Well, as Wikipedia points out, the Shi'a are kind of the proverbial "red-headed stepchild" of Islam. "One of the lingering problems... in estimating the Shi'a population is that unless the Shi`a form a significant minority in a Muslim country, the entire population is often listed as Sunni... No Sunni-Shi'a breakdown is available for many countries... This is certain to have exaggerated the proportion of Sunni Muslims." It's like the way the US is considered a Protestant country even though there are a lot of Catholics here, certainly enough to make a political impact, as we saw in the recent immigration debate.

Another great example is Iraq. Under Saddam, the country was considered to be Sunni because Saddam and his government were Sunni (though it seems they had lapsed into secularism). As we found out when we cracked Iraq open, it turns out that most of the actual people inside were Shi'a.

Wikipedia is saying that the conventional wisdom breaks it down 85% Sunni and 15% Shi'a, even though because of the problems listed above, that's probably not right.

What's happening in the world is the rift between these two sects is growing and becoming more violent. It seems that when this really ignites, nation-states are going to take sides. So, who sides with whom?

Out of the major players on the world's stage who are predominately Muslim, it breaks down (as far as I can tell, with Wikipedia's help--they have an awesome chart-- and accepting the above disclaimer) like this:


SUNNI
Somalia
Saudi Arabia
Turkey
Yemen
Kuwait
Afghanistan
Libya
Pakistan
United Arab Emirates
Egypt
Jordan
Syria
Indonesia

SHI'A
Bahrain
Iran
Iraq

Out of the countries that aren't predominately Muslim, but have significant (60-75%) Muslim populations, their Muslims break down like this:

SUNNI
Sudan
Albania
Bosnia Herzegovenia

SHI'A
Lebanon

If you're wondering about G8 countries like the US, all of their Muslims are listed as Sunni, probably because of the poor data collection mentioned earlier. (While Muslims might list their religion on US census forms, for example, I don't think it specifies "Sunni" or "Shi'a".)

So let's take a headline from the other day: "Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt issue a statement condemning Hezbollah's attack on Israel." While that seems significant, Arabs turning on Arabs instead of banding together in lockstep against Israel, look at the chart. Hezbollah is a Shi'a group from Shi'a Lebanon. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt are all Sunni. Iran supports Hezbollah, and from a glance at the chart, that makes perfect sense. The Sunni Syrians, on the other hand, took over Shi'ite Lebanon until they were recently kicked out, which explains the animosity there. On the other hand, the Syrians aided Hezbollah in the past, because Hezbollah was formed to fight the Israelis, which despite their differences is something radicals of both groups can get behind. In fact, in this growing rift between Sunnis and Shi'a, the Israel/Hezbollah conflict may be the only thing keeping them together, as seen by the Syrians welcoming Shi'ite Lebanese refugees with open arms.

Iraq has become the hotbed of the conflict between the Sunni and the Shi'a. The Sunni dictatorship of Saddam allowed for Sunni abuse of the Shi'ite majority. (Well, let's face it, the Husseins were just downright sick puppies, and they happened to be Sunni and used that as an excuse.) The US came in and, through many missteps but I think with the idea of rooting for the underdog, ended up handing the country back to the Shi'a. Needless to say, after years of horror, the Shi'a are back and they're pissed, as the saying goes. That's why what is flippantly referred to in the MSM as "sectarian violence" has replaced any kind of insurgency in Iraq.

"I can't understand/ what makes a man/ hate another man," Depeche Mode once sang, and it is unfathomable why such a horror would occur unless you're a part of it. I still find it hard to believe that Ireland was torn apart by what we would now call "sectarian violence", when really, who cares who's Catholic or Protestant. But go into a pub in Ireland and ask that question, and you'll get an earful-- or, the patrons will narrow their eyes at you as if to say, "Idiot," and turn back to their Guinness without a word.

The Shi'a are back in Iraq with a vengeance, and are flooding into the police forces and military, from which position they are purportedly abusing and murdering Sunnis. Those that don't get jobs join gangs, which they euphamisitcally call "militias", and go around abusing and murdering Sunnis on their own. What a fun place.

Is it any wonder that the Sunnis in other countries are starting to get angry with the US for backing the Shi'a and putting them in power? And who exactly would be mad at us? Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, and Turkey, for starters. At least four of those are our business partners and in recent years, friends of a sort, which would be a great loss to us if they should turn on us. Iran, for all of its saber-rattling and hatred of the US, is actually not doing as much as you might imagine to provoke us because on this greater sectarian battleground, we just helped them by creating another Shi'a country. (That's why people keep saying, "The big winner here is Iran," which doesn't really make any sense unless you understand the Shi'a/Sunni conflict.)

I don't have a profound point here, just wanted to get this all straight in my own head and hopefully help you out too. I do have a warning: keep an eye on these Sunni and Shi'a divisions, they will be key to understanding wide-spread conflict and (any God willing) resolution.


UPDATE:
Wow, talk about topicality: just took a look at Salon.com's political blog by Tim Grieve, who posted this:

The Bush administration has long insisted that news stories about violence in Iraq obscure the progress that is being made on the political front.

Perhaps it's time to put that story to rest.

In an extraordinarily gloomy report from Baghdad, Reuters correspondent Mariam Karouny says that Iraqi leaders have "all but given up on holding the country together." Among the ideas now on the table: Divide Baghdad into two zones, one for Shiites and one for Sunnis, in the hopes of stopping the bloodshed between the two.

The harsh words from one unnamed government official: "Iraq as a political project is finished."

I certainly hope that's not the case, since division is never the solution ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Reagan) but I will say I understand all that a lot better having done all this research.

All Hell is Breaking Loose

There is something really important happening in the world. It's not just that Hezbollah and Israel are at each other's throats, it's not just that the US has destabilized the region and upped the ante. It's that there are two main branches of Islam, the Sunni and the Shi'a, and they are ready to fight to the death.

All of your preconceptions about the conflict in the Muslim world, which states are nice and/or democratic versus which states are mean and/or "rogue", forget them. This battle is going to come down based on who believes what.

If you're having trouble getting your brain around this, think about the Catholics and the Protestants. While both religions follow Jesus Christ, they differ significantly about how to follow Him. To over-simplify it (oh, don't worry, I'll be over-simplifying the Muslims too), the Catholics believe that Jesus chose the disciple Peter as his successor, and Peter formed the Church and became the first Bishop of Rome, a position which later became known as the Pope. That makes the Pope the direct "descendant" of Peter, who got his marching orders directly from Jesus, which makes him the Supreme Head of the Church. Conversely, the Protestants think that Jesus didn't pick a clear successor (there were other Bishops of other cities at that time who were not considered any more important than Peter) because His whole point was that your relationship with God is personal and you don't need anyone in between you and God. This is known as the "priesthood of the believer", which means that if you believe, you are a priest yourself, and you don't need any intercession of priest or even prayers to saints.

Well, that sounds like a pretty academic argument, but if you know anything about European history, you know it has been the cause of much strife and death. And the beautiful, ethereal Ireland became the main front in a war of ideas in modern history. The Irish have more in common with each other than with any other people on the planet, and yet they were killing each other during the Troubles as if Catholics Were From Mars and Protestants Were From Venus.

The Sunni/Shi'a division is very similar. Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) also did not leave a clear successor, which left his followers at a bit of a loss as to how to proceed after his death in 632.

Mohammed was a merchant who often went to caves near Mecca to pray. "Muslims believe that in 610, at about the age of forty, while in a cave in the mountain called Hira, he was visited by the Angel Gabriel, who commanded him to recite the verses sent by God. These verses were later collected as part of the Qur'an (which was revealed to him over a period of about twenty-three years until his death)." [Wikipedia]

He went on a preaching mission, similar to Jesus, reinforcing monotheism and warning of Judgement Day, similar to John the Baptist. "He did not completely reject Judaism and Christianity, two other monotheistic faiths known to the Arabs, but said that he had been sent by God in order to complete and perfect those teachings." [Wikipedia] Remember, ultimately the God of Judaism and the God of Christianity and the God of Islam are all the same entity, the religions having already branched off (twice) many centuries before.

He moved the people of his time to reinvigorate their relationship with God, and as the quote above said, to "perfect" it. Consequently, his death left a large vacuum. If Muhammad was the only one who understood what was to be done and how to perfect religion, then who would direct the people now? "Two questions faced these early Muslims: who was to succeed Muhammad, and what sort of authority he was to exercise." [Wikipedia] Jesus left a similar vacuum-- He told us that there was a better way, but He was gone after three years, leaving mere mortals to figure out what the heck He was talking about.

What we would call the "disciples" of Muhammad are called "caliphs" in Islam. Mohammed had plenty of these. Traditionally, according to Wikipedia, Arabic leaders were chosen to lead by a committee called the "caliphate" (think of Jesus' disciples, only more of them). If a familial heir was competent, great, but if not, the caliphate was free to choose someone else that would do a better job. (Apparently there was no official method to do this.)

Muhammad had two potential successors--

-- Abu Bakr who was M's lieutenant and right-hand man (think St. Peter) and
-- Alī ibn Abī Talib, who was his son-in-law.

The followers of Abu, the lieutenant, became the Sunni.
The followers of Ali, the son-in-law, became the Shi'a.

(I hope it's not rude to shorten their names like that, but it will help readers follow all of this.)

The Sunni refer to themselves as followers of the "sunna" or the TEACHINGS of Mohammed. Their leaders are called Caliphs.

The Shi'a refer to themselves as followers of the "Ahlul Bayt", or the FAMILY of Mohammed. Their leaders are called Imams.

They not only don't agree, but these days they really don't get along at all, ala the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland.

In Part II, we'll look at what effect this split is having on today's politics.

Torn

A news junkie who is a caring citizen, like myself, often finds she is torn when waking up in the morning: Do I turn on the TV and see how bad it is today, or not?

It seems we might be on the brink of WWIII. I'm not sure what else to say about that.

It's strange to watch a war on TV that we're not in. I'm so used to the Pentagon briefings about planned strikes that it's very strange to watch the reporters scurry around and report where bombs fell and being genuinely surprised by each turn of the screw.

Stranger still to watch them cover anything else. I was flipping around last night and after wrapping up a panel discussion on this crisis, the cable news TV host (not trying to protect an identity, just can't remember!) went on to tease for the next story, which was that somebody saw TomKat's baby and said it was "funny-looking", which besides being COMPLETELY AND ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT was also three-day-old news.

I haven't turned on the TV yet but in pulling up my browser I saw a bit of CNN.com.

Now, I must be wrong about this, but I thought the idea was to keep Syria in particular out of this conflict. It may well be, as many assert, that the nation of Syria (meaning, its government) is one of the two "parents" of Hezbollah-- Iran being its "father" I guess. So perhaps that's what you do when the kid starts acting out and, you know, bombing the neighbor's cat: you call his parents. But it was also my impression that Syria was saying if they had to get involved, Israeli would pay big time-- they're already pissed off after the recent fly-by of the Israeli air force over the Syrian President's house-- and we know that Israel would be ready for them.

I must have been wrong about all that though, because the headline on CNN.com was "Bush calls on Syria to act". Now, he's an idiot but surely not that big of an idiot, right? He'd never say "Bring it on"-- oh, wait.

Leaving aside that argument-- is he calling Hezbollah's mom, or inciting a bigger conflict-- I opened the article to see what it had to say, and this line caught my eye:

"The best way to stop violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place," Bush said during a news conference ahead of the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. [CNN.com]

As Yosemite Sam would have said, "Oooooh, that varmit!" OK, here's why that pisses me off. (And wait until you hear the rest of it.)

After 9/11, the question on everyone's lips was "Why do they hate us?" Even Oprah did a show on it, bringing on the then-not-questionable Judith Miller to explain it. We were so surprised that the US could have done anything or be doing anything to make people want to inflict that kind of violence on us. Our first reaction was to find out why.

Of course, finding out why might have led to finger-pointing and/or a reassessment of US foreign policy, which was not the direction that the White House wanted to go right after 9/11. If there was a "post-9/11 mindset", then there is also a "post-Operation Iraqi Freedom mindset" where now we look at things a little more cautiously and analytically. But we were still in post-9/11 shock, and while thoughtful consideration might be the knee-jerk reaction for some of us, it wasn't for Karl Rove.

So before the conversation really got started, the White House shut it down by hitting us where it hurt-- accusing us of being pussies for wanting to talk about it.

The quote I was hunting for, to my surprise, was only from June 2005, to which fact I can only say, this is how he felt all along, and finally said it. And that he shifted the conversation using other political means, like putting up the Patriot Act for a vote which worked on the premise that there was nothing else to do but attack, attack, attack.

Regardless, here it is:

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Rove said. [Washingtonpost.com]

Now, let me reprint that Bush remark so you can see them side-by-side:

"The best way to stop violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place," Bush said. [CNN.com]

Oooh, that varmit!

Again, I'm torn! Does one get mad at them for being hypocrites, or happy that they've come around? Arianna Huffington recently found herself in a similar debate. (Sorry, can't find a link right now and I'm making pancakes so I just need to keep going.)

But even more mind-snapping than that was what he said next!

"And that is because Hezbollah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon and into Israel because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers." [CNN.com]

OK, WHAT? First of all, that sentence doesn't make any sense. Why would H attack I because H kidnapped I's soldiers? Now, Israel bombing Hezbollah because H stole their men I get, although it certainly leaves out more than half of the story. But this makes no sense at all.

Which might even be fine, except that he was just crowing about "understanding why violence occured" and he clearly doesn't understand much of anything, including what's happening on the ground right now.

The only thing worse than having Bush as Pres during and after 9/11, that is, our war, is having him President during someone else's war which is inextricably linked with ours.

So make some blueberry pancakes and watch the beginning of WWIII. Or a nice Sandler comedy like "50 First Dates". (Say whatever you want about me, but that movie is adorable.) Or if you're one of those studious types that feel the need to make good use of your time at all times, go shopping for a hybrid car. Word has it that gas is going to hit $4/gal, and if Iran gets into this, much, much higher.

Why we can't leave Iraq

We can't just take our toys and go home from Iraq. Why?

Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 ostensibly to bolster the Communist ideals in that country, but more likely was there for the same reason everyone goes there-- to secure the oil and trade routes. It was also a "last throes" effort to show military dominance in a crumbling empire. We went in to stop them, in our ongoing fight against Communism, but also because I think we knew they were in their last throes and wanted to hand their asses to them one last time. We backed the Mujahidin, who were not only tired of people invading their country but were religious Muslims who disliked the atheist Communists. After ten years of fighting, the Soviets gave up in 1989 and pulled out of Afghanistan.

The Soviet occupation resulted in a mass exodus of over 5 million Afghans who moved into refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. More than 3 million alone settled in Pakistan. Faced with mounting international pressure and the loss of approximately 15,000 Soviet soldiers as a result of Mujahideen opposition forces trained by the United States, Pakistan, and other foreign governments, the Soviets withdrew ten years later, in 1989.

Following the removal of the Soviet forces in 1989, the U.S. and its allies lost interest in Afghanistan and did little to help rebuild the war-ravaged country or influence events there. The USSR continued to support the regime of Dr. Najibullah (formerly the head of the secret service, Khad) until its downfall in 1992. However, the absence of the Soviet forces resulted in the downfall of the government as it steadily lost ground to the guerrilla forces.

As the vast majority of the elites and intellectuals had either been systematically eliminated by the Communists, or escaped to take refuge abroad, a dangerous leadership vacuum came into existence. Fighting continued among the various Mujahidin factions, eventually giving rise to a state of warlordism. The chaos and corruption that dominated post-Soviet Afghanistan in turn spawned the rise of the Taliban in response to the growing chaos. [Wikipedia]

We just left them there! We didn't act as a stabilizing force, we didn't try to help them rebuild their infrastructure, we didn't try to help them establish a democratic (or any other kind) of government, and as you saw in the Wikipedia quote, we even left the Soviets backing the Najibullah regime. We treated them like whores-- we got what we wanted, put our pants back on, and tossed a Benjamin on the bed where Afghanistan was left weeping and wondering what happened.

And you know what happened next-- the Taliban went crazy, stoned women, blew up statues thousands of years old, and coddled their favorite son, Osama Bin Laden, who to them was a heroic fighter who had dedicated his life to fighting the Soviets and protecting his newfound home. He of course went on to attack us on 9/11, and though I don't have the expertise to say that he was mad at us for leaving them there with a war-torn country, that's my understanding.

This is why we can't just abandon Iraq. We need to stay and be a humanitarian and rebuilding force. I know that Jack Murtha is correct when he says that Americans have become the target, and that our presence there has continued to irritate the situation. But that's exactly where our military strategy in Iraq is falling apart.

How does Hamas win so much support? Because they act like the Red Cross and the Shriners combined-- a social service organization, bringing aid to the little people. And in response, the little people love them. If we could stop raiding houses and start building them, and show the people the good side of America, we would not be as big of a target.

I confess I don't know how to do this, but for Pete's sake, I'm a Texas housewife with most of a degree in directing, I'm not a foreign policy expert. I just know what I see.

Ironically, Afghanistan is also the reason we should pull out of Iraq. We started a war there that became the red-headed stepchild of our foreign policy, and things there are disintegrating and fast. Poppy fields are once again the biggest cash crop, supplying heroin to the world. The tribal warlords are back, and the Taliban keeps trying to make an appearance. Because we are once again wiping our feet on that country, the people don't trust us. And why should they? This is the second time we've been there (if you don't lump us in with all the other Western peoples who have come and gone) and once again, we aren't doing a damn thing to really help these people in the long term.

(Oh, don't get at me for not supporting the troops. All I'm saying is that our men and women are hard at work giving the man the proverbial fish instead of teaching him how to fish himself. That's not to say they aren't trying, but they aren't helping in a lasting way.)

Why did we try to create Iraq into the modern democratic state and not Afghanistan? Why not just try to create our beacon of hope in the first place we "controlled"? Because Iraq was a modern, educated, secular country which, while being controlled by a madman and his sons, was in every other respect much like America. Afghanistan is more like the Wild West-- it's tribal, it's rural, it's uneducated (due to the combination of a lack of educational system and the killing and removal of the intellectual community during the Soviet occupation), and it's distrustful, tending to favor whomever is providing a tangible benefit right now, whether that is a warlord promising money and protection or a US soldier with a candy bar. So we "drained the swamp" (which we didn't really) and went on to invade another country which we thought we could better mold into the Western model of democracy.

We can't pull out of Iraq. Lord, I wish we could. I'm a peacenik, and I wish to hell we hadn't attacked Iraq in the first place. But to pull out now would be repeating our mistakes of the past. We left Afghanistan in 1989, and it took 12 years before that came back to bite us in the ass, but eventually it did. I don't want something similar to happen 12 years from now because we left Iraq before we had cleaned up our mess.

UPDATE: Note the date on this post, June 21, 2006. It's June of 2007 now and the death toll, just of our guys, is over 3500. I am not sure any more. I still believe in the ideas put forth here, but... You can talk about your various options for putting out a fire on the stove, but once the whole house is on fire, perhaps it's time to just shut up and get out. Go here for my latest post on this subject.

Weapons of Mass Deception

That's the title of an EXCELLENT documentary that aired just the other day on the Link TV network.

http://www.wmdthefilm.com/ film's site

http://www.linktv.org/ network's site

It was about all the Hollywood tricks used to dazzle the reporters from the "run-up to the war" until now. For example, embedding the reporters with the troops, which was genius. Put them in danger and ask them to report on the people that are keeping them alive--Stockhom Syndrome, anyone? And pumping them full of fear of chemical weapons and putting them through all kinds of quick-put-your-mask-on drills, which kept them too busy to ask any real questions about the war. It won Best Doc at the 2004 Austin Film Festival, the Durban International Festival, and the Starz Denver International Film Festival.

"Most of the anti-war movement focused on the crimes of the Bush Administration ignoring the mainstream media, its far more effective accomplice," says former network producer Danny Schechter (ABC, CNN). "The government orchestrated the war while the media marketed it. You couldn't have one without the other." [from the film's site]

Schechter has just written a new book as a follow-up to the film, called "When News Lies", which is a follow-up to his 2003 "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception" which is "an account of the TV coverage of the US invasion". "'When News Lies' includes the feature-length DVD of the prize-winning film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)" so there's a way to get your hands on the documentary. You can also order it on the web site.

I had long suspected that the answer to, "Why weren't you asking the tough questions?" was, "We were busy making pretty graphics." Knowing what the news is going to be is gold in that industry. They had something like 7 months to make graphics, coordinate sat phones and set up shop in Iraq, and create all the computer graphics of planes, bombs, etc. When you ask what they were doing, they were getting ready for the mother of all telecasts, not questioning whether this was good for the country and holding people accountable. If they had been working on that, and we went to war anyway, they would have missed their chance to make the coverage as pretty and dazzling as the next network. CNN in particular had its own shadow to contend with-- the first Iraq war put them on the map, with rudimentary technology, and this time they felt they had to outdo themselves or risk looking like yesterday's news network. Now their ads boast they've won awards for their coverage.

The TV networks in America considered their non-stop coverage their finest hour, pointing to the use of embedded journalists and new technologies that permitted viewers to see a war up close for the first time. But different countries saw different wars. Why? [also from the film's site]

The film discusses "five wars": one that was actually being fought, the one we saw on US news networks, the one the Arab nations saw, the one Europe saw, and the one Iraqis were seeing. In South Africa, for example, the media focused on the US cluster bombs, how they worked, and their effect of blowing limbs off of children. Our networks showed the POV of the plane gleaming in the desert sun, while theirs showed the POV of the ground where the bombs were falling.

Another section talks about the public being misled, as is shown in this graphic. I wish the Daily Show was listed in this poll. Note that PBS (and they said this included NPR also) viewers (/listeners) were the least deceived. No wonder the administration is trying to kill public broadcasting.



I urge everyone to see the documentary and get the book. You will be shocked and disgusted, or you won't be because now this is what you expect from these government hijackers but now you'll have talking points.

A Short Play: George Spills the Milk

A short play: George Spills the Milk.

George, age 6, and John, age 12, are in the kitchen. Colin, age 8, is there too, and Hillary, age 10, is in the living room. Mom is outside gardening.

George: I want some milk. Let me into the fridge.

John: OK, I mean, if you really need it, go ahead. Wait, [calls out] Hillary, what do you think?

Hillary [from the other room]: 'S fine...

George opens the fridge and lifts the glass bottle of milk, which starts to teeter in his hands.

John: George, don't spill it! I don't think this is a good idea anymore. Put it back.

Colin: If you spill it, you're going to have to clean it up.

George: I'm not going to spill it!

He manages to wrestle it out of the door shelf.

George: Mission Accomplished!

John: Watch it!

And George drops the milk. The glass shatters and the milk goes everywhere.

John: I knew it! You made a huge mess!

George: You told me I could get the milk. [as Colin opens his mouth] Shut up, Colin.

Colin: I'm not saying we're not friends anymore, but I'm going home.

Colin leaves.

John: I can't believe this mess!

George: I'm cleaning it, hold on.

He gets just one paper towel and starts to dab at the floor.

John: You're going to need more paper towels than that.

George: This one is just fine.

John: It's falling apart! It's not strong enough and rubbing it on the floor is tearing it up.

George: It will be fine...

He half-heartedly dabs at the floor, not really cleaning anything.

John: You needed more paper towels.

George: I know! I know! Ok, fine...

George gets more towels and continues mopping up the floor, not really getting anything clean. Hillary enters.

Hillary: What a mess!

George: I know, I know!

John: He needed more paper towels.

Hillary: Obviously. And steadier hands.

George: You said I could get the milk! You said!

Hillary: I didn't know you were going to make a huge mess, I thought you could handle it.

John: I didn't know you would spill it either. Besides, I told you you could before I told you not to. So just remember I said not to when you talk to Mom.

Mom enters.

Mom: Talk to Mom about what? Oh, my goodness! What a mess! Who is responsible for this?

George, Hillary, and John are all talking over each other.

George: You know how you said milk was important--

John: I told him not to--

Hillary: I was in the other room--

George: --they said I could!

John: I did not!

George: Did too! You said I could!

John: I said you could before I said you couldn't!!!

Mom: Enough! I need to go back out to the garden. The question is, who is going to be in charge now? It clearly shouldn't be George.

John: Me! I told him not to get out the milk AND I told him he needed more paper towels.

Hillary: Me! I mean, it's not really anyone's fault that the milk spilled, and I don't know exactly what to do about it, but George is a pooty-head.

John: Well, duh. We all know he's a pooty-head. The important thing is that I told him not to do it and I told him he needed more paper towels.

Mom: Yes, but what about the mess?

George: I cleaned it long enough. Now it's up to the next guy.

John: Well, it's a pretty big mess. I think paper towels are needed, more than George was ever going to use...

Hillary: Well, it is a big mess, and I mean, you never can tell where the milk is going to get to. I can't exactly say what I would do, I just know it needs to get cleaned up.

John: Obviously.

And here I bring down the curtain on my little play.

The point is, I'm getting really tired of this discussion. Yes, George is a pooty-head who spilled milk everywhere. Yes, it's going to be a mess cleaning it up, and no matter how much you are in opposition to him and his mess-making, whoever gets in there next is going to have to clean it up. And they will probably clean it up in basically the same way that George would, because there's not that many ways to do it.

So just because you are in opposition to George doesn't mean that "what you're going to do in Iraq" is going to be that much different than George would do if he stayed, or what any of your opponents would do: deal with the facts on the ground and try to get us out of there in one piece without leaving behind a hotbed of terrorism (the kind we left in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out).

The salient point to sway me then, to choose the next POTUS, is that from now on you are going to be careful. That you won't get us recklessly into another war. That you will be honest with us. That you will start to deal with international terror cells in a law-enforcement paradigm and stop bashing around the world with your bombs. That you will start treating them like the cockroachy criminals that they are and stop elevating their status to warriors that we have to send our warriors to fight in a big-scale war. That the next time a POTUS tells me that we have to go to war to defend ourselves, we actually do. That we will go back to the Powell Doctrine. That we won't have this big mess again.

As for the cleaning up, well, it's going to be messy and no one is really going to have a good answer as to how to magically make the mess go away. I think we should stop expecting that they will, and focus on whether they have the quality to keep us from future messes.


[Published by me as a letter to the War Room on Salon.com. Editor's Choice!]

They do have nice suits.

I'm a Liberal. This is well known. But I have always respected the conservative movement.

First, I am also a Libra, which if you believe any of that stuff means I'm keen to see both sides of everything. I believe that if you're someone who loves this country and are interested in developing policies to help it, then we have more in common than not. And I can respect a well-thought-out line of reasoning even if I still disagree with it in the end because I believe in different goals. (The fact that you and I are interested in discussing "the role of government in the modern age and the meaning of its social contract with its citizens" has already set us apart from the masses, who are more interested in who's running for American Idol than American President.)

Second, I once worked for the Republican Party, as an open Democrat. Some of them were indeed crazy. But I worked for two men and one woman who were kind, smart, decent, and conservative, and they enjoyed talking to me. (Again, we had more in common simply because we wanted to talk about it.) They patiently explained their point of view without slandering the left, and I learned a lot. I came to really respect the point of view of fiscal conservatives. I kept my own beliefs about the nature of the relationship between government and its people, but I have no trouble seeing the other side.

Third, my high school friend's dad was a conservative state senator in Florida, and he went to our church. I know that a lot of people have a pretty low opinion of politicians, and many on my side would dock points for him being on the right, but he was a nice and honest man, and this formed many of my feelings about politicians at a young age.

All of this is to say, after 8 years of "my President" (I think everyone has one, the first one they felt passionate about) and with a pretty bland candidate in Gore, I was willing to let the other side have a shot for a while. I confess I never liked Bush. He reminded me of men I knew, men I knew to stay away from. In fact, he reminded me a lot of a man who came up to me at closing time at the bar I worked-- drunk, vomit on his shirt, knees under his frat-boy cargo shorts skinned and freely bleeding-- who hit on me. Ick. So yes, Bush has always made me queasy.

But the country seemed to be humming along so well, I didn't think anything too bad could happen. And Clinton had championed some fiscally conservative causes, like Welfare Reform and NAFTA, so the parties didn't seem all that different. I thought we'd see a continuing paring down of government services, which can be painful but not necessarily bad. (Like I said, I can see why they would want smaller government, I can see how they could logically justify and execute it, even though I respectfully disagree on many points.)

I knew that they wanted to "bring the grownups back into the White House". I knew that Clinton's administration was seen as an overgrown dorm party. Keep in mind, this was the 1990s, when all over the business community, a radical "youth movement" was changing the face of the workplace. Dress codes went from suits to jeans, foozball tables went into break rooms, and bean bag chairs went into amorphous "team work areas". At the same time, this young band of pols moved into the White House with their backpacks instead of briefcases (an icon of which was on Josh's shoulder through all 8 years of The West Wing), meetings over open pizza boxes in the Oval Office, and a First Lady who dared to actually get involved in policy. The Old Guard, the "suits", were incensed. It didn't help that at the end of a long investigation there was found to be sex too. And so one of the promises of the Bush II Administration was to bring back the suits, literally and figuratively. Surely all of this casual behavior wasn't good for the country, they thought. I think it drove them crazy that despite all of this, the Clinton Administration was actually effective. So they promised, and I don't blame people for wanting this after the scandal, to "restore dignity", or "bring the grownups back". And I was interested to see what the "grownups" would do with it.

I knew they valued secrecy, but with the Freedom of Information Act, I didn't think they could hide that much from us.

I knew that they were oil men, I just thought these energy men would want to be in on the ground floor of the next phase of energy development.

I knew they had co-opted (or were allowing themselves to be co-opted by) the extreme religious right (ERR), but I thought honestly that the joke would be on the ERR (which it's turning out to be).

I knew there were neocons sharpening their knives in think tanks, but I didn't think they'd get the chance to remake the world they way they wanted. Think tanks are not real life, and it's often easier to imagine how you would do something in politics than to actually do it, when you have opposing ideas pressing back against you, and a planet of real nations to deal with.

I knew they were hawks, but I thought that since we had developed and cherished the Powell Doctrine, if we were forced into a war it would be swift and with a clear mission and exit strategy. And they installed Powell himself as the Secretary of State, so I thought that would keep us in check.

And I knew that they desperately wanted to go back into Iraq. For 8 years they listened to their base complain that the one failing of the Bush I years was that they "didn't finish the job" in Iraq by taking out Hussein. (Remember, I worked for them in the first few Clinton years, and I listened to them complain about this.) I knew that they wanted to "right" that "wrong", but I didn't really think they'd get the chance. I mean, the only way they could justify going back was if Hussein attacked someone else (for which he didn't have the capability) or, you know, something crazy like Arabs attacking the US. Oops.

What I'm trying to say is that I was willing to give them a shot, to see what their policies would do. I was even willing to see them get the Congress too-- for decades there had been gridlock blamed on having an Executive of one party and a Legislature of another, what would happen if they got it all and could really show us what kind of country their policies, unhindered, would bring us? What if they could remake the country for the better? That's all I want for my beloved country.

So while part of me, the part that cringed while Clinton slipped the noose around his own neck for his lynching, the part of me that wants to throw rotten tomatoes at the gerry-mandering hack Tom DeLay, is happy to be dancing on the grave of the GOP, there is a much bigger part of me that weeps for the destruction of our country and the collapse of the promise of a new vision.

Sydney Blumenthal has a new article in Salon ("The GOP Begins to Implode") in which he delineates all the factions that are splintering apart, and how the immigration issue is adding to the quake. The GOP is finding out what it means to have a big tent-- all the circus animals eventually start to eat each other. Here are some of his salient points:

• The nativist Republican base is at the throat of the business community.

• The Republican House of Representatives, in the grip of the far right, is at war with the Republican Senate.

• The evangelical religious right is paralyzed while the Roman Catholic Church has emerged as a mobilizing force behind the mass demonstrations of millions of Hispanic immigrants.

• Bush's neoconservative foreign policy has been discredited, a virulent form of isolationist nationalism, always lurking beneath the surface, has filled the vacuum.

• Fear of the Other is being displaced onto the traditional nativist target: immigrants.

The "grownups" have been terrible stewards of this country. It turns out that the alternative to being young and idealistic is being old and corrupt. They have lied, leaked, evaded, spied on us, and put dangerously under-qualified cronies in critical positions in the government. They have very nice suits, but they won't roll up their sleeves. In this culture of lawlessness, which included the "K Street Project" (forcing all lobbying firms to hire only Republicans), some of them took bribes in cash and goods.

They insisted that conservation was against the national interest (QUE???) and that drilling in Alaska and "buying" our own "gas station" in Iraq would solve our oil problems-- until it didn't, and now they are singing a false note in trying to take back everything they've ever said without sounding like liars.

They even lied to the ERR, making such hay out of the "threat" of gay marriage (rumor has it, this election cycle it will be the spectre of "gay adoption" that looms), taking their "free milk" of votes and walking away without buying the cow. (Ironic, isn't it, since abstinence is their sole sex ed, that they didn't see that one coming?)

Turns out that neoconservativism regarding domestic issues is actually for big government and domestic spending. (Well, duh, it has to financially support its militaristic foreign policy somehow.) I think this was a shock to many fiscal conservatives that didn't know some of their best friends were working to cross purposes. George Will still hasn't gotten that look of shock off his face. Wikipedia in its definition says, neocons "sympathized with a non-traditional foreign policy agenda that was less deferential to traditional conceptions of diplomacy and international law and less inclined to compromise principles even if that meant unilateral action." Turns out, that means pissing everyone off. I would go farther to say that it specifically involved remaking the entire Middle East into "people we could deal with"-- without noticing that the people who lived there didn't want to be remade and would virulently hate us for meddling in the wrong places while not meddling enough in the Palestian/Israeli conflict, making them even more impossible to deal with. (Now even the more rational states can't be seen with us for fear of attracting that hate.)

Making Colin Powell the Secretary of State, it turns out, was an effort to marginalize him. Under a plan in which one is "less deferential to traditional concepts of diplomacy and international law", the Secretary of State is a joke. The real power in a neocon administration is the Secretary of Defense, in which position they installed the neo-est, hawkest member of their cabal, Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld is one of those smarmy, arrogant people that make you feel like they are the only ones with the answers, and you're an idiot. (Not just the kind who think you are an idiot, but the kind that really makes you feel like you must be.) And when he's working in the vacuum of not being in power, I'm sure he convinced everyone (and apparently still has the President convinced) that he really did have the answers and they were idiots (because this kind of guy is really persuasive). But reality has borne out that he's just a blowhard. His arrogant, dismissive speaking has devolved into defensive whining, which oddly matches the President's defensive whining ("This is haa-ard!") Cheney has a similar intimidating veneer-- he's the quintessential stoic father, the leader of the "grownups", who makes you feel like he's the adult who understands better than you do but, it turns out, he's just feeling his way through life like anyone else.

Lastly, it's surprising to learn that the hawks are terrible at war! It's like having a group on the school fundraising committee insist on a dance-off with the rival school-- but it turns out they can't dance. We all assumed, including the right, that these men (and women, Ms. Rice) who were planning for years to go back into Iraq, who were planning for years to remake the Middle East without "traditional diplomacy" and with "unilateral [military] action" were good military strategists. It turns out the good military strategists (the best kind being the kind that try to keep us out of military action, and then only with a clear mission and exit strategy) were in the State Department being ignored. So while it's possible that the neocon vision of remaking the Middle East might (and I stress might) have worked with good military planning, we will never know because they bungled it from start to finish.

I should point out that I am referring only to the civilian military planners. The military strategists within the military are quite good at their jobs and have done an amazing job on the day-to-day planning (the small picture) while being hobbled by civilian idiots on major planning (the big picture).

You might notice that I haven't mentioned the bungling of the Katrina disaster. While this is the most blatant example of incompetence on the most basic governmental level (we might argue about health care or public education, but this is the kind of thing we all expect a government to handle for us), and it stems directly from failures in the Administration-- namely cronyism and the dismantling of Clinton's shiny revamped FEMA into a shell of its former glory, just in time for the worst disaster in 50 years or more)-- I never dreamed this could happen. The point of this essay is to say, "I was willing to give them a shot, but it turns out their ideas and the execution of those ideas were really, really bad." But I never in my life gave one thought to an organization like FEMA as a political football, or even a topic of reasoned debate. I thought that at least, our government would protect and serve in the time of a natural disaster. Turns out I was wrong.

I was wrong about a lot of things. I was a young adult not that much younger than most of the Clinton Administration. While the pizza boxes in the Oval Office didn't bother me, the sex scandal did. While I wanted another Democrat administration, I was willing to let the "grownups" back in, because if the "kids" could do this well, maybe the "grownups" could do even better. I was wrong. We all were.

One thing you can say about them, though, they do have very nice suits.

Where does campaign $$ go?

One thing I have always wanted to see reported is, what happens to all those campaign contributions?

I'm always flummoxed when a candidate can raise $2M in one night to get into office so they can fight a bill that spends $500,000. Seems like if you can just throw a dinner and raise that kind of money, then we shouldn't really have money problems in our government, should we? Why can't we throw a dinner for Medicaid?

I suppose that the donors consider it money well spent if they only have to pay it once rather than face a permanent tax. Or perhaps it's because, on principle, government forces you to spend your money via tax dollars on whatever they want, but at least with a candidate you have your choice of where to put your $2K.

During an election cycle (when are we not in an election cycle?) we hear a lot about the funds being raised in the millions of dollars, and the cost of running a campaign, which is vast, mostly because of TV ads. (Which is why you won't hear this story on CNN.)

What I've always wondered is, what happens to our economy when millions, perhaps billions when it's all added together, gets sucked out and siphoned into campaigns? If there is all this discretionary income lying around in American pocketbooks, what happens when it gets taken out of regular circulation (from your vacation money, your home improvement projects, your trips to the mall) and funneled into a campaign? Does this hurt the economy in general, or is the money from a campaign "trickling down" (as they say) back into the economy?

For instance, is it possible that election-cycles every 2 years are the thing that keeps printers of yard signs and posters, makers of buttons, bumper-sticker companies, tee-shirt companies, caterers, event halls, and for-hire telemarketing banks afloat? Is it possible that certain sectors of the economy get a shot in the arm each time, similar to the yearly Christmas-season retail boom, that keep them in business?

We all know that most of the money raised for a candidate goes to TV ads. TV ads are extraordinarily expensive, and there is no discount for "the good of the country". Personally, here's where I think there should be some real reform. Cut those costs. Force TV networks to adhere to a pre-approved pay schedule for political ads sponsored by the candidate's campaign (not the 527s) and watch the costs of a campaign drop significantly. This I believe would promote more honest campaigns, more honest politicians, and allow more room for the proverbial "little guy" to run. But I digress.

Back to those TV ads, and more specifically, those TV networks who are raking in the big bucks. I'm no economist, so I don't know what this means. It might mean that the networks are able to produce their content, making TV "free", or at least affordable (it might be that many major TV networks would be crippled without this periodic influx of cash). Or maybe it's more "trickle-y" than that, maybe it goes to high salaries for management and returns for stockholders, so that they can then go on those vacations and do the home improvements that the rest of us had forgone to send in our campaign contributions. (Hey, wait a minute...)

But Walter Shapiro at Salon.com is reporting that whatever the answers to these questions, a disgustingly enormous amount of money, and a serious percentage of campaign dollars, is going to media consultants.

For more than a quarter-century, media consultants have been paid not in fixed dollar terms, but as a percentage of the campaign's television buy. The more often a candidate goes on television, the more the media consultant makes...

These days, in a typical hotly contested House race, the media consulting firm will get between 10 percent and 15 percent of the total television ad buy, full reimbursement of production costs, maybe a post-election "victory bonus" and sometimes a $3,000-a-month consulting fee. ...The consultant's percentage fee is calculated based on the TV stations' posted ad rates (the inflated gross) rather than the actual charges (the net)...

As outlined in Joe Klein's new book, "Politics Lost," Shrum and his firm ended up receiving between between 4.5 percent and roughly 6 percent of the money Kerry spent on TV ads from the end of the primaries until Election Day. While precise figures are unavailable, it is a conservative guess that Shrum and his partners made more than $6 million (plus reimbursement for production costs) from the effort to oust George W. Bush from the White House.

Do you know what it takes to raise $6 million in politics? Picture a political gala in the largest hotel ballroom in the country -- an event so crammed with tables that there is risk of a fire hazard, with everyone in the room giving the maximum legal contribution ($2,000 in 2004). Now imagine the outrage if everyone at that dinner had been told that their money was not going to elect John Kerry president, but to pay the fees of his media consulting firm.

We're not picking on Democrats here, although in the interests of modesty it's good to use your own party as an example. But there has been a movement afoot, and for this the author again uses a Democratic example, to negotiate contracts without these huge fees, thereby greatly reducing the cost of the campaign:

In sharp contrast, the Democratic National Committee, which independently spent about $100 million on TV ads in 2004, insisted that its media firms work for a flat fee rather than a percentage of the ad buy...Unlike the Kerry campaign, the DNC paid a rock-bottom 1.7 percent of the TV buy for consulting services and ad placement...Leading figures in the party such as Sens. Hillary Clinton and Mark Warner have, with Kerman's assistance, championed flat-fee and reduced-fee arrangements with their consultants.

Another interesting quote regards the FEC:

While the Federal Election Commission requires campaigns to laboriously detail every contribution of $200 or more, the government is far more cavalier about expenditures. The FEC acts as if the only possible corruption comes from the getting rather than the spending.

But it seems to me that if we make some effort to control the costs of the campaign, by discounting TV ads or capping salaries of consultants or other means, then the candidates wouldn't be so desperate for contributions, and the corruption in "the getting" would naturally decrease.

This is a topic that I have always wanted to see reported, but that never is. Shapiro mentions this dilemma as well:

Given the reluctance of virtually everyone in politics to talk on-the-record about this taboo topic, I sometimes felt as if I would have to resort to meeting my sources in underground parking garages at 2 in morning.

So I guess I have as many of my old questions answered as I'm going to get. But now I have a new one: What are we going to do about it?

UPDATE: Bob Shrum has published a book called "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner". I haven't read it but I've heard some interviews about it, and I haven't heard him explain or lament or rejoice in the vast sums he was paid.

Tolerance vs. Conformity

The inherent difference between the two parties is that the conservatives embrace conformity while the liberals embrace tolerance. This is the root cause of their two different approaches to the political realm.

While the conservatives might have many (as you* said, "messy") points of view, they are trained to conform, or appear to conform, and as Craig234 [another letter-writer on Salon.com*] wrote, attach to brand loyalty. They also connect one brand-loyalty (for example, their church affiliation) with another (their party). ("I'm a good Baptist so I must be a good Republican.") If they disagree, they are discouraged from showing it, and if they must show it, they must still hate Dems and vote Republican.

The liberals, on the other hand, embrace tolerance for many points of view. They not only freely disagree with each other while appreciating the other's point of view, but they even embrace the right's right to their point of view. While Craig234 suggests that they should "have as their 'unity' message that they are the party which broadly repesents the most Americans' interests" (which is true, they do and they should), by virtue of saying "We support you and your right to your opinion," the message is already split.

The right are a lot like a trail of ants, all marching along in a line (some wandering off occasionally, but for the most part, all going the same way). Corralling the left is more like herding cats. I don't know if there is an answer to the "unified message problem" when its roots are so deeply ingrained into who we are as people.

(*originally published by me as a letter on Salon.com-- chosen as an Editor's Choice!)