Pelosi Should Resign

Pelosi A Patsy, Time To Go

Nancy Pelosi should resign as speaker of the House.
No, not because she knew about torture of terrorist detainees from the beginning. That’s the stupid part of this current dust-up. Her biggest sin goes far beyond the consequences of knowing about that shameful episode. The consequences of the big sin are being played out down Pennsylvania Ave. as she allows herself to be distracted and victimized by GOPcha.
Veteran Republicans as well as Democrats have known, along with many reporters, staff members, lobbyists and other veterans that the CIA and the rest of the intelligence lies with ease—if not outright lying, dissembling at the very least. One former CIA official was uncharacteristically blunt once when he said, “Of course we lied about that. That’s what we do.”
The problem is we should not even be discussing the issue at this point. It should have been mooted two years ago, by a process Pelosi should have begun, but instead blocked. That is the biggest reason why she should resign.
Most immediately, she should resign because she fell for the one of the oldest in the GOP’s bag of tricks—when the heat is on, practice a bit of legerdemain. Ironically, she enabled the trick to be played on her even before she took her seat as speaker.
The Republican Party has proved itself once again the master of the sleight of hand. A lounge magician relies on shifting the audience’s attention to one hand to help cloud what the other hand is doing to make the trick seem magical.
She allowed the GOP to shift the focus away from the entire Republican party that not only knew about the torture as soon as Pelosi did, its members aided, abetted, suggested, pushed, condoned and covered for it, all knowingly shredding or ignoring the Constitution to make it all seem legal, somehow. What kind of political fool would allow that same party to shift the attention away from all of them and onto one Democrat?
All that is bad enough, but she set the stage for the issue to be relevant at this point in the game, or even a subject for discussion.
As speaker-to-be, Pelosi took off the table the possibility of impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush and his Dr. Strangelove sidekick, Dick Cheney during their final two years of mayhem.
An impeachment inquiry, even if it failed to lead to the ouster of the two real culprits, would have settled several issues that are going to haunt us now for months, if not years.
Barack Obama has shown this to be the case in his shift on treatment of the terrorist detainees (suspected terrorists, that is) and giving them a day in what is essentially a kangaroo court that lies down the road as the detainees continue to be held under illegal circumstances.
Obama would not have been able to make this sad mistake if Pelosi and her majority Democrats had done their job as soon they won control in 2007, to re-establish the supremacy of the Constitution and the belief the American system of justice works for everyone.

If all that had occurred, Pelosi might still be a respected and influential speaker of the House, attributes she is not now likely ever to achieve.

(from: http://www.straightrecord.com)

Punish All Torturers

Do Look Back, Play the Blame Game–

In his first three months in office, President Obama has revealed a major weakness that he needs to correct for the sake of future generations. He needs to drop the idea of “looking forward” at the expense of “looking back.”

His most glaring lapse to date has been his indecisive flip-flop on what to do with those who authorized or carried out torture techniques against terrorism suspects in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

Only by “looking back” and providing the same justice to the U.S. torturers at all levels that we meted out after World War II against Germans and Japanese. Unless we do so, the United States will be seen as holding itself above the law applied to the rest of the world.

At the Nuremburg war crime trials, U.S. policy was that “just following orders” was not a defense for the Nazis who carried out the war crimes. Some of those were executed.

At the Far East military tribunals, the U.S. policy was that waterboarding was without a doubt a form of torture. Some of those carrying out the torture orders were executed.

Somehow, punishing those who “just followed orders” given by the CIA, U.S. military officers and even Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice or the president and vice president, short of executing them somehow does not seem to be so harsh.

Since one cannot prove a negative, it cannot be said with any assurance that those trials deterred nations and people from war crimes in the ensuing six decades. Even if our current torture had saved the United States from a dozen 9/11s, as Cheney might yet claim, the torture still would have been wrong.

But we can say those two sets of trials should have been seen as a clear indication there existed an international agreement such crimes were never to be repeated.

Until now.

It is overly simplistic to say those who ordered and/or carried out the crimes of torture were acting legally because the Justice Department declared such acts to be legal. Particularly the toady Justice Department during the Bush administration.

Just declaring it to be so does not make something legal. Laws are made by legislative bodies and are to be administered by the executive branch. And, sorry to say, carrying out an illegal declaration of law or an illegal was shown in those post-World War II sets of trials is no defense for the torturing.

All of this behavior should have been led to articles of impeachment against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney before they left office, but impeachment has no solution other than removal from office, so that chance has been forever lost.

But now that they, and Rice and Roberto Gonzales and the rest of the gang are out of office, they can be charged with crimes and let prosecutions trickle on down to those who poured the water and performed all the other illegal forms of torture.

The United States must carry out these proceedings and mete out the justice. It already has slapped the rest of the world on international law issues through grotesque display of arrogance by withdrawing its membership in the International Court of Justice that applies anti-torture laws to the rest of the world.

Similarly, the Obama administration must get over this “not playing the blame game” attitude towards those responsible for the financial collapse that is only now trickling down to the rest of the world with repercussions yet to be felt abroad that could make the great depression-like impact on the U.S. seem like a picnic by comparison.

From (www.straightrecord.com)

Grammar Rant

We Verb You To Quit Saying 24/7

If I were the Grammar and Usage Czar:

–Nobody would be “tasked” to do something. The person would be assigned or directed or ordered or requested or asked or commanded or ordained or appointed.

–Nobody would be allowed to use the expression “twenty-four/seven” or its newest variant “twenty-four/seven/three sixty-five.” It would be at all times or around the clock or all day or every day or always or without end or any of useful alternatives.

–Particularly in television, reporters or anchors would not be allowed to describe something as happening “as we speak.” “Police are investigating as we speak” is redundant; the present tense of the verb takes care of all that.

–“As well” should be consigned to the trash heap. “They sold new models, but also sold used cars as well.” “Also” or “and” or something else would do without the “as well.”

–Speaking of “well,” that would not be allowed to be the first word in every television reporter’s story: “Well, Skippy, the city….” “Well, today was to be the day….”

–Everyone would be assigned to study the objective case and nominative case. They would never again say “It made no difference to Joe and I” or “Mail it to Mary or I.”

—Veritas

(from www.straightrecord.com)

Grand Old Partisanship

 

Making Petty Points
      They still don’t get it, the Republicans. With almost-daily reports of harm to the economy, dithering and delay are the mantra of Republicans in Congress debating the economic stimulus.

      Some of them made speeches reminiscent of David Stockman and Ronald Reagan and trickle-down economics: Give the rich a tax break and in their generosity, they will spread the wealth to the lowest. That has not worked. It will not work, but Democrats in Congress have had to accept some portions of that argument just to get enough support to enact the stimulus legislation.

      GOP leader John Boehner said President Obama’s plan for the economy, with its enormous deficits to come, has to be paid for by the current generation’s children and grandchildren. Where was Boehner when our just-past Imbecile-In-Chief, George W. Bush, frittered away a huge surplus left to him by Bill Clinton, and rushed and lied the nation into a trillion-dollar war in Iraq? Republicans did not whimper about deficits or future generations then.

      Where was the Republican leadership when Bush’s hatred of federal oversight and regulation led to the excesses that brought the “meltdown” to Wall Street and the banks? Where were the howls about golden parachutes and billions in bonuses?

      We would not be debating a recovery, let alone one that will cost record deficits, if Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress had not led the nation down those paths.

      Lost in the shouting is a basic fact of spending: A person of modest income gets $1,000, whether in a new job or an outright grant, and spends it mostly on necessities, across a broad spectrum of labor-intensive goods, produced in ways that create jobs. A super-rich person gets $1,000, say from a tax cut, and his high-end spending goes out to a more limited spectrum of goods and labor force.

      Some of the arguments are just silly. Some critics say that giving a boost to the arts, for example, is not productive because it does not create jobs. Just taking my city as an example, spending on the arts brings tourism that is the biggest generator of jobs and prosperity.

      Just from the standpoint of practicality, tax cuts are heavy on paperwork and delay, compared with the more direct effects that come with generating new jobs, boosting aid to localities, helping the homeless and poor, or boosting working families’ purchasing power.

      The hubbub over recovery has forced a new definition of pork barrel. Some of what is “pork” in ordinary times could be recast as “recovery projects” in the deep recession. So members of both parties should be careful not to allow too much of the necessary infrastructure spending to become dismissed as “pork.” There is still inexcusable pork-barrel spending, of course. Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere” would still be “pork,” even under a shifting definition. But a meritorious public works project long postponed only because of the recession could add to the recovery by creating jobs.          –Veritas

(from www.straightrecord.com)

Same Old Party

GOP Still Doesn’t Get It

     The Republican Party took a big hit in the Nov. 4 elections, all across the country and not just at the top of the ticket. Subsequent hand wringing within the party suggested there was a widespread realization the party needed a major change.
     Republican behavior since then shows the party still does not get it. From Nov. 5 on, Republicans around the country have spouted the same old lines they have always had, most of them Pavlovian responses, led by the same old “tax cuts!”
     Choosing Michael Steele as chairman of the national GOP is not going to help the party change. Steele embodies two elements sacred to the party and its old thinking—Christianity and business. He was born on an air base (to a widow, but with no reference to a military father or the circumstances), he was educated in Catholic Schools and even attended a seminary set to become a priest, and most importantly from a political point of view, he was a corporate lawyer who helped the Wall Street gang that built the unsupported economic bubble that just burst.
     Republicans probably chose Steele because he is black, a token they hoped would attract African-Americans, and presumably Hispanics, away from the Democratic Party they so overwhelmingly backed in the election.
     The wealthy black face that stood out when he addressed a sea of white faces at the Republican Convention is not likely to understand any more of the needs of the nation’s poor and minorities (shamefully, usually the same) than his audience. His only public break with party doctrine has been that he supports affirmative action.
     The GOP response to the stimulus package offered by the new administration to help fix some of the mess left by the previous Republican administration was just about the same response it would have made 10 years earlier. Ditto the response to bringing back some regulation to help balance the greed that has been driving the nation.
     Even before Barack Obama was sworn in as president, the GOP was hurling negative invectives his way and Rush Limbaugh, whose ability to generate interest declined as George W. Bush brought the party down, returned to set the same petty oral agenda for at least the next four years.
     The GOP has never served the interests of the poor, the minorities or even much of the middle class and indicated in the first three months after the election it probably never will.
     The Republican Party’s only salvation may be to split into two parties, ceding one part to the right-wing nuts who salivate at the mention of key words to wallow in the world of hatred and meaningless issues. The remainder would work to build party of moderates that just might attract enough voters away from the Democratic Party to be viable once again, representing not only business interests, but the interests of the customers of business as well.

(from www.straightrecord.com)

 

The Bush Legacy

His Best Effort

     The exiting Bush crowd, including his dwindling supporters and apologists, spent the final days of the administration in one last attempt to put a favorable spin on the past eight years.
     He and Dick Cheney even attempted to move back the period through which a historical look at their failed presidency would be viewed. Historians generally agree that because of the emotions of the time and disclosures not yet made, a period cannot be judged honestly until about 20 years after the fact. Bush and Cheney kept mentioning 50 years for a reasonable look-back, no doubt because they figured most of us who lived through their mess would be dead by then.
     Much of the spinning got to be downright ridiculous. It also led to more Bushspeak, as in this sentence in one of his many departing interviews, during which he apologized for nothing: “I am disappointed that weapons of mass destruction were not found” in Iraq.
     If one takes a good look at that sentence, it is an amazing admission that his detractors were correct—that he wanted any excuse to invade Iraq, for whatever reason we still don’t really know. He is not apologizing for or seeking an excuse for what his defenders blamed on bad intelligence; he actually wanted there to be WMDs in Iraq to justify his invasion.
     There were many other such moments, many that evoke laughter among his detractors, others that prompt puzzling headshakes, and other misstatements and mischaracterization of the truth.
     One of the worst mischaracterizations, however, occurred during his own recounting of his administration’s achievements and similar lists compiled by his supporters. He claimed one of his major achievements was the adding prescription coverage to Medicare.
     As supporters of national health care, we also believe that was an excellent move, but only if done correctly. But because it was passed at a time when Republicans virtually controlled all three branches of government, it was deeply flawed and has become one of myriad problems left for a new Democratic administration and Democratic Congress to repair.
     Because the GOP exists chiefly to serve the rich and big business, its leaders left out of the Medicare prescription drug package a practical way to pay for the massive addition to an entitlement program.
     That also is one of the many ironies afflicting the exiting crowd that always railed against budget-busting entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. The Bush/Gingrich leadership is replete with such contradictions, but Medicare Part D takes the cake.
     Understandably, the pharmaceutical industry, already one of the nation’s wealthiest industries, wanted drugs covered under Medicare insurance to create a huge expansion of their domestic market. But they wanted to sell them at the prices they set.
     Democrats tried and failed to get some type of provision added to the benefit to keep down the cost, so they offered amendments all along the way to ensure that the government, through the Medicare program, would negotiate with the drug makers for the same volume discounts it negotiates with other suppliers.
     Not only did the Democrats fail to win that provision, the Republican majority flipped that proposal around and added language to the bill specifically barring Medicare from negotiating lower prices. So much for labeling Democrats as the “tax and spend” party.
     Thus, we have another growing mess from the Bush legacy, one he and his supporters say is one of their best efforts.
     Thank you, Mr. President—and don’t let the door hit you in the behind on your way out.

What’s That, You Say?

Mean What You Say, Say What You Mean

     The beginning of a new Congress brings to mind the title of the set of parliamentary rules by which that body operates (that is, when it operates) and the importance of that poor, ignored, misused orphan, the apostrophe.
     The book is “Robert’s Rules of Order.” A person (a family, actually) named Robert wrote the compendium of rules for the conduct of assemblies, etc. Hence, “Robert’s Rules.” But people who write about the rules usually call them “Roberts Rules” or worse, “Roberts’ Rules.” This relates also to my friends the Richardses, erudite journalists who nonetheless refer to themselves as “the Richards.” Others are “the Roberts” and “the Cheevers.” Why? Mostly carelessness, I think; they know better. But then, a family named Morris never uses “the Morris” for the plural, or Joneses “the Jones.” Why would they get it right? Go figure.
     Does all this laziness do any harm? In some cases, yes. A recipient of an invitation to visit “the Cheevers” (instead of “the Cheeverses”) may forever have the impression their last name is Cheever, not Cheevers.
     This doesn’t even get into the maddening habit of many painters of house numbers and welcome mats of making it “The Smith’s” or “The Johnson’s.”
     What grammar sloppiness really hurts understanding? Well, for example: If someone promises to “ensure compliance” with a regulation, that has (or should have) a different meaning from “insure compliance.” The first means the person will make sure compliance happens, the second means the person will provide financial backup in the case of noncompliance.
     Harm is also done by misuse of words whose meanings are clear opposites, such as “average” and “median.” If you promise a worker the “average” wage for the region, that would be different from the “median” wage.
     A humorous sidelight to all this is the regional variation of the meaning of “next.” A southerner, speaking on a Wednesday, may say “next Saturday” meaning “a week from this coming Saturday.” In other regions, “next” means “the very, absolute, coming-up NEXT Saturday, three days from now,” etc.
     Aside from all this, it is sometimes difficult to discern a train of thought, a rational discourse, in some contemporary language. “Well, it’s like we were, like, there, and I, like, did not actually like the, like, mood, y’know. So, like, I freaked, know wha’m sayn?” WHAT?
     Many people, including many in the military or in communications businesses such as television, would be surprised to learn there is no country pronounced “Eye-rack.” Iraq is “Ih-rack” or “Ih-rock,” but not “Eye-rack.”
     With Iran, the long “i” sound is permitted only as a second or third pronunciation, with “Ih-rann” the preferred, or “Ih-ronn.”
     And then there is the world of overuse. Nowadays, everything seems to be “great.” “Great food at Great prices,” one restaurant trumpets in its advertisements. I have had many restaurant meals in my day, but only one or two I would call “great.” I have never encountered “great” prices and am unsure what that means. The Great Wall of China is truly great, but few other walls are. Only a handful of movies could be considered “great.” So, how about being precise? The food was delicious or remarkable or plentiful or tasty or scrumptious, but hardly great. The prices were reasonable or a bargain, but hardly great. A party could be festive or enjoyable or lively or even memorable, but how many are great?
    Why does something have to have “an adverse effect on” something else? Why not harm, hurt, diminish, injure, or any of several worthwhile words with more precise meaning?
    Why are we confusing “lie” and “lay.” (I know “lie” has been a prominent part of the political discourse these past several years, but here I am talking about “lie” as in “lie down.” A person “lies low,” not “lays low.”
    Why did we allow one popular movie to help make “I shrunk the kids” accepted? “Shrank” is still a perfectly accepted and correct use for the plural. Also, “sank” and “drank.” As yet, nobody is saying , “He drunk his fill.”

—Veritas  

(from www.straightrecord.com)

Part II: Rethinking Israel v Palestine

Israel is There To Stay, Get Over It

     The United States was only 85 years old when it fought a Civil War over a fundamental split of the populace. Why would we expect countries in steady conflict for more than 85 decades to come to terms with differences even broader.

     The three religions had been at war with each other for nearly two millennia, so why would a collection of countries created after World War II as the United Nations believe that dividing, with Resolution 181, what was then Palestine between Jews and Arabs would work.

     Not only were lands of the Palestinians taken from them to create a state at odds with their religious beliefs, the land happened to contain Jerusalem, seen by all three of the area’s religions as their home base. Of course the Palestinians would resent the action and not go quietly into a goodnight.

     Six decades later, what is left of Palestine and the artificial state of Israel thus remain at loggerheads, both employing the eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth attitude that is doing nothing to resolve the crisis.

    The dispute is not going to be resolved by giving a scrap of land called Gaza, all that is left of Palestine, its own statehood, even though that would be a fair concession. There remains this wedge of land now known as Israel from which ancestors of Palestinians were driven and which continues to be a thorn in their offsprings’ sides.

     The U.S. position of defending Israel at all costs is a holdover from the Cold War days when the Soviet Union sided with the Arabs and the United States with Israel—our disastrously failed enemy-of-our-enemy-is-our-friend policy.

     This isn’t to say we should abandon Israel; it is to say we need a new way of thinking about the situation and to move away from the same policy that has failed for the past 60 years.

      Who knows what foreign affairs geniuses might come up with once challenged. Perhaps the right answer is a demilitarized zone similar to the one that has been successful for about the same length of time in keeping the two Koreas apart. Perhaps it is a corridor to Jerusalem cut across Israel from Gaza similar to the one from West Germany through East Germany to Berlin that lasted almost as long.

     The partition cannot be undone. Much as Palestinians and their supporters in the region may like it, the rest of the world is not going to support erasing Israel or moving it. It is there to stay and the Palestinians need to face the music and try to accommodate themselves to the reality and see what they can negotiate for themselves.

     New thinking is the challenge of the Obama administration, which in turn must convince the rest of the United Nations to think outside the box.

(from http://www.straightrecord.com)

Israel v Palestine at 60+

Same Problem, Same Thinking, Same Result

     One of the dumbest decisions a collection of nations ever made occurred in the years immediately after World War II. The consequences of the decision, which was based as much on emotion as anything else, is playing out today as it has been for 60 years.

     The conflict between the muslim Arabs of the Middle East and Jewish Israel has no end as long as those who might have an impact on a resolution continue to try to make a dumb decision work. If ever there was an up-to-date illustration of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, it is the Bush administration incursion into Iraq.

     The Barack Obama administration needs some new thinking on the issue and the rest of the involved world needs to take heed. We do not know what the solution is, we only know there needs to be a new way of thinking about the situation.

     We do know that this back and forth revenge, retaliation, tit for tat, whatever you want to call it, has been going on since 1948 without a solution, so why continue looking for one in the same old worn-out policies.

     The time to think outside the box is becoming urgent as Russia works to restore the cold war, meaning aid and support on the side of opponents of anything the United States favors, in this case, Israel.

     The region between Syria, Iraq, Arabia and Egypt to what is now the Suez Canal was handed over to the British Empire to administer after World War I. That empire has a poor history of preparing any of its minions for independence.

     Also, as we have learned most recently with the fall of the Soviet Union and other empire collapses of recent decades, artificial mergings of conflicting ethnic, cultural religious, historical or any other pairings of groups that have their own ways of life simply do not work.

     In Iraq today, it is the Shiites vis a vis the Sunnis, kept unified, as usual, through dictatorial means. That is no different than the British attempt to keep India unified as one country, even though present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh were totally unrelated to India, even hostile to it. Pakistan still is, Bangladesh is just trying to survive.

     What could world leaders have been thinking when they created a Jewish state in the aftermath of discovering the holocaust? To give Jews land, they had to take it from someone else. The someone else lived in the British Mandate of Palestine.

      There probably is no greater conflict in the recorded history than the religious schisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which came about within a few hundred years of each other in the same area before and during the Dark Ages, a period when nothing rational ever was accomplished.

Next: Part II, Israel v Palestine Rethink

(from http://www.straightrecord.com)

Deny Away Home, Dubbya

Denial Ain’t Just a River in Egypt

     A front-page newspaper headline summed up not only 2008, but the eight years of the presidency of George W. Bush: “Bush not worst president, say wife, Rice.”
     Separate Associated Press interviews with Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice elicited the denials, but the reporter apparently did not bother to ask, “Who was worse?”
     Bush and soul mate Dick Cheney made interview rounds in the waning days of their disastrous administration, trying to spin a good face on the administration one last go-round.

     All four repeated that history is yet to be written. It is true most historians would tell you an accurate historical judgment needs to wait until at least 20 years after the fact to avoid mixing in the emotions of the time.
     In this case, however, it is likely that 20 years later the Bush administration’s ineptitude will be the focus of historians in 2028 just as the opinions about Richard Nixon held true through 1994, 2004, and, we dare say, will be the historical opinion far into the future.

(from www.straightrecord.com)